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

[Ellen Stuttle]

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

I thought Rand just said that Dominique was herself in a bad mood. Did she somewhere explicitly say "malevolent universe premise" in connection with Dominique?

I don't know about claims by people associated with ARI. However, I thought that somewhere on this board Roger argued what you present as your opinion and you disagreed and said Dominique represents a malevolent view. Am I remembering backward which of you was arguing what?

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

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

But Roark didn't resort to evil, not as depicted in the novel. All he did was good and right except, he admitted, he shouldn't have ever helped Peter. Of course, if he hadn't, it wouldn't have been much of a novel. Might is right in one person, Roark, conflicts with that in another person, Wynand, begging the question of where the right really resides, but examining some different kinds of might through different types of characters, not just he and Wynand. There are effectively no politics in The Fountainhead. They are also rather weak in Atlas Shrugged and in Objectivism itself, which might help explain why Rand was uncomfortable with libertarianism. There is no Nietzcheism in libertarianism, a much more egalitarian philosophy. The politics were layered onto the top of her still developing philosophy when she was gearing up for her magnum opus and through the influence, in considerable part, of Isabel Paterson. That's why the heroes in AS didn't do, for the most part at least--the "evil" Howard Roark did. This, BTW, may help explain Rand's propensity for sicking lawyers onto people and her right to lie her way through her private life even eventually to the point of self damage, not just the damage to those around her. Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, is a cultural-intellectual artifact maintained like a figure in a wax museum by He who couldn't/wouldn't bury She, except literally. The true objectivity of Objectivism is the philosophy without Nietzsche. It's necessary to embrace this so the outright fascists can't worm their way inside. The glory of man is okay as long as it's also the glory of men (and women: man is the primary concept and men and women are derivative concepts so when men embrace "man" it's exactly the same as when women do too except too many women have no idea about this or think it's patriarchy--which is true too).

--Brant

editing to come if any needed

not neeed; my post is perfect!

Edited May 16, 2013 by Brant Gaede

[Ellen Stuttle]

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 othersand therefore, cannot provewhich 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.

Pause there. You used "aesthetic judgments" the same way in the previous post, the one I was replying to. I can't address everything at once, but looks like that conflation has to be addressed. Why are you including beauty in the category "aesthetic judgment"?

I thought you'd acknowledged that Rand didn't. I don't. Do you? I'm not thinking of beauty as a conceptual issue, and I don't think Rand was either. Thus "objectivity" as used in judgment doesn't pertain. The operative meaning of "objective" is relational between perceived and form of perception. I think Rand was thinking of beauty as being on the level of perceiving color. Somewhat more complicatedly, a reaction to perceived "harmony," but basically a perceptual response not a conceptual judgment.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Pause there. You used "aesthetic judgments" the same way in the previous post, the one I was replying to. I can't address everything at once, but looks like that conflation has to be addressed. Why are you including beauty in the category "aesthetic judgment"?

Beauty is a type of aesthetic judgment because aesthetics includes the study of beauty, and because the experience of beauty involves the act of rating/classifying -- judging. "This is more beautiful than that." "I judge this object to be beautiful."

I thought you'd acknowledged that Rand didn't. I don't. Do you. I'm not thinking of beauty as a conceptual issue, and I don't think Rand was either. Thus "objectivity" as used in judgment doesn't pertain. The operative meaning of "objective" is relational between perceived and form of perception. I think Rand was thinking of beauty as being on the level of perceiving color. Somewhat more complicatedly, a reaction to perceived "harmony" but basically a perceptual response not a conceptual judgment.

I don't think that Rand saw beauty on the level of perceiving color, but on the level of evaluating the truth or falsehood of a mathematical proposition, or of evaluating whether or not musical notes were in tune and harmonious with each other. I think that she believed that judging the "harmony" of the "constituent elements" of the human face was as objective as judging the mathematically precise harmony of the musical notes G, B and D -- just as surely as two plus three equals five, an "indefinite jawline" plus "very small eyes" objectively equals "positively ugly."

J

[Jonathan]

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

I thought Rand just said that Dominique was herself in a bad mood. Did she somewhere explicitly say "malevolent universe premise" in connection with Dominique?

