Against Ayn Rand, Vol. 4: Atheism, Materialism, Determinism, and Society

Society has long been a topic of discussion among the intelligentsia of all civilizations. It has different meanings for some cultures than for others, and its meaning is frequently hotly contested by people of different ideological persuasions. The meaning of society is essential because in democratic countries, the expectation is that the government act in the best interest of that society. And in order to define what is in the best interests of the society, there must be an understanding of what is meant by the term society.

In "The Objectivist Ethics," Ayn Rand makes passing reference to her vision of society. Tucked away in an appositive, which special attention is required to notice, Rand notes that "society is only a number of individual men." While Rand is right to point out that society is the product of men (we'll assume she's referring to all human beings), she has missed the other half of the equation entirely. Society and individual human beings are mutually constituted. Humans make up society, and society creates individuals.

It's especially strange that Rand should overlook so completely an idea such as social constructivism, given her rejection of all mysticism and the supernatural. If individuals are not the product of God or some other supernatural power, and they are not the product of their society, there seems to be no other argument but that the individual produces herself. This is, of course, impossible, and even the most serious individualists of the 19th century such as Emerson and Thoreau would not have made such an argument. It is impossible to be uninfluenced, unaltered, and entirely independent of society, even in the practice of becoming a hermit. In fact, one would be influenced by society to reject it in that instance.

But perhaps I am being disingenuous. Perhaps Rand is not arguing that we are uninfluenced, but is instead arguing that society is a non-entity, that we are only influenced by other individuals. Even this idea, however, seems to place too much emphasis on individuals. Societal norms come into and go out of fashion. Whereas today democracy is seen as a good tool of political organization, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, most American leaders felt that the American people could not be trusted with democracy. Michel Foucault, in his wonderful work Discipline and Punish, has described how norms of punishment have changed from the punishing of the body to the punishing of the soul. To say that society values something is not to say that a majority of individuals in a particular community believe something, but rather that a particular value is important to the coexistence of the members of that community.

This is where the idea of intersubjectivity must make its appearance. Rand neglects entirely the notion that there is anything beyond the physical, material, chemical/biological world. This, of course, leads her to a militant atheism. But while some would see this type of materialism and atheism as necessary corollaries and use such an argument to condemn atheists, atheism is much broader term than her narrow interpretation here. In fact, many atheists (and theists) in the social sciences, argue for the idea of intersubjectivity - that inherent in the interaction between two or more individuals there emerges something that is the union of subjectivity and objectivity. In a spiritual humanist (and perhaps atheist) sense, this might manifest itself as the electric chain of humanity.

But returning to Rand, supposing her strict atheist, materialist vision of the world were accurate, the world would be determined. There seems to alternative. If the world is entirely physical, then our perception of acting of our own volition would be illusory; we would only be acting of what we thought was our own volition but was instead a series of neural connections predetermined to respond in a certain way to our present situation. And if this were the case, then the entire goal of creating a society in which people have the maximum amount of freedom would instead be the goal of creating illusory freedom, the mere perception of freedom. Being an atheistic pragmatist and not entirely sure of the answer to the materialist question myself, I could be persuaded that the illusion of freedom is worth fighting for, but to Rand who is so dedicated to the pursuit of the objective truth, the idea that so many people could live under the false pretense of free will would seem to be a deal-breaker.

How can Rand advocate that objective truth achieved through the use of reason and one's own self interest be the goal on the one hand, when the pursuit of objective truth, the degree to which it is pursued, and the veracity of the ideas obtained are predetermined for the individual in the first place, especially when the individual doing the pursuing believes himself to be acting of his own volition? It makes no sense.

I am not the first to criticize Rand on these metaphysical grounds, nor, I'm sure will I be the last. Rand's metaphysics is weak at best, and I am not well-enough versed to bring it down on its head entirely, but this should be a good start. In a following post, I will tackle the fallacy of pure objectivity.