Beethoven and malevolent sense of life

[Jonathan]

In other words, they took into account the part the listener/viewer brings with him as a fundamental part of the artistic experience.

I think you nailed it there, MSK. That's exactly what Roger doesn't appear to understand. He seems to like to believe that each individual artwork has one true meaning, that he almost unerringly objectively identifies that meaning, that anyone who disagrees with him and finds a different meaning must be wrong and "rationalizing," and that his subjective tastes, preferences and biases aren't having any significant influence over his interpretations and judgments. He thinks that his "pointing to" the evidence in the art is sufficient to find its one true meaning, and he ignores or rejects the fact that others are also "pointing to" the content of the art just as he is, but coming to different interpretations which are no less valid.

The problem appears to be that he doesn't seem to want to accept the fact that art is complex enough that different people can give more or less weight to different aspects of the content than others do, and he doesn't seem to realize that that is exactly what he is doing when experiencing art: that he is subjectively assigning more importance to certain elements within the art than others. He doesn't seem to realize that the attitudes and predispositions that he brings to experiencing artworks are affecting his judgment of its meaning, just as they are with everyone else.

J

[PDS]

In other words, they took into account the part the listener/viewer brings with him as a fundamental part of the artistic experience.

I think you nailed it there, MSK. That's exactly what Roger doesn't appear to understand. He seems to like to believe that each individual artwork has one true meaning, that he almost unerringly objectively identifies that meaning, that anyone who disagrees with him and finds a different meaning must be wrong and "rationalizing," and that his subjective tastes, preferences and biases aren't having any significant influence over his interpretations and judgments. He thinks that his "pointing to" the evidence in the art is sufficient to find its one true meaning, and he ignores or rejects the fact that others are also "pointing to" the content of the art just as he is, but coming to different interpretations which are no less valid.

The problem appears to be that he doesn't seem to want to accept the fact that art is complex enough that different people can give more or less weight to different aspects of the content than others do, and he doesn't seem to realize that that is exactly what he is doing when experiencing art: that he is subjectively assigning more importance to certain elements within the art than others. He doesn't seem to realize that the attitudes and predispositions that he brings to experiencing artworks are affecting his judgment of its meaning, just as they are with everyone else.

J

When you get your law degree, I may very well have an opening for you in my firm.

[caroljane]

Jonathan . I have read many of your exchanges about art. I understand them only vaguely because I do not have visual skills, my main means of perception are text and audio. But this latest post seems to sum up somethIing important that I agree with. you can essentialise issues in this way, I am not surprised that PDS would hire you. He might even let you wear your sunbonnet to work.

[anthony]

In other words, they took into account the part the listener/viewer brings with him as a fundamental part of the artistic experience.

I think you nailed it there, MSK. That's exactly what Roger doesn't appear to understand. He seems to like to believe that each individual artwork has one true meaning, that he almost unerringly objectively identifies that meaning, that anyone who disagrees with him and finds a different meaning must be wrong and "rationalizing," and that his subjective tastes, preferences and biases aren't having any significant influence over his interpretations and judgments. He thinks that his "pointing to" the evidence in the art is sufficient to find its one true meaning, and he ignores or rejects the fact that others are also "pointing to" the content of the art just as he is, but coming to different interpretations which are no less valid.

The problem appears to be that he doesn't seem to want to accept the fact that art is complex enough that different people can give more or less weight to different aspects of the content than others do, and he doesn't seem to realize that that is exactly what he is doing when experiencing art: that he is subjectively assigning more importance to certain elements within the art than others. He doesn't seem to realize that the attitudes and predispositions that he brings to experiencing artworks are affecting his judgment of its meaning, just as they are with everyone else.

J

Yes, but:

Someone among all these "different people" will get the closest to what the artist 'meant'.

Even if - the artist himself is not consciously certain..

I think there is a sliding scale here: at one end, the artist is objectively and accurately portraying his vision, sliding across to the other, with an image (or music) he drags out of his 'soul' or consciousness - subjectively.

To be extreme, it may be that only one viewer/listener can identify what the work represents, and how it came about.

He is 'right', while many could be 'wrong'.

I believe the process of creation to be conscious cognition, combined with the fundamental view of existence of the artist. Often, most of his objectivity will be in his formative and growth periods - until he hits his mark some time, when technique and style become second nature. Then it may become mostly 'subjective', directly accessing his subconscious sense of life.