I don't know about claims by people associated with ARI. However, I thought that somewhere on this board Roger argued what you present as your opinion and you disagreed and said Dominique represents a malevolent view. Am I remembering backward which of you was arguing what?

Ellen

I'm not totally sure, but I think that Rand did say somewhere that Dominique was intended to represent the malevolent universe premise. As for ARIans saying so, I just did a quick Google search and found that at least one of the pieces in Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead includes the statements, "Dominique reflects 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," and, "Believing that he cannot succeed in the long run, Dominique thinks that she can hasten his defeat by deflecting commissions and thereby spare him greater suffering. At one level, Dominique is attempting to convince herself that her idealism is not viable; Roark's failure would reinforce her malevolent universe premise."

As for my previous argument with Roger, yes, you're remembering backward which of us was arguing what.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Pause there. You used "aesthetic judgments" the same way in the previous post, the one I was replying to. I can't address everything at once, but looks like that conflation has to be addressed. Why are you including beauty in the category "aesthetic judgment"?

Beauty is a type of aesthetic judgment because aesthetics includes the study of beauty, and because the experience of beauty involves the act of rating/classifying -- judging. "This is more beautiful than that." "I judge this object to be beautiful."

Traditionally aesthetics included the study of beauty, but I thought you agreed that Rand's aesthetics departs from the traditional approach. She doesn't talk about the issue of beauty anywhere in her writing, or not that I remember (do you know of a place where she does?). The Lexicon entry I quoted was from a Q&A - in fall 1976, more than a year after she'd ceased writing The Ayn Rand Letter.

The experience of color "involves the act of rating/classifying -- judging. 'This is [bluer] than that.'. 'I judge this object to be [saturated blue].'"

I thought you'd acknowledged that Rand didn't. I don't. Do you? I'm not thinking of beauty as a conceptual issue, and I don't think Rand was either. Thus "objectivity" as used in judgment doesn't pertain. The operative meaning of "objective" is relational between perceived and form of perception. I think Rand was thinking of beauty as being on the level of perceiving color. Somewhat more complicatedly, a reaction to perceived "harmony," but basically a perceptual response not a conceptual judgment.

I don't think that Rand saw beauty on the level of perceiving color, but on the level of evaluating the truth or falsehood of a mathematical proposition, or of evaluating whether or not musical notes were in tune and harmonious with each other. I think that she believed that judging the "harmony" of the "constituent elements" of the human face was as objective as judging the mathematically precise harmony of the musical notes G, B and D -- just as surely as two plus three equals five, an "indefinite jawline" plus "very small eyes" objectively equals "positively ugly."

You copied my post before I made a couple punctuation edits. I corrected those in the quote.

I should have said, "Thus 'objectivity' as used in conceptual judgment doesn't pertain."

As I said, I think she saw it somewhat more complicatedly than perception of color but basically on that level, with the harmony of the proportions being intrinsic and the beauty reaction "objective" - in the meaning of Objectivism's tripartite division, intrinsic, objective, subjective.

I'm wondering, from the way you keep using "objective," if you ever learned that trichotomy. It seems to have been altered or abandoned as time went on. However, because Rand said in her answer that beauty is neither intrinsic nor subjective, I think she was referring to the original use of the trichotomy in regard to the issue of perception.

I suppose I'd best add here, although I don't want to get bogged in a discussion of the issue, that I consider Rand's theory of perception seriously flawed, with the flaws having consequences for everything else in her epistemology, and for the theory of volition. I.e., non-trivial.

Here, I was just trying to say my understanding of that brief off-the-top answer quoted in the Lexicon.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Traditionally aesthetics included the study of beauty, but I thought you agreed that Rand's aesthetics departs from the traditional approach.

I said that Rand's Esthetics departs from traditional aesthetics in that Rand identified it as "the study of art" where traditional aesthetics included much more than the study of art. Objectivism doesn't hold that beauty is essential or required in art, but that doesn't mean that beauty is excluded from the Objectivist Esthetics. I know of nowhere in Rand's writings, or in those of her associates, that Beauty is said to not be an issue of Esthetics.

Also, the Ayn Rand Lexicon's "Conceptual Index" lists Beauty under the category of Esthetics.

