Posted on 07/20/2010 6:42:03 AM PDT by marshmallow
No philosopher ever proposed a more simple and straightforward view of life than the one Ayn Rand urges upon us.
"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis … Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley and the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality …. but to discover it."
Thus spake, not Zarathustra, but Ayn Rand's philosophical mouthpiece, John Galt, the protagonist of her principal novel, Atlas Shrugged. The "moral crisis" to which he refers is the conflict between altruism, which is radically immoral, and individualism, which provides the only form of true morality possible. Altruism, for Galt and Rand, leads to death; individualism furnishes the only path that leads to life. Thus, in order to go on living with any degree of authenticity, we must abandon the immoral code of altruism and embrace the vivifying practice of individualism.
Throughout the course of history, according to Ayn Rand, there have been three general views of morality. The first two are mystical, which, for Rand, means fictitious, or non-objective. The third is objective, something that can be verified by the senses. Initially, a mystical view reigned, in which the source of morality was believed to be God's will. This is not compatible either with Rand's atheism, or her objectivism. In due course, a neo-mystical view held sway, in which the "good of society" replaced the "will of God. The essential defect of this view, like the first, is that it does not correlate with an objective reality. "There is no such entity as 'society,'" she avers. And since only individuals really exist, the so-called "good of society" degenerates into a state where "some men are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang's desires."
Only the third view of morality is realistic and worthwhile. This is Rand's objectivism, a philosophy that is centred exclusively on the individual. It is the individual alone that is real, objective, and the true foundation for ethics. Therefore, Rand can postulate the basic premise of her philosophy: "The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A – and Man is Man."
An individual belongs to himself as an individual. He does not belong, in any measure, to God or to society. A corollary of Rand's basic premise is that "altruism," or the sacrifice of one's only reality – one's individuality – for a reality other than the self, is necessarily self-destructive and therefore immoral. This is why she can say that "altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value." On the other hand, individualism, cultivated through the "virtue of selfishness," is the only path to life. "Life," she insists, "can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action." Man's destiny is to be a "self-made soul."
Man, therefore, has a "right to life." But Rand does not mean by this statement that he has a "right to life" that others have a duty to defend and support. Such a concept of "right to life" implies a form of "altruism," and consequently is contrary to the good of the individual. In fact, for Rand, it constitutes a form of slavery. "No man," she emphasizes, "can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave.'" Moreover, there are no rights of special groups, since a group is not an individual reality. As a result, she firmly denies that groups such as the "unborn," "farmers," "businessmen," and so forth, have any rights whatsoever.
Making sacrifices for one's born or unborn children, one's elderly parents or other family members becomes anathema for Ayn Rand.
Her notion of a "right to life" begins and ends with the individual. In this sense, "right to life" means the right of the individual to pursue, through the rational use of his power of choice, whatever he needs in order to sustain and cultivate his existence. "An organism's life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is evil." As Rand has John Galt tell her readers, "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence." Man's existence must stay in existence. This is the mandate of the individual and the utility of the virtue of selfishness. Non-existence is the result of altruism and careens toward death. Making sacrifices for one's born or unborn children, one's elderly parents or other family members becomes anathema for Ayn Rand. She wants a Culture of Life to emerge, but she envisions that culture solely in terms of individuals choosing selfishly, the private goods of their own existence. If ever the anthem for a pro-choice philosophy has been recorded, it comes from the pen of Ayn Rand: "Man has to be man – by choice; he has to hold his life as a value – by choice; he has to learn to sustain it – by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practise his virtues – by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."
No philosopher ever proposed a more simple and straightforward view of life than the one Ayn Rand urges upon us. Man=Man; Existence = Existence; only individuals are real; all forms of altruism are inherently evil. There are no nuances or paradoxes. There is no wisdom. There is no depth. Complex issues divide reality into simple dichotomies. There is individualism and altruism, and nothing in between. Despite the apparent superficiality of her philosophy, Rand considered herself history's greatest philosopher after Aristotle.
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Barbara Branden tells us, in her book, The Passion of Ayn Rand, of how Miss Rand managed to make the lives of everyone around her miserable, and when her life was over, she had barely a friend in the world. She was contemptuous even of her followers. When Rand was laid to rest in 1982 at the age of 77, her coffin bore a six-foot replica of the dollar sign. Her philosophy, which she adopted from an early age, helped to assure her solitude: "Nothing existential gave me any great pleasure. And progressively, as my idea developed, I had more and more a sense of loneliness." It was inevitable, however, that a philosophy that centred on the self to the exclusion of all others would leave its practitioner in isolation and intensely lonely.
Ayn Rand's philosophy is unlivable, either by her or anyone else. A philosophy that is unlivable can hardly be instrumental in building a Culture of Life. It is unlivable because it is based on a false anthropology. The human being is not a mere individual, but a person. As such, he is a synthesis of individual uniqueness and communal participation. Man is a transcendent being. He is more than his individuality.
