I have just finished reading several books by Ayn Rand, most written around the 40’s. They detail a view that she calls “objectivism." Her writing seems to predict our current situation, as a nation, politically and philosophically very accurately. In my limited view she makes a lot of sense, at least more sense that I’ve heard from modern politicians.
Why have her ideas not been accepted throughout modern day philosophical and political circles or are they and I’m just “in the dark?”
I haven’t read her stuff, but she’s been discussed here quite a few times. From what I gather, she’s a wack job.
I’m a major Rand enthusiast. I own and have read everything she’s written, including her nonfiction and newsletters on Objectivism written in the 60s and early 70s (she died in 1982). I “discovered” Rand from a friend ten years ago who said to me, “You should read Ayn Rand, you sound just like her.” So I borrowed his “Rand library” and ended up eventually buying all the books I’d borrowed and getting books he didn’t have.
Anyway, to try to answer your question, I think her philosophy is not widely accepted because most people don’t adopt a policy of making REASON supreme above all else. Rand believes the cause of this is the fear most people have of independence (fear of relying on their own minds), which is enhanced further by the ideas they’re taught (namely, not only not to use reason, but to be outright irrational and not to question what you’re taught, either).
I can sort of see that point, since my own philosophical and political views (echoing Rand’s so highly: she was just better at ARTICULATING them than I am!) are in direct opposition to those of virtually every other person I encounter. This can be a very lonely place.
Anyway, the current philosophical/political climate you describe are still not accepted, as evidenced by the current state of world affairs. (The same and getting worse than what Rand described decades ago). They won’t change because of the power-hungry politicians whose interest it’s in to maintain the status quo. You didn’t say what Rand books you read, but I’d suggest you get your hands on “For The New Intellectual,” and read the opening essay. That’ll explain our present situation a lot better than I ever can. I also recommend “The Virtue of Selfishness.”
I’m going to guess that this thread really belongs in Great Debates, but seeing this, I just had to pop in for a moment.
Brad- you must not be familiar with Libertarians. They are not necessarily Objectivists but most Liberts have some knowledge & affection for Alissa Rosenbaum (her real name). Also, many classical Conservatives, especially of the economic nature. In fact a former disciple of Ayn Rand has gained some prominence & importance in banking- his last name is Greenspan.
Two main reasons she & her thought have not gotten mainstream acceptance- her strident atheism & her strident attitude towards everything else. Nathaniel Branden’s memoirs & Barbara Branden’s PASSION OF AYN RAND exemplify this. Ayn had an unfortunate tendency to determine that since she could rationalize & moralize all her personal & artistic preferences, her personal & artistic preferences were rational & moral, and anyone who disagreed with her preferences were irrational & immoral. Thus she could pontificate about the malevolent tendencies of a musical taste for Beethoven & Tschaikovsky while enjoying light operetta.
There is also another side to this.
I am a rational, reasonable person who dislikes the fiction of Ayn Rand that I’ve read (Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead). I agree with some aspects of her “Objectivism,” but I disagree with more. Plus I don’t like her work much as a novelist.
For another side to Ayn Rand, check out Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. There’s a chapter on Rand & “Objectivism.”
It irks me that some Objectivists portray discussion around Rand as “if you don’t like or agree with Rand you aren’t using reason.”
Weren’t some of the original founders of the Libertarian party diciples of ayn Rand?
Unfortunately, in recent years the Libertarian party got sidetracked when it called for not defending our borders, supporting open unlimited unregulated immigration regardless of how many millions of others who were actually against freedom of the individual and wanted to move here - something Ayn Rand would not have been in favor of.
I dont think it was aetheism that detracted from her message, since many in the libertarian party were both aetheist and christain. Although Ayn Rand was an aetheist, she would never force anyone else to become one.
The real reason why Ayn Rand and the old libertarian party never caught on, was because so many people of today really dont like nor want true freedom of the individual. In the same light, none of the founding fathers could ever get elected today.
Just stop and think about it: how many people today really want an almost unlimited Right to Bear arms, no income tax, no mandatory social security, no draft, not using the United States army to invade other countries, no drug laws, no physical substance or article being against the law, no mandatory car insurance, no United Nations, no federal reserve, etc?
It’s important to remember that *Atlas Shrugged *was published in 1957, less than 50 years ago. Even in this information age with widespread literacy, a radical philosophy would take several generations to become generally accepted. And even then, it will take another philosopher, with a much more scholarly approach, to separate Objectivism from the personna of Ayn Rand. (She, herself, believed that she would be remembered as merely someone who asked some interesting questions.)