She doesn't talk about the issue of beauty anywhere in her writing, or not that I remember (do you know of a place where she does?). The Lexicon entry I quoted was from a Q&A - in fall 1976, more than a year after she'd ceased writing The Ayn Rand Letter.

Rand doesn't address the issue of beauty directly or formally in her writings, at least not that I recall, but she does make reference to interpreting beauty in art as having conceptual meaning.

I think that official Objectivist courses included information that hasn't been published elsewhere, other than perhaps in OPAR, in which Peikoff says that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, nor in the object itself, but "in the object – as judged by a rational beholder." So, if he got that from Rand, or if she at least endorsed it, we're back to the problem of people simply declaring themselves to be rational beholders, and then potentially labeling anyone who disagrees with their tastes to be irrational beholders. (In which case I declare myself the most rational of all beholders, and also to have the most knowledge and hands-on professional experience in all of the visual arts than anyone else in Objectivist circles. Therefore my tastes are the most objective, and anyone with differing tastes is just really wrong.)

The experience of color "involves the act of rating/classifying -- judging. 'This is [bluer] than that.'. 'I judge this object to be [saturated blue].'"

You copied my post before I made a couple punctuation edits. I corrected those in the quote.

I should have said, "Thus 'objectivity' as used in conceptual judgment doesn't pertain."

As I said, I think she saw it somewhat more complicatedly than perception of color but basically on that level, with the harmony of the proportions being intrinsic and the beauty reaction "objective" - in the meaning of Objectivism's tripartite division, intrinsic, objective, subjective.

Okay, then I think that you and I are saying the same thing.

I'm wondering, from the way you keep using "objective," if you ever learned that trichotomy. It seems to have been altered or abandoned as time went on. However, because Rand said in her answer that beauty is neither intrinsic nor subjective, I think she was referring to the original use of the trichotomy in regard to the issue of perception.

Yes, I'm familiar with the trichotomy, and I'm also familiar with Rand's and other Objectivists' inconsistent uses of the terms, which is why I referred to Rand's comments on music and a man's inability to distinguish between what's in the object and what has been contributed by his consciousness. Those comments are valuable in informing our understanding of what she meant by "objectivity" and "subjectivity," especially as those terms apply to judgments of experiencing aesthetic phenomena.

I suppose I'd best add here, although I don't want to get bogged in a discussion of the issue, that I consider Rand's theory of perception seriously flawed, with the flaws having consequences for everything else in her epistemology, and for the theory of volition. I.e., non-trivial.

Here, I was just trying to say my understanding of that brief off-the-top answer quoted in the Lexicon.

Understood.

J

[tmj]

Look I'm the dumb cousin here but, I'd like to see a bogging down of the flawed theory of perception, maybe another thread ?

[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?

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

Busted! Got me.

Somebody had to find out. Naturally, I found accord with Rand's literature, seeing as I share her malevolent universe premise!

(But how did I recognize it, seeing as we can't know such things..? Huh.)

You must have missed where I said Romanticism is made of sterner stuff; no blushing violet is it.

It must pertain to reality to have any thrust. Guess what, in reality people sometimes suffer and always die.

But further:

How do we avoid suffering, how do we deal with it, and does suffering and mortality define man's life?

Take a look at this passage:

"She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it.

Life had been,if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little hole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity - did it matter?

Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible."

===========

Here is the young death of a central character (clear-eyed Kira is one of my two favorites in Rand's fiction) but ~almost~ contradictorily, an affirmation of life too.

It took her death, in fact, to achieve that target - in Rand's intent, I think.

I think there's a special trick to appreciating Romanticism - fiction especially- and that is to read with double vision: at the level of explicit reality (actions by the protagonists, and so on) AND at the level of metaphysical abstraction both together.

Go one way, and it falls into the hole of dull 'literalism' - like following a text-book, you recall I argued with an ultra-literalist on O.O - and going the other, becomes airy-fairy rationalism. (So bad boy Roark is an individual-rights transgressing fraud whom Rand should have had locked up because Rand told us that you must never initiate force.Blah-blah.)

Its about the IS and the OUGHT, that Romanticism bridges. Also about the life of one man and equally life of all men ever.