J, I agree with your efforts to break the bounds of rigidity in O'ist aesthetic appreciation (and creativity.) However, there is an error also in sliding too far to the arbitrary end of the range. I sense you are taking it further here than you have before.

I believe a truly insightful viewer can recognise the total worth of all the artist's striving and intention, in both its objective and subjective aspects. Even, as happens I believe, if the artist himself has doubts.

[Jonathan]

I believe the process of creation to be deliberate cognition, combined with the fundamental view of existence of the artist. Often, most of his objectivity will be in his formative and growth periods - until he hits his mark some time. Then it may become mostly 'subjective', directly accessing his sense of life.

I think that what Rand called a "sense of life" and a "metaphysical or fundamental view of existence" play a strong part in guiding an artist's creative decisions, but it doesn't necessarily follow that his sense of life and fundamental views are clearly portrayed and discernible in his art. It doesn't follow that his comprehensive view of existence is the content and meaning of any of his art, or that viewers should be trying to discern his comprehensive views through his art.

J, I agree with your efforts to break the bounds of rigidity in O'ist aesthetic appreciation (and creativity.)

However, there is an error also in sliding too far to the arbitrary end of the range. I sense you are taking it further here than you have before.

No, I don't think that I'm taking it further. I'm simply saying what I've always said, which is that artworks can be interpreted differently by different people. Different viewers or listeners can legitimately point to the same content within the art to support their differing conclusions of its meaning.

That's not to say that any and every claim of an artwork's meaning is supported by the content. If a person claims that The Fountainhead is a children's story about a swan who is born without a voice and learns to play the trumpet as a substitute, that would be irrational or arbitrary, or whatever, and not based on the content of the book.

However, if one person were to see The Fountainhead as the story of an architect who refuses to compromise his integrity, and another were to see it as the story of an architect who does compromise his integrity (by intentionally committing the fraud of passing off his work as someone else's, and by destroying others' property with the false excuse that its owners didn't abide by a contract that they didn't have with him), both could point to the content of the art to support their interpretations. The former would be focusing on aesthetic integrity, where the latter would be focusing on ethical integrity. The former would judge the novel to represent heroic individualism, where the latter would see it as representing the advocacy of a sort of lawless, elitist, anarchist vigilantism. Neither would be wrong for subjectively choosing which aspects of the novel to give more weight to.

J

[Jonathan]

He might even let you wear your sunbonnet to work.

Carol,

I don't give anyone the power to "let" me wear my sunbonnet.

J

[caroljane]

He might even let you wear your sunbonnet to work.

Carol,

I don't give anyone the power to "let" me wear my sunbonnet.

Right on brother!

ISS

Carol

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But let's go deeper. Do you think this work would convey such human tragedy--or even human tragedy at all--if it were performed during halftime of a major football game?

How about if Mickey Mouse performed it on the movie screen, all the while hamming it up? You worked at Disney, so you must know this exists. (And, Rachmaninoff himself said it was his favorite interpretation of all time.)

Do you really think the popularity of this work is due to a subconscious Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life in the souls of those who love it? That would imply that most lovers of this work would need therapy in order to be able to become heroic or deeply satisfied with life.

This is "deeper"??

Yes, I've seen this kind of stuff, including the famous Warner Brothers cartoon showing Bugs Bunny playing Lizst, and I've seen the YouTube video of the Asian guy playing the Rachmaninoff C# minor Prelude with the blocks of wood to help him play huge chords his hands could not reach. And your point is?

You ask why people "love" this and don't respond to it as tragic music? Duh. It's intended to be humorous. Beethoven's 5th Symphony conducted by Bozo the Clown isn't going to connote anything about fate either...

This is an example where I think I need to improve my style. A good stylist rarely gets misunderstood as badly as in this quote, even when a person is hostile to the message, as Roger evidently is here.

I started the passage with "Do you think this work would convey...", so I imagined when I later said, "Do you really think the popularity of this work is due...". In my mind it was evident I was talking about Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# Minor" in both cases. Roger responded to my second question as if I were talking about the Mickey Mouse performance version only. He said:

You ask why people "love" this and don't respond to it as tragic music? Duh. It's intended to be humorous.

So I imagine the sudden image of Mickey Mouse injected into a context of a discussion on music aesthetics was so powerful to Roger, it completely derailed my latter use of "this work" to indicate the musical composition itself, not any particular performance of it, even though my meaning was absolutely unambiguous in the first use a couple of paragraphs above the second.

Here is my question restated about as clear as I can make it:

Do you really think the popularity of Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# Minor" is due to a subconscious Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life in the souls of those who love it? That would imply that most lovers of this work would need therapy in order to be able to become heroic or deeply satisfied with life.

