"Romanticist Art" Is Not The Essence Of The Objectivist Esthetics

[Ellen Stuttle]

Doesn't architecture recreate, selectively, the "reality" of the cave?

--Brant

and music, noise?

Rand apologist (sorry to ruin all of Jonathan's stuff)

My serious answer would be that architecture re-creates reality in the same way that abstract art does: it uses abstract forms and compositional relationships to suggest human traits. The reality that is being re-created is not the cave, or any other space or environment, but human characteristics and attitudes like those contained in Rand's descriptions of the effects of Howard Roark's architecture:

I'm puzzled by the answer in two ways.

Are you accepting Rand's definition (or are you giving a what-Rand-might-say answer)?

Are you claiming that human traits have to be suggested in order for architecture and abstract painting to qualify as art?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

A question here though, one I've been wondering about for some while: What are you looking for as demonstration?

You seem to me to be looking for a proof of what beauty IS "out there," independent of any perceiver, a demonstration of something structural in the entity, like the atomic structure.

I'm looking for Objectivists to back up their claim that beauty is not a matter of subjective taste, but is objectively "out there" in the proportions of the objects being viewed, and that such judgments of objects, including inanimate ones, are based on man's life as the standard of value. So it's really not an issue of my expecting them to put forth proof of judgments of beauty being independent of any perceiver, but, more accurately, of judgments of beauty being independent of any perceiver's subject tastes and preferences.

J

Your "objectively" in that statement differs from its meaning in Objectivism and in Rand's only quoted (in the Lexicon) answer about beauty.

By "objective" Rand meant a relationship between what's out there and the cognizer. (At least that's what she meant in the sort of context we're talking about. She used the adjective "objective" in some contexts to mean "clearly defined," e.g., objective law.)

What she said is "out there" in the Q&A response is harmonious proportions, with beauty being our experience of something which has such proportions.

The "harmony" smuggles in an evaluative response as if the characteristic were in the object - except in the case of pure tones, where there is a way to measure exact frequency relationships. The "harmony" Rand spoke of in her answer was that of visual proportions, and as you've pointed out a number of times (that I've seen, probably lots more that I haven't seen), perceivers might differ in what they find harmonious, and in whether they necessarily see beauty in something they consider harmonious and non-beauty in something they don't.

In her answer Rand seems to me to be indicating that beauty responses are universal. But her answer was off the top, and what I wonder is, suppose someone probed further, for instance giving an example of a person who likes overcast days, or likes the appearance of someone Rand would classify as ugly, would there then be a wider thesis proposed, analogous to the breakdown used on other evaluative issues, with the rational person having one type of response, the irrational another, and the mixed a mixture?

Did Diana and others on OO actually claim, as Rand seems to in her answer, that judgments of beauty are universal, or just that "Man's Life" is the standard of rational judgments of beauty?

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

About "metaphysical value judgments" and their being (1) necessarily present in and (2) identifiable in an art work, here's a little example I pose for consideration.

When I was a freshman in high school, among the pieces I wrote for my English and literature class was a short short short story, about four medium-sized paragraphs and then a two-sentence final paragraph.

The piece started with a statement that I was looking from a window. I then described a bucolic sort of afternoon scene. Gentle breezes, light wispy clouds, blossoms in bloom, robins and other birds chirping, the sound of children playing. I spelled all this out in evocative language for about four paragraphs.

And then:

"But the scene holds no hope for me. For I gaze from a prison window, and I have only twelve minutes to live."

When my teacher walked into the classroom the day after I'd handed that little item in, she said, "Ellen!"

I grinned and asked, "Did you like it?" (She did like it.)

So: diagnosis?

Ellen

Two sickos.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

I'm puzzled by the answer in two ways.

Are you accepting Rand's definition (or are you giving a what-Rand-might-say answer)?

I'm identifying how abstract art forms such as architecture and abstract painting (as well as music, dance, etc.) can quality as art even according to Rand's definition and criteria.

