The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book more clearly explains Ayn Rand’s position than any other book of hers I’ve read in the past.
Rand is often hotly contested; but it’s not enough to say that something nonsensical or stupid because to truly understand something we should be able to explain what it is or why something is dismissed. Not only that but we should also be able to explain how a view is (in)valid. In a sense, Rand often fails to explain what is detestable in others, resorting to words like “evil” or “irrational” to carry an emotional weight in her argument.
(Un)surprisingly though, there is much in here that is admirable. After all, anyone who can inspire and move people like she does must say something somewhere that is correct.
What is interesting is that there is much basis for similarity between herself and other thinker’s conclusions she would dismiss as they argue from a very similar basis. As hinted before, I do believe that she is a bad reader of Kant, for example.
She is correct, that Kant is the root of what she detests in modernism, but Kant’s concept of will, reason and pragmatics leads him to very nearly the same structure that Rand poses. Kant sees reason as being a tool for will finally, because Kant dismisses “pure reason” as being inherently undecidable. Rand doesn’t see things this way. She believes will is a tool for pure reason because “a=a”; that functionality is purpose therefore a consistency in reason will work itself out if we have the will to do so. This last point of reason and will being only positive is perhaps the biggest flaw for her philosophy.
In this way Rand is actually alot like Heidigger. Both Heidigger and Rand believe that language is reasonable, and non-contradictory in-itself. Both believe that ironing out consistency in languaged reason will result in successful and fulfilling lives.
This makes them both throwbacks to early modernism, towards a kind of Cartesian truth-value. This signifies a break because it is Kant who provides the initial break in his critique of pure reason that demonstrated a gap inherent within things-in-themselves and a gap within our relationship with those things. The gap with our relationship with those things formulates a basis for science and for existentialism. Unfortunately not many understand that the split also echos within reason itself, so that reasoning through sheer consistency will undeniably lead to contradiction.
Given a post-Kantian view, of which society has progressed towards, there can be no point of view from which the world will be stable, without consistency, because the world is not consistent in a human fashion. It is this last point which Rand seems unwilling to grasp resorting instead to calling all that is thought to be rational (including Classism) as subjective and arbitrary. She is correct. All views are inherently subjective and arbitrary, including her own. What makes Kant non-arbitrary though, is that he grounds human behavior and a will to maxims in his critique of practical reason that is in the supersensible. This gives up reasoning in this world as a coherency in favor of a faith, which is what makes Kant still a christian philosopher.
Rand of course, cannot stand this. From her assumption that functionality in the world is purpose, and that making one into a functional person will result in purpose she proves remarkably consistent in her assessment of the arts throughout this small book. What makes her irritating to read however, is that she is unable to express herself beyond calling positions she dislikes evil or irrational. It is in her style to insist on a singular view that is ultimately arbitrary… without providing a neutral grounds to assess what is meaningful we cannot help but judge everything else as being arbitrary to something else. Rand does seem unable to explain herself philosophically — hence she does so artistically to give us feelings of purposefulness.
Unfortunately for her, if the adherence to will as a resolution of being in existentialism is irrational then her art/philosophy in which characters will themselves to a resolution of function and purpose must also be equally irrational.
Calling something philosophy or rational doesn’t make it rational if you cannot provide a cogent basis from which to assess everything else including your own work. After all, if continual self insistence is adequate than it should be equally adequate for anything and everything else as well…and given a modernist aesthetic in which there can only be one truth and language can only mean one thing this last “equally adequation” would be inherently unacceptable!
But I doubt that Rand has the ability to express why language should be a seamless and complete consistency (a=a) with reality other than “it is”
Still, despite my disagreement and all the holes I’ve just poked at her work, I do admire the clarity with which this book is written. After all, without this clarity I would have had a harder time finding the conflicts inherent in her own writing.
Comments (0)