The Importance of Being Earnest
by Michael Prescott
One of the most useful intellectual skills to cultivate is the ability to enter into sympathetic engagement with the idea or argument you are considering. The only way to really understand what another person is saying is to listen closely, and the only way to listen closely is first to find, or at least pretend to find, some common ground between the other person and yourself. You need not maintain this sympathetic engagement, this provisional or illusionary agreement, for very long -- just long enough to absorb and grasp the points at issue.
On the other hand, an inability or an unwillingness to drop your guard and make room, even temporarily, for an idea that you may find distasteful is the main impediment to really understanding what other people are saying and, therefore, to being able to effectively refute what they say.
I thought of this today when flipping through a book that I admit to having bought in the expectation of a cheap laugh, and not for any intellectual merit that it may possess: Ayn Rand's Marginalia. That's right, her marginalia. In their continuing effort to publish every word that Ayn Rand ever committed to paper during the course of her 77 years, those in charge of her estate have published her private letters, her private journals, and yes, even the scribbled notes in the margins of books she was reading.
Supposedly, these notes give us an insight into Rand's brilliant mind at work. No doubt this was editor Robert Mayhew's intention, and no doubt this is how the collection of jottings will be received by her more uncritical admirers. Not being an admirer of Ayn Rand myself, I had a rather different reaction. I was simply amazed -- and amused -- at how consistently she failed to understand the most basic points of the books in question.
In his introduction, Mayhew says he did not include many of Rand's positive comments because they were generally insubstantial. This collection, then, is not a representative sample of her reactions to her reading material. Even bearing this in mind, I found the fury and frustrated rage exhibited by Rand in these remarks to be extraordinary. Hardly a page goes by without encountering angry exclamation points, and even double and triple exclamation points, sometimes augmented by question marks in comic-book fashion. ("!!?!") The terms "God-damn" and "bastard" are unimaginatively and gratingly repeated. Repeatedly I came across yet another burst of venom to the effect that whatever sentence or paragraph Rand had just read is the worst, most horrible, most abysmal, most corrupt, most despicable thing she has ever, ever, ever encountered!!! The woman lived in a simmering stew of her own bile.
She came at the books she read, it would seem, not from the perspective of honestly and conscientiously trying to understand the author's position, but instead by assuming an adversarial and combative stance from the very start and then finding the most negative and malicious spin to put on the author's formulations. This approach enabled her to vent a considerable amount of rage. It does not seem to have aided her comprehension of the material in front of her.
To me this is most obvious in her treatment of The Abolition of Man, which, other than John Herman Randall's Aristotle and Ludwig von Mises's Bureaucracy, is the only book in this collection that I've read. (I suppose someday I should get around to reading Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which is considered a classic of free-market polemic -- though Rand of course finds it poisonously wrongheaded. The rest of the books, except for von Mises's Human Action and two books by Henry Hazlitt and John Hospers, are largely forgotten today.)
Lewis's book is hardly a difficult read. It was aimed at an educated but not highbrow segment of the public, and his cautions on the potential misuse of science seem chillingly prescient these days. He develops his case methodically, building on the premise that man's power over nature translates into the power of some men over others. Rand furiously contests this idea, though she makes precious little argument against it, relying mainly on personal invective against Lewis himself, who is variously characterized as an "abysmal bastard ... monster ... mediocrity ... bastard ... old fool ... incredible, medieval monstrosity ... lousy bastard ... drivelling non-entity ... God-damn, beaten mystic ... abysmal caricature ... bastard ... abysmal scum." (These quotes give you the tenor of the master philosopher's coolly analytical mind.)
In one marginal note Rand scrawls, "This monster literally thinks that to give men new knowledge is to gain power (!) over them." What Lewis says is that it is the holders and utilizers of new knowledge, who do not "give" it to others but use it for themselves, who gain de facto power over their fellow human beings. He is fearful of the emerging possibilities of "eugenics ... prenatal conditioning [and] education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology," which may someday be wielded by an elite he calls the Conditioners. "Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men." And "the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means ... the power of some men to make other men what they please." Should this come to pass, "the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the power of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique ... They [will] know how to produce conscience and [will] decide what kind of conscience they will produce."*
Lewis was clearly arguing against one possible vision of the future, the dystopia fictionalized in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I find his points compelling, but of course they are debatable. In order to be properly debated, however, they must first be understood. Rand shows no interest in even trying to understand what Lewis is saying.
Earlier, Lewis develops the argument that basic moral values cannot be rationally defended but must be accepted as given, as part of the fabric of human nature, common to all communities and societies, though not always equally well-developed or implemented. This view, known as moral intuitionism, is a serious ethical position and one that has been defended by many prominent philosophers, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (It is enjoying something of a resurgence today.) Rand was vehemently opposed to this view, believing that it smacked of faith, which was, as she understood it, the archenemy of reason.