The Greeks had two words for "life": bios and zoe. Bios represents the biological and individual sense of life, the life that pulsates within any one organism. This is the only notion of life that is to be found in the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Zoe, on the other hand, is shared life, life that transcends the individual and allows participation in a broader, higher, and richer life.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis remarks that mere bios is always tending to run down and decay. It needs incessant subsidies from nature in the form of air, water, and food, in order to continue. As bios and nothing more, man can never achieve his destiny. Zoe, he goes on to explain, is an enriching spiritual life which is in God from all eternity. Man needs Zoe in order to become truly himself. Man is not simply man; he is a composite of bios and zoe.
Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
The transition, then, from bios to zoe (individual life to personal, spiritualized life; selfishness to love of neighbor) is also the transition from a Culture of Death to a Culture of Life.
THE AUTHOR
Donald DeMarco is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut and Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo Ontario. He also continues to work as a corresponding member of the Pontifical Acadmy for Life. Donald DeMarco has written hundreds of articles for various scholarly and popular journals, and is the author of twenty books, including The Heart of Virtue, The Many Faces of Virtue, Virtue's Alphabet: From Amiability to Zeal and Architects Of The Culture Of Death. Donald DeMarco is on the Advisory Board of The Catholic Education Resource Center.
Ayn Rand may have said a few smart things, but she seems to have been a pretty empty person overall.
Rand rejected all the lessons of Communism except Atheism. I can never figure out how she missed how interconnected it all was.
But I think people read into Galt’s words too much dogmatic ideology, and I think Rand missed a huge loophole in her thought in the book.
If Objectivism is doing what is in my own self interest without cheating another, then I can choose, in my own self interest, to extend aid to another who needs it.
“Altruism” can only be immoral when it is coerced or forced from a person.
True altruism is a personal choice, rationally reached.
Rand never got that.
The Catholic church has way too much blood on it’s hands in the 20th century with Marxist governments to have any credit on anything.
And their support of socialism in America makes me sick!
To me she is the definition of “half-baked”.
>>...to have any credit on anything.
If you’re choosing enemies, you could do worse than the Church.
Materialism, whether it’s collective or individual based, always leads to death. Marxism and Objectivism are two sides of the same coin in the end: all meaning is derived from the material world.
She never said any such thing about voluntary choices. Her objection was to governments (or quasi-governmental churches like the author's) compelling sacrifice from their victims.
Well, she said that no one has the right to compel another to sacrifice himself. That doesn’t mean that someone can’t decide to do it on his own. This author seems to think that people have to be forced to be altruistic. An insane concept.
To me...the author is half-baked.
"...Rand never got that....."
Actually, yes she did. I read most of her books and she explicitly stated many times exactly what you said: that if it was in her own rational self interest to help another (and not be forced to do it) she would.
For example, the joy derived from helping a complete stranger, either financially or whatever.
What she deemed evil was the forced "help" imposed by a government or bureaucrats to enact that assistance. For example, the plundering of personal or corporate wealth for re-distribution for "altruistic" causes.
"Rand rejected all the lessons of Communism except Atheism. I can never figure out how she missed how interconnected it all was."
Pretty much sums up my perspective on her as well; I'd go so far to say she said a lot of smart things. I do find delicious irony in the fact that many of her diehard proponents have essentially deified her, and will viciously assail any person who casts even remotely negative aspersions her with all the vigor of a religious fanatic in the face of a heretic. Funny how an avowed athiest seems to be followed by so many "true believers".
I greatly admire Rand, however, I recognize she was exclusively intellectual at the cost of her spirit. I do believe, had she had children, her outlook and philosophy would have softened. She is the most moral “horizontal” person I have ever studied. That she eschewed the “vertical” was her choice. I can still map my own course using much of her moral landmarks.
Rather than confound myself with how they're able to do this, rationalizing personal altruism as a sin, and individual, singular arrogance as a virtue, it occurs to me that maybe there's a simple answer to it:
"Just plain ol' nuts."
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
-- Ayn Rand
Yep. Culture of death for sure.
We’re born like Ayn Rand describes - all self. We don’t tend to date people long that are still that way.
I suppose the Catholic Church starved the Kulaks, sent millions of people to freeze and starve in the Gulags, created mass democide on the Chinese mainland, created the killing fields of Kampuchea and Cuba, and killed all those Poles and Jews in the concentration camps.
I guess the Catholic Church also murdered millions of children in the womb as well.
Sigh. Your post was mostly gibbering insanity.
However there is a real issue with members of (e.g.) the American church hierarchy supporting socialist doctrines. Lead with that next time, rather than the DU-style frothing at the mouth.
Yes, but in Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s rules explicitly forbid voluntary altruism in Galt’s Gulch. It was that book that I was speaking of when I said she missed a major loophole.
“Making sacrifices for one’s born or unborn children, one’s elderly parents or other family members becomes anathema for Ayn Rand.”
She said a sacrifice is giving up something you value highly, for something which you don’t. If you value your elderly parents, and you decide to assist them, it is a rational choice for you,,,not a sacrifice. And she is right about one thing, someone demanding a “sacrifice” is at the root of almost all evil.
“Ayn Rand: Architect of The Culture of Death”
Now I thought that would have been Margaret Sanger.
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