J., I assume you do not see the same metaphysical values as me in WtL?

Happy endings are not indicative of Romaticism, so long as the character's life was purposeful and their own.

The better known AS has such a finale, in the second-last sentence Rand ever wrote in fiction: "The road is cleared", said Galt. "We are going back to the world".

[Ellen Stuttle]

Also, the Ayn Rand Lexicon's "Conceptual Index" lists Beauty under the category of Esthetics.

I hadn't noticed that, or if I had, I hadn't remembered it. I just did a quick read-through of the "Conceptual Index." "Benevolent Universe Premise" and "Malevolent Universe Premise" are listed under Metaphysics, as well as under Psychology. My theory about those two terms is that Rand was already using them before she worked out details of her philosophy in process of writing Atlas and she kept them despite the disparity with her subsequent near-empty-metaphysics stance. Nathaniel says in his memoir that Rand asked him when he first met her if he had a benevolent or malevolent universe view, and he found the question odd. I'll look up the passage in a bit.

Rand doesn't address the issue of beauty directly or formally in her writings, at least not that I recall, but she does make reference to interpreting beauty in art as having conceptual meaning.

I'm not recognizing what you're referring to. Can you specify?

I think that official Objectivist courses included information that hasn't been published elsewhere, other than perhaps in OPAR, in which Peikoff says that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, nor in the object itself, but "in the object – as judged by a rational beholder." So, if he got that from Rand, or if she at least endorsed it, we're back to the problem of people simply declaring themselves to be rational beholders, and then potentially labeling anyone who disagrees with their tastes to be irrational beholders.

Can you give a page or at least section reference?

Earlier today I read a few passages in OPAR - for the first time. When that book was published, the first thing I turned to was the section on volition, which section irritated me so much with the internal inconsistencies and the assertions, I never bothered to read the book. Mostly my impression of its content comes from quoted passages I've seen in other people's posts.

If indeed Peikoff got "in the object - as judged by a rational beholder" from Rand, or if she endorsed that formulation, then she was thinking of beauty on a more-than-perceptual level, since she considered perception automatic, so it wouldn't involve rational versus non-rational beholders. To me her reported answer from the 1976 Q&A sounds as if she presumed that all observers would classify the same things as beautiful.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Look I'm the dumb cousin here but, I'd like to see a bogging down of the flawed theory of perception, maybe another thread ?

Maybe another time. Too many irons in the fire at the moment.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Oops, something I forgot to ask in #160:

J, what's your source for the wording you describe as Objectivism's definition of "objectivity"?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Here's the passage I mentioned in post #160 from Nathaniel's memoir.

It's on pp. 45-46 of Judgment Day and pp. 37-38 of MYWAR. The only differences I noticed between the two versions are minor: a few slight punctuation changes , one word-order change, a preposition change, and the dropping of italics for NB's answers "Oh, yes" and "Of course."

Ayn said that there were three questions she wanted to ask me, questions that touched on the essentials of how one saw human existence. What did I think of reason? What did I think of man? What did I think of life?

[skipping the part about reason]

"When you ask me what I think of man," I said, proceeding to her second question, "I'm not sure I know what you mean." She explained that she meant, Did I think man was evil by nature or good? I found the question odd; I did not believe either. I thought that we were born with a potential for evil or for greatness. I did not believe in original sin, and I did not believe in original virtue. Frank broke his silence to laugh at this. She said she agreed with me, but this was not what she was asking. Did the concept of human being or man evoke a positive response in me or a negative one? "Put that way, I would say a positive one," I responded. Did I see man as depraved by nature? Of course I didn't. Did I see him as heroic, at least potentially? "Oh, yes." This satisfied her.

As to what I thought of life, this meant, Did I see life as malevolent or benevolent? Again, I thought the question strange, explaining that I saw life as neutral and as containing both malevolent and benevolent possibilities. But, Ayn asked, I did not think of existence as intrinsically evil? "Of course not." I did not think that the universe was such that man was doomed to defeat and tragedy? "No." Did I think that life was such that success and happiness were in principle possible for man, if man acted rationally and realistically? "Of course." This is what she meant, she explained, by the concept of a benevolent universe. "The benevolent universe premise," she called it.

