Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (48 page)

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?

As a novelist and lecturer, Rand presented her otherwise integrated perspective in stark terms, which often did violence to the complexities and subtleties of her philosophy. This was perhaps an unavoidable by-product of her popular expositional style. It was an approach that made her famous, and which very much reflected the immoderate tendencies inherent in the Russian literary tradition.

Rand advocated “a black and white view of the world” since one could not “identify anything as gray, as middle of the road,” without knowing “what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two.”
⁸¹
While she defined
rationality
as the basic virtue, she regarded
irrationality
as the basic vice.
⁸²

In order to understand Rand’s notion of irrationality, it is important to grasp her distinction between an error of knowledge and a breach of morality (
Atlas Shrugged
, 1059). Rand recognized that people are not infallible or omniscient. A person who makes an error of knowledge may be in full mental focus, but may either lack sufficient information, or make a mistake. Such a person is not irrational. By contrast, a person who breaches morality commits the equivalent of a “cardinal sin,” in Rand’s view, a “sin” that makes all other vices possible. For Rand, the essence of such a breach is willful
evasion
of the facts of reality.

Rand recognized that evasion can become habitual in a person’s psycho-
epistemology
. Such evasions may inevitably contribute to a form of
psychological
repression that blocks an individual from being aware of certain uncomfortable facts. Though repression is outside the realm of
conscious
control, and thus, extra-moral, Rand condemned the sustained practice of willful evasion. A person who consciously evades the facts of reality acts against the means of his or her own survival. Such irrationality cannot be practiced with impunity; it must engender consequences that undermine a person’s self-preservation.

Rand believed in a kind of Gresham’s law of morality. Just as bad money drives out
good
money, so bad moral principles have a tendency to drive out good ones. She argued that most people internalize a mixture of both rational and irrational premises, but that unless the irrational ones were fully articulated and transcended, people risked poisoning even their good principles (Peikoff 1987T, lecture 6). Knowledge is an integrated totality. To evade one fact is to introduce a contradiction into one’s
consciousness
, which, if left unchecked, must engender further contradictions, and the ultimate
dis
integration of one’s cognitive and evaluative mechanisms. Rand compared the process to government intervention in the economy. She argued that unless the irrationality (or intervention) is examined and entirely eliminated, it requires further irrationality (or intervention) in a misbegotten attempt to overturn the deleterious consequences.
⁸³
The result is disastrous in both cognitive and
social
spheres. Ultimately, Rand’s analysis of
statism
is a radical critique of systemic irrationality.

Rand argued that
rationality
, the good, has nothing to gain from irrationality, the evil. Rand believed that evil is impotent because those who engage in sustained evasion cannot realize the potentialities distinctive to human being. Because evil is fundamentally impotent, it can only succeed by the default of those rational and moral people who do not recognize its basic irrationality. In a clear articulation of principles, irrationality is defeated. By obscuring these principles, the irrational gain a certain leverage in social relations they do not naturally possess.
⁸⁴
It is for this reason that Rand rejected any compromise on basic principles of right and wrong.