Ironically, this question was not only not answered, here is a comment Roger made shortly after the quote above (my bold).

He [Rachmaninoff] got incredibly bugged that it was popular and invariably requested as an encore--as though the rest of his marvelous solo piano output was chopped liver or something. Just guessing, but maybe he was hoping the trivializing of his prelude would wear some of the glamour off of this piece he could barely stand to play any more.

So not only was my question not answered, the popularity I referred to was presumed as a default in making an argument against something I didn't mean.

The work (that is, Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# Minor," not Mickey Mouse's performance of it) was so popular that it made Rachmaninoff sick of playing it. (It still is one of the all-time greats in piano music.) So, to repeat, my question is a valid one and it still stands. If the "Prelude in C# Minor" conveys a Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life, why did people love it so much they made the composer weary of it? And why do they still love it? Is it because these people have such a Byronic pessimistic, malevolent sense of life that they all need therapy or something?

Now, the great unanswered question shall probably go unanswered for eternity...

I'm thinking if I prepare my images better--maybe a Hollywood build-up, or even something like prefacing the examples by saying, "I know this will sound comic or trite," or something like that--instead of just lowering the boom out of nowhere, this kind of misunderstanding wouldn't happen and the questions I truly mean to discuss would get addressed.

I like lowering the boom, though. Unexpected images get people's attention and add flavor to bland abstractions. But, maybe, the middle of a discussion is not the right place for doing it. My unexpected images set a frame that disrupted the discussion. A better place for this stuff, maybe, would be a headline or follow-up post or somewhere an important point did not need to be elaborated on. Or if I wanted to be humorous. I have to think about this...

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

I had to delete the post because it was a godawful formatting mess. Here is the first part of it again:

Michael wrote:

Roger, in this last post, I get the impression that I am talking about horses and you are talking about the price of hay. I am probably not communicating well enough.

I'm Roger Bissell, former farm boy and occasional rider of horses, and I approve of that message. :-)

...you say Rand created Dominique as herself in a bad mood...let's take the Dominique thing at face value. How on earth is being in a bad mood equivalent to having a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life"? One is temporary and the other is semi-permanent. One is superficial and the other is deeply ingrained almost as a lifestyle. Dominique is not a person with a "Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life." (That would mean Rand, herself, was, by Rand's comparison of Dominique to herself.) She is a person who has a heroic sense of life (like Rand), but who is grumpy and snarky or whatever a bad mood causes heroes to be. Like I said, horses and the price of hay.

"The Dominique thing"? News flash: Dominique most certainly did ~not~ have a "heroic sense of life." She had a ~malevolent~ sense of life. Rand said so herself. So did Tara Smith in her essay in Mayhew's collection of essays. This doesn't mean Dominique was an axe murderer or wanted to see babies burned in crematoria. It just means that Dominique believed that "the world is not fundamentally conducive to man's success and happiness; failure and frustration are the norm." This is a perfect description of Dominique's well-depicted attitude toward life, and explanation of her repeatedly sabotaging Roark's success and her own happiness -- until she saw that he could after all, against the odds stacked against him, be a success on his own terms. That conversion experience came toward the very end of the novel.

When Rand said that Dominique was her "in a bad mood," she did ~not~ mean that Dominique's personality and behavior was just attributed to a "bad mood." Rand meant that Dominique's ~ongoing, ingrained~ world perspective was how she, Rand, feels ~occasionally~. Rand's ~occasional mood~ is like Dominique's ~sense of life~.

Maybe this is wrong. Maybe Rand was in denial, as some suggest. Maybe Rand herself had the Byronic view that life is stacked against the conscientious person of integrity, and that her novels were an attempt at catharsis, to purge this dark perspective, and that she professed a radiant, sunlit, optimistic worldview that she did not in fact hold. More likely (I think), she just felt that Western culture was more inimical to success than it should be, and her bad moods did not actually reflect a negative "metaphysics."

But it's clear as day, from the evidence in the novel and from Rand's own words, that she meant to say that Dominique's continuing stance toward the world represented Rand's occasional, passing moods, not her own sense of life.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I had to delete the post because it was a godawful formatting mess.

Roger,

I deleted my response post, too.

Michael

EDIT: And here is another that followed, but it makes more sense after your repost than before it:

Here's a thought.

If Dominique had a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life, and Howard Roark was one of Rand's perfect man creations, how on earth did he ever fall in love with her?

