Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (45 page)

The whole point of Ayn Rand’s derivation of “ought” from “is,” as it applies to humans, is that
if
you choose to exist,
then
you can consistently pursue that choice, and any other particular choice, only by holding
life
as your ultimate value—because life, by its nature,
requires a specific course of action; only that fact about life gives point to any act of evaluation, any reason to choose—any basis for a
concept of value.
But that fact about life has no implication for action to beings who choose not to exist. The choice to live and the nature of life
together
ground the status of one’s life as one’s actual, and only rational, ultimate value.
³¹

Peikoff (1991b, 244, 248) argues further that the choice to live is indeed a metaethical commitment. It is a choice that both precedes and underlies the need for morality. But such a choice is not arbitrary. Rather, it is an affirmation of a human being’s willingness to accept the reality of his or her own existence. Binswanger concurs that the choice to live is what gives a person a stake in his or her own actions. Such a choice engenders the need for evaluation. Binswanger agrees with Peikoff that the choice to live establishes the context for
ethics
. In choosing to live, a person has chosen the only
consistent
alternative. By choosing not to live, a person has rejected the entire realm of
values
and has no alternative but to die. To actualize his or her potential for life, an individual must choose to live and pursue those values that are requisite to survival.
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Those who deny this proposition are guilty of a contradiction; their very ability to deny is proof that they are alive, that they continue to choose life, and that such a choice is tacitly affirmed in their every commentary.

Rand’s argument that there is an inseparable link between life and value is in fact circular. But it is not a vicious form of
circularity
. Such circularity is inherent in any internal
relationship
. When Rand stated that “metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself,” she was
identifying
both life and value. Life
is
the ultimate value. It entails value in its very identity. Life is internally related to value because it could not be what it is in the absence of this relation. To attempt to separate life and value would be to evade the meaning of both concepts. Life and value are conditional upon each other. One can no more refer to life without value, than to value without life. Thus Rand maintained that their bifurcation is “worse than a contradiction.” Rand did not see the relationship of life and value in strictly linguistic terms. She did not deduce the concept of value from the concept of life. Her arguments for their internal relationship are inductive. They are based upon an observation of a fact of reality.
Epistemologically
, Rand recognized that the concept of life is prior to the concept of value. But
ontologically
, the two are simultaneous. The very existence of life depends on the pursuit and achievement of values; the very phenomenon of value depends on the existence of life.
³³

In this internal link, Rand was not offering an immediate defense of any particular value system. She was merely observing that
life
and value
cannot be separated from each other. To say that the choice to live is metaethical is to acknowledge that it is a fact inherent in the conditional nature of human life itself. A person’s continued existence is predicated on his or her choices. None of these choices can have any meaning if they are disconnected from the most basic choice to live. It can be said that even if someone pursues contradictory values inimical to survival, he or she may still be affirming the will to live. Subjectively, these choices may appear to have short-term survival value, even if they objectively threaten long-term survival interests.
³⁴
Rand’s critique of
altruism
is at once her explicit
articulation
of the means by which people unwittingly accept a death premise on which to base their actions. Just as the principle of altruism is based on a self-sacrificial death premise, Rand proposed that those who attempt to practice it will, in fact, subvert their own ultimate survival. One cannot consistently engage in self-sacrifice without negating the basic choice at the foundation of
ethics
. Those who consistently live by self-abnegating principles achieve literal suicide.

Rand acknowledged that one’s conceptual
awareness
is governed by cognitive concepts and evaluative choices that are often
subconscious
and tacit. Thus she suggested that even the primary choice to live is implicit. As a child learns to distinguish between right and wrong, it may not be making a calculated decision “to live.” Indeed, it may not even know
why
certain actions are good and others are bad. Even as its
consciousness
evolves toward full
conceptual
maturity, it is more likely to take for granted the moral principles governing its actions as it follows certain traditional precepts by habit (Rand 1946, 9). In most cases, the choice to live becomes apparent in the everyday pursuit of life-sustaining material and spiritual values. In Rand’s view, it is the task of
ethics
to objectively validate values that confirm this most basic choice to live through the conscious, articulated, principled pursuit of goals that make
human
living both possible and desirable.

RATIONALITY AND VIRTUE

Having traced the
relationship
between life and
value
, and having enunciated an
objective
ethical
standard, Rand argued that there is an inseparable link between the moral and the practical. Moral principles are the means by which a human being—a being of integrated mind and body—survives
practically
on this earth. Everything that a human being needs to sustain life must be discovered by his or her mind. A rational being survives by thinking and by applying thought to
action
. Rand identified those derivative
values
and
virtues
which serve as the means to this genuinely
human
survival: “
Value
is that which one acts to gain and/or keep—
virtue
is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist
ethics
—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life—are:
Reason
,
Purpose
,
Self-Esteem
, with their three corresponding virtues:
Rationality
, Productiveness,
Pride
.”
³⁵

These values and virtues have both theoretical and practical, intellectual and existential aspects. Recalling the ethos of classical antiquity, Rand saw Virtue as One. No values and no virtues can be thoroughly abstracted from the ethical totality they constitute. Though Rand analyzed the virtues separately, she emphasized that they form an indissoluble whole (Peikoff 1991b, 250). For instance, just as Rand saw reason as the source of
productive work
, and pride as the result of achievement, she recognized that each component nourishes—and is nourished by—the other elements in the totality. Successful production enables a person to attain his or her rational purposes. Both reason and production contribute to a sense of accomplishment. The ability to realize goals contributes to a sense of self-efficacy. Pride in one’s accomplishments fosters a continuing policy of rationality and productive work. Each of these moments is in reciprocity with its constituent relations. Each is both the source and product of the other. Each is part of an organic
unity
.

