Ayn Rand on Nietzsche

On Feb 17, 12:17 am, Fred Weiss <fredwe...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 16, 5:24 pm, Clare Quilty <mac_the_n...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But what any person with a logically functioning mind must come to in
view of this Randian metaphysics of ethics, is to demand to know a
difference between this and the "Golden Rule" of Christianity, or the
Categorical Imperative of Kant, or the "responsibility" of Sartre?

That is the question.

Content. That is the answer.

The "Golden Rule" or "Categorical Imperative" are empty floating
abstractions and they do not in themselves provide a basis for
determining what one should do - nor for that a matter a standard for
judging it. Those rules merely say in effect, "don't be a hypocrite"
or "be consistent", i.e. don't do anything you would not expect and
accept others also doing, including to you.

The Objectivist version of that is, "neither sacrifice yourself to
others, nor sacrifice others to yourself".

Which brings immediately to mind the thing which determines the stark
contrast between the thought of Ayn Rand and that of Friedrich
Nietzsche . . .

In "For the New Intellectual" Rand writes . . .

'Nietzsche's rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the
sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself.
He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his
"blood," by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power--that he
is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself,
while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves--that
reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality
is useless, that the "superman" is "beyond good and evil," that he is
a "beast of prey" whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim.
Thus Nietzsche's rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating
Attila into a moral ideal--which meant: a double surrender of morality
to the Witch Doctor.' *For the New Intellectual* p. 36

And in the Introduction to the 1968 edition of *The
Fountainhead* . . .

'Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. His
metaphysics consists of a somewhat "Byronic" and mystically
"malevolent" universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to "will,"
or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But,
as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent
feeling for man's greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual,
terms.' *Objectivist* March 1968, p. 6

If Rand is to be compared, let alone foolishly confused, with any
other thinker, to her credit, as mentioned previously, the most likely
candidate would be Jean Paul Sartre. But this is to speak of the
philosophical Sartre, not the political, which two facets of the man
were monstrously at odds not only in himself, but as is obvious, with
the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Politically, Sartre was continually and actively militant in consort
with Marxists, beginning with his short career in the French
Resistance, and ending with his support for the revolution in Algeria.
That Sartre never could bring himself so madly into contradiction with
his own philosophy, as to mindlessly embrace the Marxism of the
Communist Party is nevertheless the case, and his long friendship with
Camus came to an end over it. Something in the existentialism of Jean
Paul Sartre rendered for him a form of individualism so extreme in its
affirmation of 'free will" that he was able to run as a fellow
traveler to the Reds without finding himself to be in "bad faith" to
that very individualism which notwithstanding would not permit him to
forsake his autonomy by becoming a member of the Party.

Such an existentialist Ayn Rand could never be, as her adherence to
the principles of reason would not have allowed it. For Sartre, reason
was a means toward a non-rational end, an existential philosophy of
"situational ethics" borne of a condition of Free Will that must be
ruled by nothing, not by God, not by reason, not by anything except
the demands of existence alone, namely survival. This is all based in
the dark and fatalistic view that insofar as man has no salvation
coming to him from Heaven or from the State, then how much less can it
be expected from the dictates of Reason? Clearly, for Sartre, the
entire weight of responsibility for survival falls to the shoulders of
the individual existential man, and so long as he does not act in "bad
faith" against these principles, his existence is 'authentic' and not
a phony show in some absurd dog and pony parade going from nowhere to
nowhere.

Both Sartre and Rand discover the starting point for the basis of
their thought in the mere, bare fact of man's existence. Ayn Rand puts
it this way . . .

"I quote from Galt's speech: 'There is only one fundamental
alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence . . . the
existence of life . . . depends on a specific course of action." She
goes on to show that *reason* is the course of action open to man,
which we, being deprived of the non-rational alternative, i.e. action
motivated by instinct which serves to preserve the existence and
survival of the other animals--is nevertheless a *choice* for man. And
you might say it is no different to choose for reason, as for putting
on your clothes in the morning before you go out the door to drive or
take the bus to work.