I know the statement of show me who a man sleeps with and I will give you his entire philosophy came much later, but the level of inconsistency of having one of her perfect men fall for a life-hater doesn't pass my quality filter in judging Rand as an artist.

I think she knew what she was doing and consistency in her characters is one of her hallmarks.

[Roger Bissell]

I had to delete the post because it was a godawful formatting mess.

Roger,

I deleted my response post, too.

Michael

EDIT: And here is another that followed, but it makes more sense after your repost than before it:

Here's a thought.

If Dominique had a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life, and Howard Roark was one of Rand's perfect man creations, how on earth did he ever fall in love with her?

I know the statement of show me who a man sleeps with and I will give you his entire philosophy came much later, but the level of inconsistency of having one of her perfect men fall for a life-hater doesn't pass my quality filter in judging Rand as an artist.

I think she knew what she was doing and consistency in her characters is one of her hallmarks.

Consistency in her characters includes portraying characters with value conflicts. Dominique was heavily conflicted. She was a passionate idealist, valuing human creativity at its highest and best. She loved first-hand achievement and hated mediocrity. She couldn't accept anything less than perfection. However Dominique was deeply pessimistic, believing that the world was so full of second-handers that someone as good as Roark could not achieve his ambitions and goals. This latter, Tara Smith points out, is the "malevolent universe premise: the belief that the world is not fundamentally conducive to man's success and happiness; failure and frustration are the norm" (Mayhew, p. 299)

You ask why someone as perfect as Roark would fall in love with someone like Dominique? Clearly, he had a thing for chicks with a malevolent view of life.

Seriously, he was drawn to her passionate idealism (and her great bod, no doubt). He realizes that Dominique is ~not~ a "life-hater" at heart, but someone who deeply values life and achievement, and she has made a deep error about whether happiness and success are possible. He is patient with her, though not without some...ahem...physicality along the way, and eventually she realizes her mistake, that "idealism and reality are not in conflict" (Mayhew, p. 301). She actually overrides and corrects her sense of life error about the basic nature of the world, not through extended therapy, but by seeing Roark's uncompromising success. "Roark is a walking refutation of the malevolent universe premise" (Mayhew, p. 301).

It was the very ~inconsistency~ in Dominique's premises, including her malevolent universe premise, that was tearing her apart and keeping her from happiness -- and once she ~eliminated~ that inconsistency, she and Roark lived happily ever after. (I'm sure it was worth the wait. :-)

REB

[Roger Bissell]

Michael wrote:

I mentioned several times your phrase, "Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life." I happen to think this is not a good way to characterize art because I don't think it accurately conveys how art works in the human mind. (I.e., according to this concept, a person responds to an art work because the work conveys this sense of life and that person is dominated by the same, or similar, sense of life. The sense of life is the thing that gets matched between art work and consumer...My examples did not treat the artistic experience as a one-way street from artist's utterance to consumer. They opened the artistic experience road to go both ways. That is deeper in my meaning. Rand claims that an art work is an end in itself. I claim that, by the very nature of art being created by and for human beings, without human beings to consume it, an art work is not art at all. This is quite deep when you think about it.

And an Objectivist Living post or a JARS essay is not an OL post or JARS essay if no one reads it. Am I moving forward on the path to Enlightenment now? :-)

Rand, in saying that art is "an end in itself," was ~not~ saying that art is some kind of self-sufficient entity, with an intrinsic nature, apart from the people who created it or who consumed it. She was simply saying that it does not serve an "external," material, utilitarian end, but instead fulfills a need of human consciousness, a spiritual need. So yes, she would certainly agree that art, like language, must be used by ~someone~ for it to carry out its function of making abstractions perceivable. (TRM, p. 20) She also stressed the selfish motivation of writing her novels so that ~she~ could have the experience of living in the world she had created. Anyone else who wanted to share that experience was welcome to join in, and the more the merrier. (Cha-CHING!) This is a very important point, and is why, to this day, Leonard Peikoff has very (pardon the pun) deep pockets.

But I really do get your point that art creation and consumption is a two-way street. Let me be clear: I ~do not deny~ that a given artwork may be inconsistent with that artist's or any given art consumer's overall sense of life, and yet it may be an accurate expression of how they felt about life at the time they created or consumed it, and not at some other time. I also ~acknowledge~ that artists and art consumers differ in the consistency or monolithic nature of their senses of life. Some have "mixed" senses of life, just as some have mixed explicit philosophies. When people make inconsistent, mixed choices in their lives, including what they create or enjoy in art, they reveal the many-faceted parts of their souls.

