Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  In a passage from Atlas Shrugged, Rand describes an encounter between Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden which expresses the fully integrated nature of the sex act:

  She knew that what she felt with the skin of her arms was the cloth of his shirt, she knew that the lips she felt on her mouth were his, but in the rest of her there was no distinction between his being and her own, as there was no division between body and spirit.… The course led them to the moment when, in answer to the highest of one’s values, in an admiration not to be expressed by any other form of tribute, one’s spirit makes one’s body become the tribute, recasting it—as proof, as sanction, as reward—into a single sensation of such intensity of joy that no other sanction of one’s existence is necessary. He heard the moan of her breath, she felt the shudder of his body, in the same instant. (252)

  Of course, Rand’s belief in the full integration of mind and body does not mean that romantic partners are morally obligated to have a simultaneous orgasm. Rather, Rand argued that in all relationships of affection, from friendship to romantic love, the partners incorporate the welfare of each other into their hierarchy of values.62 In romantic love, the interpenetration of each body is a synthesis of both spirits (N. Branden 1980, 120). Sex, however, is not a primary. One cannot generate self-esteem through sexual conquest and adventure. For Rand, only the “rationally selfish,” are capable of giving and receiving love. People who do not value themselves first are incapable of valuing anything or anyone.63

  From the time of his association with Rand, Branden developed the deeper implications of the Objectivist view in his examination of the principle of psychological visibility and its relationship to self-esteem and romantic love.64 Branden argues that a person’s self-concept is constituted by “a cluster of images and abstract perspectives on his various (real or imagined) traits and characteristics.” Like any broad, metaphysical abstraction, this cluster of images cannot be held in full conscious awareness at any particular moment. We are tacitly aware of our self-concept in each of our activities, but we never perceive it, as such (N. Branden [1969] 1979, 200). Branden argues that even though we can come to experience ourselves in terms of higher-level concepts, it is only in our interaction with another consciousness that we can experience ourselves perceptually.

  This Brandenian argument mirrors Rand’s own insights into the creative nature of production and art. Rand suggested that human productive activity as such is essentially objectifying, creative praxis. In concretizing their goals, people make visible not only their explicit production designs, but the implicit values that propel them toward achievement. So too, art enables a person to experience his or her broadest, metaphysical abstractions in objective, perceptual form. By creating an art work, an artist makes visible a tacit sense of life. The artist objectifies materially that which is internal to consciousness. This process is duplicated by the responder. By articulating the basis of his or her aesthetic responses, the responder’s own core evaluations become self-visible. In this communicative interaction with an artist’s creation, the responder’s subconsciously held values are objectified for contemplation. A positive aesthetic experience will suggest a congruence between artist and responder that is mediated through the art work.

  Branden recognizes that the experience of objectification and visibility is augmented exponentially in the context of human relations. Just as art allows one to grasp valuational concepts with the ease of perceptual focus, so human relationships permit people “to perceive [themselves] as [entities] in reality—to experience the perspective of objectivity—through and by means of the reactions and responses of other human beings.”65

  Branden’s articulation of the principle of psychological visibility emerged initially from his interactions with his dog, Muttnik. He acknowledged that a human being could experience visibility even with a nonhuman consciousness. By playing aggressively with Muttnik, Branden noticed that the dog responded in a fully appropriate manner. Muttnik’s response seemed to objectify Branden’s actions in a way that mirrored his playful intentions.66

  The experience of visibility allows us to view ourselves as objective existents. Branden (1980) states somewhat cryptically: “The externalization of the objectification of the internal is of the very nature of successful life” (74). What Branden means is that to the extent that we articulate and make explicit that which is within our own consciousness, we can experience ourselves as objectified beings in the eyes of another. To be genuinely visible to others, we must also be willing to be self-visible. To the extent that we have articulated and grasped our own convictions and values, we will optimize our visibility to others. To the extent that these convictions and values are shared with others, we will maximize the possibility for genuinely intimate relations. In our relations, we can achieve an “expanded awareness of self” (79).

  In romantic love, the highest form of human visibility, the relationship constitutes a dynamic system (211). Since no one is a static entity, and since each “is engaged in a constant process of unfolding,” the self-visibility of each and the visibility of each to a significant other will evolve over time (N. Branden 1983a, 260). The dynamism inherent in the interpenetration of two selves creates a new universe that is unlike that occupied by either person alone. The result is an intermingling of many complex conscious and subconscious factors, including biological elements that science has yet to fully understand.67

  Romantic love, then, is the concrete expression of human integration. It is not infatuation. An infatuation is a distortion based on the reification of one or two aspects of a person’s character. When we are infatuated with another person, we abstract these selected qualities from the totality and respond to the person as if these characteristics constituted the whole (N. Branden [1969] 1979, 210). Romantic love eschews such one-dimensionality. It is a synthesis of body and mind, sense modalities and spirituality, self-visibility and objectification. It is a totalistic and mutual response that preserves the independence of the lovers, even as it heightens their sense of unity. In Rand’s fiction, lovers may be willing to die for one another, but they refuse to live for one another. Even in unity, each person retains the self-actualizing values and virtues consonant with their individual, human survival.68

  Like Rand, Branden recognizes that this conception of self-esteem and romantic love is a product of historical evolution. It is profoundly individualistic, egoistic, secular, and rationally selfish and stands in stark opposition to all premodern and religious theories. Such a conception would not have been possible without the accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization engendered the rise of a middle class that reached beyond its purely material needs and embraced an ideal of romantic love that was revolutionary in its impact (N. Branden 1980, 37). Both Rand and Branden suggest that the implications of this concept have yet to be fully appreciated or understood.

