Ayn Rand’s View of Self
I just posted the following to OWL and Mudita Forum:
In response to my posting on Rand’s definition of the self, Allen Costell raises a number of points, and objections, that are worth considering. I suspect Allen and I ultimately agree (that identifying one’s self exclusively with abstract thinking is unhealthy), but after reading his post, I believe it does not accurately reflect what it claims to reflect, which is Rand’s philosophy.
In my response below, I should point out that I’m trying to clarify what I believe to be Rand’s conception of self, and not necessarily my own. The original definition I cited was:
“A man’s self is his mind—the faculty that perceives reality, forms judgments, chooses values” (from Ayn Rand, “Selfishness Without a Self,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 50).
And Allen responds:
First, Rand’s statement isn’t a definition. It’s little more than a synonym or a clarification, like the “definitions” offered in dictionaries.
In many ways, Rand’s definition is rather unlike a dictionary definition, in that it does not attempt to address every colloquial use of the word. Rather, it would appear that Rand was attempting to address the essential meaning of the word, within the context of her philosophy.
Second, the general idea of your self as your mind is false. One can see how it’s false when you think of the last time you were cold. Did you say “my body is cold”? No, you say “I am cold”—and the same goes for nausea, hunger, and a host of other examples. Your mental abilities (i.e., your mind) might very well be the essence of who you are, but an essence isn’t a totality. You are more—far, far more—than a mind.
Well: The purpose of a definition is to identify the essential referents of a concept. If you cut your thumb, you might well say “I cut myself.” Yet if you cut the thumb off entirely, you would hardly say “I cut off myself.” You’d say “I cut off my thumb,” because your thumb is a non-essential part of the self.
Right or wrong, I suspect Rand would say the same is true for most, if not all, of the body. You can lose an arm or a leg, or get a heart transplant, and you’re still yourself. But if a friend were to lose his mind—and were no longer able to “perceive reality, form judgment, choose values”—I can easily picture Rand saying, quite rightly, that “He’s no longer himself.”
Regarding being cold, hungry, or nauseated, Rand might well counter that it is the mind—the self—that integrates, apprehends, and responds to these sensory experiences. And so these examples are quite consistent with the definition of the self as the mind.
(Unfortunately, Objectivists as prominent as Leonard Peikoff have taken this false “definition” and run with it: “Since the self is the mind, self-esteem is mind-esteem”[OPAR, p. 307]. As a result, you see the various Objectivists afflicted with “mentalism”; they care a great deal about learning philosophy, improving their thinking ability, debating each other, increasing their knowledge—but then they care little about improving their body, their emotional health, or their social skills and relationships.)
Objectivists do have an unhealthy proclivity for mentalism. And this is no doubt partly due to an overly-constricted view of the self. That makes perfect sense.
At the same time, the mind (as characterized by Rand, above and elsewhere) basically dictates one’s “emotional health, …social skills, and relationships.” It also has a great deal to do with improving the body. Chris Sciabarra has done much to draw attention to Rand’s expansive concept of mind, and perhaps the mistake Allen makes above is to identify the mind solely with abstract thinking (which is a mistake that I believe Rand flirted with but did not make entirely).
Further, it is not just “fundamentalists” (to use your word) like Peikoff who believe that “self-esteem is mind-esteem.” For example, even (certified non-fundamentalist) Nathaniel Branden writes, “When a person understands that who I am, ultimately and essentially, is my faculty of awareness and my power to regulate its activity, the road is cleared to experience the joy of living mindfully” (The Art of Living Consciously, 75-76).
The “faculty of awareness and … power to regulate its activity” sounds very much like Rand’s definition of the self. And similar observations—to the effect that self-esteem means having trust and confidence in the activities of one’s own mind—abound in Nathaniel’s writings.
Still also, it’s an idea Objectivism—and Rand—flat out rejects.
She frequently attacked the idea of a mind/body dichotomy in Atlas (see p. 467 of the Lexicon), and she often railed against related ideas such as the theory-practice dichotomy, the moral-practical dichotomy, the love-sex dichotomy, and the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. She found this mind-body dualism to be not only a horrible idea, but any idea that’s been destroying western culture and people’s lives for centuries.In short, the statement is not a definition, is untrue, and is
“un-Objectivist”.
Yes, Rand rejected these dichotomies. Yet, her clearest and most pithy identification of the nature of the self is the one provided above. If such poses a contradiction, how do we resolve it? Allen suggests the following:
So then why did she make that statement? Look at the context; the context determines meaning. She was discussing how “lone wolves” have no sense of “personal interests” and “spiritual values”. In other words, she’s talking about the psychological essence of their self, not the entirety of it. Those who present Rand’s “A-man’s-self-is-his-mind” statement as a definition have committed the mistake of a fundamentalist: they’ve ripped the a passage from its context and then taken it literally.
Would you say that her definition of “rationality” in “The Objectivist Ethics” applies only to the the essay in which that definition appears? If not, then why would her definition of “self” in “Selfishness Without a Self” only apply to that essay?
I don’t think anyone here would argue that Rand was talking about anything other than “the psychological essence of [the] self.” However, you might be the only one who would argue that identifying the psychological essence of the self wouldn’t constitute a definition of the self.
The fact that Rand rejected the mind/body dichotomy does not necessarily mean that she believes the mind and the body are of equal significance in constituting a person’s self. (Nor would it mean Rand was immune to being influenced by the dichotomy.)
Unless Allen can provide us with a Rand quote that includes the body (or, indeed, anything but the mind) as an essential component of the self, I would have to conclude that he is making an awkward attempt to revise Rand’s apparent decision to define the essential feature of the self as “the mind.”
