Rand & Human Nature 7

Love. Rand's most sophisticated theory of love appears in The Romantic Manifesto:

Love is a response to values. It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism—in terms of human suffering—is the belief that love is a matter of “the heart,” not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of philosophy—of a subconscious philosophical sum—and, perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then—and only then—it is the greatest reward of man’s life.

Rand and Aesthetics 5

The Tragic Vision (or sense) of Life. By declaring that people tend either toward a benevolent or malevolent sense of life, Rand implied that these two options exhaust the category. However, there is a third option that trascends Rand's rather simplistic and invidious dichotomy: the tragic vision (or sense) of life. Thomas Sowell defines this sense of life as "a vision in which the inherent flaws of human beings are the fundamental problem and social contrivances are simply imperfect means of trying to cope with that problem." Sowell continues:

Rand and Aesthetics 4

Malevolent sense of life. For Objectivists, a malevolent sense of life stems from an acceptance of the malevolent universe premise (MUP), which Rand defined as "the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him—that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them." Objectivism contends that the MUP ultimatly derives from mistaken (perhaps even evil) philosophical premises:

Rand and Aesthetics 3

Rand's "Sense of Life" as an argument ad hominem. All ethical arguments, according to the philosopher George Santayana, ultimately resolve into an argument ad hominem. "There can be no other kind of argument in ethics," Santayana warns us. Aesthetic arguments often suffer from the same problem, particularly when they are either used as the pretence for baseless psychological speculation or moral condemnation. In Rand, we find evidence of both. She could not accept that people had different aesthetic tastes than her own. Her tastes were not only "objectively" better, but those with contrary tastes were lesser people. Worse, in her public philosophy, Rand tended to be rather coy and ambigious about all of this, as if to give herself plenty of wiggle room so that she could deny that she meant any offense. But her scorn for contrary tastes is palpable, even if it isn't always explicit. And in her private life, she didn't always hold back her scorn. People, she declared, who did not share her sense of life were psychologically incompatible with herself.

Rand and Aesthetics 2

Sense of Life 1. This is in many ways the most troublesome of Rand's aesthetic conceptions, precisely because it is the least implausible, particularly those inclined to accept Rand's judgments. Rand defines the notion as follows:

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character.

Elsewhere, Rand writes:

It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as “important,” those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life.

“It is important to understand things”—“It is important to obey my parents”—“It is important to act on my own”—“It is important to please other people”—“It is important to fight for what I want”—“It is important not to make enemies”—“My life is important”—“Who am I to stick my neck out?” Man is a being of self-made soul—and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is made. (By “soul” I mean
“consciousness.”) The integrated sum of a man’s basic values is his sense of life.

Rand's term "sense of life" is roughly equivalent to such terms as character and personality. Rand's sense of life is, in effect, the general drift or tendencies of the individuals emotional reactions. Two important conclusions can be drawn from the Randian conception:

A. That the "content" of a man's sense of life (i.e., his specific reactions) are not determined or even influenced by innate tendencies, but are the consequence of integrated (or "misintegrated") value judgments.

B. People tend to have either a "benevolent" or "malevolent" sense of life; or, if they seem to have parts of both, this is a result of contradictory basic premises.

The first conclusion states what should be fairly obvious: Rand's conception of an individual's sense of life is merely her view of human nature applied to the issue of aesthetic judgment. An individual's reaction to a work of art is thoroughly emotional; and this emotion, for Rand, is "automatic effect of man’s value premises." The second conclusion is one of those hidden premises in Objectivism, one implicit in the philosophy, rather than one explicitly endorsed by Rand or her chief disciples. Rand tends to break down sense of life emotional reactions into two predominant types: (1) A "benevolent" sense of life; and (2) a "malevolent" sense of life. If an individual does not easily into either category, that can only be as a result of contradictions in the basic premises that make up his character.

I have written enough posts on this blog about Rand's theory of human nature to establish that it her view of man is factually incorrect. The character or personality of the individual is not a mere product of his basic premises, ethical or otherwise. So Rand's assumption that an individual's sense of life is, in effect, his own responsibility is empirically insupportable. Moreover, it has the unfortunate effect of reducing all arguments about aesthetic judgments to an argument ad hominem (more on this in my next post).

What about conclusion B? Well, the falsity of conclusion A causes serious problems for conclusion B. Here's the chief problem: Rand tends to categorize aesthetic reactions as being either benevolent or malevolent. Yet in real life, aesthetic reactions tend to be far more complex and even nuanced than can be adequately summed up in just two words. Nor does this complexity result from mixed or contradictory premises, as is suggested in Objecitivism: it doesn't result from premises at all, but from much more complex sources, which may include innate proclivities, influences from peers, reactions to traumatic events, and independent conscious judgments. There is no support in experimental psychology for the view that emotions arise either solely or even primarily from consciously chosen (or accepted) value judgments.

Rand's conception of a sense of life is, in its overall tenor, merely an attempt to integrate her view human nature with her aesthetics. It also serves as a convenient rationale for attacking those who have aesthetic reactions that varied with Rand's own. In my next post, I will examine how Rand uses her sense of life notion to denigrate those who dared to have different aesthetic tastes from her own.