Thoughts on Objectivism

[LaissezFaire]

I wanted to give and get a few thoughts on Objectivism and post-Objectivist/Neo-Objectivist etc. philosophical work. To give a background, my first exposure to Objectivism was through an audio book version of Atlas Shrugged I had torrented (take that, Objectivist IP nerds!) I was already familiar with radical liberalism and market anarchism through various lectures and articles on Mises.org, Anti-state.com and similar websites. I think I first heard about libertarianism via a Yahoo political party search (I liked the LP platform), and had started reading economics articles on Lew Rockwell. Pretty soon I was emailing socialist parties asking them why they had such crazy ideas about international trade, but it wasn't for a while after that that I seriously investigated Ayn Rand. I think I might have heard a few of her views on metaphysics and God when researching atheism in my teens, but I didn't distinguish her in particular until I decided to give Atlas Shrugged a listen.

 

I have a taste for pulp literature and hard boiled detective novels, both of which influenced Ayn Rand, so I generally enjoyed the story. I found it a bit weird and slow at times, but some of the dialogue was really great, and funny (Rand wouldn't appreciate that - she believed laughter was for destructive purposes!) I especially liked Hank Rearden, who's more charming as an uptight but straightforward sexy Rockefeller than the New Capitalist Man John Galt.

 

I agreed or sympathized with many views Rand expressed in the book, but I was not especially taken in by her philosophy - probably because I had already felt many of the same influenced she had, and had already radicalized into libertarianism and egoism a bit further than she did. I am not an intensive student of Objectivism in general or Rand, but I have put some effort into reading works by Objectivists or those strongly influenced by its ideas; and as I said, I have read some of the source material that influenced Ayn Rand's own development such as Aristotle, Nietzsche and Mises.

 

The best place to start would probably be standing on one leg.

My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

• Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
• Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
• Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
• The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

 

• The first seems entirely reasonable to me. Although certain metaphysical theories and religious belief systems would deny or qualify this, I suspect that most Objectivists had the same experience of George H. Smith of loudly proclaiming the existence of the external world and futiley waiting for someone to argue with you. That is not to say there isn't merit in pointing this out: after all, academic philosophy and pop mysticism are rife with bizarre and contradictory standards that contrive to allow them a pretended solipsism, and following through the implications of a realist metaphysic will help us understand the relationship between ontological coherence and logical consistency: Rand, like Aristotle, wants to make metaphysics prove logic. Her arguments in favor of this are not particularly detailed. Peikoff has made more elaborate discussions, but probably the best Objectivist-Aristotilian metaphysic and ontology I have seen is in the work of George H. Smith such as Atheism: The Case Against God.
• I am not sure if I agree with Ayn Rand's epistemology, though it does not strike me as a crazy epistemology what I have read by her and Peikoff hasn't convinced me. In fact, it hasn't entirely stuck with me, which is why I'd like comments from others. My own epistemic views are similar to those of Roderick Long, himself an Aristotilian, and it would perhaps to be worthwhile to see what he has to say about Rand's epistemology. I know that David Gordon has a lecture on this available online, too, which I'll try to listen and pay attention to.
• In some literal sense every man is his own end in that only particular persons have ends or ideas about means. Rand's moral views, as I understand it ala David Kelley, is that when persons understand their nature they use their reason to assess facts and assign a value and disvalue according to some standard of life or flourishing. If that is what Rand means by 'morality' I suppose I would agree, but I have always had trouble with how she goes from this very general proposition to presuming an broad swathe of classical liberal legal virtues. I wouldn't even say that law and morality are the same thing. It reminds me of the very abstract arguments of theologians for the existence of a Benevolent Prime Mover which conclude with, "therefore Jesus." While I do believe there are plausible supports to be made for libertarian law, eudaemonian reasoning, virtue ethics, egoism, and the general advantages of an individualist, rationalist and capitalistic society I don't know that you could make any straightforward deduction of them from the fact that men must use reason in their pursuit of ends. I mean, certainly thugs do use reason.They are not 'faking reality', because the 'long run' contribution to the damage of society they make is miniscule and the benefits are rapid and direct. Arguments that being a thug leads to a poor disposition and shallow life, that you risk retaliation, etc. are all perfectly reasonable, but MAN'S NATURE just isn't going to cut it.
• I am a Mises U. disciple of the Austrian Priesthood, generally favoring Rothbard, Mises and Menger. I am also fond of certain elements of Joseph T. Salerno's formulations, particularly on causal realism and economic calculation. Given that, and my overall views on civil society and law, I am a firm endorser of laissez-faire capitalism and I believe that Rand had a reasonably good grasp on economics from her writings in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. It's not clear if she understood the Austrian theory of the trade cycle, but capital theory is obscurantist by its nature.

[travioli]

I'll just contribute a little--I was first introduced to philosophy as a science through Objectivism, and I still love the books on it today. I wouldn't consider myself an Objectivist in a particular since, since I don't stand completely with her view of politics, due to this article by Roy Childs, among other things.

 

2. The essence that I got from Rand's epistemology was that concepts play a vital role in cognition. It was especially emphasized in "The DIM Hypothesis", which I don't know if you've read--if you haven't, and are wondering about her epist, for sure check it out--it's all about the triad of the role of concepts; the conflicting ideas that concepts are superior to reality (Plato), that abstractions are not reliable to use to deal with reality (Kant), and the Objectivist position; that abstractions/concretes and concepts/percepts are totally interrelated. I think Epistemology is the most important branch, and it's where I think Rand was most revolutionary--or "against the grain"--in her works, almost as she was in the branch of ethics.

[Hannibal]

I love Ayn Rand. I used to agree almost entirely with everything she said, with a few caveats, but since I've spent more time reading and understanding the subtleties of Objectivism, and their implications, I now agree virtually 100%.

 

Yaron Brook does loads of really good talks on youtube about the virtue of selfishness, etc. He's a bit warmongery for me, but apart from that he does a really great job.

 

She did appreciate laughter. She used to refer to her little gang of objectivists as "the collective" for a giggle. It's how you target that destructive element (humour) which is important:

 

 

 

Humor is the denial of metaphysical importance to that which you laugh at. The classic example: you see a very snooty, very well dressed dowager walking down the street, and then she slips on a banana peel . . . . What’s funny about it? It’s the contrast of the woman’s pretensions to reality. She acted very grand, but reality undercut it with a plain banana peel. That’s the denial of the metaphysical validity or importance of the pretensions of that woman. Therefore, humor is a destructive element—which is quite all right, but its value and its morality depend on what it is that you are laughing at. If what you are laughing at is the evil in the world (provided that you take it seriously, but occasionally you permit yourself to laugh at it), that’s fine. [To] laugh at that which is good, at heroes, at values, and above all at yourself [is] monstrous . . . . The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.

 

 

 

point 2) If you don't believe that a man's faculty of reason is his only guide through life, then what else do you think that there is? She did acknowledge that our emotions help to guide us, but reason is the final arbitrator.

 

point 1) kindof follows on from point 2.

 

point 3) I get what you're saying, but I think that the idea is that men must be free to act like men, being that reason is their only tool to do so, and that men are able to be their best only when they trade freely with other men. Have you ever met a genuinely happy thug? I haven't. If real happiness is the purpose of life, then it is irrational to sacrifice the achievement of real joy, by being a thug.

Maybe there are exceptions, but it seems to me that the capacity to feel true joy is inextricably linked to the values that Rand outlines, as part of man's nature. Lottery winners don't feel the same joy that an entrepreneur does from making his first million, because as Rand states, Pride is the sum of all virtues, and pride is the source of human joy.