“A is A” – The Moral Significance of Atlas Shrugged: A progressive’s understanding of the philosophy of Ayn Rand
John Saudino
2011
Originally written in response to the following question: What does the story of Atlas Shrugged have to say about the relative powers of good and evil and the conditions under which one is victorious over the other?
Except where indicated all citations are from Atlas Shrugged
“A is A”. When it appears in a limited context, this fundamental axiom of objectivism, taken from Aristotle, can seem like a mystic mantra, an empty tautology. It is not until its full implications are fleshed out in the pages of Atlas Shruggedthat this “law of identity” and Rand’s entire philosophy acquire their ultimate moral significance. The novel compels the reader to contemplate and reevaluate his standards of good and evil in this world and discover the circumstances under which one is victorious over the other. This is done in many ways and at various points throughout the narrative.
One typical device Rand uses to explore ethical principles is presenting the reader with characters who serve as clearly opposing moral antagonists. It is significant to note that the polar opposites on her scale of ethics are not only notdivided by culture, class, and upbringing, but that these essential formative variables are set at equilibrium by virtue of the fact that two of the most significant sets of paired examples in fact involve siblings. We are just as inspired by the heroism and integrity of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden as we are repulsed by the spinelessness and hypocrisy of their siblings James and Philip. This irrelevance of social class with regard to virtue is taken even further in that Rand, in great contradiction to her purported elitism, poignantly exemplifies her moral standards in some of the poorest and most working class characters in the book: like Cherryl Brooks, Jeff Allan and the engineers and firemen of Taggart Transcontinental, who unanimously volunteer to man the first run of the John Galt line in spite of the propaganda against it. In fact it is far more depraved hereditary aristocrats like the Starns siblings, or “the intellects who seek escape from moral values” (976) like Dr. Stadler who are the real villains in Atlas Shrugged, not “the masses”. The point here is an important one for Rand, for as she once pointed out in her “Essentials of Objectivism”, “Objectivism rejects any form of determinism, the belief that man is a victim of forces beyond his control (such as God, fate, upbringing, genes, or economic conditions)”. Virtue is not a question of circumstances outside one’s control; it is a question of choice, the choice to accept the primacy of reason, “the recognition that reality is final, that A is A and that truth is true” (965), that “man’s reason ishis moral faculty” (931).
By taking over the airwaves John Galt sends out his message to a world on the verge of utter barbarism. He offers those who still maintain some remnant of virtue the choice that will save them “not to returnto morality…but to discoverit.” (925) The key to morality is the virtue of independent rational thought “…that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not…the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.” (931) Doing this may seem simple enough on the surface; it is a choice anyone can make, but humanity has been led astray at the top by centuries of pernicious philosophy, by “the mystics of faith” and “the mystics of muscle” i.e. by the medieval clergy and by the modern intelligentsia, both of whom are committed to the destruction of reason. The first resorts to mysticism and the powerful weapons of fear and guilt, the other uses the moral and epistemological depravity of modern philosophy, which today is represented by relativism, constructivism and postmodernism. These philosophical positions, which have only become more widespread since Rand’s death, are depicted in the novel by the philosophical propositions made by Dr. Simon Pritchett and by Dr. Floyd Ferris who has written a book titled “Why do you Think you Think?”.The excerpts of their treatises presented in the novel do come across as caricatures, but they are nonetheless shockingly close to the positions maintained by some modern philosophers.
As one of the most consciously evil members of the looters’ cabal Dr. Ferris gives us a bit of insight into the specific purpose of such teaching. While defending his constructivist treatise to the perturbed yet spineless Dr. Stadler, he says, speaking of the stupid public that his book is intended for, “they’ll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue—a highly intellectual virtue—out of what they know to be their sin.” Thus man is induced by this philosophy to abandon his rational nature which is the very essence of his morality and instead to indulge in “the source of all his evils, … the act of blanking out”. (931) Why would the professor “who takes pleasure in crippling the minds of his students” (958) be so keen on propagating this evil? John Galt explains: “Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages—and power, the power to rule by force, has always been their only lust.” (956).
“The mystics of muscle” have had a profound and pernicious impact not only at universities but upon the entire culture, in the fields of literature, psychology, journalism and of course politics. The central message of the novel, however, is that the evenhanded justice of reality will spare no one, neither the individual nor the immoral society that he has supported. Rand gives us a particularly poignant meting out of this justice in the form of the Winston Tunnel catastrophe. The complex chain of events leading to the asphyxiation of hundreds of passengers and the destruction of the entire tunnel is meticulously illustrated as the consequence of a society that has eliminated personal integrity and individual responsibility. However, it is not only the railroad employees that are indicted but also the “victims” aboard the train. As the reader’s eye probes through the cabins in search of “one good soul in Sodom” we find that in a society this decadent, no one is free of guilt. The sociology professor “who taught that individual ability is of no consequence”, the trash journalist, the school teacher who has made her students into “miserable cowards by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil”, the businessman who got his company through a government favor, the economist who believes “intelligence plays no part in industrial production”, the misanthropic publisher, the decadent playwright, the professor of philosophy “who taught that there is no mind…no reality…no logic…no principles…no rights…no morality” (559) are all in their own way responsible for their ignominious end in the tunnel, with Wyatt’s torch as their last vision of the world they have helped to destroy.
As the factories, farms, and infrastructure of the world’s last functioning economy fall into ruins and desperate mobs pillage the countryside, each and every man is reduced to destroyer and destroyed. In the meantime the leadership continues to deny reality. Even after Galt’s speech and Dagny’s advice to “get out of the way” they stubbornly cling to their delusions with the same depravity that has crippled them and the entire society. They still insist on their “refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance but the refusal to know”. (931)
As Orwell also pointed out in 1984, one of the main prerequisites for a dictatorship is illogical contradictory thought, doublethink, the rejection of objective reality. Totalitarianism cannot function without a managerial class that systematically practices this anti-reason, anti-man, anti-life form of non-thinking. The rulers in Atlas Shrugged, from the opportunist head of state, Mr. Thomson, to the spineless wretch James Taggart, to the treacherous mediocrity that is Wesley Mouch, are eternally willing to indulge in “the refusal to see…the refusal to know… the act of unfocussing [the] mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment”. (931)
However, just as it was for the thugs of Nazi Germany who believed in their leader’s fantasies of racial superiority, or for the Soviets who believed innovation could be compelled at the point of a gun, or as it is today for the worshippers of Kim Jong-Il, or the contemporary “mystics of faith” in Iran’s fascist theocracy, who hope to combine medieval barbarism with 21stcentury weaponry, the truth is that such regimes are all doomed to failure. What they attempt to do is to “dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality…to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their wish”. (984) Their failure will leave them smashed to pieces by the righteous hand of reality itself.
Rand shows us that any society that seeks to rule man by “faith and force” will eventually find that “existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper”. (931) Evil, which is in the end impotent, stems from the refusal to think, from man’s submission to irrationality. “All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is evil.” (927) When the men of the mind of all walks of life refuse to play by the rules imposed by the mystics, the system will go the way of its mystic leader: “reality will wipe him out, as he deserves”. (931) The good, on the other hand, will be victorious by finally becoming conscious of its own virtue and ending the compromises it has made for centuries, no longer allowing evil to subsist on the life blood of its achievement and its self-esteem.
Originally written as an entry in the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contestof 2011. Needless to say it failed to please the neo-mystics of the Ayn Rand Institute