Are you claiming that human traits have to be suggested in order for architecture and abstract painting to qualify as art?

No.

J

[Jonathan]

Your "objectively" in that statement differs from its meaning in Objectivism and in Rand's only quoted (in the Lexicon) answer about beauty.

By "objective" Rand meant a relationship between what's out there and the cognizer. (At least that's what she meant in the sort of context we're talking about. She used the adjective "objective" in some contexts to mean "clearly defined," e.g., objective law.)

Rand's notion of objectivity versus subjectivity in aesthetic judgment is further informed by her comments on music and man's inability to prove which aspects of his experience are inherent in the object and which are contributed by his own consciousness, and that until man has the ability to separate and prove which are inherent and which are not, via the discovery and clear identification of a conceptual vocabulary, judgments of music must be treated as a subjective matter. In other words, any content that is contributed to a judgment by a man's individual consciousness, and which cannot be proven to be inherent in the object, is subjective.

That is not only true of music, but of judgments of beauty or any other taste preference. Taking Rand's words and editing them to replace "music" with "beauty":

"In experiencing beauty, a man cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others—and therefore, cannot prove—which aspects of his experience are inherent in the object and which are contributed by his own consciousness. He experiences it as an indivisible whole, he feels as if the magnificent exaltation were there in the object—and he is helplessly bewildered when he discovers that some men do experience it and some do not. In regard to the nature of beauty, mankind is still on the perceptual level of awareness...The formulation of a common vocabulary of beauty would require: a translation of the beautiful experience, the inner experience, into conceptual terms; an explanation of why certain arrangements of form, color and proportion strike us a certain way; a definition of the axioms of beauty perception, from which the appropriate esthetic principles could be derived, which would serve as a base for the objective validation of judgments of beauty...Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of judgment is possible in the field of beauty, and we must treat tastes and preference of beauty as a subjective matter. No one, therefore, can claim the objective superiority of his choices over the choices of others. Where no objective proof is available, it’s every man for himself—and only for himself."

Rand's concept of "objective" is also informed by her comments on the concept of "objectivity," which she described as the act of volitionally applying a clearly identified objective standard of judgment using logic and reason. Judgments of beauty do not follow that course.

In her answer Rand seems to me to be indicating that beauty responses are universal.

Yes. She seems to have believed, as she thought was true of all other objective judgments, that "only one answer is true." 1 + 1 = 2 is true regardless of the tastes and preferences of any perceiver. Rand's personal judgments of beauty should therefore also be true of all men. Only a person who was mistaken, irrational or a liar could disagree with her tastes.

But her answer was off the top, and what I wonder is, suppose someone probed further, for instance giving an example of a person who likes overcast days, or likes the appearance of someone Rand would classify as ugly, would there then be a wider thesis proposed, analogous to the breakdown used on other evaluative issues, with the rational person having one type of response, the irrational another, and the mixed a mixture?

She seemed to believe that her tastes were objective, rational and universally true of all other rational men, and that anyone who disagreed was subjective and irrational. To her, different races had different standards of beauty, which suggests that she believed that each race had its own single physical ideal of beauty. So apparently two people could have identical features, proportions and coloring -- they could appear to be twins despite being of different races -- and one could be judged as beautiful because she was Asian and therefore fit the Asian ideal, but the other would be ugly because she was European and should be judged by the European ideal. Not a very coherent theory.

Did Diana and others on OO actually claim, as Rand seems to in her answer, that judgments of beauty are universal, or just that "Man's Life" is the standard of rational judgments of beauty?

Hsieh claimed, in her podcast, that when others' tastes in beauty differed from her own, they were "just really wrong." Her view therefore appeared to be that judgments of beauty are universal among rational people like her, and that disagreements with her judgments were indicators of irrationality and/or dishonesty. Her position was that there was a certain limited range of beauty which was broad enough to include some room for minor differences of opinion based on "personal" preferences, but outside of that, people were "really wrong" to judge something as beautiful.

