Ricardo PintoAfter the fall of the Soviet Union, many thinkers celebrated the apparent triumph of market-driven, “liberal democratic” societies, even declaring that Western culture had reached “the end of history.” Yet three decades later, authoritarian regimes — on both the “left” and the “right” — are once again on the rise, and many are still willing to experiment with force in the name of the values of their tribe. Why?
Writing in 1960, Ayn Rand offered an explanation in her essay “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” — one that identifies the deeper corruption behind the persistence of tyranny.
In the essay, Rand contends that the West’s cycles of prosperity and destruction reflect the deeper philosophical conflict between reason and mysticism. Periods of stagnation and brutality, such as the Middle Ages and twentieth-century collectivism are, in her view, the result of mysticism. In contrast, the affluence and freedom achieved by capitalism in the United States stem from the rediscovery of reason since the Renaissance. As she argues, there is a logic to this historical pattern:
Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible.
Yet mysticism and the collectivist ideologies it gives rise to are culturally dead. As long as reason’s achievements remain visible in the modern world, she writes, “nobody will be able to arouse men’s hope, eagerness and joyous enthusiasm by telling them to ditch their mind and rely on mystic faith.”
Why, then, do irrational ideologies persist? Because, Rand argues, the West remains gripped by the morality of altruism, the idea that self-sacrifice is one’s highest moral duty and the only justification for one’s existence. Unless this moral code is intellectually challenged, men will continue to repeat the same historical disasters. They will be unable to fully grasp the achievements and promise of reason and individualism, which are sanctioned only by the morality of self-interest. “The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers — and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.”
“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” has never been available online — until now. You can read the full essay here. ARI is working with publishers to make online publication of Rand’s works like this possible.
Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.
If you want me to name in one sentence what is wrong with the modern world, I will say that never before has the world been clamoring so desperately for answers to crucial problems—and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the belief that no answers are possible.
Observe the peculiar nature of this contradiction and the peculiar emotional atmosphere of our age. There have been periods in history when men failed to find answers because they evaded the existence of the problems, pretended that nothing threatened them and denounced anyone who spoke of approaching disaster. This is not the predominant attitude of our age. Today, the voices proclaiming disaster are so fashionable a bromide that people are battered into apathy by their monotonous insistence; but the anxiety under that apathy is real. Consciously or subconsciously, intellectually or emotionally, most people today know that the world is in a terrible state and that it cannot continue on its present course much longer.
The existence of the problems is acknowledged, yet we hear nothing but meaningless generalities and shameful evasions from our so-called intellectual leaders. Wherever you look—whether in philosophical publications, or intellectual magazines or newspaper editorials or political speeches of either party—you find the same mental attitude, made of two characteristics: staleness and superficiality. People seem to insist on talking—and on carefully saying nothing. The evasiveness, the dullness, the gray conformity of today’s intellectual expressions sound like the voices of men under censorship—where no censorship exists. Never before has there been an age characterized by such a grotesque combination of qualities as despair and boredom.
Continue reading the essay here, or find it in Rand’s book Philosophy: Who Needs It.
Itamar Feldman