Man has the freedom to be as contradictory and paradoxical as he may
choose in going about the business of living his life; he can, like
Sartre, allow for Reason to be his sometime friend, but in the end
this really does come to a life lived in *bad faith*, and an existence
that chooses to ignore, that is lived in ignorance of the most
essential component of existence over and above them all; a truth
discovered by Aristotle long ago which stands as the very foundation
of reason in the logical principle of Non-Contradiction.

The above named principle is what Ayn Rand takes into account with a
view to alternatives which with the aid of reason may lead to the
rational recognition of a "value", something she has further defined
most concretely as whatever may be the object of human desire, as
something a man would want to keep. Here is reason defining and then
observing at the very foundation of a philosophy, a non-rational, yet
empirical phenomenon of human nature: we desire things and want to
keep them. This is *existence* which we also want to keep, so far as
humanly possible. We desire to eat and drink, therefore we hunt and
sow; we desire to be warm, this is why we plant and sew. But! Because
we are Man and not Dog or Snake, we have our reason rather than
instinct to guide us toward the realization of our desires, and toward
the attainment of the things we should want to keep.

But if any have yet to read Ayn Rand's first essay, "The Objectivist
Ethics" in *Virtue of Selfishness*, let them do so, to discover just
exactly how she comes to demonstrate, without contradiction, how
*value*, a human ethical conception of "good and evil" is altogether
so inherent in Nature as the laws of physics, deriving not from any
putative source of divinity, but from the laws of reason which are not
to be distinguished from the laws of Nature. She writes . . .

"Is the concept of *value*, of 'good or evil' an arbitrary human
invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts
of reality--or is it based on a *metaphysical* fact, on an unalterable
condition of man's existence?"

Ayn Rand finds for the existence of truth, revealed without
contradiction, i.e. by reason; truth which is without paradox or
alternative, where answers may be found absolutely with no two ways
about them, so that it may be said, not relatively but universally and
finally, that it is of absolute value (good) that each man should live
for his own sake in respect of the right, or that is, the necessity
for every other man so to do. This is to live without being imposed
upon to live artificially, inauthentically, sentimentally for the
other man's sake; this for the ultimate, universal and absolutely true
reason that the only way you can live for the other man's sake is to
let him live for his own sake, in noncontradiction to your own value
as established for yourself.

It is in this, strictly and fundamentally that Ayn Rand finds the
foundation for her metaphysics of ethics. There are no two ways about
it, it is absolute, it is a Truth that is told by various phrases such
as, "Live and let live," "Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you," as also it is quite the same reasoning which led to the
Categorical Imperative of Kant.

So, if none should find serious fault in these arguments, I would move
on to the next question . . .

If it is true, that for Ayn Rand there was no such thing as relative
truth, that reason cannot function except a thing be either valid or
invalid, that as according to the principle of Noncontradiction,
nothing can both be true and not true of the same thing at once . . .

Then what if it were to be said that nothing can be absolute and less
than absolute at once? And further, what if it were to be said that
nothing can be absolute and not be God?

Patience! my dear Atheist friend, and do please bear with me just a
bit longer . . .

Ayn Rand has said concerning reason, it is the only thing that makes
man truly human, makes man in truth a man, and if so then what if it
were to be said that only at such a time as man should come to the
view that reason cannot exist, cannot work except that it be thought
and practiced in adherence to the truth, and that therefore Truth is
indeed a priori to reason; that reason works in subservience to Truth,
and further, that truth may exist without reason, but reason may not
exist without Truth.

A truth may exist prior to the day that reason, by adhering to truth,
discovers that prior truth. Therefore it must be said of God, that as
his reality is not one of material "existence" but of an 'actuality'
transcending mere physical existence; as God may not be said to
"exist" but strictly in accord with reason, to be 'real' to be
'actual' to be "the truth of the matter"--but not matter itself--then
never the day shall come that the actuality of God will be discovered
by man, except that man should finally come to understand that telling
the truth and facing the truth are both the same hard thing to do--
given man's tendency always to want things to come out just as he
wants them to come out--and truth, reason, logic be damned.