Hsieh's view was also that animals which are selectively bred for beauty, but which develop health problems due to their forms not being well-suited to their survival, were not actually beautiful. If I were to interpret such an animal's sleek lines and large, intelligent-looking eyes as beautiful because sleekness and intelligence are traits that I value based on "man's life" as my standard, I would still apparently be "really wrong" simply because it wouldn't matter to Hsieh what the creature's proportions and features implied to me, but only that they did not in reality serve its existence, but hindered it.

J

[anthony]

About "metaphysical value judgments" and their being (1) necessarily present in and (2) identifiable in an art work, here's a little example I pose for consideration.

When I was a freshman in high school, among the pieces I wrote for my English and literature class was a short short short story, about four medium-sized paragraphs and then a two-sentence final paragraph.

The piece started with a statement that I was looking from a window. I then described a bucolic sort of afternoon scene. Gentle breezes, light wispy clouds, blossoms in bloom, robins and other birds chirping, the sound of children playing. I spelled all this out in evocative language for about four paragraphs.

And then:

"But the scene holds no hope for me. For I gaze from a prison window, and I have only twelve minutes to live."

When my teacher walked into the classroom the day after I'd handed that little item in, she said, "Ellen!"

I grinned and asked, "Did you like it?" (She did like it.)

So: diagnosis?

Ellen

Hmm. Quite Yu Ng-Yan.

Life's a pleasant dream then you wake up just in time to get the bad news.

(Didn't Tom Jones do a version?)

Seriously, it's a poignant sketch, but not enough in characterization, plot action, theme, style, to establish

its mv-j's.

I do not believe 'living happily ever after' is indicative of Romanticism anyway. It's made of much tougher stuff than that.

And I'd far rather read powerful naturalist writers than the sort of soft sentimentalism that gets published too often now. No contest, in fact.

[Jonathan]

That's usually the type of excuse that I get when I test Objectivists on their ability to follow Rand's prescribed methods of identifying what they claim with absolute certainty to be able to identify. That story's just a bit too short. The weather's too humid for my divining rod to work properly, but, honestly, I've found lots of water with it in the past.

Ellen, maybe you should have labeled your short short short story a "poem," because Objectivism accepts poetry as art, including very short poems, and therefore renaming/recategorizing it would be enough to make Tony realize that there's already more information in what you've presented than there is in most works of art about which Objectivists claim to know "true" and "actual" meanings, and artists' senses of life and metaphysical value-judgments.

It's actually quite amazing how fickle their powers of aesthetic judgment are. And socially bashful. It's almost like the powers of psychics.

Tony's inability to find metaphysical value-judgments, when put on the spot, in front of witnesses, reminds me of the contrast of Roger Bissell's claiming to be able to find deep meaning in the abstract forms of architecture, but not in the abstract forms of paintings and sculptures.

It's just amazing how sharp that on/off switch is! In one case, a simple arrangement of geometric forms can tell Objectivists very detailed and personal things about another person whom they've never met, but yet in the next case, they assert that anyone who claims to be able to find meaning and metaphysical value-judgments in a different arrangement of the same forms is a charlatan.

It's all about how you name or categorize the arrangement. Perhaps I should rename/recategorize certain abstract paintings as "plan" or "elevation" architectural drawings, mix them in with actual architectural drawings, and then go in search of Objectivist responses.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

That's usually the type of excuse that I get when I test Objectivists on their ability to follow Rand's prescribed methods of identifying what they claim with absolute certainty to be able to identify. That story's just a bit too short. The weather's too humid for my divining rod to work properly, but, honestly, I've found lots of water with it in the past.

Ellen, maybe you should have labeled your short short short story a "poem," because Objectivism accepts poetry as art, including very short poems, and therefore renaming/recategorizing it would be enough to make Tony realize that there's already more information in what you've presented than there is in most works of art about which Objectivists claim to know "true" and "actual" meanings, and artists' senses of life and metaphysical value-judgments.

