"Metaphysical Value-Judgments" - Rand Quotes


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I'm starting a cognate thread to the "Apples" thread in order to have Rand's actual statements of her meaning of "metaphysical value-judgments" where those statements are easy to find.

The following two excerpts are taken from the on-line Lexicon.

I've reversed the order in which the excerpts appear in the Lexicon in order to have the quotes in chronological order.

"The Psycho-Epistemology of Art" was originally published in the April 1965 "The Objectivist Newsletter."

"Philosophy and Sense of Life" was originally published in the February 1966 The Objectivist.

Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable? Can man find happiness on earth, or is he doomed to frustration and despair? Does man have the power of choice, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, the power to direct the course of his life - or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, which determine his fate? Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil? These are metaphysical questions, but the answers to them determine the kind of ethics men will accept and practice; the answers are the link between metaphysics and ethics. And although metaphysics as such is not a normative science, the answers to this category of questions assume, in man's mind, the function of metaphysical value-judgments, since they form the foundation of all of his moral values.

Consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, man knows that he needs a comprehensive view of existence to integrate his values, to choose his goals, to plan his future, to maintain the unity and coherence of his life - and that his metaphysical value-judgments are involved in every moment of his life, in his every choice, decision and action.

The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,

The Romantic Manifesto,19

The key concept, in the formation of a sense of life, is the term "important." It is a concept that belongs to the realm of values, since it implies an answer to the question: Important - to whom? Yet its meaning is different from that of moral values. Important does not necessarily mean "good." It means "a quality, character or standing such as to entitle to attention or consideration" (The American College Dictionary). What, in a fundamental sense, is entitled to ones attention or consideration? Reality.

"Important" - in its essential meaning, as distinguished from its more limited and superficial uses - is a metaphysical term. It pertains to that aspect of metaphysics which serves as a bridge between metaphysics and ethics: to a fundamental view of man's nature. That view involves the answers to such questions as whether the universe is knowable or not, whether man has the power of choice or not, whether he can achieve his goals in life or not. The answers to such questions are "metaphysical value-judgments," since they form the base of ethics.

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.")

"Philosophy and Sense of Life,

The Romantic Manifesto, 28

Ellen

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  • 1 month later...

In this and following posts I want to "park" several passages from The Romantic Manifesto so as to have the material easily available for reference.

~~~

Subject in Art

"Art and Sense of Life"

pg. 30, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the March 1966

issue of The Objectivist)

Two distinct, but interrelated, elements of a work of art are the crucial means of projecting its sense of life: the subject and the style - what an artist chooses to present and how he presents it.

The subject of an art work expresses a view of man's existence, while the style expresses a view of man's consciousness. The subject reveals an artist's metaphysics, the style reveals his psycho-epistemology.

The choice of subject declares what aspects of existence the artist regards as important - as worthy of being re-created and contemplated. He may choose to present heroic figures, as exponents of man's nature - or he may choose statistical composites of the average, the undistinguished, the mediocre - or he may choose crawling specimens of depravity. He may present the triumph of heroes, in fact or in spirit (Victor Hugo), or their struggle (Michelangelo), or their defeat (Shakespeare). He may present the folks next door: next door to palaces (Tolstoy), or to drugstores (Sinclair Lewis), or to kitchens (Vermeer), or to sewers (Zola). He may present monsters as objects of moral denunciation (Dostoevsky), or as objects of terror (Goya) - or he may demand sympathy for his monsters, and thus crawl outside the limits of the realm of values, including esthetic ones.

Whatever the case may be, it is the subject (qualified by the theme) that projects an art work's view of man's place in the universe.

Ellen

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This passage comes directly after the one in the above post.

~~~

Style in Art

"Art and Sense of Life"

pp. 30-32, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the March 1966

issue of The Objectivist)

The theme of an art work is the link uniting its subject and its style. "Style" is a particular, distinctive or characteristic mode of execution. An artist's style is the product of his own psycho-epistemology - and, by implication, a projection of his view of man's consciousness, of its efficacy or impotence, of its proper method and level of functioning.

Predominantly (though not exclusively), a man whose normal mental state is a state of full focus, will create and respond to a style of radiant clarity and ruthless precision - a style that projects sharp outlines, cleanliness, purpose, an intransigent commitment to full awareness and clear-cut identity - a level of awareness appropriate to a universe where A is A, where everything is open to man's consciousness and demands its constant functioning.

