Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (27 page)

Rand believed that the three axioms at the base of
ontology
and epistemology were significant in several ways. First and foremost, she believed that knowledge depended on the recognition of certain basic foundations. The axioms provided such an ultimate
context
, an irreducible secular grounding for epistemological continuity, guidance, and objectivity (“Appendix,” 260–61). They are the preconditions of all knowledge (Peikoff 1983T, lecture 9).

Second, she did
not
consider these axioms the foundation for a rationalistic
science
. Peikoff argues that to present Objectivism as a step-by-step deduction from first principles is to reconstitute it as a form of
monism
.
³⁸
Like Theodor
Adorno
, Peikoff admits that in the history of philosophy the articulation of axioms has sometimes led to
rationalist
authoritarianism.
³⁹

Rand rejected monism as the acceptance of one polar principle over another. She repudiated cosmology and tried to avoid the kind of dogmatism that has plagued other
ontologists
.

Moreover, Rand did not limit her axioms to the point of exclusion. Though existence,
identity, and
consciousness
are the basic irreducible fundamentals in her system, Rand recognized that other
concepts
have an axiomatic character too. In their primary usage, such concepts as “
entity
,” “the validity of the
senses
,” and “free will” exhibit all of the irreducible, simultaneous qualities of axioms.
⁴⁰
Even though Rand provides broad validation of these concepts, she argues that none of them can be proven by reduction to sensory data because each is the basis of proof.

Having emphasized the axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness, Rand traces their implications. The first “self-evident” consequence, or corollary, of identity is the law of
causality
. Rand’s approach to causality is a continuation of her critique of mechanistic
materialism
. Like the Marxists who reject “vulgar” materialism, Rand views entities as organic wholes that are more than the mere sum of their parts.
⁴¹
Rand’s teacher,
Lossky
, also rejected the materialist and positivist conception of causality. He argued that in modern
science
, events are causally linked to preceding events. The world is studied purely in terms of actions and reactions. Lossky (1952, 372) believed that such materialism obscured the causal links between the entity and its actions. For Lossky, causality implies a teleological dimension in which the “substantival agent” causes and determines its own actions.

The problem with Lossky’s “personalist” critique of materialism is that it ascribes a teleological character to every “potential” person, in both inorganic and organic nature. Even atoms, molecules, and electrons are endowed with the potential for causal efficacy.
⁴²
Rand rejected this approach. The concept of final causation applies
only
to human action. It applies to the work of a conscious rational entity who chooses a purpose and proceeds to effect this purpose through specific means. Rand used to joke that the extent to which any individual is an object of efficient causation, rather than final causation, is the extent to which he needs a therapist. Such a person, unmotivated by ends, is a pure reactive being (Rand 1958T, lecture 3).

Thus Rand rejected both the materialist-mechanist and the idealist-personalist versions of causality. She argues: “The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.”
⁴³

The law of
causality
is as all-encompassing as the law of
identity
. All the elements of the universe, “from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life—are caused and determined by the identities
of the elements involved.”
⁴⁴
Since each
entity
has a specific nature, it is the entity’s nature that is the cause of its actions. But actions have a
context
. The entity itself acts within a given set of circumstances. As an application of the law of identity, the law of causality states that the same entity under the same circumstances must behave in the same way. Causality applies to the relationship between entities and their actions, not between disembodied actions and reactions (Peikoff 1976T, lecture 2).

In conjunction with her rejection of
cosmology
, Rand rejected the view that the universe itself has a cause. As Nathaniel Branden explains: “Causality presupposes existence, existence does not presuppose causality: there can be no cause ‘outside’ of existence or ‘anterior’ to it. The
forms
of existence may change and evolve, but the
fact
of existence is the irreducible primary at the base of all causal chains.”
⁴⁵

Everything that happens has a cause. Events are determined by the circumstances within which they occur, and these circumstances include both the antecedent events and the nature of the entities that act (Kelley 1985aT, lecture 2). Causality “is a law inherent in being qua being. To be is to be something—and to be something is to act accordingly” (Peikoff 1991b, 17).

THE ENTITY AS A CLUSTER OF QUALITIES

In discussing the nature of an entity, Rand continued to emphasize that
philosophy
is metascientific. We may never know an entity’s ultimate constituents. We may never know if entities are reducible to matter or to some as-yet-undiscovered form of energy. We may never know if our perceptual level is even capable of discovering the ultimate nature of entities in the universe (“Appendix,” 290–95). None of this has any philosophic significance.

The only important philosophical conclusion that can be made about the nature of any entities in the universe is that
each
has identity. For Rand, as for Aristotle, “‘Entity’ means ‘one’” (198–99). This is not an ineffable One, but a
particular
one. Rand was committed to metaphysical
pluralism
. Since everything that exists in the universe is a particular, particularity is inherent in existence as such. Every entity that exists is something in particular.
⁴⁶

But metaphysical pluralism for Rand is
not
atomism
. Just as Rand rejected metaphysical,
organic
collectivism
, she also repudiates metaphysical atomism. In her emphasis on the
ontological
priority of individuals, Rand did not dissolve reality into wholly independent entities. Reality is an interconnected system of interacting entities governed by the laws of
identity
and causality (Peikoff 1976T, lecture 2). And since in a certain context, the
universe itself can be thought of as an
entity
, it too has identity. It is something specific and finite. Like Aristotle, Rand argued that the
concept
of “
infinity
” is applicable only as a methodological tool; it does not apply to the universe as a whole. Such a metaphysical application is pure reification.
⁴⁷

Moreover, Rand grasped that the concept of “
order
” is
epistemological
, and not metaphysical. The order of the universe is its identity (Binswanger [1987] 1991T, lecture 2). She states: “There is no such thing as a disorderly universe. Our whole concept of order comes from observing reality and reality has to be orderly because it’s the standard of what exists. Contradictions cannot exist” (1979aT).