Well, a further problem, whether the piece was Goldilocks length (not too long and not too short) or not, is that I don't have metaphysical value-judgments. I don't think the universe is weighted one way or the other with reference to humans except insofar as indisputably it's a universe where humans can exist. We're here.

Furthermore, I think that Rand's notion of metaphysical value-judgments clashes with her near-empty metaphysics stance.

Ellen

[ginny]

Oh, wow, Ellen, would you make a value-judgment if I sent you a metaphysical bow of appreciation?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Oh, wow, Ellen, would you make a value-judgment if I sent you a metaphysical bow of appreciation?

Um, if you just sent a bow of appreciation without the metaphysical.

Ellen

[ginny]

Picky, aren't we?

[Ellen Stuttle]

J,

Re your post #130:

I don't think that "beauty" and "music" are comparable such that it makes sense to substitute "beauty" for "music" in Rand's discussion of the latter. Rand thought of music as an art form and as having meaning. What she's saying we don't have a way of demonstrating in regard to music is the substantive content. But beauty is just how something looks (or it could be sounds or reads) to one. There isn't a substantive content.

I take Rand's answer as merely an attempt to explain what it is in the perceived entity or phenomenon which produces a reaction of beauty - just as we try to explain what properties of entities or phenomena produce the experience of color.

Maybe you're placing an out-of-scale degree of weight on Rand's answer because of Diana and OO people making a big deal of the issue of beauty. I wish we had the question Rand was asked. Sounds to me as if it was along the lines, What's Miss Rand's opinion of the saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? And that she didn't like the "whim" sound of the saying.

Regarding her comment about different standards for different races, I heard her say something about that on another occasion, maybe at the Ford Hall Forum, so I think I understand what she was talking about - the differences in the shapes of features and thus in proportionality. (Your comment about twins I don't understand. An Asian person who looks like a Caucasian person doesn't look Asian and vice versa.)

Did Diana and others on OO actually claim, as Rand seems to in her answer, that judgments of beauty are universal, or just that "Man's Life" is the standard of rational judgments of beauty?

Hsieh claimed, in her podcast, that when others' tastes in beauty differed from her own, they were "just really wrong." Her view therefore appeared to be that judgments of beauty are universal among rational people like her, and that disagreements with her judgments were indicators of irrationality and/or dishonesty. Her position was that there was a certain limited range of beauty which was broad enough to include some room for minor differences of opinion based on "personal" preferences, but outside of that, people were "really wrong" to judge something as beautiful.

I'm reminded of a statement re taste sensation which was in the manuscript of - but did not appear in the finished text of - a book I was editing. The book was on the subject of alcoholism, and was geared to the teenage market. The authors, a husband and wife team, were people who didn't drink at all. They were generally pretty good in their research, but they went off the mark a number of places in the manuscript of this particular book, so I had to do a lot of fact-checking and correcting.

In a passage where the subject was why people drink, they reported that there are people who say that wine makes a meal taste better, and then added that since alcohol dulls the senses, maybe those people just think that the food is tasting better.

I had a bit of difficulty convincing them (actually, the wife, who did the bulk of the writing) that if a person is experiencing an enhanced taste sensation, that's what the person is experiencing, there's no "what it really tastes like" against which to measure.

Ellen

[anthony]

That's usually the type of excuse that I get when I test Objectivists on their ability to follow Rand's prescribed methods of identifying what they claim with absolute certainty to be able to identify. That story's just a bit too short. The weather's too humid for my divining rod to work properly, but, honestly, I've found lots of water with it in the past.

Ellen, maybe you should have labeled your short short short story a "poem," because Objectivism accepts poetry as art, including very short poems, and therefore renaming/recategorizing it would be enough to make Tony realize that there's already more information in what you've presented than there is in most works of art about which Objectivists claim to know "true" and "actual" meanings, and artists' senses of life and metaphysical value-judgments.

