Ayn Rand

Over the years I have heard various gripes and praises of Ayn Rand, so finally, with all the spare time I have these days, I checked out and read Anthem yesterday. I have no idea how representative this is of Ms. Rand's other works or philosophy in general, so my commentary is based purely on that book as an independent entity. When I finished reading it, I had somewhat mixed but generally positive feelings. Today, while on my run, I had this realization that at least in Anthem, Ayn Rand's philosophy is as great of an intellectual catastrophe as the communism and collectivism she so despises and the libertarianism that worships her so.

To begin, Anthem is not a good novel or novella. I would say that it is not even either of those two things. It is a sort of philosophical allegory whose characters and world is so flat and stylized that it simply a more palatable surrogate for a philosophical tract. In this sense, it is in the same genre as classic dystopias like Brave New World or Animal Farm (although I would say that the last classic in this group, 1984, constitutes more of a legitimate literary work than the others). With that in mind, Rand makes the absurd decision to craft all of her protagonists as godlike figures. The feature that makes them the protagonists and sets them apart from the rabid collectivists that control the "City" is that they are able to embrace their individuality. Now this is an excellent point, but it is marred by the fact that such people represent nonexistent ideals. I would argue that humanity's greatness comes not from our perfection, but our imperfection and our ability to both overcome it and embrace it as something meaningful. After all, Rand's incessant banter about reason would be much more appropriate in such a context. Would it not be better (and more realistic) if the "Golden One" were hideous yet realized that her individuality gave her something to live for? Rand is useless, because she shows that perfect individuals succeed and achieve fulfillment by worshipping their individuality, but this proves nothing. Of course perfect people will gain for egotism, for they truly are the best. The truth is that there is no such thing as perfection, and pretending that it exists in one's self is tantamount to myopic self-delusion. Her implication that ideals exist is actually self-defeating in the work, since it suggests that there is a single archetype, which all people should strive to imitate. This contradicts the very essence of individuality, which is that differences are important.

But alas, these criticisms are really just structural and they don't cut through an philosophical flesh. She made crappy characters for the point she was trying to make--so what? Of principle importance is her obsession with individuality, which I have already mentioned. Generally speaking, I don't find it to be a terribly profound point that valuing individuality is essential for maximizing both social and personal happiness, fulfillment, etc. It was probably more meaningful in the 1930s, when it was written. It's a good point though. Just not terribly original. I agree with it wholeheartedly... I think. She walks a very fine line in her literal fixation on individuality, and it is unclear as to how far she really means to take it. I personally believe that selfishness on the scale of an economic system, tends to work tolerably well (i.e. better than anything else we've found). But individuals in a selfish economic system are not necessarily selfish in a detrimental way. Indeed, America's capitalist economy gives more charity than most (pretty sure, although statistics were a little sparse on that one) others. Is this sort of ego-worship good to adopt on a personal level? I would say no. It is wholly unnatural and personally destructive if people are selfish at the expense of others. Does Anthem suggest that this should occur? It's very ambigious. Probably not, for the protagonist tries to give his electric invention to the Council of Scholars, but it is a big question.

Finally we come to my main criticism, which is Rand's worship of reason. From what I gather (partially from outside sources), the basis of Rand's objectivism is that reason should be man's only absolute. This is genuinely flawed, like the rests of Rand's thinking, because it relies on terrible, terrible ideals that aren't actually true. First of all, reason will tell you that reason is not absolute. Second of all, where does "reason" come from anyway? Why do humans have the capacity for rational thought? Because of evolution of course, and because of instinct. While humans are usually rational, this reason is ultimately derived from instinct, which gives us our emotions, creativity, and other parts of our identity. To try to make reason the sole tool at man's disposal in life would breed disaster since it rests on a false assumption.

The fact is that humans are instinctively altruistic to some degree, and this occurs for the reason that it has been beneficial to our species for such a trait to exist. So perhaps reason tells us that altruism is best? Isn't this a contradiction of Rand's assumption that reason tells us to be selfish? So my conclusion of this messy tirade is that at best Rand and her ideas are a completely null conclusion: they say to follow reason, and when I follow reason it tells me that I should follow reason to the extent that instinct tells me to, which I'm already doing because my use of reason was instinctual to begin with. At worst, it is a personally and socially simplistic road to unhappiness.

As a final note, Ayn Rand kind of reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche in some ways. True, their names both look and sound hideously ugly, but their philosophies share a few characteristics. I have quite a few problems with Mr. Nietzsche, but I prefer his finer points to those of Ms. Rand.