Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (28 page)

Attributes are what can be separated mentally from the entity. “
Parts
” Rand defined somewhat more narrowly. A “part” is something that can be separated materially from the whole. In cutting off the legs from a table, for instance, the legs are parts that are no longer connected to the table top. Hence, the table is no longer what it once was.
⁵³
But Rand preserved the integrity of the whole. The entity is the “sum” of its characteristics. Rand does not mean “sum” in a literal fashion (“Appendix,” 265–66). A “sum” is an
integrated
sum. As Nathaniel Branden ([1969] 1979, 16) observes, the organism is “not an aggregate, but an integrate.” Hence, although the parts of someone can be viewed as separate and distinct, Rand admonishes us never to drop “the
context
that they are vital organs of a total entity which is a human being” (“Appendix,” 270).

In rejecting the bifurcation of the
entity
and its attributes, Rand presents an integrated view that is also sensitive to the context within which an entity exists. Entities, like
concepts
and words, cannot be fully understood when disconnected from their context. Peikoff explains, for instance, that words and concepts are not external or “neutral” to the totality; they often take on the connotation of the context within which they are used.
⁵⁴
So, too, an entity must be understood in terms of its conditions of existence,
which are partially comprised by the entity’s dynamic relationship to other entities. This principle is duplicated in Rand’s
social
analysis, wherein no single social problem can be resolved apart from related problems, or apart from the system which they jointly constitute—and perpetuate.

THE METAPHYSICAL VERSUS THE MAN-MADE

Rand’s simultaneous emphasis on the ontological priority of individual entities and the integrated nature of each entity has immediate implications for her social
ontology
. Rand did not use the term “social ontology.” But it characterizes her view of the nature of
humanity
, human action, and social institutions. For Rand, the person is an
individual
,
human
,
being
, with each of these factors essential to our understanding of his or her nature—
not
an abstraction but a
real
entity. As an entity, the person is an
individual
, a particular. And as a particular kind of entity, the person has a distinctive species
identity
—
human.
The bulk of Rand’s philosophy is an examination of what it means to be
human.

Within the present context, it should be mentioned briefly that Rand saw free will as one of humankind’s most distinctive characteristics. But the power of
volition
does not enable people to alter that which Rand described as the “metaphysically given.”
⁵⁵
Though people can rearrange the elements of reality to serve human needs, they cannot alter the laws of identity and
causality
. For Rand, there is no contradiction between inability and the fact of human volition. Rand reaffirmed
Bacon’s
insight that human beings cannot command nature unless they discover the properties of the elements they seek to control, as well as the rules by which volitional
consciousness
functions. Indeed, for human beings to initiate and direct the actions of consciousness, they must obey the rules of cognition. Though they are free to evade or subvert their own perceptions of reality, they cannot escape the existential consequences of such willful cognitive distortion.

Rand made a crucial distinction between those elements in reality which are metaphysically given, and those objects, institutions, procedures, or rules of conduct made by human beings (33). She refers to this distinction as the “metaphysical versus the man-made”: “It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary. Man is not omniscient or infallible” (ibid.).

In essence, Rand rejected those who
reify
human institutions as unalterable metaphysical facts. Such a practice preserves the status quo, while sanctioning those injustices which happen to exist (Peikoff 1991b, 26).
Although “the metaphysically given is, was, will be, and had to be,” Rand argued that “nothing made by man
had to be
: it was made by choice.”
⁵⁶

Rand equated those who would uncritically accept the products of human action with those who would rebel against nature in an attempt to negate
existence
. In either case, people did not grasp the difference between what
can
be changed and what cannot.

And yet by creating such a distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made, Rand seemed wholly ignorant of what
Hayek
called the unintended consequences of human action. In Hayek’s view, cultural traditions are largely the result of inarticulate
social
practices. Hayek argued that spontaneously emergent social institutions are the historical product of human interaction but not of deliberate design. The attempt to alter these evolved institutions by will is one of the hallmarks of
utopianism
. Those who seek to control the delicate fabric of social life ultimately destroy the very forces that generate order. Hayek condemned these utopians as “constructivist rationalists.” His critique of utopianism was simultaneously a powerful indictment of the efficacy and propriety of state planning. Ironically,
Marx
also recognized the tacit dimension in social reality. But unlike Hayek, Marx projected a future communist society in which people were no longer the playthings of history, but the
conscious
creators of their own destiny.
⁵⁷

RAND VERSUS KANT

Rand’s commitment to
realism
in philosophy penetrates to the root of her metaphysics.
Objectivism
begins with the axioms of existence,
identity
, and
consciousness
and proceeds to a defense of the primacy of existence in each of its
ontological
moments. Rand argued that most philosophies advocate either the primacy of existence or the primacy of consciousness.
⁵⁸
As Kelley (1986) explains:

In Ayn Rand’s terms, it is a question of the primacy of consciousness versus the primacy of existence: do the objects of awareness depend on the subject for their existence or identity, or do the contents of consciousness depend on external objects? … Realists claim that the objects exist independently of the subject. Awareness is non-constitutive, the identification of things that exist and are what they are independently of the awareness of them.
Idealists
, on the other hand, claim that the object of cognition does depend on some constitutive activity of the subject—even if, with
Kant
, they allow that some independent noumenal realm also exists. (8, 27)

In Rand’s view,
Kant’s
grand and far-reaching synthesis was the
philosophy
most responsible for promulgating the view that consciousness is ontologically prior to existence. Kant attacked objective reality and the efficacy of the mind on a
metaphysical
level. While a full discussion of Rand’s anti-Kantianism is beyond the scope of this book, it is valuable to briefly examine the similarities and differences between the two thinkers. Such an exploration provides additional evidence of Rand’s Russian intellectual roots.