Well, a further problem, whether the piece was Goldilocks length (not too long and not too short) or not, is that I don't have metaphysical value-judgments. I don't think the universe is weighted one way or the other with reference to humans except insofar as indisputably it's a universe where humans can exist. We're here.

Furthermore, I think that Rand's notion of metaphysical value-judgments clashes with her near-empty metaphysics stance.

Ellen

Jonathan's flailing of course. The J. we know and appreciate for, at the very least, sticking to his guns all this time(wrong and right) spots a gap and makes the most of it.

I like being kept on my toes, so I'll answer your request for a diagnosis of your piece, despite my earlier demurral citing lack of knowledge.

It's almost too predictably obvious, but going by what there is, it is a judgment upon reality. It's the dilemma of viewing existence as being unbearably beautiful - and brutal beyond belief, simultaneously. I don't think anyone's a stranger to this, especially those of a sensitive bent. For many, the dichotomy leads to a neutral and dulled place, in which reality is 'shut down' to a degree. Some may resort to dreamy

sentimentality, interspersed with moments of terror.

I think primacy of consciousness is the metaphysical premise of your sketch, at that time, isolated from you or your "unweighted" universe premise at present, I gather. To psychologise a little, it seems probable to me that the former represented your value-judgments as a girl and freshman.

(Of course, in your statement above you have begged the question - you make a metaphysical value-judgment (for autonomy in an impartial universe) although you reject the mv-j concept in the same breath.)

[anthony]

"Metaphysical value-judgments."

We all got 'em. Only questions are, do we realise it? did we borrow them? do we have the confidence

and independence (aka, "arrogant superiority") to form them ourselves?

[Brant Gaede]

Whether it's a "crack" or a chasm, you're entitled to make the former the latter all in the name of objectifying the conversation. The chasm of course can be filled in if possible for the sake of conformation to the "facts of reality." Objectifying subjective tastes and preferences is Objectivism. They remain subjective for changing the metaphysical nature of things is not identification. One needs to keep the conceptual hierarchy in mind. Rand embraced this when she--not Greenspan--embraced Austrian economics (subjective theory of value, the role of the business cycle and it's inevitability). She was right, while Greenspan helped make a gigantic, world-wide mess. We say this is an "Objective truth" not to redundate truth but to indicate that truth is Objectivism, which we can then debate if some asshole doesn't agree with her.

--Brant

arguing and debating and investigating are naturally important parts of Objectivism, but Rand eschewed that

[Brant Gaede]

"Metaphysical value-judgments."

We all got 'em. Only questions are, do we realise it? did we borrow them? do we have the confidence

and independence (aka, "arrogant superiority") to form them ourselves?

They're all subjective, of course. The objectification of value means that when the objectifier dies the value remains. This includes the death of all objectifiers. Thus gold has no intrinsic value, nor does anything else. If you were the last man on Earth would you back up the truck to Ft. Knox (or the local food store or put a bullet in your brain*)?

--Brant

or, the objectification of value means identifying and acknowledging its subjective nature and "metaphysical value-judgment" refers to the metaphysical nature of the valuer not any value per se

*watch out; there may still be women around who will value you and you should be able to value up to 300 in continuous impregnations--even more if artificial insemination is used causing the human population of Earth to recover in a century or two (for informational purposes only--don't try this at home--professional fornicator)

[anthony]

Whether it's a "crack" or a chasm, you're entitled to make the former the latter all in the name of objectifying the conversation. The chasm of course can be filled in if possible for the sake of conformation to the "facts of reality." Objectifying subjective tastes and preferences is Objectivism. They remain subjective for changing the metaphysical nature of things is not identification. One needs to keep the conceptual hierarchy in mind. Rand embraced this when she--not Greenspan--embraced Austrian economics (subjective theory of value, the role of the business cycle and it's inevitability). She was right, while Greenspan helped make a gigantic, world-wide mess. We say this is an "Objective truth" not to redundate truth but to indicate that truth is Objectivism, which we can then debate if some asshole doesn't agree with her.