That said, why can we not look in on Beethoven, using the available biographical information as well as the panoply of straightforward musical expressions of his soul, and acknowledge that this guy had a lot of reasons to be upset about life, and that he both expressed it, at times, in his music, and managed to not let his disappointments and afflictions and adversities keep him from producing a truly monumental output of musical creativity? Again, in suggesting that he had a malevolent sense of life, we are not saddling him with the smear that he is a malevolent ~person~, an evil person who hates people and wants to destroy things -- merely that he strongly wants to create and produce, and he feels that he has to do so in the face of very difficult obstacles, which make it harder and harder for him to function, and that it's "the world's" or "God's" fault that it's this way (not his).

One last point: Rand is not the first nor the only person to refer to this as the Byronic sense of life, aka the ill-fated heroic stance toward life. I just think that she is the first to apply it to subcategorizing trends in Romantic literature and, by implication, in Romantic music.

REB

[Brant Gaede]

I had to delete the post because it was a godawful formatting mess.

Roger,

I deleted my response post, too.

Michael

EDIT: And here is another that followed, but it makes more sense after your repost than before it:

Here's a thought.

If Dominique had a Byronic, pessimistic, malevolent sense of life, and Howard Roark was one of Rand's perfect man creations, how on earth did he ever fall in love with her?

I know the statement of show me who a man sleeps with and I will give you his entire philosophy came much later, but the level of inconsistency of having one of her perfect men fall for a life-hater doesn't pass my quality filter in judging Rand as an artist.

I think she knew what she was doing and consistency in her characters is one of her hallmarks.

Consistency in her characters includes portraying characters with value conflicts. Dominique was heavily conflicted. She was a passionate idealist, valuing human creativity at its highest and best. She loved first-hand achievement and hated mediocrity. She couldn't accept anything less than perfection. However Dominique was deeply pessimistic, believing that the world was so full of second-handers that someone as good as Roark could not achieve his ambitions and goals. This latter, Tara Smith points out, is the "malevolent universe premise: the belief that the world is not fundamentally conducive to man's success and happiness; failure and frustration are the norm" (Mayhew, p. 299)

You ask why someone as perfect as Roark would fall in love with someone like Dominique? Clearly, he had a thing for chicks with a malevolent view of life.

Seriously, he was drawn to her passionate idealism (and her great bod, no doubt). He realizes that Dominique is ~not~ a "life-hater" at heart, but someone who deeply values life and achievement, and she has made a deep error about whether happiness and success are possible. He is patient with her, though not without some...ahem...physicality along the way, and eventually she realizes her mistake, that "idealism and reality are not in conflict" (Mayhew, p. 301). She actually overrides and corrects her sense of life error about the basic nature of the world, not through extended therapy, but by seeing Roark's uncompromising success. "Roark is a walking refutation of the malevolent universe premise" (Mayhew, p. 301).

It was the very ~inconsistency~ in Dominique's premises, including her malevolent universe premise, that was tearing her apart and keeping her from happiness -- and once she ~eliminated~ that inconsistency, she and Roark lived happily ever after. (I'm sure it was worth the wait. :-)

REB

Or, after observing not just Roark but Wynand in action and in actions' consequences, she got educated.

--Brant

she was Rand, "in a bad mood."

The Fountainhead is about the triumph of perfection or the redemption of perfectionism: he had it and she got it and Wynand--the perfect imperfectionist--had to fold his tent

to be more accurate, Roark is about integrity--and so is Dominique--Wynand is about betrayed integirty and Keating is about no integrity--Toohey--he's really about nothing at all

etc.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

He realizes that Dominique is ~not~ a "life-hater" at heart, but someone who deeply values life and achievement, and she has made a deep error about whether happiness and success are possible.

Roger,

You just described to me a person with a heroic sense of life and a conflict. (Ditto about Wynand, for that matter, except his conflict involved power.) Not a person with a malevolent sense of life.

As to Byron, I certainly don't see Dominique pining away in her free time in Byronesque tragic longing.

Look at her taste in art if you want to see how Rand characterized her sense of life.

Ellsworth Toohey had a malevolent sense of life. And his taste in art reflected it.

Michael

EDIT: Here's Rand's definition from "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto:

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.

Notice that in Rand's idea, a sense of life is pre-conceptual and, more importantly, emotional.