"I hate the idea," she said in her thick accent, "that the essence if life is frustration, futility, and tragedy. It's very Russian, you know. That's one of the reasons I love America. In the American sense of life, happiness is normal. With all its flaws and contradictions, this is a pro-life culture. In spite of the guff about religion, I believe it's also pro-reason and pro-man, in its deepest 'instincts.'"

Ellen

[Serapis Bey]

Here's the passage I mentioned in post #160 from Nathaniel's memoir.

It's on pp. 45-46 of Judgment Day and pp. 37-38 of MYWAR. The only differences I noticed between the two versions are minor: a few slight punctuation changes , one word-order change, a preposition change, and the dropping of italics for NB's answers "Oh, yes" and "Of course."

Ayn said that there were three questions she wanted to ask me, questions that touched on the essentials of how one saw human existence. What did I think of reason? What did I think of man? What did I think of life?

[skipping the part about reason]

"When you ask me what I think of man," I said, proceeding to her second question, "I'm not sure I know what you mean." She explained that she meant, Did I think man was evil by nature or good? I found the question odd; I did not believe either. I thought that we were born with a potential for evil or for greatness. I did not believe in original sin, and I did not believe in original virtue. Frank broke his silence to laugh at this. She said she agreed with me, but this was not what she was asking. Did the concept of human being or man evoke a positive response in me or a negative one? "Put that way, I would say a positive one," I responded. Did I see man as depraved by nature? Of course I didn't. Did I see him as heroic, at least potentially? "Oh, yes." This satisfied her.

As to what I thought of life, this meant, Did I see life as malevolent or benevolent? Again, I thought the question strange, explaining that I saw life as neutral and as containing both malevolent and benevolent possibilities. But, Ayn asked, I did not think of existence as intrinsically evil? "Of course not." I did not think that the universe was such that man was doomed to defeat and tragedy? "No." Did I think that life was such that success and happiness were in principle possible for man, if man acted rationally and realistically? "Of course." This is what she meant, she explained, by the concept of a benevolent universe. "The benevolent universe premise," she called it.

"I hate the idea," she said in her thick accent, "that the essence if life is frustration, futility, and tragedy. It's very Russian, you know. That's one of the reasons I love America. In the American sense of life, happiness is normal. With all its flaws and contradictions, this is a pro-life culture. In spite of the guff about religion, I believe it's also pro-reason and pro-man, in its deepest 'instincts.'"

Ellen

I've been accused of having a Russian soul on more than one occasion.

Alice Rosenbaum had the soul of a Jew -- utopian idealism.

[tmj]

SB

I get the sense of utopian as derogatory, if true, based on what? That human nature is enough of an impediment to make the realization of a rational society so highly impropable that it should be considered impossible?

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'd like to describe a couple beauty experiences of a breath-taking sort. I'm wondering how experiences like these would be fit into O'ist ideas of beauty.

One is in process now, just past its most spectacular peak.

Along about half of the back wall of our house there's a row of Azalea bushes. The height is such that a splash of blossoms can be seen across the lower part of the dining room windows. The color is a flame orange, or red with an orange cast, a setting-sun sort of color. It's one of my favorite colors. The back of the house faces South. Thus from dawn to dusk whatever sunlight is shining makes the blossoms glisten and glow and flash with sparks in their depths as if the fire were residing in them.

The dining room can be entered from three directions: a back hallway to one side, the kitchen to the other, or, coming down the stairs from ithe upper floor and turning round the bend from the living room area. Each time I enter from any of those ways during the about two weeks when the blossoms are in full display, I feel a shock of indrawn breath at the sight. I've seen that blossom display many times over the course of the twenty springs we've lived in this house, but it still produces a surprised startle reaction. And then I want to stand there and look for awhile, "feasting" my eyes on the details.

The other experience was the only time I've ever seen the moon (Earth's moon) through a telescope.

This was a year ago spring. I'd gone with Larry to the regional meeting of the AAPT, American Association of Physics Teachers. The place was a private school called the Thayer Academy. The school has a small dome-encased telescope, and a smaller outdoors one. The moon was at half.

After the banquet lecture, a couple of the school's physics faculty members invited those who wanted to go to do some viewing. While some of the people were in the domed structure, a few of us went to look at the moon through the small telescope.