--Brant

arguing and debating and investigating are naturally important parts of Objectivism, but Rand eschewed that

"Conceptual hierarchy". "Keeping it in mind." Exactly. How far down does one go until absolute values shift from objective values, to personal and subjective values? There are things you can't get away from (reality) and one thing you can't escape (yourself.) "Hierarchy" was my breakthrough originally, to understanding all that. The "pay off" amongst all our objectifying of existence, is rational selfishness. Or else we - each - are 'objects' in reality, not subjects.

[Jonathan]

I don't think that "beauty" and "music" are comparable such that it makes sense to substitute

"beauty" for "music" in Rand's discussion of the latter. Rand thought of music as an art form and as having meaning. What she's saying we don't have a way of demonstrating in regard to music is the substantive content. But beauty is just how something looks (or it could be sounds or reads) to one. There isn't a substantive content.

My purpose in mentioning Rand's comment on music in relation to beauty was only to clarify her criteria for objectivity and subjectivity in aesthetic judgments -- to address what she accepted as objective versus subjective in people's aesthetic judgments. That which a man "cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others—and therefore, cannot prove—which aspects of his experience are inherent in the object and which are contributed by his own consciousness" is subjective by her criteria. In contast, her notion of objective judgment was that it was the process of volitionally adhering to reality by following logic and reason using a clearly identified objective standard. Past and current judgments of beauty don't follow that process and therefore can't qualify as being objective. All past and current judgments of beauty have been ones in which those making them couldn't distinguish between which aspects are inherent in the object and which are contributed by their own consciousnesses.

(Even if a past or current judgment of beauty turned out to be accidentally right in a future time when an objective standard existed, it would still be subjective since it didn't follow Rand's process of objectivity. As I said on the OO thread on beauty, any judgments of beauty made prior to the identification of an objective standard of beauty that turned out to be right would be "like the wild guesses that a toddler might make when he knows nothing about math but nevertheless once in a while guesses the right answer when asked the sum of one number and another." We wouldn't call a such a toddler's correct wild guesses "objective" by Rand's criteria.)

Having said that, you do make a good technical point. I wasn't focusing on the "conceptual vocabulary" aspect of Rand's comments enough to recognize that those parts could also use adjustment. So, along with altering "music" to "beauty," change "common vocabulary" to "common, objective system of measurement," change "conceptual terms" to "objectively measurable terms," and change "conceptual vocabulary" to "objective system of measurement."

Regarding her comment about different standards for different races, I heard her say something about that on another occasion, maybe at the Ford Hall Forum, so I think I understand what she was talking about - the differences in the shapes of features and thus in proportionality. (Your comment about twins I don't understand. An Asian person who looks like a Caucasian person doesn't look Asian and vice versa.)

I have relatives of European descent who look more Asian than European. Since they're European, shouldn't they be judged by European standards of beauty according to Rand's notion of having different standards for different races? If not, what's the point of having the different racial standards? If a European can be judged to be beautiful by Asian standards, why not just eliminate the racial classifications and break it all the way down to the individual? For instance, "For the type of face that she has, which is lopsided, with a very indefinite jawline, very small eyes, beautiful mouth, and a long nose, she is beautiful."

I'm reminded of a statement re taste sensation which was in the manuscript of - but did not appear in the finished text of - a book I was editing. The book was on the subject of alcoholism, and was geared to the teenage market. The authors, a husband and wife team, were people who didn't drink at all. They were generally pretty good in their research, but they went off the mark a number of places in the manuscript of this particular book, so I had to do a lot of fact-checking and correcting.

In a passage where the subject was why people drink, they reported that there are people who say that wine makes a meal taste better, and then added that since alcohol dulls the senses, maybe those people just think that the food is tasting better.

