Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (38 page)

Rand’s bias against lesbians and gays has been challenged by both Peikoff and
Packer
. Though these thinkers continue to regard homosexuality as a psychological detour from the norm, they are less inclined to moralize about it.
⁶⁵
Branden, too, has exhibited much growth in his view of homosexuality. He formerly maintained that the polarity between man and woman most fully fosters each individual’s awareness of his or her male and female aspects. He therefore saw both homosexuality and bisexuality as a “detour or blockage on the pathway to full maturity as an adult human being” (N. Branden 1980, 94). More recently, however, Branden has argued that many factors contribute to our integration as psychological and physical beings: genetic endowment, maturation, biological potentials and limitations, life experiences, explicit knowledge, conscious
philosophy
, and subconscious conclusions form a complex interrelated totality that cannot be easily reduced to any of its component parts.
⁶⁶
Indeed, science has yet to discover the roots of sexual orientation.
Thus, Branden argues against moralizing about homosexuality, for it is not within the realm of conscious choice and cannot possibly be a moral issue.
Allan Blumenthal
, a psychotherapist working within the
Objectivist
tradition, has expressed the same opinion.
⁶⁷

Such developments among Objectivist and
neo-Objectivist
thinkers suggest that they have appropriated from Rand a highly
dialectical
view of human psychology. In extending Rand’s legacy, these thinkers have reaffirmed inadvertently her dialectical Russian roots. They have even exhibited a willingness to distinguish between Rand’s personal attitudes and the philosophy of Objectivism. Although Rand’s revolt against Russian mysticism sometimes led her to a one-sided emphasis on reason, her successors have more fully realized the integrative character of her philosophy. They have moved toward a conception of psychological integration that builds upon Rand’s insights while transcending their limitations.

8

ART, PHILOSOPHY, AND EFFICACY

Throughout Rand’s writings, one can find a persistent emphasis on the process by which human beings articulate the tacit dimensions of
consciousness
. This theme is implicit in Rand’s theories of
concept
formation and
emotion
. The concept formation process is largely dependent on an act of
measurement
omission, which takes place in the mind whether people are aware of it or not. By articulating the tacit principles by which people form concepts, Rand attempted to provide an
objective
foundation for human knowing. She suggested that even though measurement omission is a tacit process, it is necessary to make explicit its reality-based principles in order to defend the objective integrity of our knowledge.

The Objectivist theory of the relationship between
reason
and emotion stresses a similar articulation process. By delving deeply into the inarticulate contents of the mind, and the habitual methods by which the
subconscious
integrates these contents, we can make explicit that which is implicit. Rand sought to provide an objective account of human emotional response. Even though we may be unaware of the cognitive roots of many of our
emotions
, she argued, it is both possible and desirable to initiate a therapeutic articulation process.

Thus both in concept formation and in emotional discernment, Rand’s
Objectivism
aims to bring implicit elements of consciousness into more thoroughly explicit, articulated form. She suggested that knowledge and emotions are not mysterious, ineffable phenomena beyond our comprehension and control. Understanding the components of our consciousness enables us to better integrate—and alter, if necessary—the contents and methods of awareness.

Rand extended this impulse toward articulation into the realm of aesthetics and ethics. She attempted to show how the interaction of the conscious and the
subconscious
can move people toward acts of spiritual and material creativity.

THE FUNCTION OF ART

In this section, I am concerned with Rand’s view of the fundamental nature of
art
and its
function
in human life, rather than with Rand’s personal artistic tastes, or her specific views on literature, painting, music, aesthetic judgment, or beauty.
¹

One of the most distinctive aspects of Rand’s theory is her belief that “the source of art lies in the fact that man’s cognitive faculty is
conceptual
.
”
²
For Rand, the central function of art is not social, but
epistemological
. Certainly art reflects the
cultural
milieu, but its
essential
function pertains specifically to the nature of human
consciousness
. The mind grasps the infinite complexity of the world by reducing the number of
units
with which it must grapple. As we have seen, concept formation and
definition
also serve this cognitive need for unit economy. By abstracting various aspects from a totality and forming relational units, our minds synthesize an infinite number of similar concretes under a particular concept, designated by a particular word. The efficiency of our cognitive processes depends upon how well we have automatized and integrated these units.
³

Art is the product of a comparable tacit process in which the artist’s “metaphysical
value
-judgments” are concretized. As we have seen, such metaphysical abstractions pertain broadly to the nature of existence. They are usually held subconsciously, in an implicit form, as a component of our
sense
of life. Metaphysical
value
judgments are core evaluations of the self, the world, and other people. For most people, they are not consciously deduced judgments, but are an unintended, emotionally charged consequence of innumerable life experiences, from the earliest moments of childhood on.

While an
art
work, like every human
creation
, involves the application of both explicit and implicit knowledge, articulated and tacit skills, it remains far more dependent on the artist’s subconscious
integrations
than on any conscious philosophical convictions. And “since artists, like any other men, seldom translate their sense of life into conscious terms,” they are just as
likely to produce works of
art
that project all of the tensions and contradictions of their inner worlds.
⁴

Rand defined art as “
a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments
” (
Romantic Manifesto
, 19). Guided by their sense of life, artists automatically isolate and integrate those aspects of reality which epitomize their unique views of the world. Their creations therefore emphasize the aspects they regard as important. Since the building blocks of knowledge derive, in Rand’s view, from
perception
, art completes the
epistemic
circle by bringing one’s most important metaphysical
abstractions
back to the perceptual level. Every art form fulfills this same function. An artist’s metaphysical abstractions can be concretized in a variety of material, visual, or auditory forms, in
literature
, sculpture, painting, or musical composition. Rand argued that despite technological innovations, the basic art forms have remained constant since the prehistoric period because they depend on sensory, perceptual, and
conceptual
means of
consciousness
that are innate to the human species.
⁵