A man who is moved by the fog of his feelings and spends most of his time out of focus will create and respond to a style of blurred, "mysterious" murk, where outlines dissolve and entities flow into one another, where words connote anything and denote nothing, where colors float without objects, and objects float without weight - a level of awareness appropriate to a universe where A can be any non-A one chooses, where nothing can be known with certainty and nothing much is demanded of one's consciousness.

Style is the most complex element of art, the most revealing, and often the most baffling psychologically. The terrible inner conflicts from which artists suffer as much as (or, perhaps, more than) other men are magnified in their work. As an example: Salvador Dali, whose style projects the luminous clarity of a rational psycho-epistemology, while most (though not all) of his subjects project an irrational and revoltingly evil metaphysics. A similar, but less offensive, conflict may be seen in the paintings of Vermeer, who combines a brilliant clarity of style with the bleak metaphysics of Naturalism. At the other extreme of the stylistic continuum, observe the deliberate blurring and visual distortions of the so-called "painterly" school, from Rembrandt on down - down to the rebellion against consciousness, expressed by a phenomenon such as Cubism which seeks specifically to disintegrate man's consciousness by painting objects as man does not perceive them (from several perspectives at once).

A writer's style may project a blend of reason and passionate emotion (Victor Hugo) - or a chaos of floating abstractions, of emotions cut off from reality (Thomas Wolfe) - or the dry, bare, concrete-bound, humor-tinged raucousness of an intelligent reporter (Sinclair Lewis) - or the disciplined, perceptive, lucid, yet muted understatement of a represser (John O'Hara) - or the carefully superficial, over-detailed precision of an amoralist ([Gustave] Flaubert) - or the mannered artificiality of a second-hander (several moderns not worthy of mention).

Style conveys what may be called a "psycho-epistemological sense of life," i.e., an expression of that level of mental functioning on which the artist feels most at home. This is the reason why style is crucially important in art - both to the artist and to the reader or viewer - and why its importance is experienced as a profoundly personal matter. To the artist, it is an expression, to the reader or viewer a confirmation, of his own consciousness - which means of his efficacy - which means of his self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).

Ellen

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Subject in Art As a Moral Issue

"The Goal of My Writing"

pp. 158-60, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the October-November 1963

issues of "The Objectivist Newsletter")

I see the novelist as a combination of prospector and jeweler. The novelist must discover the potential, the gold mine, of man's soul, must extract the gold and then fashion as magnificent a crown as his ability and vision permit.

Just as men of ambition for material values do not rummage through city dumps, but venture out into lonely mountains in search of gold - so men of ambition for intellectual values do not sit in their backyards, but venture out in quest of the noblest, the purest, the costliest elements. I would not enjoy the spectacle of Benvenuto Cellini making mud-pies.

It is the selectivity in regard to subject - the most severely, rigorously, ruthlessly exercised selectivity - that I hold as the primary, the essential, the cardinal aspect of art. In literature, this means: the story - which means the plot and the characters - which means: the kind of men and events that a writer chooses to portray.

The subject is not the only attribute of art, but it is the fundamental one, it is the end to which all the others are the means. In most esthetic theories, however, the end - the subject - is omitted from consideration, and only the means are regarded as esthetically relevant. Such theories set up a false dichotomy and claim that a slob portrayed by the technical means of a genius is preferable to a goddess portrayed by the technique of an amateur. I hold that both are esthetically offensive; but while the second is merely esthetic incompetence, the first is an esthetic crime.

There is no dichotomy, no necessary conflict between ends and means. The end does not justify the means - neither in ethics nor in esthetics. And neither do the means justify the end: there is no esthetic justification for the spectacle of Rembrandt's great artistic skill employed to portray a side of beef.

That particular painting may be taken as a symbol of everything I am opposed to in art and in literature. At the age of seven, I could not understand why anyone should wish to paint or to admire pictures of dead fish, garbage cans or fat peasant women with triple chins. Today, I understand the psychological causes of such esthetic phenomena - and the more I understand, the more I oppose them.

In art and in literature, the end and the means, or the subject and the style, must be worthy of each other.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth re-creating in art

Ellen

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Sense of Life and Self-Esteem (or Its Lack)

"Philosophy and Sense of Life"

pp. 16-17, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the February 1966

issue of The Objectivist

A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they evoke - i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion. For instance: a new neighborhood, a discovery, adventure, struggle, triumph - or: the folks next door, a memorized recitation, a family picnic, a known routine, comfort. On a more adult level: a heroic man, the skyline of New York, a sunlit landscape, pure colors, ecstatic music - or: a humble man, an old village, a foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music.

