Michael Miller

Morality is at root personal, not social, It is the master method you need to live in reality, i.e., among the entities around you. You'd need it as much on a desert island as among other men. 

What is changed when you live among other men? Fundamentally, nothing is changed: other men merely add one more kind of entity to your world. 

But what an entity! Men are the most important entities in every landscape. No other kind of entity has nearly the same power for your good or evil. When you live among other men you need a method to deal with other men! You need a method to use other men to serve your life, to make them your values. 

I expect this will raise hackles. But consider. Love is a response to values. The method you seek, to the precise extent it succeeds, will provide the real basis for the much ballyhooed (and much despaired of!) love of mankind. The method you seek will be the master social virtue; it will set the terms for all your dealings with other men. 

The method you seek, like all methods, must be based on the nature of the entity you're dealing with. What is the nature of other men? Well, here's a big clue: you're a man! Other men's natures are, to that extent, the same as your own. So, barring error, you will arrive at the same method for dealing with them that they arrive at for dealing with you. 

And that's a form of the Golden Rule--do as you would be done by--derived on an uncompromisingly egoist basis! 

Men have got by with no more social method than the Golden Rule and a bit of common sense, but it doesn't offer specific guidance. To get any farther you have to look at your nature in more detail. 

What is your nature? You are volitional, rational, moral. You focus on things in reality. You learn. As you learn to judge what is important, your judgments of importance guide your focus. You integrate the things you focus on into concepts, and integrate the concepts into principles. You retain your knowledge and guide your actions by means of principles. You learn that you can arrange principles in logical hierarchies, that the broader principles include the narrower. You learn that the broadest principles are the province of philosophy. 

Your mission is to devise a method to use such an entity, even if many of his principles are distinctly different from your own. Where do you start! 

Or do you have to start from scratch? Does such a method already exist? Is the master social virtue already lying about unrecognized and unappreciated? Do you merely have to recognize it, to acknowledge it, to elevate it to its rightful status, and perhaps to fumigate it of old errors? 

Relax! The method you seek already exists! That method--the master social virtue--is diplomacy.

Diplomacy recognizes that a man's actions stem from his principles; to know what to expect of a man, you must "learn his mind" by means of "discussions." Diplomacy does not start by assuming agreement on principles, it actively and purposefully seeks agreement by "opening questions" and "presenting views." 

It is a diplomatic success to win an "agreement in principle," for this gains you the other man's help in an infinite range of specific cases--as far as the principle reaches. With its "opening of questions," "discussions" and "agreements in principle," diplomacy is through and through adapted to the nature of a rational, volitional being. 

Diplomacy's goal is to win the other guy's help. No inanimate entity can help you. Wood does not help the carpenter, nor steel help the blacksmith. It "is a question" whether the dog helps the hunter and the horse helps the rider. Help is the genuine, eager, self-directed and self-interested cooperation of another rational being. If you will review the vast powers of man, you will see that help is no small thing! 

Help cannot be won through force, so diplomacy uses no force; diplomacy is sharply distinguished from war. But only diplomacy can discover when war is advisable or unavoidable. 

Diplomacy is philosophy in action; the diplomacy of a rational man is reason making its way in the world! Every principle that philosophy has identified provides a basis for diplomatic discussion, for agreement or disagreement. Behind every diplomatic agreement or disagreement--perhaps known only in such vague terms as "He annoys me." or "I like him."--lurk philosophical principles awaiting identification. 

The fact that wider principles include narrower ones is diplomacy's secret power. The wider the principle which is agreed, the greater the help that can be won. To win agreement on property rights is to gain help with a vast range of issues. To win agreement on the right to live is to gain help with a yet vaster range. To win agreement on reason and egoism is to gain help with virtually everything! The philosopher, who knows the widest principles, has the means to win help across the widest range of issues. 

No one who holds a principle knows every remote application of it (though philosophers know more than most); no one is omniscient. So those who have sincerely agreed a principle may have "divergences," disagreements about how to apply it. These divergences may be "composed," by agreeing new principles to decide the disputed cases. 

Or the divergences may prove irreconcilable; there may never have been a true agreement in the first place, but merely the illusion of an agreement. Discussions based on merely illusory agreement are not "fruitful." Perhaps some other agreement can be salvaged, or perhaps the "breach" will prove to be total. That is a matter for yet other discussions. 

The philosopher, who is skilled at defining concepts and formulating principles, has advantages here as well: whether in avoiding illusory agreements in the first place, or in composing differences, or in recognizing a breach. 

Philosophers have great advantages in their diplomacy! 

Philosophers' massive advantages in diplomacy may lead you to deduce that philosophers rule the world! That is absolutely correct: they do, typically from the grave. Philosophers create philosophy, and philosophy drives the course of history: it rules the world. 

We can now explain how philosophy rules the world. Philosophy rules through diplomacy. Diplomatic discussions are no idle academic debates. They are preliminaries to concerted action. That action may decide the toppings on a shared pizza, or the price of a plot of land, or it may decide the fate of nations! 

"Do as you would be done by" is still the Golden Rule. Only now you have positive content for it! In fact, you have enough knowledge to invert the Golden Rule: expect others to do by you as you do by them! I.e., require diplomacy of others as the precondition of any dealings with them! 

Diplomacy is reason in action among men. He who sins against diplomacy sins against reason. You may be able to avoid those who sin against diplomacy, but when you can't avoid them, you must wage war upon them. The alternative of reason vs. force is the alternative of diplomacy vs. war. 

We now have a precise answer for Dr. Stadler's idle question in "Atlas Shrugged:" What can you do when you deal with people? The answer is: "You can practice diplomacy!"

Now let's integrate diplomacy with some better known virtues. The first thing to do is to identify the social virtues. We must distinguish the virtues you would need even on a desert island from the virtues you need only among other men. 

Ayn Rand lists seven central virtues: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness and pride. (See Galt's speech.) Rationality, integrity, productiveness and pride are clearly personal virtues; you would need them as much on a desert island as you do among men. Honesty has two aspects, one personal and one social: being truthful with oneself, and being truthful with others. Justice is clearly social. Independence is hard to call. 

We can recognize justice and honesty as sub-methods of diplomacy. To treat men justly and honestly is essential to winning and keeping their help. Justice and honesty aim at help; they are sub-virtues of diplomacy. 

Diplomacy is the art of getting others to help. Of getting help for whom, for what? Why for you, of course, and for your work! The aim of your diplomacy is not to win help for some group you happen to belong to, nor for some "cause," nor for anything else of a long list of things that might be proposed involving other men. 

Rather, the aim of your diplomacy is your own good. This aspect of diplomacy is the virtue of independence! In your diplomacy, you are sovereign! Whatever friendships, alliances or arrangements you come to with others, can only be based on your own knowledge and purposes. You are your own man! You act for yourself alone! Independence puts your diplomacy at the service of your own life. 

Diplomacy is important! It deserves your focus and your thought. I seek help to learn more about diplomacy. I would "welcome" a theory of diplomacy! 

For a mass of evidence, I recommend Churchill's "The Second World War." After all the cynical wisecracks I'd heard about diplomacy, I was startled by Churchill's emphasis on honesty and genuine agreement as intensely practical necessities. And Churchill's frank pursuit of values in every issue and meeting was truly an eye-opener!