I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of Rand’s philosophy, or of Christianity. She saw her libertarianism as being a pragmatic and felt it was good for society. It was what made her such a strong supporter of individual liberty.
Think of it this way, this actually reminds me of a Greek myth. There were once two sea monsters that guarded the Straight of Messina. Charybdis hid in the darkness of the sea, its mouth formed a whirlpool on the surface, lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth that would tear a man to shreds. On the other side of the Straight, there was Scylla. A six-headed monster whose heads would fight over the men it caught. Odysseus had to pass through the Straight of Messina between the two monsters.
But they were too close to avoid both of them. So he had to make a choice. What was the lesser evil? Which monster did Odysseus choose? What Odysseus decided in the end doesn’t matter. Six of his men died getting through that Straight. Sometimes whatever you choose, you lose.
It’s why Rand felt the government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers, but that the free market should play out.
Someone who builds himself up at the expense of others would be a classic “second hander”, to use a Radian expression. Can you name one hero in Rand’s novels who built himself up at the expense of others?
Hank Rearden, who exploited his wage-slaves and denied them their rightful equal share.
The simple fact is, capitalism is an authoritarian slave system, and it’s grossly dishonest to style yourself as a defender of liberty if you’re a defender of capitalism.
Actually, no. The concept of something being “good for society” was alien to her. Society doesn’t exist, only individuals. And as for pragmatism, she denounced it vehemently. She never advocated anything because it “worked”, only on the basis of it being a logical extension of her premises. A favorite mantra of hers was “Check your premises”, meaning that if you find any problem or contradiction in anyone’s thinking, go back and trace that thinking to its original premises, and you will discover the error.
Unfortunately, her greatest error was in not checking her own premise, in her statement that “man is a being of volitional consciousness.” This statement is at the root of her ethics and, by extension, her politics. Aside from the fact that our volitional conscious is questionable, we are not merely beings of consciousness, but also physical beings. This is a fatal flaw in her thinking, putting the mental above the physical… a practice that she herself denounced in others. If our rights are determined by the requirements of our consciousness, why are they not equally determined by the requirements of our bodies? She would reply that it is our mind that controls our body. But I have found that it’s often the other way around.
An extremely solid policy for message boards is to respond to the posters who make cogent, intelligent points while ignoring the posters who make empty blanket assertions. You’re right not to respond in this case. But a small issue here is that you did actually hit the quote button, and then “responded” at least to the minimal extent to say that you weren’t going to respond. Even better would have been to ignore the empty post entirely. Added bonus: if you’re not going to respond to empty posts, that leaves up more time to respond to posts filled with more substance.
Such as Fredescu’s posts, which you have legitimately ignored.
You haven’t even made a response to state that you weren’t going to make a response. When posters ignore responses of substance, in order to focus their attention on manure, they give the impression that they have no decent response to the more substantial posts. This post by Fredescu is, I think, particularly important since it’s a direct response to one of yours:
If that response isn’t clear, then I can make my own criticism of your assertion here.
As the words “subjective” and “objective” are usually defined, none of these things that you list are objective values. There is no such thing as “objective value”.
Take air and water, as easy examples. We can state that these things exist objectively. What do we mean by that? We mean that air and water would continue to exist, even independent of the existence of humans. They are objectively real, since their existence is not dependent on the viewpoint of any being or group of beings. Human subjects don’t have to be around to appreciate water for water to exist. It exists independently of us. Its existence is not subject to us.
Now, if the “value” of air and water were also “objective”, then we should similarly say – using the conventional definition of this word – that the “value” of air and water would likewise continue to exist even without any human beings around to appreciate it. If the value were objective – using the conventional definition of this word – then there should be some theoretical way to estimate what water’s objective value would be, even if all life on this planet were extinguished. How many gold kruggerands would water be worth, if all life on this planet were extinguished? As soon as we put things this way, we should be able to see that water and air are not “objective values”, in the conventional sense of those terms. Air and water have value for human beings. Air and water need a subject that appreciates them, in order for them to have value.
The same is true for every other item on your list. Sex? Not everyone values sex. There are genuinely asexual people. Or to make the point more forcefully: a species that evolved asexually in a methane atmosphere would not “objectively” value our oxygen-rich atmosphere, nor envy us our tendencies to bump uglies. None of this is actually objective. They’re all subjective, because they’re all valued by people, and the value would cease to exist as soon as the subjects who valued them ceased to exist. Oxygen molecules exist objectively and would continue to exist objectively even without us. Their existence is not subject to preferences of life. But the value of that oxygen is very different.
You are, of course, correct that our human (subjective) values are far from arbitrary.
We evolved in the presence of an earth-like atmosphere, and so most of us value that atmosphere. That’s not arbitrary at all, exactly as you say. But there is, nevertheless, no “objective value” in these things. The value is still subjective, which is to say, dependent on the existence of a being that appreciates these things. Likewise, it is not arbitrary that most of us value sex, and shelter, and food, and so on. There are strong non-arbitrary evolutionary reasons for that. But these values can be perfectly non-arbitrary, and nevertheless perfectly subjective. The two properties are not mutually contradictory. It is objectively true that humans value things, but the things that we value are nevertheless valued by us subjectively, and thus their value would vanish just as quickly as we do.
