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From: Bryan Douglas Caplan <bdcaplan@phoenix>
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Date: Wed, 14 Dec 94 17:24:48 EST
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To: objectivism@vix.com
Subject: Guess Who Wrote This
Reply-To: Bryan Douglas Caplan <bdcaplan@phoenix>
Status: RO


I found the following passage in a work by a famous author who enjoys
a rather bad reputation among Objectivists:

  We may find the clue in one of the so-called ideal standards of
  civilized society.  It runs: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'
  It is world-renowned, undoubtably older than Christianity which 
  parades it as its proudest profession, yet certainly not very old;
  in historical times men knew nothing of it.  We will adopt a naive
  attitude towards it, as if we were meeting it for the first time.
  Thereupon we find ourselves unable to supress a feeling of astonishment,
  as at something unnatural.  Why should we do this?  What good is it
  to us?  Above how, how can we do such a thing?  How could it possibly
  be done?  My love seems to me a valuable thing that I have no right to
  throw away without reflection.  It imposes obligations on me which
  I must be prepared to make sacrifices to fulfill.  If I love someone,
  he must be worthy of it in some way or another...He will be worthy
  of it if he is so like me in important respects that I can love myself
  in him; worthy of it if he is so much more perfect than I that I
  can love my ideal of myself in him; I must love him if he is the son
  of my friend, since the pain my friend would feel if anything untoward
  happened to him would be my pain - I should have to share it.  But
  if he is a stranger to me and cannot attract me by any value he has
  in himself or any significance he may have already acquired in my
  emotional life, it will be hard for me to love him.  I shall even
  be wrong if Ido, for my love is valued as a privilege by all those
  belonging to me; it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger of
  a level with him (with that kind of universal love) simply because he,
  too, is a denizen of the earth, like an insect or an earthworm or a
  grass-snake, then I fear that but a small modicum of love will fall to
  his lot and it would be impossible for me to give him as much as by
  all the laws of reason I am entitled to retain for myself.

And this author goes on to say that:

If the high-sounding ordinance had run, 'Love thy neighbor as thy
enemy loves them,' I should not take objection to it.  And there is 
a second commandment that seems to me even more incomprehensible, and
arouses still stronger opposition in me.  It is: 'Love thine enemies.'
When I think it over, however, I am wrong in treating it as a greater
imposition.  It is at bottom the same thing.
I imagine I hear a voice gravely adjuring me: 'Just because thy 
neighbor is not worthy of thy love, is probably full of enmity toward
thee, thou shouldst love him as thyself.'  I then perceive the case
to be like that of *Credo quia absurdum*.
----
The author of this passage is Sigmund Freud, from his _Civilization
and Its Discontents_.  Of course I slightly take this passage out
of context, especially Freud's pessimistic view of man as tortured
by the conflict between his animalistic instincts and the veneer of
civilization.  But I still found the passage rather interesting.
Indeed, the whole book so far has been interesting; valuable, I think,
as an eloquent statement of how _some_ people happen to feel about
modern society, rather than a scientific proof of how everyone really
feels.  Comments, anyone?
   --Bryan Caplan