Lewis argues that in the realm of values, as in other realms of thought, you must begin with certain fundamental assumptions; "you cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever." Rand furiously rejects this idea, and you can practically hear her pen stabbing at the page as she writes, "By 'seeing through,' he means: 'rational understanding!' Oh, BS! -- and total BS!" But Lewis's entire point is that "rational understanding" must start somewhere, just as geometry or set theory must begin with certain axioms that cannot themselves be proven by the system in question. It takes more than declarations of "BS!" to vanquish this argument -- or, for that matter, any argument.
Rand is always telling the authors she reads what they "actually" are saying. Most of the time what she thinks they are "actually" saying bears no relationship whatsoever to anything they have written or even implied. With regard to Lewis, she says that his view boils down to the claim that the more we know, the more we are bound by reality: "Science shrinks the realm of his whim. (!!)" This is a thorough misunderstanding of Lewis's essay -- an essay, let me repeat, aimed at the intelligent general reader and not requiring any special expertise to decipher.
Although Ayn Rand's Marginalia hardly demonstrates the genius that Rand's admirers believe she possessed, it does unintentionally serve an instructional purpose. It shows how important it is to enter into a temporary but sincere sympathy with an author whose view you are trying to understand -- that is, if you are trying to understand it at all. To put it another way, in reading, it's important to be earnest -- to embrace a spirit of respect, honest consideration, and goodwill. You'll find those qualities in most serious thinkers. You will not find them, I'm afraid, in Ayn Rand's marginal notes.
P.S. Although it is not relevant to the above essay, I can't help sharing a few things in Ayn Rand's Marginalia that I found funny.
Rand the historian:
A book on the history of philosophy points out that Immanuel "Kant's sympathies were ... with a democracy, such as had just been established in North America." This is a well-known fact, evidenced by Kant's sympathetic writings on liberty and individual rights. But since Kant served as Rand's bogeyman, she cannot accept the statement. "Good God, no!" she exclaims in outraged ignorance.
Rand the self-aware:
In 1975 Rand filled out a newspaper quiz called "What's Your Love Quotient?" This embarrassing revelation should never have been printed, if only out of respect for the deceased author's memory. But for anyone familiar with Rand's long history of chronic, angry altercations with friends and followers, it is darkly amusing to read her answer to the first question: "Do you find it hard to take criticism?" Rand: "Not if it's rational."
Rand the lover of nature:
A newspaper piece on industrial pollution in Greece observes, "The beach at Marathon, where the Greeks fought the Persians in 490 B.C., is now pocked with tar and littered with refuse." Rand's astute comment: "So what?!"
Rand the lover of knowledge:
An article suggesting strategies for increasing the number of serious readers in America advocates promoting "the love of knowledge for its own sake." Rand underlines these words and writes in the margin: "So long as this continues, you'll never get the people's interest!" Love of knowledge for its own sake is apparently not a worthy goal for the committed Objectivist -- which perhaps explains why Rand was such a poor reader.
Rand the lover of literature:
The same article laments that "so many people can't see why any sensible person would want to own books." In one of her most bizarre outbursts, best-selling author Rand, who derived virtually all of her income from book royalties, exclaims: "I don't either!"
Well, at least I can partly agree with her on this one. I don't see why any sensible person would want to own Ayn Rand's books.
Except for a laugh, of course.
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* The synopses of The Abolition of Man provided by Marginalia's editor Robert Mayhew are sometimes inaccurate. For example, with a few words in square brackets Mayhew summarizes part of Lewis's argument in a quoted passage: "[Those who reject tradition] are not men at all: they are artefacts." But Mayhew has conflated two different sentences, which have two different subjects. The actual passage reads: "It is not that they [i.e., the Conditioners] are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao [Lewis's term for universal moral truths], they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts."
Thus, while "they are not men at all" does refer to the Conditioners (whom Mayhew somewhat inadequately labels "those who reject tradition"), the words "they are artefacts" refer to the Conditioners' victims, who have been remade (via eugenics, prenatal conditioning, education and propaganda) into something no longer human.
Perhaps such inaccuracies are explained by a comment Mayhew makes in his introduction. A true acolyte, he unabashedly praises Rand, writing, "I do not recall a single case [in her marginalia] where what she said was unfair." It's good to know that when Rand railed against Lewis as a bastard, monster, scum, etc., she wasn't being unfair. Mayhew continues, "In fact, I was often filled with admiration for her patience, and for the strength of her stomach, in being able to go through some truly horrible book that she had decided was worth reading. (I, for one, could never have completed C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.)"
I suppose if Mayhew wasn't actually able to read Lewis's book, he would have been hard-pressed to summarize it accurately.