[Roger Bissell]

He realizes that Dominique is ~not~ a "life-hater" at heart, but someone who deeply values life and achievement, and she has made a deep error about whether happiness and success are possible.

Roger,

You just described to me a person with a heroic sense of life and a conflict. (Ditto about Wynand, for that matter, except his conflict involved power.) Not a person with a malevolent sense of life.

As to Byron, I certainly don't see Dominique pining away in her free time in Byronesque tragic longing.

Look at her taste in art if you want to see how Rand characterized her sense of life.

Ellsworth Toohey had a malevolent sense of life. And his taste in art reflected it.

Michael

EDIT: Here's Rand's definition from "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto:

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.

Notice that in Rand's idea, a sense of life is pre-conceptual and, more importantly, emotional.

Being a passionate idealist, which Dominique was, is ~not~ the same as having a heroic sense of life. A heroic sense of life is the view that one ~can~ strive toward values, and that they can be ~achieved~. The Byronic sense of life is the view that one ~can~ strive toward values, but that they ~cannot~ be achieved. (See Rand in "What is Romanticism?") The Byronic sense of life is thus an ~idealistic subcategory~ of malevolent sense of life. Dominique's sense of life is another idealist subcategory, which holds that it is so painful to endure the sight of a great person engaging in a futile attempt to achieve values, that one should undercut them and spare them and oneself the agony. Byron says "Damn the torpedoes, I've gotta be me." Dominique says, "No, you don't."

Both Dominique and Toohey do things to smash attempts at genuine creative achievement, but Dominique does it out of anguished idealism, while Toohey does it out of vicious hatred of the good for being good. Dominique acts out of a malevolent universe premise that is tempered by her passionate love of values, so her smashing of achievements is more like mercy killing. Toohey's smashing, by contrast, is Nihilism, pure and simple. He does ~not~ exemplify a malevolent sense of life, because he knows that values ~can~ be achieved, that integrity and beauty ~are~ possible, and he hates them and acts to destroy them or prevent them from being created. Toohey is not a basically good, idealistic person with a screwed up sense of life, a malevolent universe premise. He is a truly malevolent ~person~, pure evil, or as close as Rand could come in depicting it in Fountainhead.

Again, read the definition. A malevolent sense of life is not a hatred of the good. That is Nihilism. A malevolent sense of life, or a malevolent universe premise in one's psychology, is the deep belief that, whether or not one should strive to achieve values (a separate issue, on which Byron and Dominique differed), values cannot be achieved. A truly malevolent person knows that they ~can~ be achieved, and wants to destroy them. If you want a name for Toohey's sense of life, it is not "malevolent," but "nihilistic."

It may help to point out that both "malevolent" and "benevolent" do double-duty in Rand's philosophy. She sometimes means them to refer to people who are hateful or generous. Toohey is certainly malevolent in that sense, while Dominique certainly is not (not in her heart of hearts, which aches for the brilliant creators whom she adores but feels they are doomed to failure). But Rand also uses the terms in a factual non-value sense, to mean that the universe either is or is not open to man's effort to achieve values. That is how she uses the terms when she speaks of ~sense of life~ -- as against any time she makes a moral evaluation of someone as being a good, benevolent ~person~ or an evil, malevolent ~person~.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

We understand Rand differently on her sense of life concept.

I believe there is way too much concept and not enough pre-conceptual in what you write for your understanding to align with mine.

I don't see sense of life as primarily believing that achieving goals (or values) is possible. I grant that's part of it, but not the essence.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

We understand Rand differently on her sense of life concept.

I believe there is way too much concept and not enough pre-conceptual in what you write for your understanding to align with mine.

That puzzles me. I see sense of life as ~entirely~ pre-conceptual in its source and nature. However, people ~can~ identify the various strands or components of their sense of life. Dominique was painfully aware of hers.

I don't see sense of life as primarily believing that achieving goals (or values) is possible. I grant that's part of it, but not the essence.

I don't either. From Rand's discussion of it in TRM, it's related to one's "metaphysical value-judgments," which are preconceptual or subconscious conclusions about life and the world. There are several of them, and a sense of life can be categorized as one or more of them.

1. Is happiness possible to man?

2. Is man capable of achieving values?

3. Is man good?

4. Are life and values good?

Dominique was an implicit no on 1 and 2 and yes on 3 and 4. So she was a conflicted, pessimistic idealist. Malevolent sense of life in a man-worshipping idealist.