Nevertheless, as in most aspects of Rand’s thought, there is an asymmetric internality among the constituent elements of the whole. In other words, though the elements are reciprocally related, there is a skewed emphasis on one factor. In keeping with her
epistemic
focus, Rand argued: “Rationality is [the] basic virtue, the source of all … other virtues.” Rationality entails the raising of one’s level of mental
awareness
. A
volitional
, cognitive activity serves as the basic moral virtue because it affirms the mind as the human being’s only means of knowing reality and of surviving on earth. In exercising rationality, human beings validate, choose, and derive their convictions, values, goals, desires, and actions from a process of thought.
³⁶

While this formulation suggests a one-sided focus on the rational to the detriment of other constituent factors of
consciousness
, it must be remembered that Rand’s conception is essentially expansive. As we have seen, Rand’s emphasis on the centrality of reason does not negate the role of
emotions
or the automatized integrations of the
subconscious
. By focusing on
rationality
as the chief virtue, Rand was
not
devaluing the nonrational and nonconscious elements of the mind. Certainly there is evidence that as someone who scorned Russian religious culture, Rand was deeply hostile toward all things irrational. This translated into an antipathy toward emotionalism. But the thrust of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is toward
the
transcendence
of
dualism
. The virtue of rationality does not mean that one
rationalizes
one’s actions, values, goals, and desires. Rather, it entails the conscious
awareness
and
articulation
of rationally derived goals, the
articulation
—and long-term, therapeutic alteration, if necessary—of one’s emotions and desires.

Rationality as articulation is how people grasp the metaphysical value judgments they have tacitly absorbed and integrated into their subconscious. Such core evaluations are not rationally derived; they are formed tacitly from a very early period in a child’s life. Thus a child raised in a loving, predictable household may achieve a benevolent sense of life, internalizing the values and
virtues
that Rand identified as objective. But Rand believed that an individual could not act consistently and efficaciously over the long run on the sole basis of unarticulated premises. Likewise, a child raised in a nightmare universe, the victim of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, may acquire a malevolent sense of life that reflects its experiences. If the child internalizes a view of itself as worthless and evil, or if it practices evasion, or if it represses its anger, hurt, and pain, it stunts its development toward full efficacy. For Rand, rationality is the moral choice—regardless of one’s metaphysical value judgments—because it compels the child to augment its introspective focus and to grasp the experiential roots of its emotions and subconsciously held values. Rationality is the means to an unobstructed and integrated awareness. It is the means to articulating that which is implicit, serving the need for conceptualization which is crucial to genuinely human survival.

As derivatives of rationality, Rand cited several subsidiary virtues.
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Each of these virtues is a reality-oriented means to a rational end. The virtue of
independence
means that one must have the responsibility to form one’s judgments based upon one’s own perception of reality.
Integrity
is the virtue of never sacrificing one’s rationally derived judgments to the wishes or opinions of others.
Honesty
is the virtue of never faking reality in any manner.
Justice
is the virtue of recognizing and evaluating people based on objective criteria.

Rand emphasized that none of these virtues is intrinsically absolute. Each constitutes an objective
relation
between the faculty of consciousness and reality. Each is
contextual.
Practicing honesty, independence, and integrity in one’s life requires existential conditions that make such practices efficacious. There is no virtue to being honest with a kidnapper who has abducted your child. And there is little possibility of being independent in a social system that makes the exercise of one’s rationality ineffectual. Rand’s critique of culture suggests that statism subverts the consistent practice of virtue. Indeed, the practice of these virtues without regard to
context
can prove fatal.

This contention is most dramatically illustrated in Rand’s depiction of a totalitarian society in
We the Living
.
Her protagonist, Kira, seeks to secure material benefits for her sick lover, Leo, by lying to, and manipulating Andrei, an idealistic and influential communist. Kira’s dishonesty is necessary, and yet it involves her in a romantic triangle that inevitably destroys all three characters. The fault lies not in Kira’s dishonesty, as much as it does in a system that penalizes
virtue
. At the culmination of the novel, each of the three main characters has been literally or figuratively destroyed. Rand wished to show that such a system is anathema to the achievement of human
life
and values. From the time of this early novel, Rand was making explicit connections between morality and the sociopolitical conditions that make its practice both necessary and desirable.

PRODUCTIVE
WORK

Rand did not merely deduce the practical power of
reason
from
ontological
and epistemological axioms. Her observations of
history
helped to provide the foundation for her philosophical approach. Rand recognized that her own identification of
ethical
principles would not have been possible without the
Industrial Revolution
. Though the ancient Greeks had celebrated the human being as a rational animal, even thinkers such as Aristotle saw contemplative knowledge as superior to practical knowledge.
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Industrialization brought the practical power of reason to fruition. It offered an uncontestable historical display of the connection between thought and reality, thinking and activity, theory and practice, science and technology, reason and production.
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