Ayn Rand and Spinoza
I’ve intended for quite a while to write a blog explaining my understanding of the writings of Ms Ayn Rand. I read all her work several decades ago, named my daughter Dagny Ayn (after her and the heroine of Atlas Shrugged), and remain an admirer. At first, five decades ago, I was more than a mere admirer; I was a true believer who saw in her work an unvarnished picture of the way the world really is. Over the years my view has matured, and the following represents my mature thoughts.
Those Libertarians who read her work as if it presented a philosophical system in the classical sense have missed her point entirely (and maybe she did too, as some of her essays seem to indicate). At the core of her work is the notion that the quality of the world (as defined by humans) lies nowhere but in the quality of its people. She and I and Spinoza regard this as an axiom that does not need proof.
The world (as seen by human beings) is determined to be what it is by the unchanging laws of nature. But the face the world shows us is forever changing. The human brain, considered as an objective "thing," also operates in accord with unchanging laws. But our species -- no more than the collection of all rivers -- is not a homogeneous assemblage of like-minded things. Although the body parts -- including the brains -- of every human work in accord with unchanging laws, the values taken by the neural structure of each one of us is determined individually by our experience in the world.
Compare this to a computer's memory. As they come off the assembly line, all the memory chips look exactly alike, and as parts of the whole mechanism they all operate in accord with the same physical principles. But as the computers begin to be used, their individuality becomes manifest. The same memory location in computers of the same design will no longer be identical, They will be encoded with electrical impulses representing words and other symbols that will vary from machine to machine. So also do the memory functions of human brains contain (in a so far undecipherable code) different symbols, and some of those symbols, when brought into play in human behavior, function as human values, the actual determinants of the way we shall behave in reaction to the world.
Ms Rand was writing about those memories we refer to as values.
Before getting further into her "people" we must acknowledge and understand the difference between egoism and egotism. All of us, according to Spinoza and Ayn Rand, are egoists. Spinoza expressed our egoism by the Latin word conatus, by which he referred to the propensity of all things to perpetuate themselves in being. Note, all things, not just human beings. The very nature of the smallest atom and the largest star (and everthing in between) acts in such a way that the object will remain what it is until it is acted upon by a more powerful object. Human "objects," unlike most others, are aware of their desire to perpetuate themselves in being, so unlike those that are unaware, humans take actions that they perceive to be in the direction of their preservation. That is the nature of us all, and that is what Ms. Rand (and Spinoza) meant by the word "egoist."
An egotist, on the contrary, is an egoist who has a limited view of what it takes to survive in the world as a functional being (i.e., what it takes to be happy). He sees himself as a more or less isolated creature whose ego. along with all its values, whether good, bad, or evil, must be preserved. The egotist is an unenlightened egoist.
All the main characters in Ms. Rand's major books were intentionally written as caricatures of various qualities that occur in human beings, some of which are good, some bad, some downright evil. Some of those characters have been seen as representatives of the "Supreme Egoist," and in my opinion, some of them were. But the supreme egoist was not, as some imagine, neither John Galt (in Atlas Shrugged) nor Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead). The Supreme Egoist is a person who is equally capable of being a leader and of being led. He is just as physically alone in the world as are all of us, but he has spiritually bridged the gap between himself and others and has managed to view the world and all that's in it as an integrated whole, a One, a naturally adapted organism.
The principal characters in Ms Rand's books do not represent ideal versions of humanity, but rather ideal representations of specific human qualities. The best (but not only) example of this sort of being appears as the riveter, a minor character in "The Fountainhead." He comes as close to perfection as can be imagined. He's great at his work (delivering 8 hours of devoted work for 8 hours pay), loyal to his friends, and not overly consumed with himself. When we observe the riveter pitching a rivet with complete awareness of the importance of what he's doing, we may have difficulty seeing his action as an expression of his commitment to excellence. And even when we analytically resolve his perfection, seeing it as an expression of, say, his "upbringing" or his "morals" we miss the point. The characteristics Ms Rand gave him express everything he is (or better, has become). He is an effect of all that appears in his "driving" device, his very human brain.