Which particular emotions will be invoked by the things in these examples, as their respective common denominators, depends on which set of things fits an individual's view of himself. For a man of self-esteem, the emotion uniting the things in the first part of these examples is admiration, exaltation, a sense of challenge; the emotion uniting the things in the second part is disgust or boredom. For a man who lacks self-esteem, the emotion uniting the things in the first part of these examples is fear, guilt, resentment; the emotion uniting the things in the second part is relief from fear, reassurance, the undemanding safety of passivity.

Even though such emotional abstractions grow into a metaphysical view of man, their origin lies in an individual's view of himself and of his own existence. The sub-verbal, subconscious criterion of selection that forms his emotional abstractions is: "That which is important to me" or: "The kind of universe which is right for me, in which I would feel at home." It is obvious what immense psychological consequences will follow, depending on whether a man's subconscious metaphysics is consonant with the facts of reality or contradicts them

Ellen

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Vermeer As the Greatest Painter

"Art and Cognition"

pp. 38-39, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the April-June 1971

issues of The Objectivist)

The closer an artist comes to a conceptual method of functioning visually, the greater his work. The greatest of all artists, Vermeer, devoted his paintings to a single theme: light itself. The guiding principle of his compositions is: the contextual nature of our perception of light (and of color). The physical objects in a Vermeer canvas are chosen and placed in such a way that their combined interrelationships feature, lead to and make possible the painting's brightest patches of light, sometimes blindingly bright, in a manner which no one has been able to render before or since.

(Compare the radiant austerity of Vermeer's work to the silliness of the dots-and-dashes Impressionists who allegedly intended to paint pure light. He raised perception to the conceptual level; they attempted to disintegrate perception into sense data.)

One might wish (and I do) that Vermeer had chosen better subjects to express his theme, but to him, apparently, the subjects were only the means to his end. What his style projects is a concretized image of an immense, nonvisual abstraction: the psycho-epistemology of a rational mind. It projects clarity, discipline, confidence, purpose, power - a universe open to man. When one feels, looking at a Vermeer painting: "This is my view of life," the feeling involves much more than mere visual perception.

As I have mentioned in "Art and Sense of Life," all the other elements of painting, such as theme, subject, composition, are involved in projecting an artist's view of existence, but for this present discussion, style is the most important element: it demonstrates in what manner an art confined to a single sense modality, using exclusively visual means, can express and affect the total of man's consciousness.

Ellen

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Is it possible that Vermeer and Rembrandt looked upon their subjects, painted them and said to themselves this is what they looked like to -me-.

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~ Please reserve this thread as an archival resource and pursue discussion on other threads. ~

Sense of Life - 1961 and 1962 talks

Transcribed by Roger Bissell

from the taped Columbia Radio broadcast

"Our Esthetic Vacuum,"

delivered April 26, 1962

This is probably the same talk Rand gave with the title

"The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age"

at the University of Michigan

Creative Arts Festival

May 15, 1961

Art is the expression of man's deepest, most fundamental, most philosophical values. Art is the concretization of metaphysics. Let me explain this fully.

Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy which studies the nature of reality, the basic nature of existence and of man. Most men do not hold any conscious philosophical convictions and have never heard of metaphysics, yet all men have a philosophy of life that directs their choices and actions. If they do not form it consciously, they form it subconsciously, by means of an emotional generalization, by an unidentified, unverbalized estimate of the value and meaning of their own existence,

Observe, for example, that some people are always attracted to the new, the original, the untried, that they like to take risks, to venture out, to stand on their own - while other people in the same circumstances prefer to play it safe, to stick to the customary, the established, the known. The first kind are motivated primarily by the desire to seek enjoyment or gain. The second kind are motivated primarily by the desire to protect themselves from suffering or loss. Under any superficial reason they may give for their choices, their basic reason is a philosophical estimate of man's position in the universe which they have formed subconsciously. The first kind have concluded that life is good, that success, happiness, the achievement of his values are possible to man. The second have concluded that life is evil, that man is doomed to fail, that existence by its very nature is set against him, and that disaster is his metaphysical fate.

Neither of these two types may have given any conscious thought to these questions and may not have any consciously reasoned grounds for their views. Yet, their emotions have summed up their experiences and have become a basic attitude toward life, a basic motivation. In the presence of a new experience, the immediate reaction of the first type of man will be eagerness or enthusiasm; the immediate reaction of the second type will be fear.

