Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical
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Rand transcended the fact-value dichotomy by claiming that “the fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do.” Rand affirmed the Aristotelian belief that actuality precedes potentiality.25 What a thing is determines what it can and will become. Just as Rand’s ontology dictates that “to be” is “to be something,” so her ethics demand that for something “to be,” it must act in accordance with what it is—that is, in accordance with its specific nature. And as Rand’s epistemology views human beings as entities possessing free will, so her ethics demand that for human beings “to be” human beings, they must choose to act rationally. But unlike other organisms, human beings can act against their nature; they can act irrationally.
Beginning with an integrated, expansive concept of human reason, Rand attempted to develop and validate a rational code of values. She argued that there is in fact an awareness of “good” and “evil” even on a primitive, sensorial level. In the pleasure-pain mechanism, we first become aware of those things which are “for” us and “against” us. Our sensations and perceptions are the foundation of our cognitive and evaluative development. But sensations of pleasure and pain are automatized responses, “an automatic form of knowledge,” which a human consciousness cannot avoid experiencing. Our distinctive modes of sensual, perceptual, and conceptual awareness are our integrated means of surviving in the world. And since we have free will, we must choose to think and raise our mental focus if we are to sustain our lives.26
Thus the science of ethics is “an objective, metaphysical necessity of … survival” (23). It satisfies a practical need that we cannot avoid. By accepting a code of principles to guide our actions, we consciously—or tacitly—accept a code of morality. In Rand’s system, a genuinely objective moral code emerges from ontological and epistemological premises. The standard of an objective morality is “man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man. Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil” (ibid.).
Just as Rand proposed an expansive concept of reason, so too, she proposed an expansive concept of what it means to live as a rational being. One cannot evaluate her concept of good and evil outside this context. For us to survive as human beings, we must not aim for “a momentary or a merely physical survival.” Nor can we survive through purely sensual or perceptual means. We have a conceptual consciousness, which shapes the “terms, methods, conditions and goals” that our survival requires, “in all those aspects of existence which are open to [our] choice.” Thus the abstract standard of value—our lives as human beings—is concretized on the individual level, as each of us pursues his or her own life as the ethical purpose of our existence. To survive, to fulfill and enjoy our own lives as integrated “continuous whole[s],” each of us must choose among actions, values, and goals according to the objective standards that our lives as human beings require (24).27
At this point, it is necessary to examine Rand’s proposed link between life and value in much greater detail. Her theory has been the subject of extensive scholarly discussion. Nozick, O’Neill, and other philosophers have not focused extensively on Rand’s main contention that the choice to live necessitates a guiding code of values.28 Rather, the critics question why anyone should choose to live. Why could not “death” be the ultimate standard of value? Such Rand-influenced thinkers as Nathaniel Branden and John Hospers have responded to this query in a similar manner: To choose death as the ultimate standard of value distorts the very concept of value. Since value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, death cannot qualify as a value per se. Death does not require any action at all; it demands nothing active. Thus issues of morality cannot be discussed if they are divorced from the very concept of life that provides the context for values. It is life that gives the notion of value any meaning.29
And yet even among those who are inclined to accept Rand’s contention, there is the belief that this argument is marred by a form of circularity. Merrill, for instance, argues that Rand seems to be using the concept of value in her understanding of the concept of life itself. At the base of her ethics, Rand seems to employ the same “stolen concept” arguments that are apparent in her defense of ontological axioms. By challenging the principle that life is the standard of moral values, one must be alive in order to raise the objection. If life were not the standard of morality, then the critic would be involved in a logical contradiction by questioning that which he implicitly accepts by the very fact of his continued existence (Merrill 1991, 101).
