Re: Ayn Rand

I know I haven't actually read anything about this Rand woman other than Nicole's helpful comments below and wikipedia, but I seem to find a lot of conclusions and not a lot of argument. I really don't know what I'm talking about so please jump in to correct me but in what I've seen there always seems to be a jump from just saying that humans act egoistically to adding a positive evaluation of that, and that requires substantial argument. Further, I am really not sure that egoism is man's natural state. Hobbes goes on about how it is and "man is a wolf to man." I always take a very empirical stance towards such claims: they are not things that can be worked out from the armchair. Looking at evolution is it clear that man is a social animal and survived because of this. I always wonder what explanation these individualists give of the fact that we live in societies and have done so for at least all of recorded history. At least from my own perspective I'm sure my natural state is not to live away from or in any other sense isolated from others. Of course, some might say that is because I have not realised the truth of some individualist doctrine, but that claim as well will need substantial argument. Wikipedia lists one Rand cultists Leonard Peikoff saying that a person either agrees with Rand or you fail to understand her. Of course this is no argument, since we can make such an argument for the truth of any person's theory, and not everyone in the world is correct, but this cult aspect should worry anyone.

On 21/04/06, Nicole L Hopkins (nhopkins@Princeton.EDU) <nhopkins@princeton.edu > wrote:

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In response to N Tasker's comments on Rand:

You're quite right in that much of the writings on Rand are composed by her followers -- a generally cultic bunch, and quite enthusiastic. Hers is a classic unquestionably totalizing system whose methods and conclusions indeed follow "logically", but from a premise that is very take-it-or-leave-it. To follow Rand is to proclaim for oneself that 1) man is the absolute advanced and only truly rational "worthwhile" being and 2) that man's volition, the ultimate, unquestionable will of each individual is not only the only true means but also an entirely self-contained and glorious end.

The Randite schema might be described as follows: I am a man; I am wholly rational; my volition is at my sole disposal and I am unquestionably its master; I am my ultimate means, whether that be in terms of my "happiness" [an entirely relative term at the end of the day for Rand as it is unquesitonably individual, though she does believe in moral absolutes, which she believes are natural ends of logical progression within her system and thus applicable to anyone within her camp] or of my intellect, wealth, etc; as a wholly rational man whose volition is infinitely at my disposal, I must actualize my selfhood; there are given political/economic extensions of this, capitalism and a sort of radical libertarianism that are the conclusions of people within this system, who are the only wholly rational people around.

The trick with Rand is that she was very, very good at working her premises through, with her brand of logic, to their natural [and yes, quite sound in terms of her project] conclusions, and thus elaborating on their applications in everything from the life of intellectuals [many of her writings were addressed to students in the '60's] to the most grandiose "meaning of life" tropes around.

Two interesting things to note about Rand: she was an enthusiastic smoker who claimed that the burning cigarette and the exhailing of smoke was the visible, gestural manifestation of the "promethean fires burning within each intellectual's soul"; sadly, she died of lung cancer in 1980.

The last, and I think this is something not enough critics discuss with regards to Rand, is her vision of the afterlife. It was not nothingness, as is a common belief among atheists [as she herself claimed to be]. Rather, in the soul's exit from this world, it will find what it has been seeking all along: itself, and no other. Thus, Rand's is the ultimate egoist wet-dream, in which she and she alone, in all of her what might be termed hyper-narcissism, exists for all eternity.

The reason that so few rigorous studies or readings of Rand happen within academia is simply that you either get on board with her system and grab hold of her premises, or you don't. As an enthusiastic reader of Adorno, it's damn-near abhorrent to me; but then again, when I was 16, reading Rand [indeed I've read almost everything she wrote] did up my energy for intellectual pursuits, though it was in going after a rather self-involved and self-gratifying sort of fantasy. Knowing many Randites and having been a very well-read, informed and passionate one myself, I will assert that such catagorizations extend quite across the board.

N Lynn Hopkins
German Dept, Princeton Univ.

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