I had a bit of difficulty convincing them (actually, the wife, who did the bulk of the writing) that if a person is experiencing an enhanced taste sensation, that's what the person is experiencing, there's no "what it really tastes like" against which to measure.

In saying that alcohol dulls the senses, did she mean that alcohol intoxicates people, and therefore people were only intoxicated into misidentifying food as tasting better? If so, was she so unfamiliar with the consumption of alcoholic beverages so as to incorrectly assume that a person would be intoxicated after a few sips of wine with dinner?

Anyway, one could make your same point about a starving shipwreck survivor having the opinion that a piece of half-rotten raw octopus that landed in his life raft was the most delicious thing that he ever tasted, or about a person who entered an eating contest and felt that his last bite of ten pounds of filet mignon was the worst tasting thing he had ever eaten. It tastes like what it tastes like to the person in the time, place and context that he's in. There's no "what it really tastes like."

J

[Jonathan]

That's usually the type of excuse that I get when I test Objectivists on their ability to follow Rand's prescribed methods of identifying what they claim with absolute certainty to be able to identify. That story's just a bit too short. The weather's too humid for my divining rod to work properly, but, honestly, I've found lots of water with it in the past.

Ellen, maybe you should have labeled your short short short story a "poem," because Objectivism accepts poetry as art, including very short poems, and therefore renaming/recategorizing it would be enough to make Tony realize that there's already more information in what you've presented than there is in most works of art about which Objectivists claim to know "true" and "actual" meanings, and artists' senses of life and metaphysical value-judgments.

Well, a further problem, whether the piece was Goldilocks length (not too long and not too short) or not, is that I don't have metaphysical value-judgments. I don't think the universe is weighted one way or the other with reference to humans except insofar as indisputably it's a universe where humans can exist. We're here.

Furthermore, I think that Rand's notion of metaphysical value-judgments clashes with her near-empty metaphysics stance.

Ellen

You remind me of Dominique. Not in specific attitude, but in method. As I understand it, her character was designed to represent the malevolent universe premise. I'm pretty sure that Rand stated that as her intention, and I know for certain that people associated with ARI have claimed that the content of the novel objectively reveals that Dominique had a malevolent view of existence. I disagree. We have no reason to believe that she had any view of existence per se, but only of the current culture in which she lived, and she had a very accurate one at that. And she also change her view of that culture when it changed.

J

[Brant Gaede]

The only reason I could eat that "octopus" was that nice chianti and flava beans that came with it.

--Brant

at first there were five of us--I didn't tell that to the ship's crew that rescued me, but I did inform the relatives

A-1 is the best--I had a case of it

[Brant Gaede]

That's usually the type of excuse that I get when I test Objectivists on their ability to follow Rand's prescribed methods of identifying what they claim with absolute certainty to be able to identify. That story's just a bit too short. The weather's too humid for my divining rod to work properly, but, honestly, I've found lots of water with it in the past.

Ellen, maybe you should have labeled your short short short story a "poem," because Objectivism accepts poetry as art, including very short poems, and therefore renaming/recategorizing it would be enough to make Tony realize that there's already more information in what you've presented than there is in most works of art about which Objectivists claim to know "true" and "actual" meanings, and artists' senses of life and metaphysical value-judgments.

Well, a further problem, whether the piece was Goldilocks length (not too long and not too short) or not, is that I don't have metaphysical value-judgments. I don't think the universe is weighted one way or the other with reference to humans except insofar as indisputably it's a universe where humans can exist. We're here.

Furthermore, I think that Rand's notion of metaphysical value-judgments clashes with her near-empty metaphysics stance.

Ellen

You remind me of Dominique. Not in specific attitude, but in method. As I understand it, her character was designed to represent the malevolent universe premise. I'm pretty sure that Rand stated that as her intention, and I know for certain that people associated with ARI have claimed that the content of the novel objectively reveals that Dominique had a malevolent view of existence. I disagree. We have no reason to believe that she had any view of existence per se, but only of the current culture in which she lived, and she had a very accurate one at that. And she also change her view of that culture when it changed.