Our host-guide made some remarks as he got the telescope positioned and calibrated. "Astronomers tend to be negative about the moon," he said, "because moonlight interferes with viewing. But I think that anyone who could look at this and not have an 'Ooh!' reaction doesn't have a soul."

I was first up to look, deference to the female in the group, and just after he said 'Ooh,' as he was finishing the sentence, I said with an audible sharp intake of breath, "OOH!"

Everyone laughed, and I said, "It wasn't deliberate. It's amazing!"

The shine, the size, the clarity. The edge of the silver glisten was serrated in stretches so that one could tell it was falling across mountain ranges. Just an amazing sight.

I don't see, however, how "harmony" could be enlisted to explain these reactions. Or another of the type, which I suppose most everyone has experienced: the indrawn-breath "Ooh!" at certain bursts in a fireworks display.

Ellen

[ginny]

Sounds beautiful, Ellen. I wonder whether Obj's don't really appreciate nature, since it's natural instead of artificial and manmade. Some hangovers from Dagny rejoicing in the beauty of a billboard. I think nature has a beauty of its own that doesn't require explanation.

[BaalChatzaf]

Sounds beautiful, Ellen. I wonder whether Obj's don't really appreciate nature, since it's natural instead of artificial and manmade. Some hangovers from Dagny rejoicing in the beauty of a billboard. I think nature has a beauty of its own that doesn't require explanation.

Nature IS. And it has been IS-ing for much longer than homo sapien has been around.

And Nature never makes mistakes, because Nature has no choice in the way it operations. Nature unfolds according to inherent physical laws. Man, on the other hand, can pursue false leads and make mistakes which Nature ultimately corrects.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

And Nature never makes mistakes, because Nature has no choice in the way it operations. Nature unfolds according to inherent physical laws. Man, on the other hand, can pursue false leads and make mistakes which Nature ultimately corrects.

This whole approach is based on the premise that man is not part of nature, that man is a freak standing outside of nature instead (hat-tip to NB).

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

And Nature never makes mistakes, because Nature has no choice in the way it operations. Nature unfolds according to inherent physical laws. Man, on the other hand, can pursue false leads and make mistakes which Nature ultimately corrects.

This whole approach is based on the premise that man is not part of nature, that man is a freak standing outside of nature instead (hat-tip to NB).

Michael

Yeah, he'd do better with "freak of nature," but that's next door to going semantical on him.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Excerpt from a letter of AR's to Isabel Paterson:

March 13, 1948

[....]

Of course, the alleged idea that one can be "practical" without principles stumps me completely. I, too, am simply unable to understand what it is people think they mean when they say it.

The only explanation I see is the "malevolent universe" idea. This case interests me, in a sort of morbid way, because it does seem to bear out rather obviously what Albert and I had concluded on the subject. People nowadays think that the universe is malevolent, that reality is evil, that by the essential nature of the world, man is doomed to suffering and frustration; and therefore, if any fundamental principles could be discovered in objective reality, it would have to be the principles of evil. So these people prefer to avoid discovering such principles, and they think that to be practical one has to cheat reality in some way, that one can hope to survive only by fooling the laws of the universe (though how they expect to do that I can't imagine), since their natural fate should really be horror and destruction. Isn't that, in effect, what Levine believes, if he says that any tolerable periods of history were only a lucky accident? Would you say that that is the explanation?

[On the other hand, she wasn't feeling hopeful about the then-current world - my interjection. I'm skipping some paragraphs between the above and the next.]

I am not surprised that another congressman has discovered The God in the Machine. I think it is wonderful that he did. You yourself told me that the ideas of your book would take a long time to get to people--and if they are reaching a few people now, I am glad to think that there is some intelligence left in the world. But, oh God! How slow it is!

You know, it's strange, but I am getting pessimistic about the state of the world for the first time, after all these years. While the general trend of public opinion is going our way more obviously than ever before, and while there are a few indications of people doing some thinking in the right direction, I suddenly find myself wondering whether things are hopeless. By that I mean that I am not certain, as I was before, that we will see an intellectual renaissance on a large scale in our lifetime, or see the right ideas being applied in practice, in politics. I always thought that we would see it, but now I am doubting it. The reason is that the scale of horror in Europe has reached such a blatant state that I am beginning to think there can be no intellectual redemption for the whole present generation of people who permit this to go on. There is now no room to plead ignorance or confusion. If people still talk about "the middle of the road," they are much worse than cowards; they are truly and totally corrupt.