  EUDAEMONIA

  It should be apparent by now that Rand’s ethics are as expansive as her epistemology. In Rand’s epistemology, reason is constituted by many interrelated practices. Reason is consciousness. Consciousness is mind. But mind includes articulated, conscious convictions and tacit, subconscious integrations, the capacity for logical deduction and inductive inference, as well as the ability to evaluate, to feel, and to create. And the mind cannot be abstracted from the body, without losing the totality of what it means to be human. Rand does not identify reason with emotion or thought with action. Her system seeks their integrated and organic unity, such that no part is in fundamental conflict with the other parts or the totality that gives it meaning.

  It is this expansive, multidimensionality that is reproduced within Rand’s ethical theories.69 And yet a number of thinkers have criticized Rand because they believe that she never fully explained the exact nature of her standard of moral values. For instance, Mack notes that “man’s life qua man” as the standard of moral values seems to incorporate rationality and productivity into the fabric of human survival. Mac
k wonders why Rand did not make pleasure and happiness partially constitutive of this standard. He asks if Rand valued rationality and productivity instrumentally, as means to the goal of human survival, or if these virtues are constituent elements of that ultimate goal.70 Henry Veatch is also perplexed by Rand’s use of “life” as the ultimate end, since she gives no precise indication of what “man’s life qua man” might be.71

  Many of these criticisms are rooted in actual—ambiguous—passages in Rand’s writings. For instance, in the course of three pages in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” Rand presents three distinct purposes as central to a person’s life. She argues that everyone’s life is his or her own ethical purpose, and that this is the means of concretizing the abstract standard of value, “man’s life qua man.” But she also states that in the context of a “man’s life qua man,” productive work is the central purpose, a value that integrates other values. She simultaneously links productive work to rationality, whose function is also primarily integrative. Rationality and productive work, then, seem to fulfill similar requirements of integration. But Rand complicates these themes further when she states, as a social principle, that every person is an end in him-or herself, and not a means to the ends of others. It is “the achievement of his own happiness [that] is man’s highest moral purpose.”72

  How can one’s own life, productive work, and happiness all be central to one’s highest moral purpose? Was Rand equivocating, or does her argument have its own inner logic? This requires some further exploration.

  For Rand, happiness is to living as logic is to thought. Just as logic is the “art of non-contradictory identification,” so happiness is the “state of non-contradictory joy” (Atlas Shrugged, 1016, 1022). Logic requires the integration of one’s basic premises and experience, with an understanding of context. Happiness emerges from the integrated achievement of one’s values. It is not merely a fleeting pleasure or a momentary feeling. It requires an acceptance of one’s context and a grasp of one’s own long-term interests.

  However, Rand remarked that though happiness is the purpose of ethics, it is not the standard.73 This suggests a distinction between life as the standard and happiness as the purpose of life. Rand distinguished between these categories in order to criticize hedonism. She maintained that hedonism views pleasure and happiness as moral standards. The good is anything that gives people pleasure and/or happiness, and the evil is anything that gives people pain and/or unhappiness. In Rand’s view, however, happiness is an emotional state, proceeding from one’s values and convictions. Since values ultimately determine what makes you happy, and since each individual’s values arise from a confluence of conscious and subconscious factors, the emotion of happiness is a complex, integrated derivative. It cannot serve as an ultimate standard because it is not an end in itself. Nor is it strictly a means to the end of life. It is an emotional experience of pleasure and joy in being as such. It is a form of pleasure, Bran-den suggests, which “is a metaphysical concomitant of life, the reward and consequence of successful action.”74

  Rand explained further that the relationship between virtues and values is a relationship between means and ends. She maintained that our virtues enable us to achieve life and happiness. Thus, “Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward.… Life is the reward of virtue—and happiness is the goal and reward of life” (Atlas Shrugged, 1022).

  Rand seems to be saying that virtues do not constitute the values they actualize. And yet how can rationality and productive work constitute the value of life if they are a means to life’s achievement? How can the practice of any virtue be a constituent element of the one ultimate value it aims to consummate? How can happiness be the goal of life when life is the ultimate value itself? How can Rand be involved in such a quagmire of apparent ambiguity?