J

The culture didn't change so much as Dominique learned of the impotence of evil with the destruction of Peter and Gail and the triumph of Howard over that culture and what a pipsqueak Ellseworth really was.

--Brant

Rand hanged it all on the impotence of evil and not sanctioning it

[Jonathan]

"Metaphysical value-judgments."

We all got 'em. Only questions are, do we realise it? did we borrow them? do we have the confidence

and independence (aka, "arrogant superiority") to form them ourselves?

Ah, so Ellen doesn't realize it!

Ellen is pretty damn sharp, but if she can't know her own mind as well as you do, then that's just further confirmation to me that Rand probably didn't realize what her true metaphysical value-judgments were either. And you don't either, Tony.

As I said earlier, her We The Living has a tragic ending. Therefore her sense of life and metaphysical value-judgments were that mankind is fated to struggle heroically but to inevitably fail. Howard Roark, her fictional ideal man, was an anarchist vigilante and fraud. He had to lie, cheat and destroy in order to prevail. Therefore Rand's view was that certain people are above the law, and have the right to initiate force against those whom they unsuccessfully conspired to defraud.

You, Tony, love Rand's novels, and therefore you also have a malevolent universe premise.

Why do you love books with tragic endings in which the heroine is slaughtered? Why do you make excuses for Howard Roark's fraud and anarchist vigilantism? Existence hater!

J

[Jonathan]

The culture didn't change so much as Dominique learned of the impotence of evil with the destruction of Peter and Gail and the triumph of Howard over that culture and what a pipsqueak Ellseworth really was.

--Brant

Rand hanged it all on the impotence of evil and not sanctioning it

No, Dominique couldn't have "learned of the impotence of evil" through Roark's having to resort to evil in order to triumph over it.

Rand's hanging it all on the impotence of evil is irrelevant. We're supposed to judge her art, not her intentions.

J

[Jonathan]

The only reason I could eat that "octopus" was that nice chianti and flava beans that came with it.

--Brant

at first there were five of us--I didn't tell that to the ship's crew that rescued me, but I did inform the relatives

A-1 is the best--I had a case of it

Now you've got me feeling peckish.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

It's almost too predictably obvious, but going by what there is, it is a judgment upon reality. It's the dilemma of viewing existence as being unbearably beautiful - and brutal beyond belief, simultaneously. I don't think anyone's a stranger to this, especially those of a sensitive bent. For many, the dichotomy leads to a neutral and dulled place, in which reality is 'shut down' to a degree. Some may resort to dreamy

sentimentality, interspersed with moments of terror.

I think primacy of consciousness is the metaphysical premise of your sketch, at that time, isolated from you or your "unweighted" universe premise at present, I gather. To psychologise a little, it seems probable to me that the former represented your value-judgments as a girl and freshman.

(Of course, in your statement above you have begged the question - you make a metaphysical value-judgment (for autonomy in an impartial universe) although you reject the mv-j concept in the same breath.)

Tony,

I'll tell you just what was in my mind.

I was lying on a bed in the downstairs guest room, daydreamily gazing out the window at the side yard, and a mischievous impulse entered my head, and I thought, "That would be clever," and wrote the little story.

That's all. Nothing more.

The year before, when I was in eighth grade, I'd memorized "reams" of Poe's poetry. (I could memorize poetry with great ease at that age, didn't need much effort.)

So I suppose you can diagnose that factum (my liking Poe's poetry) too, and again be wrong. I was a sunny dispositioned happy kid.

Re your assertion that we all have 'em (metaphysical value judgments), all men have Oedipal complexes. Freud said so.

What did Rand mean by the idea, m v-j? Something mixed up, a conflating of questions about man and about reality as such.

Ellen