[....] I think the Czechoslovakian and Finnish issues were the straw for this camel's back.

I can't think of anything cheerful at the moment, except for personal matters. My book is going well, the flowers and the grounds here are wonderful right now, this is the only beautiful time of the year in California. You said, "Love to all, wish I were there." Oh God, how I wish you were!

Love from both of us,

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Excerpt from a letter of AR's to Isabel Paterson:

April 3, 1948

[....]

Yes, I agree with you completely that it is the "irrationalist" philosophy that leads to such a conception as a "malevolent universe." If it were possible to conceive man without his rational faculty (which is inconceivable), one would have to say that the universe is malevolent indeed.

Of course I agree with you when you say that you cannot really form a concept of a malevolent universe. It is a contradiction in terms. My own basic definition of evil is that it is destruction, as you say; therefore, a malevolent universe could not exist. I think that any philosophical error, by definition, proceeds from or leads to some conception which is actually inconceivable. I am merely interested to know what sort of error leads people to some of the terrible notions they hold. As near as I can guess, without becoming a Beaver myself, I think those people believe that the universe may go on existing as inanimate matter, but that it is essentially malevolent to man--that man is a kind of misfit on this earth, who does not belong here and cannot survive because this world is improper for him and, therefore, dooms him to suffering and destruction. I know how many holes there are in such an idea. But, as you say, since they have discarded reason and logic, holes or contradictions do not bother them. They leap over it by saying that everything is a contradiction, that life is illogical, etc. I am thinking of the girl who made this sort of criticism of your book to John Chamberlain in his school class, you remember. I think I said at the time that that girl's attitude contained the root of all evil on earth.

Incidentally, have you noticed a new kind of philosophical party line--not Communist party, but the general argument of collectivists? I am now encountering it repeatedly in articles and book reviews. When the present-day collectivists find themselves smack up against the dead end of the final results of their own ideas, they try to wiggle out by saying that man's life and the universe are essentially a paradox, or else a "dynamic paradox"--and we're supposed to let it go at that and swallow any contradiction. Is such a thing as a "paradoxical universe" conceivable?

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Busted! Got me.

Somebody had to find out. Naturally, I found accord with Rand's literature, seeing as I share her malevolent universe premise!

(But how did I recognize it, seeing as we can't know such things..? Huh.)

You must have missed where I said Romanticism is made of sterner stuff; no blushing violet is it.

It must pertain to reality to have any thrust. Guess what, in reality people sometimes suffer and always die.

But further:

How do we avoid suffering, how do we deal with it, and does suffering and mortality define man's life?

Take a look at this passage:

"She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it.

Life had been,if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little hole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity - did it matter?

Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible."

===========

Here is the young death of a central character (clear-eyed Kira is one of my two favorites in Rand's fiction) but ~almost~ contradictorily, an affirmation of life too.

It took her death, in fact, to achieve that target - in Rand's intent, I think.

I think there's a special trick to appreciating Romanticism - fiction especially- and that is to read with double vision: at the level of explicit reality (actions by the protagonists, and so on) AND at the level of metaphysical abstraction both together.

Actually, your "special trick to appreciating Romanticism" is to arbitrarily ignore any aspects of a work of art which don't support your predetermined judgment of it and its creator.

Go one way, and it falls into the hole of dull 'literalism' - like following a text-book, you recall I argued with an ultra-literalist on O.O - and going the other, becomes airy-fairy rationalism. (So bad boy Roark is an individual-rights transgressing fraud whom Rand should have had locked up because Rand told us that you must never initiate force.Blah-blah.)

Its about the IS and the OUGHT, that Romanticism bridges. Also about the life of one man and equally life of all men ever.

J., I assume you do not see the same metaphysical values as me in WtL?

Happy endings are not indicative of Romaticism, so long as the character's life was purposeful and their own.

