Why So Negative, Miss Rand?

 

In a previous pair of essays (see here, and here), I suggested that Ayn Rand’s ethics, commonly referred to as “egoism” or “rational selfishness,” is more basically a form of eudaimonism or human flourishing. Such a shift in perspective, I said, would be an important way to perfect Rand’s philosophy and more effectively help people to live better and happier lives.

Another issue apropos to this theme is Rand’s unfortunate tendency to discuss some of her most important ideas in overly negative terms.

Another issue apropos to this theme is Rand’s unfortunate tendency to discuss some of her most important ideas in overly negative terms.¹ For instance, in John Galt’s radio speech in Atlas Shrugged, Rand defines logic as “the art of non-contradictory identification” (1957, 943).² This is like defining man as “the non-irrational animal”—or instructing driver’s education students to “not drive in the ditch,” rather than “keep it on the road.”

Peikoff ratifies this definition by nonessentials when he says that “the avoidance of contradiction—is at the heart of every process of logic.”³ This is like saying that the avoidance of an arithmetic error is at the heart of every math test. If that is your mind-set in doing either logic or math, you are literally not focusing on what you’re doing. You are forgetting that doing math or logic is the primary, and that checking your work for errors is what you do after you have completed a syllogism or an arithmetic problem.

The canonical Objectivist definition of logic clearly deviates from Aristotle’s principle that concepts should be defined in terms of positives.

The canonical Objectivist definition of logic clearly deviates from Aristotle’s principle that concepts should be defined in terms of positives. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example. For instance, Rand also has Galt state that “Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any or your values and does not work for your own destruction…”⁴

Happily, we can let Rand off the hook in the case of happiness, since eight pages previously Rand had Galt provide the official Objectivist definition: “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of your values.”⁵ This is stated in positive terms, as all good definitions should be (unless they define a negative, what Aristotle called a “privation”).

Similarly, though, Rand should also have had Galt define logic in positive terms, as something like “the art of correct identification,” or perhaps “the art of reasoning consistently with the Law of Identity.” Instead, the leaders of Official Objectivism cleave to Galt’s words and continue to tie themselves in negativistic logical knots. Harry Binswanger correctly and helpfully acknowledges that “the guidance logic provides flows from a single imperative: Be consistent.” But then he cites Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction as “the basic principle of all knowledge,”⁶ which suggests an underlying preference for the double-negative: “Don’t be inconsistent.”

The point is that a definition, like logic, is a tool to guide you, most basically, in identifying what something is, and only secondarily to help you avoid misidentifying that thing or to detect when you have misidentified it. This principle is nowhere more vitally important than in ethics, since we are talking about how to guide your actions in living your life; and Objectivism is most emphatically not a philosophy for avoiding death, but for living life.

Only two of the seven canonical Objectivist virtues (Productiveness and Independence) are defined or described in consistently positive terms.

Yet, only two of the seven canonical Objectivist virtues (Productiveness and Independence) are defined or described in consistently positive terms, while the word “never” frequently appears throughout Rand’s discussion. You get the impression that she is hovering over you, not telling you what to do so that you will be happy so much as what not to do so you won’t be miserable (or worse). Probably the most glaring example is the following:

The virtue of Pride is the recognition of the fact “that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining—that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.” (Atlas Shrugged) The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection—which one achieves [here comes the negative part] by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational—by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected—by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s character—by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.7

The six uses of “never” and two of “rejection” make this passage very negative. Had I been invited to tweak the last half of that paragraph, I would have done something like this:

[Beginning with Rand’s wording] The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection—which one achieves…[here I would break off from Rand’s verbiage and write the following]…by insisting on a code of rational virtues that are possible to practice and by scrupulously practicing those virtues—by conscientiously correcting any guilt that one has earned—by persistently correcting any flaws in one’s character—by always holding the reality of one’s own self-esteem above any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment. And, above all, it means one’s consistent adherence to the principle that one is, like every other human being, an end in oneself, not a means to the ends of others.

If Rand had taken this more positive approach, she could then have trotted in all the negative stuff, if necessary for balance or whatever. But she should first have given a nice, clean positive statement of pride and “moral ambitiousness” before galloping off into “never”-“never” land. In characterizing virtue, it is most helpful to begin on the high ground, to point toward what one should aspire to, rather than focusing so relentlessly on what one should reject.