And this is the element of her philosophy that Ms Rand left unexplored (and which I suspect she was incapable of exploring in herself). It remains much easier for her readers to fall into the traps of Objectivism, much easier to wind up believing that human qualities can be observed, much in the same way we observe the qualities of, say, a good poem. Just as the poem seems to be an object that can be objectively assessed, but that is a deception. Its authentic quality lies in the fact that it is an artifact of a human mind. As such it cannot be separated from the human being who created it, and he or she is a product of his or her whole experience in the world. (Note this well, since it follows that as more and more human beings become more adequately adapted to the authentic whole, the easier it will be for the rest also to adapt -- i.e., to find enlightenment.)
Literary deconstructionists go a step further in understanding the objects of their study, but they still, with all their cleverness, are unable to get their minds around the process that generated the work. The ideas the poet expresses in his work may be objectively studied and placed alongside similar ideas spoken of by other poets, but each poet's mind remains unique. As academics we may place this or that poet in a taxonomy of so-called cultural categories, but however much we may feel we understand the man by an observation of his work (and the similar work of others), we are still blind to the interacting content of the mind.
Now, when we look at the human world and see it as something akin to a work of art, we are apt to take the same sort of easy path, thinking that by making superficial judgments of the quality and character of the players we can understand the thing itself -- the uniquiness of all thinking and interacting things. But the human world is an effect of "human action" and human actions are effects of the undecipherable array of causes we euphemistically refer to as the human brain. Even if by some inspired leap of our science we are able to comprehend the workings of a generic brain, we will still not understand any particular brain, much less the multiplicity of brains that abide in the six-billion of us.
And that is why literature such as that produced by Ms Rand serves a useful (although limited) function. In her characters she has depicted the constituent parts of the non-objective world. As such, they can be viewed as models of how the ideal human should behave. But if for instance, we observe the quality of "productiveness" and think of it as a quality we ought to emulate, and make the mistake of thinking that productiveness is the end-all of human virtue, we will be mistaken. In the famous John Galt radio address Ms Rand identifies many other qualities besides productiveness. To emulate each of these, as if it were an isolated model, is a virtual impossibility. When correctly considered, they appear as undifferentiated aspects of the human spirit, as inseparable elements of the integrated whole that is reflected in the being-ness of the individual human brain. We act out of the whole, not out of the part . . . and the whole cannot be objectified as anything other than a poorly defined taxonomy that represents but does not define the human mind.
The human condition comes about as a pseudo-parallel, interactive effect of variously "configured" human minds. As such it is essentially incomprehensible. We make sense of it -- to the extent that we can -- by giving names to objectively observable categories of human action. We use the names Ms Rand and many others have given to our virtues and our sins. And when we do it right, we base our collective management (our governments) on the virtues while eshewing the sins. But the government that functions best is the one that recognizes the existential nature of the people being governed, all of which are essentially different.
Consequently, the basic principle incorporated in the most perfect government acknowledges and protects the fundamental freedom of all its subjects to remain, to the greatest extent possible, what they are. The differences among us cannot all be accommodated in the man-made laws of the land, so it is incumbent on the leadership to instantiate and "act out" those ideals that most conform to the taxonomy of values that perpetuate the nation and its inhabitants in their being. Identifying and expressing those ideals is the job of the "riveters" among us who are most capable of communicating the beneficence of the nation's ideals. As individuals, we each ought to lead ourselves and be led by our frail grasp of the goodnesses reflected in the qualities Ms Rand has laid out. In that sense, her work deals with ethics.
In Ms Rand's books and in reality, the individual is paramount, not only to him- or herself, but to the functional whole which is the world we make. The true believers who have made Ms Rand into an icon to be worshiped have made the same mistake she apparently made in her own life. They have let their egotism lead the egoism. The result is a caricature of what a human being actually is.
Those Libertarians who read her work as if it presented a philosophical system in the classical sense have missed her point entirely (and maybe she did too, as some of her essays seem to indicate). At the core of her work is the notion that the quality of the world (as defined by humans) lies nowhere but in the quality of its people. She and I and Spinoza regard this as an axiom that does not need proof.
The world (as seen by human beings) is determined to be what it is by the unchanging laws of nature. But the face the world shows us is forever changing. The human brain, considered as an objective "thing," also operates in accord with unchanging laws. But our species -- no more than the collection of all rivers -- is not a homogeneous assemblage of like-minded things. Although the body parts -- including the brains -- of every human work in accord with unchanging laws, the values taken by the neural structure of each one of us is determined individually by our experience in the world.