Toohey was an implicit yes on 1 and 2 and no on 3 and 4. He was a man-hating, value-hating nihilist, who knew in his gut that values and happiness were possible, but that they should be smashed. Nihilistic sense of life in a viciously evil (~morally~ malevolent) person.

Their policies and actions were deliberate and conscious, but their motivations were gut-level, emotional drivers of their actions. That is why Dominique had to be emotionally reoriented by seeing that success and happiness ~were~ possible after all.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What I found objectionable was your perhaps inadvertently playing the Phil Donahue card. Have you ever seen the time Rand was a guest, and an audience member prefaced her question with the snarky comment that she used to admire Rand's novels, but she doesn't any more since she has grown up? (Or something to that effect.) The implication was that a mature person doesn't get hooked into that stuff, only immature adolescents who don't know better and who don't understand life and how it should really be.

Roger,

There's waaaaaaay too much preaching in the Objectivism world.

There is only one way you could get that impression and derive such an implication--if you believed I was speaking from the posture of the expert instructor telling how it is and should be for others and not the posture of the witness telling what it has been for me.

I have come up with these writing posture categories for a work I am preparing to sell to the Internet marketing world. I touch on it here and earlier in that thread (and I recommend you read it merely because I believe you will be interested in the approach).

Let me say what I mean by boneheaded Randroid. I mean someone who answers each statement with Objectivist jargon. Who seeks to humiliate anyone with a whiff of empathy or compassion with a withering Randish put-down--usually snarking about altrusim. Who takes the worst possible meaning of a vaguely stated phrase and gets indignant about it and starts preaching. Who will scapegoat you in a hearbeat and sever friendship or love over a difference in ideology.

I could go on, but I think this kind of person is so common in our subcommunity, there is no need. We see them all the time.

I consider that state to be immature. Most grow out of it, while keeping a more profound understanding of what Rand was getting at. Some don't. However, one of the characteristics of that phase is to set Rand up as a virtual goddess to be worshipped and fall out with anyone who disagrees--usually using phrases of hatred of the good for being the good and that kind of thing.

So when I said I believe she is even a greater artist than I thought when I was going through that phase, there was no insinuation about you or anyone else. I hate to say it, but when I am discussing something like that, I just don't think of you.

My thing is to exchange ideas, not to preach them. It is for people to work out their thinking, not persuade others to join a movement.

I'm not against preaching or movements per se, but there are churches and soapboxes for that. I do admit to a growing distaste for them when I am delving into deep thinking. I vastly prefer (and use) the witness voice when I am dealing with an exchange of ideas, unless I am teaching a newbie something or correcting an error that I know for a fact to be wrong.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

To me, Dominique felt happiness and the rest were possible to man, just not possible to her (or anyone she knew) in the current society she lived in. Not because she was rotten, but because other people in the society around her were.

I don't call that a malevolent sense of life.

That observation is on a social level. On a metaphysical level, I never got the impression she believed nature itself frustrates man's happiness and condemns him to doom and he has to fight against it (to state Rand's notion of the Byronesque view).

She blamed other people, not herself and not nature. And she did not fight against it. Her whole struggle was to try to stop caring so other people would not take stuff she loved from her and thus hurt her.

Not once did I get the impression she felt it was hopeless on a metaphysical level to love. The hopelessness was always on a social level because of them. The bastards. Not because of how nature is.

EDIT: In a word, get rid of them and the world is worth living in. (Look what happened when she tried her cold fish thing on Wynand. ) That's different than the world is not worth living in, but we gotta try anyway.

Michael

[anthony]

I believe the process of creation to be deliberate cognition, combined with the fundamental view of existence of the artist. Often, most of his objectivity will be in his formative and growth periods - until he hits his mark some time. Then it may become mostly 'subjective', directly accessing his sense of life.

I think that what Rand called a "sense of life" and a "metaphysical or fundamental view of existence" play a strong part in guiding an artist's creative decisions, but it doesn't necessarily follow that his sense of life and fundamental views are clearly portrayed and discernible in his art. It doesn't follow that his comprehensive view of existence is the content and meaning of any of his art, or that viewers should be trying to discern his comprehensive views through his art.

J, I agree with your efforts to break the bounds of rigidity in O'ist aesthetic appreciation (and creativity.)

However, there is an error also in sliding too far to the arbitrary end of the range. I sense you are taking it further here than you have before.

No, I don't think that I'm taking it further. I'm simply saying what I've always said, which is that artworks can be interpreted differently by different people. Different viewers or listeners can legitimately point to the same content within the art to support their differing conclusions of its meaning.