  The issue here, I think, is that Rand was being true to her dialectical roots. The circularity indicates that there is an identity between human life and all the values (reason, purpose, self-esteem) and virtues (rationality, productiveness, honesty, integrity, independence, justice, and pride) Rand enunciates. The virtues are the means to life. However, the standard of moral values is not mere survival, but the life proper to a rational being. Life is self-sustaining action. Human life as the standard of value entails the actions that are necessary for its achievement.

  Despite her emphasis on axioms and derivatives, Rand did not think in terms of strict logical dependence, or one-way causality, i.e., that A leads to B which leads to C. Rather, she thought in terms of reciprocal causation and mutual reinforcement: A leads to B which leads to C, with each of the elements being both the precondition and consequence of the others. Such an integration allowed Rand to view the sex act, for instance, as simultaneously, a celebration of life, an expression of happiness, a manifestation of self-esteem, and a product of human values. The constellation here cannot be understood in its abstracted units, but only in its organic unity.

  True, Rand recognized an asymmetry among the elements of the totality. In her ethics, life is the source of value—just as existence is prior to consciousness; just as reason, albeit expansively conceived, is the root of the individual’s distinct evaluative and emotive mechanisms. But the relationships between these pairs is reciprocal and integrated. We cannot know existence without consciousness. We cannot understand life without grasping the necessity of valuation in human survival. We cannot remain fully conscious, reasoning animals without articulating our emotions and integrating our subconscious values and conscious convictions; such is the essence of an unobstructed awareness.

  Rand’s integrated approach is clearly reflected in her statement: “To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement.”75 While happiness depends upon the standard of life, it is also a constituent aspect of genuinely human survival. But so are all the values and virtues that Rand has enunciated. To hold the life of a rational being as the standard of value, is simultaneously to endorse a view of what a rational life is. Not surprisingly, it comprises the very derivative values and virtues that make human life possible. In Peikoff’s words: “The moral, the practical, and the happy cannot be sundered. By their nature, the three form a unity: he who perceives reality is able to gain his ends and thus enjoy the process of being alive.”76

  Peikoff (1976T, lecture 7) argues that at the core of Objectivism is a belief in the actualization of human potentialities. In this regard, Objectivism follows the Aristotelian conception of eudaemonia as the human entelechy. For Aristotle, the proper end of human action is the achievement of “a state of rich, ripe, fulfilling earthly happiness.”77

  Branden too applauds Aristotle’s eudaemonic worldview. He argues that human life involves the expansion of “the boundaries of the self to embrace all of our potentialities, as well as those parts that have been denied, disowned, repressed.” The actualization of human potential is a form of transcendence, an ability “to rise above a limited context or perspective—to a wider field of vision.” This wider field does not negate the previous moments; it is a struggle “from one stage of development to a higher one, emotionally, cognitively, morally, and so forth” (N. Branden 1983b, 114, 244).

  This teleological strand in Objectivism has led Den Uyl and Rasmussen to view Rand’s philosophy as fully within the Aristotelian eudaemonic tradition.78 They suggest, quite persuasively, that Rand, like Aristotle, saw human life in terms of personal flourishing. The principles that guide people toward their own fulfillment “are both productive of the condition and expressive of it” (Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1991, 59–60).

  This “flourisher” interpretation of Rand’s ethics is not without its critics. In the Objectivist literature, the “flourishers” are opposed by the “survivalists.”79 Kelley (1992c), for instance, argues that to regard “flourishing” as a constituent of the ultimate value of life, is to put the cart before the horse. According to Kelley, every
value and virtue in Rand’s ethics has a bearing on self-preservation. To incorporate these values and virtues into the ultimate value, life, escapes the need to prove that they are a “necessary means to that end” (54, 58). For Kelley, Rand has established a strictly causal relationship:

  The alternative of existence or non-existence is what bridges the is-ought gap, it is what all values have to be tied back to, and that means literal survival or death. I think if you’re going to ground your ethics in facts, you have to trace everything back to survival or non-survival, because that’s where you face the fundamental alternative. Or you have to develop a new theory, some other connection between facts and values, in addition to or instead of the one Ayn Rand proposed.80

  But as I have suggested, Rand endorsed a form of reciprocal connection. She did trace the necessary links between virtue and survival, but she also argued that survival is specifically human survival, an integrated existence. Her virtues serve the goal of human life, even as they are necessary constituents of the goal itself. If, as I have argued, Rand is profoundly dialectical in her methodology, then the “survivalist” interpretation of Rand’s ethics is fundamentally flawed.

  MORALITY AND MORALIZING

  In this chapter I have presented a rather exalted view of Rand’s approach to ethics. I have yet to focus on Rand’s concept of immorality or on her own reputation for “moralizing.” While I will have the occasion to explore her view of evil later, it is impossible to leave this chapter without a brief discussion of these themes. The primary reason for addressing these issues at this time, relates to the leitmotif of this book. If Rand’s ethics are inherently nondualistic, does her definition of evil reintroduce dualism into the framework of her philosophy? Furthermore, does her alleged penchant for moralizing undermine the rich, integrated conception that I have reconstructed in this chapter?