Rand’s understanding of the creative process was informed by her introspection into her own literary craft. In writing, Rand argued, authors draw on the knowledge stored in the subconscious mind. The capacity to summon such knowledge must be so automatized that the author “just knows” what to do as if by “instinct.” In constructing plot and character, authors can program their subconscious minds to direct their conscious thoughts.
⁶
Authors achieve a “feel” for their craft that follows from the logic of their own literary context. Harking back to an Aristotelian aesthetic, Rand argued that in the totality of the author’s creation, the parts and the whole generate and imply each other.
⁷
Rand explained that in her own writing, she created descriptions on four distinct, though interrelated, levels: the literal, the connotative, the symbolic, and the
emotional
. While she never calculated these interconnections consciously, she presented the reader with a totality—an integrated, emotional sum that provoked a corresponding emotional response.
⁸

According to Rand, the artist and the responder enter into a communicative interaction.
⁹
The artist begins with a broad abstraction that he or she concretizes in the
art
work. The responder perceives and integrates the particulars, grasping the abstraction concretized by the artist. The communicative circle is completed through two interacting
psycho-epistemological
moments. The first resembles a process of deduction, in which there is a movement from a broad, general abstraction to a specific, concrete, artistic expression. This is a movement from the artist’s core evaluation to an aesthetic, concrete embodiment in
literary
, visual, or auditory form. The second moment of the circle resembles a process of induction, in which
there is a movement from the artist’s concrete forms to the responder’s emotional experience. This experience in turn, reflects the responder’s own
sense of life
.
¹⁰

The responder experiences not only the content of an artist’s work, but the artist’s style as well. Both the content and style reflect the artist’s sense of life. Artists choose subjects that manifest their metaphysics, their views of existence, what they believe to be worthy of contemplation. An artist’s style reveals his or her psycho-epistemology; it is the manner in which the artist presents the subject.
¹¹
Artists may choose to present the heroic or the mediocre, the triumphant or the vanquished. They may do so in stark, precise terms, or in blurred abstractions (40–41). Every aesthetic choice made by the artist, every aesthetic experience of the responder, is a psychological confession (N. Branden 1967T, lecture 18). While Rand presumptuously claimed that she could pinpoint the exact nature of the confessions involved, she admitted that it can be very difficult to infer the basis of these choices and responses because there are many cross premises at work in the human psyche (in Peikoff 1976T, lecture 11). Nevertheless, when one responds positively to a work of art, one experiences a certain congruence with the artist’s sense of life. When one responds negatively to a work of art, one’s sense of life is at odds with the artist’s projections.
¹²
Thus, an art work will confirm or contradict the responder’s fundamental outlook on reality.
¹³

Though Rand analyzed this communicative interaction between artist and responder in epistemic terms, she recognized that every art work has cultural implications. Each individual’s psycho-epistemology and sense of life, developed mainly in early childhood, is influenced by the dominant values and ideas of the
culture
in which he or she lives.
¹⁴
A culture may stress the importance of independence or obedience, of reason or religion. Just as an art work is a reflection of the artist’s soul, so, too, it is a barometer of the culture. However, Rand did not posit strict cultural determinism.
¹⁵
She did not believe that the individual artist slavishly mimics the values of the culture at large. But most artists, like most individuals, tacitly absorb the dominant ideas of their age. Although a few artists may rebel against the dominant views, the vast majority will give material expression to a culturally specific sense of life.
¹⁶

In absorbing dominant artistic and cultural fashions, the majority also tends to accept the dominant moral trends. It is for this reason perhaps that Rand conjoined her aesthetic and
ethical
visions. Although all
art
fulfills a fundamental epistemic need to concretize humanity’s broadest abstractions, Rand argued that
literature
in particular can serve as a means of communicating a moral ideal as well. From the sacred texts of religion to the pages of
Atlas Shrugged
, the most abstract moral codes have found concrete
literary expression. Through literature, Rand hoped to provide an image of things not as they are but as they “ought to be.” Whereas an ethical code can enunciate abstract moral principles, only literature can
create
a concretized model for their application in the realm of human action. In Rand’s words, “Art is the technology of the soul.”
¹⁷

Rand’s literary credo can be made the subject of a book in itself.
¹⁸
Yet it must be mentioned that Rand saw herself as promulgating a new Romantic literary tradition. She was influenced by such nineteenth-century Romantic writers as Hugo, Dostoyevsky,
Schiller
, and Rostand. Like these writers, she was deeply concerned with the realm of moral values. She argued that the Romantic movement celebrated the individual as an efficacious being of free will. It partially and implicitly affirmed the Aristotelian sense of life and the individualist
culture
of nineteenth-century capitalism. But the Romantic movement was, she points out, full of inner contradictions. Its brand of
individualism
was antimaterialist and emotionalist. As the movement collapsed under the weight of its internal conflicts, its writers were criticized for presenting escapist novels bordering on fantasy.
¹⁹
The Romantics were opposed by the Naturalists, who accepted the premises of determinism. Viewing human beings as puppets of their environment, the Naturalists set their stories in more contemporary,
“realistic”
settings. In keeping with her dialectical impulses, however, Rand rejected the traditional Romantic-Naturalist dichotomy and viewed herself as a “Romantic
Realist
.”
²⁰
As a Romantic, Rand aimed to project a vision of the ideal man. As a Realist, she presented her moral vision almost exclusively in a contemporary, this-worldly context.
²¹