Rand’s treatment of Rationality is only somewhat less negativistic. She gives five thoroughly positive sentences describing Rationality, followed by a positive description of the virtue of Independence. However, she then lapses into a lengthy series of negative definitions of Integrity, Honesty, and Justice, and concludes with a very lengthy sentence and a shorter one both negatively characterizing Rationality:

1. “…one must never sacrifice one’s convictions to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity).”
2. “…one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty).”
3. “… one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice).”
4. “…one must never desire effects without causes…”
5. “…one must never enact a cause without assuming full responsibility for its effects…”
6. “…one must never act like a zombie, e., without knowing one’s own purposes and motives”
7. “…one must never make any decisions, form any convictions or seek any values out of context, e., apart from or against the total, integrated sum of one’s knowledge…”
8. “…one must never seek to get away with contradictions…”
9. “…the rejection of any form of mysticism, e., any claim to some non- sensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge.”⁸

The word “never” occurs eight times in connection with Rationality, with a “rejection” thrown in for good measure. This makes a total of fourteen uses of “never” and three of “rejection” for Pride and Rationality. If you felt hovered over regarding the virtue of Pride, you were well prepared for Rand’s discussion of Rationality! (By contrast, Rand’s discussion of Productiveness is a veritable oasis, with much positive reinforcement of how to practice the virtue and only slightly tinged with negativity in the reference to “refusal to bear uncontested disasters” and to the fact that it “does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job.”⁹)

The words “hovering” and “hovered” are not chosen lightly. They connote a person anxious to serve as your moral guardian—so anxious for your well-being that she will go to great lengths to tell you what to avoid and what not to do. This crowds out the positive message of what to do and what to seek and is very oppressive, demotivating, and inhibiting. It takes on the aura of the Ten Commandments, which are also stridently negative, eight of the ten being expressed as “thou shalt not” and only two expressed as positive encouragements.

Granted that the context here is ethics, not politics, the differences between positive and negative orientations in ethics are eerily similar to what Rand referred to as “economic power” vs. “political power.” She wrote:

Let me define the difference…economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.¹⁰

This positive reframing of the Objectivist virtues is part of the much-needed turn toward eudaimonism and away from dysdaimonism, with an emphasis on the enthusiastic, uplifting, businessman-like pursuit of values (and how to pursue them) and fewer alarmist, oppressive, bureaucrat-like admonitions to avoid dis-values.¹¹ (Suppose instead of his inspiring benediction, “Live long and prosper,” Mr. Spock had said, “Avoid death and poverty.”)

As John Galt taught us, “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

In life in general, don’t fill your mind with negative injunctions of the form, “Whatever you do, for God’s sake, don’t do X.” This simple negative injunction is the only one you will ever need, and it will help you keep from filling your mind with an unmanageable clutter of things not to do. But if the inconsistency bothers you, then translate it as: Fill your mind with positive injunctions of the form, “Do X.”

As John Galt taught us, “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”¹² To this, I would add, in the spirit of the rational individualistic perfectionism that is the essence of the Objectivist ethics: the purpose of morality is to guide you first and foremost in achieving values and making your life better—and there is much, much more to dealing with this challenge than simply knowing how to avoid suffering and death. If life were as full of peril as the negative focus implies, we wouldn’t be around to have this discussion.

 

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Notes

1. See Roger E. Bissell, What’s in Your File Folder? Essays on the Nature and Logic of Propositions (Amazon Kindle and CreateSpace, 2019), pp. 271-274, 313-314. For a very different perspective on this issue, see the discussion by Ben Bayer and Onkar Ghate here: https://newideal.aynrand.org/why-are-objectivists-so-negative/
2. Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 943.
3. Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1991), p. 119.
4. Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 1022, emphasis added.
5. Rand, ibid., 1014.
6. Harry Binswanger, How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (New York: TOF Publications, 2014), p. 192.
7. Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet, 1964), pp. 29–30, emphasis added.
8. Rand, ibid., pp. 28-29, emphases added.
9. Rand, ibid., p. 29, emphasis added.
10. Rand, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), p. 48.
11. See “The Benevolent Sense of Life,” in Nathaniel Branden, The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism (Gilbert, Arizona: Cobden Press, 2009), pp. 505–27; and “The Entrepreneur as Moral Hero,” in Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 284–319.
12. Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 932.

 

 

This essay, like the previous two-part essay, is an abridged and revised version of material from the paper titled “Eudaimon in the Rough: Perfecting Rand’s Egoism” published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, December 2020, and appears here with the permission of Pennsylvania State University Press.