Since order is internal to the universe, Rand contended that in knowledge, as in reality,

Everything is interrelated.… [S]ince reality is not a collection of discrete concretes which have nothing to do with each other, since it is actually an integrated, interrelated whole, the same is true of our conceptual equipment. We cannot begin to use it until we have enough interrelated concepts to permit us, beginning with a small vocabulary, to reach higher and higher distinctions. Observe that all concepts on the first, perceptual level are enormously interrelated. And it would be impossible to say that we have to conceptualize tables first or chairs first. Or inanimate objects in the room before persons. There would be no rule about it. (“Appendix,” 180)

Even though our knowledge is hierarchical, in reality, everything is simultaneous. Unlike
Lossky
, the arch personalist, Rand does not place greater existential emphasis on any particular elements of reality. Atoms are not lower or higher than chairs; chairs
are
atoms. Although people characteristically grasp the entity of “chair” before the “atoms” that comprise it, chairs and the atoms are on equal metaphysical footing (Peikoff 1990–91T, lecture 8).

This whole realm of inquiry leads us to question the status of internal
relations
as an ontological doctrine in
Objectivism
.
⁴⁸
From a metaphysical standpoint, Rand refuses to speculate on whether a thing’s identity includes its relations to other things. For Rand, this is a
scientific
question and as such is outside the province of philosophy proper. However, although Rand offers no doctrine explicating the actual nature of the relationship between the constituent elements of reality, she defends the organic integrity of an entity. She argues that each entity is constituted by qualities from which it cannot be legitimately separated. Indeed, the entity’s properties are internal to its identity.

And yet traditional philosophy distinguishes the
constitutive
from the
dispositional
properties of an
entity
. Constitutive properties are part of the entity. They include such qualities as “weight” and “height.” Dispositional properties, on the other hand, refer to the entity’s capacity for action and interaction. For example, “fragility,” a dispositional quality, depends on a
relationship
between a breakable glass and a concrete floor.

Rand was once asked the following question: if the glass’s fragility cannot be defined except in terms of its relations to another entity (i.e., the concrete floor), would the definition of the glass necessarily contain a reference to an entity other than itself? This would seem to imply that there is an interpenetration of two entities in which one enters into the definition of another. Does this not violate
identity?

Rand argued, in response, that traditional philosophy had created an “artificial dichotomy” between constitutive and dispositional properties. Rand begins by asking, “What is the nature of the entity?” She does not divide the entity into subcategories. Such qualities can be abstracted epistemologically once the nature of the entity has been determined. But the qualities themselves cannot be separated
ontologically
from the entity. By focusing on one group of properties to the exclusion of others, traditional philosophy attempts to edit reality by defining “what an entity is on a partial, selective basis.”

Rand emphasizes the structure and nature of the entity as consequential to its form of action. The
identity
of the entity implies
causality
, that certain effects will occur in its interactions with other entities and with the world at large. The potential of an entity to act in a particular way is inherent in its composition and its physical and chemical properties. A dispositional property is one that belongs to a causal relationship. By distinguishing between constitutive and dispositional properties, traditional philosophy divorces the constituent elements of an entity from its potential for action. It simultaneously divorces the entity’s potentiality for action from its fundamental characteristics.
⁴⁹

For Rand,
all
properties are constitutive of the entity. But no entity can “take an action which is not possible to it by its constituent nature…. [O]ne cannot claim causeless actions, or actions contrary to the nature of the interacting entities … actions cannot be inexplicable and causeless. If the cause lies in the nature of an entity, then it cannot do something other than what its nature makes possible” (“Appendix,” 288).

Rand extended this analysis to her examination of the entity and its
attributes
: “An attribute is something which is not the entity itself. No one attribute constitutes the whole entity, but all of them together are the entity—not ‘possessed by’ but ‘are’ the entity” (276).

The attributes name the same existential fact as the
entity
itself, from a different vantage point. The entity and its attributes are not two different things. Their
relationship
is not merely reciprocal, it is
identical
; “the attributes are the entity, or an entity
is
its attributes.”
⁵⁰
One cannot separate attributes from the entity and reify them as separate existents.
Ontologically
, each of an entity’s characteristics has the same status and is a part of the entity. Because we are not omniscient, we discover the properties of the entity through study, observation, and validation. Even though some of the entity’s aspects may be unknown to us presently, this does not mean that such characteristics are excluded from our
conceptual
identification of the existent. The existent is what it is independent of what people think or feel. Our conceptual designation is open-ended and
contextual
; it is expandable to include the known and the not-yet-known (
Introduction
, 98–99).

Thus the entity cannot be isolated from its characteristics, nor can its characteristics be taken apart from its being.
⁵¹
The entity’s attributes are indivisible. Further, just as there are no attributes or actions without entities, so there are no relationships apart from the entities that are in relation to one another.
⁵²
“Length,”
for instance, does not exist in reality as a disembodied Platonic Form. It exists as an inseparable attribute of concrete, material entities. People establish units of length through abstraction, but this does not disconnect the concept of length from the entity that embodies it (“Appendix,” 278).