Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (42 page)

Hayek’s central objection to rationalism is that it obscures the internal relationship of mind and culture. The rationalist conception of reason sees the rational faculty as external to the culture from which it springs. This is an inherently dualistic approach to social reality. Hayek argued that the Cartesian rationalists, in particular, promoted this arrogant interpretation of reason’s power. He called these rationalist thinkers “naive” or “constructivistic.”
⁵⁹
They assume that institutions which benefit humanity have “in the past—and ought in the future to be invented in clear awareness of the desirable effects they produce” (85).
Constructivism
presumes that human beings can design (or “construct”) social institutions as if they were outside the context of history, using the infinite powers of Reason. Constructivism is the “fatal conceit” endangering the future of wealth, morals and peace.
⁶⁰
It is “an abuse of reason based on a misconception of its powers, and in the end leads to a destruction of that free interplay of many minds on which the growth of reason nourishes itself.”
⁶¹

Hayek contrasted constructivist rationalism with a legitimate alternative, which he called, “
critical rationalism
” (94). He believed that “reason properly used” is a faculty that acknowledges its own limited potential. Hayek criticized socialists precisely for their constructivist attempts to invert the structure of social order.
Socialism
embodies a mechanistic approach to human affairs; it sees social order as a form of arrangement and control. The central planners believe that they can gain access to all those facts which may facilitate social directioning (Hayek 1988, 66). But central planning requires knowledge of relative scarcities, information that cannot be disconnected from the context—the dynamic market process—that generates it.

By contrast, Hayek saw capitalism as an extended order of human cooperation, an emergent, spontaneous product of
social
interaction. What
makes the market so unappealing to the socialist is that most of its institutions are not the product of explicit design. Socialists reject the “anarchy” of capitalism because it appears both “unreasonable” and “unscientific” (ibid.).

For Hayek, there are aspects of social reality which are not subject to direct control. There are many
unintended consequences
that arise from the process of social interaction. These consequences are not a sign of human inefficacy; they are a natural, social product. Constructivism requires people to step outside the social and
historical
process, grasping its modus operandi through a synoptic identification of the totality. This attempt at
omniscience
is an abuse of
reason
, according to Hayek, because it fails to grasp the actual structure of knowledge, which includes both
articulate
and inarticulate components.

The constructivist rationalists embrace what Hayek (1973) describes as a “
synoptic delusion
” (14). A synoptic delusion represents a false belief that one can consciously design a new society as if one had possession of holistic knowledge. Holistic knowledge involves grasping the complex interrelations of the society which are necessarily constituted by both articulate and
tacit
social practices. Such knowledge ultimately requires omniscience. Omniscience, in turn, implies human
infallibility
. This infallibility would even have to extend to knowledge of the structure and processes of one’s own mind. Hayek stated: “There will always be some rules governing a mind which that mind in its then prevailing state cannot communicate, and that, if it ever were to acquire the capacity of communicating these rules, this would presuppose that it had acquired further higher rules which make the communication of the former possible but which themselves will still be incommunicable.”
⁶²
Hayek believed that the idea of a mind explaining itself is a logical contradiction. Its impossibility should help us curb our intellectual hubris.
⁶³
Human fallibility and the inherent contextual limits of knowledge are then the strongest factors militating against a fully imposed or designed rationalist order. The attempted imposition of order dislocates the very processes that make order possible.

Clearly, there are enormous differences between the Randian and Hayekian perspectives. But it is possible to see some significant parallels between them. On an immediate level, Rand would have agreed with Hayek that one cannot explain the rules of mental operation by a process of infinite regress. Moreover, as Binswanger (1989T, lecture 1) argues, we cannot use our own minds to step outside of and judge those very minds. There is no such thing as a “supraconscious” that enables one to “stand above” oneself.

But far more important, Rand and her intellectual allies would have agreed with Hayek’s assessment of the historical roots of constructivist
rationalism
. Hayek argued that just as the Western concept of
rationality
is the product of both
Enlightenment
thought and market capitalism, so constructivism is an inappropriate extension of the Enlightenment faith in
Reason
.
⁶⁴
Though Rand celebrated the Enlightenment’s contribution to the secular defense of liberty, she also argued that the Enlightenment perpetuated a fallacious view of reason.
⁶⁵

This critique of Enlightenment rationalism was not peculiar to Rand or Hayek. Thinkers in the hermeneutic and Frankfurt school traditions have all exhibited a similar tendency to criticize the “instrumentalist” view of reason at the heart of Enlightenment thought.
John Caputo
(1988) explains that these thinkers aimed to redefine reason

in a more reasonable way and to rescue it from the Enlightenment distortion of rationality. For the Enlightenment subjected reason to the impossible ideal of unconditioned rationality and absolute indubi-tability, and then, in the hope of meeting such impossible standards, turned reason over to the rule of a rigorous method and systematicity.… [W]e have learned to stop blaming reason for the failure to meet these standards and to start blaming the Enlightenment. (5)

This is precisely the crux of both Rand’s and Hayek’s critique. The failure of rationalism was not a failure of reason. By ascribing to human beings the attributes of an omniscient deity, and then condemning human reason for not fulfilling this ideal, rationalists attack the genuine legitimacy of human cognition. Rand argued that this destructive pattern is reproduced by the advocates of altruism, who erect an impossible, self-abnegating standard of morality and then indict humanity for not being able to live up to it.

Whereas Hayek concentrated on the social and cultural context of the capacity to reason, Rand focused on the identity of the rational faculty. By ascribing to human beings an infallibility that is, in fact, unattainable, rationalists disconnect the will to
efficacy
from any realistic understanding of its meaning.