The late
George Walsh
, a distinguished Objectivist philosopher, criticizes Rand and other Objectivists for their wholesale rejection of Kant’s metaphysics and
epistemology
.
⁵⁹
Walsh argues persuasively that Rand exaggerated her differences with—and misinterpreted—some of Kant’s central positions in these basic fields of philosophy. It is Walsh’s view that both thinkers adhere to many of the same basic propositions.

Kant accepted
Aristotle
’s definition of metaphysics as the study of being qua being. He asked whether metaphysical knowledge is possible and identified the solution of this problem as the aim of his
Critique of Pure Reason
. He divided metaphysics into
ontology
, which studies existing things and events separately, including whether every event has a cause, and
cosmology
, which studies the totality of existence, including whether the universe as such has a cause. Kant concluded that ontology is possible as knowledge since people can visualize
causality
between events. But cosmology is not possible as knowledge, because the universe as a whole cannot be treated as an
entity
. Viewing cosmology as knowledge leads to unwarranted conclusions in some cases and to outright contradictions or “antinomies” in others. The only legitimate function of cosmology is to “regulate” science in the direction of broader, more general theories. But for Kant, since no completely general theory can ever be attained, cosmology can never qualify as knowledge.

Like Kant, Rand accepted
Aristotle
’s definition of metaphysics as the study of being qua being. She implicitly acknowledged the conventional division of metaphysics into
ontology
and
cosmology
, but rejected cosmology as illegitimate. Whereas ontology or metaphysics can establish
that
there are entities which have natures, and
that
only finite concretes exist and interact causally, it is the job of science to study the
specific
nature of these entities, to discover
what
they are and the laws of their interaction. Cosmology extends to the whole universe the
empirical
laws that have been reached at any given moment. For Rand, as for Kant, such cosmological speculation can be defended only by an appeal to some sort of mystical insight. But whereas Rand categorically rejected such “
mysticism
,” Kant provided a defense of
faith
and intuition as the central means for dealing with fundamental noumena.

This difference, however, does not constitute the central criticism that Rand leveled against Kant. According to
Walsh
, the principal—and least tenable—point of Rand’s critique was her mistaken assumption that Kant had disqualified the efficacy of
consciousness
precisely because the mind possessed
identity
. Rand ascribed to Kant the doctrine that knowledge is a “distortion” or “collective delusion.” She claimed that Kant derived this conclusion from the premise that the mind possesses a specific identity.

Walsh argues, however, that Kant made no such argument. Kant contended that all knowledge falls necessarily under the forms of space, time, and the categories (which as knowledge are tied to space and time). These forms cannot be the properties or relations of things as they are in themselves, for, if they were, we would know them a posteriori, whereas in fact we know them a priori (Walsh, 14 October 1993C).

For Kant, the mind, with its definite structure or identity, is the only source that originates the formal element in knowledge. This is not Kant’s basic premise, but his ultimate epistemological
conclusion.
Walsh argues that Rand has misinterpreted this aspect of Kant’s thought; Kant does not believe that the mind must have
some
identity or
other
, and that this identity,
as such
, distorts the objects of its knowledge. As a transcendental Idealist, Kant argues: “All objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations which,
in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as a series of alterations
, have no independent existence outside our thoughts.”
⁶⁰

Kant provided a means of distinguishing objective truth from error. He distinguished illusions and delusions from “
empirical
reality” by systematically
applying criteria of order and regular sequence. In Walsh’s opinion, Rand cannot dismiss Kant’s view that the mind imposes forms of space and time upon
percepts
without putting in serious question the validity of her own theories of perceptual relativity. As we shall see in
Chapter 6
, Rand believed that percepts come to us arrayed in forms, such as color, determined by the interaction of our sense organs with appropriate stimuli. How can Rand criticize Kant when her own view suggests that sensory “processing” does not in itself, grasp the “ultimate constituents of the universe,” even if these are the “causal primaries” behind our percepts? The only difference between the Randian and Kantian approaches is that for Rand, science may one day discover the properties of the “ultimate constituents,” whereas for Kant, such knowledge of things-in-themselves is impossible
as such.
In Walsh’s opinion, Rand’s critique of Kant’s
epistemology
as radically distortive, dualistic, and delusory ought to be qualified. For Walsh, even in Kant’s account of knowledge, “empirical reality,” once known, may indeed, be obeyed and commanded.