But Rasmussen has argued further that the mere presence of a logical contradiction in the critic’s challenge begs the question of why a person ought not to commit contradictions. Rasmussen wonders too: “Is life a value because we choose it, or do we choose it because it is a value?” For Rasmussen, the choice to live seems to be based on an arational commitment, outside the province of Rand’s ethics.30
It appears that even the friendly critics have pinpointed a difficult problem at the foundation of Rand’s ethical system. But such theorists as Gotthelf, Peikoff, and Binswanger have each argued that these questions are not fatal to the Objectivist approach. Gotthelf answers Rasmussen’s questions directly. He argues that in strict terms, life is not a value because we choose it, nor do we choose life because it is a value. For Gotthelf, as for Rand, there are no human values apart from human choice. But this does not imply that life is an ultimate value simply because we have chosen it to be so. It is in the nature of life that an individual’s choice to live simultaneously concretizes that person’s own life as the only rational, ultimate value within his or her grasp. In Gotthelf’s opinion:
The whole point of Ayn Rand’s derivation of “ought” from “is,” as it applies to humans, is that if you choose to exist, then you can consistently pursue that choice, and any other particular choice, only by holding life as your ultimate value—because life, by its nature, requires a specific course of action; only that fact about life gives point to any act of evaluation, any reason to choose—any basis for a concept of value. But that fact about life has no implication for action to beings who choose not to exist. The choice to live and the nature of life together ground the status of one’s life as one’s actual, and only rational, ultimate value.31
Peikoff (1991b, 244, 248) argues further that the choice to live is indeed a metaethical commitment. It is a choice that both precedes and underlies the need for morality. But such a choice is not arbitrary. Rather, it is an affirmation of a human being’s willingness to accept the reality of his or her own existence. Binswanger concurs that the choice to live is what gives a person a stake in his or her own actions. Such a choice engenders the need for evaluation. Binswanger agrees with Peikoff that the choice to live establishes the context for ethics. In choosing to live, a person has chosen the only consistent alternative. By choosing not to live, a person has rejected the entire realm of values and has no alternative but to die. To actualize his or her potential for life, an individual must choose to live and pursue those values that are requisite to survival.32 Those who deny this proposition are guilty of a contradiction; their very ability to deny is proof that they are alive, that they continue to choose life, and that such a choice is tacitly affirmed in their every commentary.
Rand’s argument that there is an inseparable link between life and value is in fact circular. But it is not a vicious form of circularity. Such circularity is inherent in any internal relationship. When Rand stated that “metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself,” she was identifying both life and value. Life is the ultimate value. It entails value in its very identity. Life is internally related to value because it could not be what it is in the absence of this relation. To attempt to separate life and value would be to evade the meaning of both concepts. Life and value are conditional upon each other. One can no more refer to life without value, than to value without life.
Thus Rand maintained that their bifurcation is “worse than a contradiction.” Rand did not see the relationship of life and value in strictly linguistic terms. She did not deduce the concept of value from the concept of life. Her arguments for their internal relationship are inductive. They are based upon an observation of a fact of reality. Epistemologically, Rand recognized that the concept of life is prior to the concept of value. But ontologically, the two are simultaneous. The very existence of life depends on the pursuit and achievement of values; the very phenomenon of value depends on the existence of life.33
In this internal link, Rand was not offering an immediate defense of any particular value system. She was merely observing that life and value cannot be separated from each other. To say that the choice to live is metaethical is to acknowledge that it is a fact inherent in the conditional nature of human life itself. A person’s continued existence is predicated on his or her choices. None of these choices can have any meaning if they are disconnected from the most basic choice to live. It can be said that even if someone pursues contradictory values inimical to survival, he or she may still be affirming the will to live. Subjectively, these choices may appear to have short-term survival value, even if they objectively threaten long-term survival interests.34 Rand’s critique of altruism is at once her explicit articulation of the means by which people unwittingly accept a death premise on which to base their actions. Just as the principle of altruism is based on a self-sacrificial death premise, Rand proposed that those who attempt to practice it will, in fact, subvert their own ultimate survival. One cannot consistently engage in self-sacrifice without negating the basic choice at the foundation of ethics. Those who consistently live by self-abnegating principles achieve literal suicide.
Rand acknowledged that one’s conceptual awareness is governed by cognitive concepts and evaluative choices that are often subconscious and tacit. Thus she suggested that even the primary choice to live is implicit. As a child learns to distinguish between right and wrong, it may not be making a calculated decision “to live.” Indeed, it may not even know why certain actions are good and others are bad. Even as its consciousness evolves toward full conceptual maturity, it is more likely to take for granted the moral principles governing its actions as it follows certain traditional precepts by habit (Rand 1946, 9). In most cases, the choice to live becomes apparent in the everyday pursuit of life-sustaining material and spiritual values. In Rand’s view, it is the task of ethics to objectively validate values that confirm this most basic choice to live through the conscious, articulated, principled pursuit of goals that make human living both possible and desirable.
RATIONALITY AND VIRTUE
Having traced the relationship between life and value, and having enunciated an objective ethical standard, Rand argued that there is an inseparable link between the moral and the practical. Moral principles are the means by which a human being—a being of integrated mind and body—survives practically on this earth. Everything that a human being needs to sustain life must be discovered by his or her mind. A rational being survives by thinking and by applying thought to action. Rand identified those derivative values and virtues which serve as the means to this genuinely human survival: “Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep—virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life—are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.”35
These values and virtues have both theoretical and practical, intellectual and existential aspects. Recalling the ethos of classical antiquity, Rand saw Virtue as One. No values and no virtues can be thoroughly abstracted from the ethical totality they constitute. Though Rand analyzed the virtues separately, she emphasized that they form an indissoluble whole (Peikoff 1991b, 250). For instance, just as Rand saw reason as the source of productive work, and pride as the result of achievement, she recognized that each component nourishes—and is nourished by—the other elements in the totality. Successful production enables a person to attain his or her rational purposes. Both reason and production contribute to a sense of accomplishment. The ability to realize goals contributes to a sense of self-efficacy. Pride in one’s accomplishments fosters a continuing policy of rationality and productive work. Each of these moments is in reciprocity with its constituent relations. Each is both the source and product of the other. Each is part of an organic unity.