What if it is altogether so difficult to discern the actuality, the
reality of God as it is for man to tell the truth, and to think
logically? How many people do you meet every single day either
physically or on the Internet that you know do not tell the truth, do
not reason honestly, or who just out-right run from truth any time it
seems to come at the expense of their pride?

What if it should turn out to be the case that there is only truly one
truly human human being, which is the man who no matter the pain, the
embarrassment, the hurt pride will never forsake the facing or the
telling of the truth? It is this human who is the only human who thus
becomes equipped by reason, by the truth that must govern all reason,
to understand by process of reason that from the looks of it, God is
actual; that indeed this has been his discovery? Okay, i.e. that God
may be 'seen' and indeed may even be known, may be heard speaking
through the language of reason, of the *Logos* (Word, Reason) in ways
that do not in every case come in agreement with words that have been
preached from the pulpit or written down on the pages of the scripture
of the various religions?

What if it should be, that the Rationalist theologians under whom
Nietzsche was a student, were not just whistling Dixie when they held
that the true content in books of the Judaeo-Christian tradition can
be read and understood only through the lens of reason which has the
capacity to separate truth from fiction?

And what further would any say to those who affirm that once they have
read those books under the light of reason and have performed the holy
ritual of removing the fiction until all that remained was the truth,
that then they could hear God, see God, dig God the most, and then
realize that like Ayn Rand, he or i.e. 'He' has never been out to
demand even the least sacrifice from any man (other than the pound of
flesh that comes from the shame of facing an uncomfortable truth), and
that neither has he ever made any demand upon man other than that if
we should care to have an answer concerning his actuality or lack of
it, that we both face and tell the truth?

And if we should finally come to understand that we may not call
ourselves reasonable human beings except that as reason arose to meet
the demands of our desires and to guard the things we should want to
keep, once reason was established, it was no longer the servant of
desire, but rather of Truth without which it could not function. Thus
it came to be the desire of the truly human person, that truth was the
greatest value to be desired, to be sought--but to be 'kept'? No. It
is the one thing that seems to have a tendency to spoil, when you try
to keep it. You may think you have it, but then reason comes along to
show another side of it that you hadn't noticed, or were shy of
looking at before. It may be that your desire is to have it just as it
was before, but this is now in contradiction to a larger truth. As it
was for Heraclitus we see that it's like trying to dip your hand into
the stream for the same water as you had before--and truth is like
that. Try to keep it, or to think that you've got it, soon it turns
out that truth is really the last thing you've got. Truth sometimes
comes only with the opening of the hand, not the closing of it.

And having begun to do that, then and only then will we begin to
behave like human beings, each in respect of the other. People who
face the truth of what they do, cannot do harm to other people. Or, if
we sin in being liars to ourselves long enough to do harm to another,
which in itself is "only human" then so long as we face the truth of
that, we also must face the truth that it is not really "only human"
but only savage, only primitive, only animal when we screw up like
that, and if there be any truth in us, we are going to feel sorry
about it. And since feeling sorry is a big drag, if there is any real
manliness in us, we resolve not to be so damned weak, so easily made
patsy to our desires the next time.

And we get better; we get to observe what we may suppoe to be the
actuality of God more often, and that makes for being happy, free of
dread for what the end of our lives may portend. It doesn't take faith
but only reason to realize that if God is real, and reasonable, then
God is totally hip, and kind, an all around swell fellow who would lay
death on us for none but the best reason, which would be to permit us
to lose a lot of dead weight and enter into the same actuality wherein
is his transcendent, timeless, infinite and eternal realm, where the
big drag of existential survival is at an end, where every soul is on
vacation and nobody's ego is working overtime--and where the music
channels are totally out of this world--and as to those golden couches
with the 72 Virgins?

Hey! Just give me a modernist tweed couch with one forty-something Ayn
Rand adorning it, some Jobim or Luiz Bonfa on the stereo, or maybe the
news that Alan Greenspan is coming over to blow some sax with his
trio, make sure its Tanqueray being mixed with the Cinzano for the
martinis--let's talk about Truth, Desire, and a reasonable portrait of
Paradise, one that may be worthy of a truly human religious
sensibility.
--
CQ
.

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