That's not to say that any and every claim of an artwork's meaning is supported by the content. If a person claims that The Fountainhead is a children's story about a swan who is born without a voice and learns to play the trumpet as a substitute, that would be irrational or arbitrary, or whatever, and not based on the content of the book.

However, if one person were to see The Fountainhead as the story of an architect who refuses to compromise his integrity, and another were to see it as the story of an architect who does compromise his integrity (by intentionally committing the fraud of passing off his work as someone else's, and by destroying others' property with the false excuse that its owners didn't abide by a contract that they didn't have with him), both could point to the content of the art to support their interpretations. The former would be focusing on aesthetic integrity, where the latter would be focusing on ethical integrity. The former would judge the novel to represent heroic individualism, where the latter would see it as representing the advocacy of a sort of lawless, elitist, anarchist vigilantism. Neither would be wrong for subjectively choosing which aspects of the novel to give more weight to.

J

Jonathan,

A work being appreciated and revered for the wrong - unintended, partial or limited - reasons might (as with a person) be an artist's idea of hell. I doubt very much that an artist of integrity could accept that his finished work is, say, 'all things to all men'.

(You didn't say that - I'm being extremist.)

If he was honest in his purpose, he at very least begins each piece with a central intent.

He may well have objectively/subjectively changed his portrayal along the creative process, but after completion he must believe that it has stand-alone integrity - otherwise he should question the honesty of his vision, or his technical mastery.

As much and more than any of us, in seeking truth, an artist endeavors to be right for the right reasons.

One may argue that being 'right' for the wrong reason is still 'right'. But that's

this time - what about the next... and the next?

[Jonathan]

"The Dominique thing"? News flash: Dominique most certainly did ~not~ have a "heroic sense of life." She had a ~malevolent~ sense of life. Rand said so herself.

"It is of course impossible to name the sense of life of fictional characters. You might name the sense of life of your closest friend though I doubt it. You may, after some years, know the sense of life of the person you love, but nobody beyond that."

Guess who?

J

[Jonathan]

The Fountainhead is about the triumph of perfection or the redemption of perfectionism: he had it and she got it and Wynand--the perfect imperfectionist--had to fold his tent

to be more accurate, Roark is about integrity--and so is Dominique--Wynand is about betrayed integirty and Keating is about no integrity--Toohey--he's really about nothing at all

See what I was talking about? Brant's interpretation of the novel subjectively places emphasis on Roark's aesthetic integrity, and places practically none on his serious lapses of ethical integrity.

J

[Jonathan]

A work being appreciated and revered for the wrong - unintended, partial or limited - reasons might (as with a person) be an artist's idea of hell. I doubt very much that an artist of integrity could accept that his finished work is, say, 'all things to all men'.

(You didn't say that - I'm being extremist.)

If he was honest in his purpose, he at very least begins each piece with a central intent.

He may well have objectively/subjectively changed his portrayal along the creative process, but after completion he must believe that it has stand-alone integrity - otherwise he should question the honesty of his vision, or his technical mastery.

As much and more than any of us, in seeking truth, an artist endeavors to be right for the right reasons.

One may argue that being 'right' for the wrong reason is still 'right'. But that's

this time - what about the next... and the next?

I don't think that most creators approach their art that way. I think most expect a more open-ended experience. You seem to see all artists as being very Randian in wanting to take the reader, viewer or listener by the hand and to guide them step by step along a path within the art's microcosm while pointing out, precisely on schedule, exactly what the artist wants them to see and understand. I think most artists would rather have you explore the place on your own, at your own pace, and see what you see and think what you think. To most artists, I think it's more about an experience than pouding home a clear, specific message.

J

[PDS]

"The Dominique thing"? News flash: Dominique most certainly did ~not~ have a "heroic sense of life." She had a ~malevolent~ sense of life. Rand said so herself.

"It is of course impossible to name the sense of life of fictional characters. You might name the sense of life of your closest friend though I doubt it. You may, after some years, know the sense of life of the person you love, but nobody beyond that."

Guess who?

J

Phil Coates?

[Jonathan]

"The Dominique thing"? News flash: Dominique most certainly did ~not~ have a "heroic sense of life." She had a ~malevolent~ sense of life. Rand said so herself.

"It is of course impossible to name the sense of life of fictional characters. You might name the sense of life of your closest friend though I doubt it. You may, after some years, know the sense of life of the person you love, but nobody beyond that."

Guess who?

J

Phil Coates?

Close! Think of a person who is a little less self-important.

J