Nevertheless, as in most aspects of Rand’s thought, there is an asymmetric internality among the constituent elements of the whole. In other words, though the elements are reciprocally related, there is a skewed emphasis on one factor. In keeping with her epistemic focus, Rand argued: “Rationality is [the] basic virtue, the source of all … other virtues.” Rationality entails the raising of one’s level of mental awareness. A volitional, cognitive activity serves as the basic moral virtue because it affirms the mind as the human being’s only means of knowing reality and of surviving on earth. In exercising rationality, human beings validate, choose, and derive their convictions, values, goals, desires, and actions from a process of thought.36
While this formulation suggests a one-sided focus on the rational to the detriment of other constituent factors of consciousness, it must be remembered that Rand’s conception is essentially expansive. As we have seen, Rand’s emphasis on the centrality of reason does not negate the role of emotions or the automatized integrations of the subconscious. By focusing on rationality as the chief virtue, Rand was not devaluing the nonrational and nonconscious elements of the mind. Certainly there is evidence that as someone who scorned Russian religious culture, Rand was deeply hostile toward all things irrational. This translated into an antipathy toward emotionalism. But the thrust of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is toward the transcendence of dualism. The virtue of rationality does not mean that one rationalizes one’s actions, values, goals, and desires. Rather, it entails the conscious awareness and articulation of rationally derived goals, the articulation—and long-term, therapeutic alteration, if necessary—of one’s emotions and desires.
Rationality as articulation is how people grasp the metaphysical value judgments they have tacitly absorbed and integrated into their subconscious. Such core evaluations are not rationally derived; they are formed tacitly from a very early period in a child’s life. Thus a child raised in a loving, predictable household may achieve a benevolent sense of life, internalizing the values and virtues that Rand identified as objective. But Rand believed that an individual could not act consistently and efficaciously over the long run on the sole basis of unarticulated premises. Likewise, a child raised in a nightmare universe, the victim of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, may acquire a malevolent sense of life that reflects its experiences. If the child internalizes a view of itself as worthless and evil, or if it practices evasion, or if it represses its anger, hurt, and pain, it stunts its development toward full efficacy. For Rand, rationality is the moral choice—regardless of one’s metaphysical value judgments—because it compels the child to augment its introspective focus and to grasp the experiential roots of its emotions and subconsciously held values. Rationality is the means to an unobstructed and integrated awareness. It is the means to articulating that which is implicit, serving the need for conceptualization which is crucial to genuinely human survival.
As derivatives of rationality, Rand cited several subsidiary virtues.37 Each of these virtues is a reality-oriented means to a rational end. The virtue of independence means that one must have the responsibility to form one’s judgments based upon one’s own perception of reality. Integrity is the virtue of never sacrificing one’s rationally derived judgments to the wishes or opinions of others. Honesty is the virtue of never faking reality in any manner. Justice is the virtue of recognizing and evaluating people based on objective criteria.
Rand emphasized that
none of these virtues is intrinsically absolute. Each constitutes an objective relation between the faculty of consciousness and reality. Each is contextual. Practicing honesty, independence, and integrity in one’s life requires existential conditions that make such practices efficacious. There is no virtue to being honest with a kidnapper who has abducted your child. And there is little possibility of being independent in a social system that makes the exercise of one’s rationality ineffectual. Rand’s critique of culture suggests that statism subverts the consistent practice of virtue. Indeed, the practice of these virtues without regard to context can prove fatal.
This contention is most dramatically illustrated in Rand’s depiction of a totalitarian society in We the Living. Her protagonist, Kira, seeks to secure material benefits for her sick lover, Leo, by lying to, and manipulating Andrei, an idealistic and influential communist. Kira’s dishonesty is necessary, and yet it involves her in a romantic triangle that inevitably destroys all three characters. The fault lies not in Kira’s dishonesty, as much as it does in a system that penalizes virtue. At the culmination of the novel, each of the three main characters has been literally or figuratively destroyed. Rand wished to show that such a system is anathema to the achievement of human life and values. From the time of this early novel, Rand was making explicit connections between morality and the sociopolitical conditions that make its practice both necessary and desirable.