Compare this to a computer's memory. As they come off the assembly line, all the memory chips look exactly alike, and as parts of the whole mechanism they all operate in accord with the same physical principles. But as the computers begin to be used, their individuality becomes manifest. The same memory location in computers of the same design will no longer be identical, They will be encoded with electrical impulses representing words and other symbols that will vary from machine to machine. So also do the memory functions of human brains contain (in a so far undecipherable code) different symbols, and some of those symbols, when brought into play in human behavior, function as human values, the actual determinants of the way we shall behave in reaction to the world.
Ms Rand was writing about those memories we refer to as values.
Before getting further into her "people" we must acknowledge and understand the difference between egoism and egotism. All of us, according to Spinoza and Ayn Rand, are egoists. Spinoza expressed our egoism by the Latin word conatus, by which he referred to the propensity of all things to perpetuate themselves in being. Note, all things, not just human beings. The very nature of the smallest atom and the largest star (and everthing in between) acts in such a way that the object will remain what it is until it is acted upon by a more powerful object. Human "objects," unlike most others, are aware of their desire to perpetuate themselves in being, so unlike those that are unaware, humans take actions that they perceive to be in the direction of their preservation. That is the nature of us all, and that is what Ms. Rand (and Spinoza) meant by the word "egoist."
An egotist, on the contrary, is an egoist who has a limited view of what it takes to survive in the world as a functional being (i.e., what it takes to be happy). He sees himself as a more or less isolated creature whose ego. along with all its values, whether good, bad, or evil, must be preserved. The egotist is an unenlightened egoist.
All the main characters in Ms. Rand's major books were intentionally written as caricatures of various qualities that occur in human beings, some of which are good, some bad, some downright evil. Some of those characters have been seen as representatives of the "Supreme Egoist," and in my opinion, some of them were. But the supreme egoist was not, as some imagine, neither John Galt (in Atlas Shrugged) nor Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead). The Supreme Egoist is a person who is equally capable of being a leader and of being led. He is just as physically alone in the world as are all of us, but he has spiritually bridged the gap between himself and others and has managed to view the world and all that's in it as an integrated whole, a One, a naturally adapted organism.
The principal characters in Ms Rand's books do not represent ideal versions of humanity, but rather ideal representations of specific human qualities. The best (but not only) example of this sort of being appears as the riveter, a minor character in "The Fountainhead." He comes as close to perfection as can be imagined. He's great at his work (delivering 8 hours of devoted work for 8 hours pay), loyal to his friends, and not overly consumed with himself. When we observe the riveter pitching a rivet with complete awareness of the importance of what he's doing, we may have difficulty seeing his action as an expression of his commitment to excellence. And even when we analytically resolve his perfection, seeing it as an expression of, say, his "upbringing" or his "morals" we miss the point. The characteristics Ms Rand gave him express everything he is (or better, has become). He is an effect of all that appears in his "driving" device, his very human brain.
And this is the element of her philosophy that Ms Rand left unexplored (and which I suspect she was incapable of exploring in herself). It remains much easier for her readers to fall into the traps of Objectivism, much easier to wind up believing that human qualities can be observed, much in the same way we observe the qualities of, say, a good poem. Just as the poem seems to be an object that can be objectively assessed, but that is a deception. Its authentic quality lies in the fact that it is an artifact of a human mind. As such it cannot be separated from the human being who created it, and he or she is a product of his or her whole experience in the world. (Note this well, since it follows that as more and more human beings become more adequately adapted to the authentic whole, the easier it will be for the rest also to adapt -- i.e., to find enlightenment.)
Literary deconstructionists go a step further in understanding the objects of their study, but they still, with all their cleverness, are unable to get their minds around the process that generated the work. The ideas the poet expresses in his work may be objectively studied and placed alongside similar ideas spoken of by other poets, but each poet's mind remains unique. As academics we may place this or that poet in a taxonomy of so-called cultural categories, but however much we may feel we understand the man by an observation of his work (and the similar work of others), we are still blind to the interacting content of the mind.
Now, when we look at the human world and see it as something akin to a work of art, we are apt to take the same sort of easy path, thinking that by making superficial judgments of the quality and character of the players we can understand the thing itself -- the uniquiness of all thinking and interacting things. But the human world is an effect of "human action" and human actions are effects of the undecipherable array of causes we euphemistically refer to as the human brain. Even if by some inspired leap of our science we are able to comprehend the workings of a generic brain, we will still not understand any particular brain, much less the multiplicity of brains that abide in the six-billion of us.