And this is a key issue that people can have with Rand. The founder of “Objectivism” doesn’t seem to have a good handle on what “objective” actually means, as that word is used by people who don’t happen to be her. Nobody who actually knows what that word means (outside of her writings) would ever claim that gold was “an objective value”. The idea is self-evidently silly. Now, maybe it’s possible that she knew how other people used the word and just didn’t care. But it’s also possible that she just didn’t appreciate the distinction between subjective and objective that most other people draw.
It’s possible, too, that people who had a lot of previous exposure to Rand still carry along her idiosyncratic usage of basic words from philosophy. Better, in my opinion, to use the words as most everyone else does, rather than remain mired in a semantic dead-end.
And to repeat my point from above: I think it’s solid policy not to respond to useless posts. One of the best reasons for that is that it leaves time open to respond to better posts, like Fredescu’s, if you don’t care overmuch for mine.
We The Living was a good book. Horribly depressing, but a good book.
And she really disliked Kant, much more than he probably deserved. For what it’s worth, somebody said something earlier about how her stuff was Marxian, but I I don’t think so. I think the biggest influence on her was Nietschze.
The oil tycoon who set fire to his oil well. Air pollution on a large scale, the destruction of irreplaceable oil, and the economic devastation for all of the company’s shareholders.
When what you have to offer seems to be the keen incite of blurb-sized ort, how could you possibly expect people to show interest in engaging? If you offered some palatable substance that we might chew on, you might get a decent response. As it stands, it looks like you just want to push everyone away.
I mean, I doubt that anyone on this thread fails to see significant flaws in our current socio-economic system, and we might well be interested in exploring ways to deal with them. Capitalism is far from perfect, and it may not even be the least-bad option, but until you have something to contribute beyond “Capitalism Bad!”, do not be surprised to be passed over.
Hellestal: When I began posting in this thread, I decided not to engage in a defense of her positions, especially since I no longer agree with many of them. I decided to limit my posts to my personal memories of her and to challenge any factual misrepresentations of her life. But from time to time I eventually chose to briefly speak up on a few issues of substance as well.
The fact is, it has been more than fifty years since I knew Rand, and a few decades since I read her. A lot of forgetting happens in that time span. As far as Fredescu’s posts are concerned, I actually attended Objectivist lectures on the subject of “objective values”, but I’ll be damned if I can remember much from them after all these years. I could have discussed Rand’s unique definition of value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep”. From there, I remember how some values can be more realistic than others, but I don’t remember exactly how that relates to objectivity. So, with my rather fragmented memory, I opted not to pursue that particular discussion.
You’re right that Rand often used words in ways other than their conventional usage. But, to her credit, she always provided explanations and definitions of her unique usage. She never left readers in the dark as to what she was talking about. She even wrote an entire book about the virtue of selfishness, rather than accepting the common misconception that rational self-interest implies exploiting others. Any dedicated reader of hers understands that, to her, selfishness does not imply the sacrifice of either oneself or others.
And this action “built himself up” how? The acts you are describing were, in effect, an act of war. The original claim was aimed at businesspeople building up their fortunes at the expense of other people. The folks who “shrugged” in the novel destroyed their fortunes.
It was an act of immorality, from people who were supposed to be paragons of moral perfection.
If it was an “act of war,” it targeted people who had nothing to do with the oppression of individual liberty. John Galt just walked away, but this boob set fire to property that was not his own.
Except it’s not 100% “their” fortune anymore is it? Do they not have shareholders and investors? Do their corporations owe any debt? Do they have any obligations to customers? Employees?
IIRC Ffrancisco D’Anconia committed what we would consider outright fraud and embezzlement in destroying his fortune. And what “extraordinary” thing did he do anyway, other than inherit a copper mining business?
To add to what panache45 said, one of the key motivations for her attempt at philosophy was that she didn’t like capitalism being seen at the pragmatic option. She wanted capitalism to also be an idealistic choice. Hence the name of her book “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.”
That’s not a simple fact. It’s definitely an effect of it that supporters need to address, just like the mass killings under communism are something supporters of that system need to address. Ultimately a social system needs to account for psychopaths who desire power. Not an easy thing to do.
Why does the man who pushes the broom on Rearden’s mill floor deserve an equal share to Rearden, who invented a revolutionary new kind of steel?
Capitalism is less an “authoritarian slave system” than other systems that would forcibly redistribute wealth and ownership in the name of “fairness”. Which is pretty much the point of Atlas Shrugged.
The headline and letter seem at odds. The letter writer seems to be saying that Rand’s ideas are justified by epigenetics, but the headline says they’re not.
Neither really make a point about Rand though. She believed in tabula rasa, so would have denied any effects of genetics. In that sense she’s even more out of date than the letter or headline suggest.
i think the letter writer is responding to the notion that the selishness that we are motivated by is something innate; at the genetic level. And she’s using the term “epigenetics” to apply to the mechanisms that cause evolution, not the genes themselves. That evolution is an active process:
and that this is more in line with Rand than some “selfish gene”