It is in this manner that most men from their convictions, their answers to the basic questions of philosophy: Is the essential nature of existence benevolent to man, or malevolent? Is man, by his essential nature, good or evil? Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable? Can man be happy on earth, or is he doomed to despair and frustration? Does man have the power of choice, the power to direct the course of his own life, to choose his values, set his goals and achieve them, or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, which determine his fate? All of us have formed our answers to these questions, whether we know it consciously or not, and these answers direct our actions, our choices, our preferences, our tastes, our values.

Man cannot escape the fact that he needs a philosophy of life - i.e., a basic, comprehensive view of himself and of his relationship to existence. His only choice is whether he forms his philosophy by a process of thought or by accidental, emotional associations - whether he holds his philosophy consciously or subconsciously - whether his philosophy is true or false. All men form their first philosophy of life on the subverbal, subconscious level. Most of them leave it there for the rest of their days. A few learn to translate it into conscious terms, to consider it, to correct it if necessary, and to acquire a reasoned philosophy of life. That which some men hold in the form of a philosophical conviction, most men hold in the form of an emotion. Observe that under any specific, particular, momentary emotion you may experience, there is a deeper emotional undertone, a constant which seldom varies, a leitmotif so deeply rooted in your consciousness that you take it for granted and are seldom able to identify it. That is a metaphysical emotion. That is your basic estimate of yourself and of existence. That is your sense of life.

A sense of life is the emotional counterpart of metaphysics. It is the metaphysics of the subconscious. You have heard the expression "a tragic sense of life" used by philosophers and estheticians. "Tragic" is not the only possible attribute of that concept. There can be a tragic sense of life or a benevolent sense of life or a heroic sense of life, etc., according to one's basic estimate. Those who hold a conscious, rational philosophy do not lose their sense of life, but their philosophy and their sense of life are integrated, unified into perfect harmony. They have no conflicts between their ideas and their emotions Others, whose conscious or subconscious premises are irrational, may find themselves torn by the conflict between their ideas and their sense of life. Still others have nothing but their sense of life to guide them. But whatever the case may be, all men possess and retain a sense of life. It is this aspect of man's consciousness that is the special domain, the realm, the concern, and the source of art.

Art is the expression and the projection of a man's sense of life.

Ellen

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Sense of Life As Inner Judgment Day - February 1966

"Philosophy and Sense of Life"

pp. 14-16, The Romantic Manifesto,

Signet 1975 paperback Second Revised Edition

(originally published in the February 1966

issue of The Objectivist

Since religion is a primitive form of philosophy - an attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality - many of its myths are distorted, dramatized allegories based on some element of truth, some actual, if profoundly elusive, aspect of man's existence. One of such allegories, which men find particularly terrifying, is the myth of a supernatural recorder from which nothing can be hidden, who lists all of a man's deeds - the good and the evil, and noble and the vile - and who confronts a man with that record on judgment day.

That myth is true, not existentially, but psychologically. The merciless recorder is the integrating mechanism of a man's subconscious; the record is his sense of life.

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.

Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him - most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion - an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life.

To the extent to which a man is mentally active, i.e., motivated by the desire to know, to understand, his mind works as the programmer of his emotional computer - and his sense of life develops into a bright counterpart of a rational philosophy. To the extent to which a man evades, the programming of his emotional computer is done by chance influences; by random impressions, associations, imitations, by undigested snatches of environmental bromides, by cultural osmosis. If evasion or lethargy is a man's predominant method of mental functioning, the result is a sense of life dominated by fear - a soul like a shapeless piece of clay stamped by footprints going in all directions. (In later years, such a man cries that he has lost his sense of identity; the fact is that he never acquired it.)

[....] The enormously powerful integrating mechanism of man's consciousness is there at birth; his only choice is to drive it or to be driven by it. Since an act of volition - a process of thought - is required to use that mechanism for a cognitive purpose, man can evade that effort. But if he evades, chance takes over; the mechanism functions on its own, like a machine without a driver; it goes on integrating, but integrating blindly, incongruously, at random - not as an instrument of cognition, but as an instrument of distortion, delusion and nightmare terror, bent on wrecking its defaulting processor's consciousness.

The material quoted in post #5 - on Sense of Life and Self Esteem (or Its Lack) - follows directly after the above, opening discussion.

Ellen

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