And that is why literature such as that produced by Ms Rand serves a useful (although limited) function. In her characters she has depicted the constituent parts of the non-objective world. As such, they can be viewed as models of how the ideal human should behave. But if for instance, we observe the quality of "productiveness" and think of it as a quality we ought to emulate, and make the mistake of thinking that productiveness is the end-all of human virtue, we will be mistaken. In the famous John Galt radio address Ms Rand identifies many other qualities besides productiveness. To emulate each of these, as if it were an isolated model, is a virtual impossibility. When correctly considered, they appear as undifferentiated aspects of the human spirit, as inseparable elements of the integrated whole that is reflected in the being-ness of the individual human brain. We act out of the whole, not out of the part . . . and the whole cannot be objectified as anything other than a poorly defined taxonomy that represents but does not define the human mind.
The human condition comes about as a pseudo-parallel, interactive effect of variously "configured" human minds. As such it is essentially incomprehensible. We make sense of it -- to the extent that we can -- by giving names to objectively observable categories of human action. We use the names Ms Rand and many others have given to our virtues and our sins. And when we do it right, we base our collective management (our governments) on the virtues while eshewing the sins. But the government that functions best is the one that recognizes the existential nature of the people being governed, all of which are essentially different.
Consequently, the basic principle incorporated in the most perfect government acknowledges and protects the fundamental freedom of all its subjects to remain, to the greatest extent possible, what they are. The differences among us cannot all be accommodated in the man-made laws of the land, so it is incumbent on the leadership to instantiate and "act out" those ideals that most conform to the taxonomy of values that perpetuate the nation and its inhabitants in their being. Identifying and expressing those ideals is the job of the "riveters" among us who are most capable of communicating the beneficence of the nation's ideals. As individuals, we each ought to lead ourselves and be led by our frail grasp of the goodnesses reflected in the qualities Ms Rand has laid out. In that sense, her work deals with ethics.
In Ms Rand's books and in reality, the individual is paramount, not only to him- or herself, but to the functional whole which is the world we make. The true believers who have made Ms Rand into an icon to be worshiped have made the same mistake she apparently made in her own life. They have let their egotism lead the egoism. The result is a caricature of what a human being actually is.
posted by Benedict S. at 6:41 AM
7 Comments:
Your observations of Ayn Rand's philosophy would be more cogent if you would avail yourself of her non-fiction such as The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal.
As I said in the text, I have read essentially every oublished word written by Ms Rand. There is no virtue in selfishness, but all virtue emates from enlightened egoism. Further, her views on laissez faire capitalism are fine for those who worship systems of thought. Their Gods are free to inflict punishment upon them, while the victims are free only to be in awe of "God's mysterious ways."
I have read essentially every published word written by Ms Rand.
You might have read the words, but there is no sign in the above blog entry that you ever grasped the content they conveyed. Readily apparent in your writing is your preference for baroque prose over an elegant presentation of useful ideas. So many characterizations ... so little to show that they actually apply.
Thanks Mike, I'll trry to work on the prose, stick to two syllable words, 15 word sentences. Maybe then, by a wild non sequitur, I will catch on to Ms Rand's deeper meaning. Until then . . . alas. I am stuck in disagreement.
Benedict,
Even your sarcasm depends on the error of equating syllable- and word-count for the value of content.
Guilty as charged, Mike. I guess I'm too old to reform my ways but I'll give it a try.
Your claim that Rand uses caricaturization to depict the morals and values of her characters is correct, in my opinion. But so does every other literary piece since the greek tragedies till modern day TV drama.
Since nothing can be said about morals and values stemming from emotions (due to the subliminal nature of emotions), they can only be described through metaphore, and that is the basis of every attempt at literature.
If someone grasps Rand's writings as a recipe for morality and happiness, then he has totally missed the point (creating caricature, as you said). Rand only analyzes the source of each action a man takes in facing a moral dilemma, showing the reader the basic evil in what we normally would treat as a choice without moral implications.
She shows us how to identify the basic evil in certain situations that we have come to accept as everyday and normal, making unidentifiable, wordless indignation, into clear cut morality and value issues.
It is not a "Do as I say" manual, or a self help book, it is an incredible achievement in taking "everyday" decisions and thoughts, and breaking them down to their moral concretes. It is meant for the concise knowing-of-self, rather than a list of commandments, and she never would have intended it to be a list, because that would be against all she has written.
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