Wrong. Objectivism's view is that there are false versions of Romanticism. They include tragic endings. They mean that the artist's view of existence is that man possesses volition only in regard to consciousness, but not in regard to existence -- in regard to his own character and value choices but not in regard of the possibility of achieving his goals in reality. Heroic characters who experience tragic endings represent, according to Objectivism, the artist's belief that man must lead a heroic life and fight for his values even though he is doomed to defeat by a malevolent fate over which he has no control.

That is the view presented in We The Living. From a truly benevolent universe point of view, there was no legitimate reason for Kira's death. There's no good reason that she couldn't have successfully escaped to freedom and lived.

The better known AS has such a finale, in the second-last sentence Rand ever wrote in fiction: "The road is cleared", said Galt. "We are going back to the world".

Why are you talking about Atlas Shrugged? Just as you've decided to selectively and arbitrarily ignore any of Shakespeare's works which don't support your silly, predetermined judgments of his sense of life and metaphysical value-judgments, I'm ignoring certain works by Rand. Her true sense of life and metaphysical value-judgments are in We The Living and The Fountainhead. Come on, Tony, try to pay attention. I'm using your method of detecting metaphysical value-judgments, so don't bring up stuff that is irrelevant to your method.

J

[Jonathan]

Rand doesn't address the issue of beauty directly or formally in her writings, at least not that I recall, but she does make reference to interpreting beauty in art as having conceptual meaning.

I'm not recognizing what you're referring to. Can you specify?

Not at the moment. I'm thinking of Rand's comments, in the Romantic Manifesto and elsewhere, of beautiful objects representing the good, and of ugliness and flaws as being a vicious attack on values. I'll look for quotes when I have access to my Rand books again.

I think that official Objectivist courses included information that hasn't been published elsewhere, other than perhaps in OPAR, in which Peikoff says that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, nor in the object itself, but "in the object – as judged by a rational beholder." So, if he got that from Rand, or if she at least endorsed it, we're back to the problem of people simply declaring themselves to be rational beholders, and then potentially labeling anyone who disagrees with their tastes to be irrational beholders.

Can you give a page or at least section reference?

I don't have the book in front of me, but I just did a Google search on the quote, and one of the resulting links says OPAR page 448.

Earlier today I read a few passages in OPAR - for the first time. When that book was published, the first thing I turned to was the section on volition, which section irritated me so much with the internal inconsistencies and the assertions, I never bothered to read the book. Mostly my impression of its content comes from quoted passages I've seen in other people's posts.

If indeed Peikoff got "in the object - as judged by a rational beholder" from Rand, or if she endorsed that formulation, then she was thinking of beauty on a more-than-perceptual level, since she considered perception automatic, so it wouldn't involve rational versus non-rational beholders. To me her reported answer from the 1976 Q&A sounds as if she presumed that all observers would classify the same things as beautiful.

Yes, and I think that's the mindset of the vast majority of inhabitants of the Objectivist Movement. Hearing them tell me what is beautiful and what is not is kind of like hearing a 4-year-old niece tell me, with absolute certainty, that pink Hello Kitty® products are the most beautiful things in all of existence. There's really no maturity or experience to inform their tastes.

J

[Jonathan]

Oops, something I forgot to ask in #160:

J, what's your source for the wording you describe as Objectivism's definition of "objectivity"?

Ellen

It's not a quote from Rand or anything, but my own condensing and summarizing of what I took to be her position based on reading her comments from a variety of sources on the subjects of "objectivity," "objective," "judgment," "evaluation," "measurement," etc.

I know of no place that Rand offered her own specific definition of "objectivity." If I recall correctly, her writings on the subject spend a lot of time scolding and complaining about what objectivity is not, but don't ever get around to her normal practice of offering her own concise definition.

Ellen, in an earlier post you had said that "objective" is "relational between perceived and form of perception." I think that's right, but not quite detailed enough. Rand's view was that it was a properly rational relationship between object and viewer, which, in Objectivist terms, means volitional adherence to reality, which means the employment of logic/reason, which means that, in matters of judgment or measurement, such as those of objectively measuring the "harmony" of beauty, one must clearly identify an objective standard of measurement upon which to base ones logical, volitional adherences to reality.

J