But the will to
efficacy
is not simply a capacity to produce a desired effect. It is the conviction that one is competent
in principle
to think and act. Although such efficacy is expressed in particularized skills, it is not confined to skill. Nathaniel Branden ([1969] 1979) writes: “It is applicable to, and expressible in, every form of rational endeavor” (128). But efficacy is not a purely cerebral experience. Rand’s expansive concept of
consciousness
translates into an equally expansive notion of what it means to be efficacious. Genuine efficacy results from a fully integrated constellation of
reason
, emotions, values, actions, conscious convictions, and subconscious
sense of life, with no dichotomy presumed between any of the constituent elements. In
Chapter 9
I explore the Objectivist conviction that labor—
productive
work—is central to the achievement of such efficacy because it “is the distinctively
human
mode of action and survival” (129). Productive work expands our particularized efficacy, our replication and knowledge of skills, our understanding of tasks, our ability to grasp principles of action.

Rand’s recognition of these interrelationships provides a basis for comprehending the nature and guiding purpose of the constructivist
rationalism
that both she and Hayek condemned.
Such rationalism fractures the constituent elements of consciousness, and abstracts reason from its integrated context.
Rationalism attempts to satisfy the human need for efficacy by a one-sided emphasis on Reason, not human reason, but an abstract, narrow, disconnected, and unintegrated conception of reason.

Rationalism emerges from an error of
abstraction
, an isolated focus on the apparently limitless capacity of the human rational faculty. In proposing an all-powerful Reason with no limits, rationalists project a Reason with no identity. The rationalist sees the capacity to know as infinite, in the sense that the knowledge of one fact presupposes that a person can attain knowledge of a second fact, a third fact, etc. This knowledge series can be (potentially) extended to
infinity
. But Rand observed that infinity is only a mathematical or methodological concept; it is not valid as a concept pertaining to human
epistemological
potential.
⁶⁶
People are neither immortal nor
omniscient
. At any point in time, a person’s actual capacity and knowledge is both finite and contextual. Rationalism collapses the distinction between potential knowledge and actuality. It deifies the human ability to know and embraces a concept of reason that is epistemologically invalid.

We think within a definite structure. Our senses perceive real things and processes in the universe, and our rational faculty apprehends their structural and logical interrelationships. We achieve the cognitive efficacy that is requisite to survival by acting in accordance with the laws of logic to produce the desired effects. All of natural
science
is an attempt to systematize our knowledge of consistent and predictable relationships. Science charts certain courses of action initiated by particular entities with distinctive natures, producing specific effects. But as Hayek emphasized, and as Rand would not have denied, one person’s attempt to generate a desired effect is tempered by the reality of other people who are engaging in similar actions. The result is often a product that no one intended. To a rationalist, this is incompatible with our need for predictability and certainty. The rationalist wishes to create a social laboratory in which people are made to act with the same predictability as the law of gravity.

Such
rationalism
is rooted in a deep psycho-epistemological fear. As Branden emphasizes, people can develop a fear of the risks of acting on their own fallible judgments. This is a fear not of
action
per se, but of action in a universe in which success is not always guaranteed.
⁶⁷
There are two diametrically opposed ways in which we can respond to this fact of fallibility. There are innumerable variations in behavior between these two extremes. We can accept the possibility that we might make mistakes. We can accept that there will be many
unintended consequences
to our actions. Or we can revolt against this fact. We might seek to escape from the responsibility of thinking and acting (N. Branden 1980, 100). Alternatively, as
Packer
(1986T) suggests, we might be neurotically obsessed with planning and structuring every minute detail of our existences in a compulsive and misbegotten effort to conquer life’s uncertainties. If we do that, we have replaced our will to efficacy with an illusory quest for
omniscience
.

In Rand’s view, the rationalist assault on
reason
has “two interacting aspects” that must be examined. The primary aspect is individual since, ultimately, it is the individual who must choose “to think or not to think.” Hence, any doctrine that attacks the mind’s efficacy must be judged by its effects on our willingness or ability to raise the focus of our awareness. Rationalism subverts an individual’s psycho-
epistemology
because it proposes a standard that no one can live up to. Those who accept this doctrine live in perpetual guilt for their alleged failures.

But Rand recognized that there was a second interacting aspect that needed to be explored. This “contributory cause” is always
social
. The “social environment can offer incentives or impediments; it can make the exercise of one’s rational faculty easier or harder; it can encourage thinking and penalize evasion or vice versa.” For Rand, contemporary statist society “is ruled by evasion—by entrenched, institutionalized evasion—while reason is an outcast and almost an outlaw.”
⁶⁸

What makes Rand’s analysis so powerful is her ability to trace the effects of a philosophic doctrine on many different levels of generality. For Rand, rationalism was but one particular form of epistemological perversion with negative consequences for values, culture, education, politics, and human relationships.

9

ETHICS AND HUMAN SURVIVAL

Rand’s
ethics
is a direct application of her theory of knowledge. In her emphasis on the centrality of
reason
, Rand enunciates both an
epistemological
and normative principle. If reason is how we gain knowledge, it is simultaneously how we (as human beings) survive. That is, we
should
use our rational faculty
if
we choose to live. In Rand’s ethics, life, as an ultimate value, cannot be separated from reason, purpose, and self-esteem.

The issues involved in Rand’s ethical theories are enormous, complex, and controversial. Indeed, no other aspect of Rand’s thought has received as much
scholarly
attention as her defense of
egoism
.
¹
Rand herself believed that in addition to her theories of concept formation and politics, her ethics were among her most important philosophic contributions (in Peikoff 1976T, lecture 8). It is impossible to convey the depth of Rand’s ethics here. Once again, I focus chiefly on the nondualistic elements of Rand’s approach.