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.
Better yet...why?
It would prove what point, exactly?
They're not interconnected. Communist strongmen suppressed religious belief because they took over the mantle, and had the populace worship the state instead. But there's plenty of non-believers who aren't authoritarians, leftists, or liberals.
I'm not a card carrying objectivist, but I think that a few more of them in Congress would actually be a good thing for liberty. 534 of 535 members of Congress are theists, as is our President. My question to theism is, "What have you done for me lately?"
But to Rand, in doing so, you deprive the beneficiary of liability for his own success or failure, which is the ultimate form of slavery. If he fails, YOU own his failure. If he succeeds, YOU own that. And you defy the natural order when you bear the burden of someone else's life -- success or failure -- whether you choose to do so or not. Your aid elevates you to a status above your donee, and creates a moral obligation in him to account to you. Altruism -- to Rand -- is always the wrong choice.
Personally, I think that's pasture putty. But it underlies much of her Objectivist ideology.
Ayn Rand lived a relatively long, trouble-free life despite her “fatally flaws [sic]” view of the nature of man. Joan lived a rather short, troubled life that ended in severe pain despite her having the supposedly un-flawed view of a Christian.
Well said.
The logical conclusion of Objectivism is nihilism.
Culture of death existed long prior to Ayn Rand.
Even trying to ascribe to Rand the title of chronicler of the culture of death is a stretch.
She also missed the part about “forced altruism”.
I finally finished reading “Atlas Shrugged.” Has that book ever been published abridged?
That would be the movie, if/when it finally gets made.
You wouldn't understand logic if it bit you.
What compelled you to read Atlas Shrugged? And do you read other books under a similar compulsion?
Oh, I think I'm comfortable enough with logic and history to know that King Solomon considered and rejected objectivism about 3000 years ago. because it leads to nihilism.
Mao lived a even longer, more comfortable life, I guess Rand should have been a communist after all
What a bunch of bull.
You can accurately call Ayn Rand a godless atheist and a self-centered wretch. But an architect of he culture of death? Come on. There is nothing that I’ve sen in her philosophy that would indicate an animus to life.
Are you suuuure we're not Commies? Cuz on the other thread, we're Nazis. Didn't the Nazis shoot the Commies? Then Uncle Joe invaded Germany, and the Commies shot the Nazis.
So I guess the Nazi me should shoot the Commie me. Or should the Commie me shoot the Nazi me? It's all so confusing, really ...
Not at all. The philosophy was pretty simple. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit is good. Coercion for exclusive benefit is bad.
Particularly in Atlas Shrugged, she delivered an ideologically pure message, but it is not in evidence she had the thoughts and values attributed to her in this article.
Giving because some entity has a gun to your head forcing you to do it, is not altruism.
But ultimately, a society built on them (or most of what passes for libertarian thought) will not last very long. Christian theology is that no man is alone, and we all have a measure of responsibility for what happens to those around us. Sacrifice is not a vice but a virtue.
Materialism does not recognize that.
I agree that portions of what Rand believes are appealing, but the root of her philosophy seems to be selfishness and atheism.
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
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For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
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For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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