But let’s put this in some context. Ayn Rand challenged the prevailing philosophies of the last several thousand years - in every branch of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics. And the amazing thing is not that her philosophy hasn’t caught on, but in how many ways she has **already **influenced people’s thinking.
Not that people are quick to give her credit when they do use her ideas. How many Libertarians acknowledge her for providing the ethical foundation without which their economics would collapse?
Most people in the real world do not base their worldview on accepting one single philosopher wholesale, but instead assemble their beliefs for a large number of different places. Ayn Rand had some good ideas and some bad ideas, so most people agree with some of her ideas and reject others. For instance, most economists would now agree that protective tariffs to boost one particular industry against foreign competition are a bad idea in the long run. On the other hand, the idea that we can objectively determine the worthiness of every artist, composer, writer, etc… is rejected by most people because, quite frankly, it’s nuts.
As to why most philosophy professionals don’t rank her very highly, the explanation is that, despite the claims of some of her more fervent loyalists, little of what she said was original. For instance, her economic beliefs are identical to what was preached by a group of economists known as “The Vienna School” more than a full generation before the publication of Atlas Shrugged. When I took political philosophy in college, we read a guy named Ludwig van Mises rather than Rand because van Mises said the same thing and he said it first. Likewise, most of the rest of her beliefs can be found in sources from decades or even centuries before her time.
Also, if she believed that all leftists were like those she portrayed in Atlas Shrugged, then she wasn’t a very rational individual at all. She tended to see everything in terms of black and white-which is very unrealistic.
I think my thread about reading that pile of crap is still around.
That thread is here.
Well, I wouldn’t call her a wack job. I would call her an obtuse, self-centered, egoistic, success-worshipping hack who died embittered and lonely. I also got the idea from reading Anthem and The Fountainhead that she masturbated while she wrote. I can’t back it up, but the way she describes Roark and the guy in Anthem leads me to that conclusion. I get an Anne Rice vibe from her fiction, and damn me if it isn’t the most off-putting vibe ever.
Just saying. Nevertheless, Anthem is a good book to read. The rest of her crap can sit on a shelf forgotten for all I care.
She was a hypocrite. She claimed to be rational, but all her thinking was colored by her irrational hatred of being told what to do by anyone else. Her philosophy is most attractive to spoiled adolescents and egomaniacs of all ages.
That amuses me because one of my ex-gfs is now a big Rand reader/follower. And angsty Goth girl who hates her parents despite the fact that they’ve bought her 4 vehicles and she’s getting a $600 mountain bike for Xmas. Hurm.
Anyway, I haven’t read any Rand stuff. My mom doesn’t like her (and I respect my mom’s literary decisions), and she’d been made fun of in CARTOONS. One of these days I’ll get around to reading her. Just . . . not right now.
Ah, thank you. Yeah, that was a pretty painful experience.
From bagkitty
So true, so true.
But seriously, it’s not so much her philosophy, even though I loathe it. It’s just that her ideal characters are, in my opinion, very shallow and boring. There’s a LOT of pretension in her writing, it’s one big long, “See how great I am!” fest. And it’s strange, because the one character I ended up REALLY liking was Eddie-he seemed to be an afterthought, but he was the only one who wasn’t strictly good or strictly bad, it seemed.
I have heard theories that she suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I have no idea if she did or not, I just thought I’d mention it.
I hate to make this one big Ayn-Bash-Fest, but really, when all was said and done, her writing struck me as cold and banal. No subtly, no color.
>>the idea that we can objectively determine the worthiness of every artist, composer, writer, etc…
Can someone point me to places in her books that expose this?
BTW I think that every well rounded person should have gone through an Ayn Rand stage. Just my opinion…
Not sure. But I have heard she was addicted to amphetamines…
I read Atlas Shrugged once from cover to cover (skipping the Galt speech.) Every time I’ve tried to read it after that, I just can’t make it through it. The last time it stopped with that Francisco d’Anconia speech about money at a party - it’s hard to read a book with eyes rolled at the back of your head. And IIRC that’s one of the least brain-scrub-inducing of the book’s philosophy scenes.
The whole book reads like it comes from an alternate timeline - one where an author has written a brilliant, convincing pro-capitalist novel that has became a classic of it’s times even though some remark of it’s tendency of book-jarring philosophical scenes and odd characterization of characters, and another author has written a less-well-remembered, Bored-of-the-Rings-type parody of it where those features - and other such characteristics of the first book - are exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. A pity our timeline only got the parody book, which doesn’t work so well without the context.
Also, it has a character named “Balph Eubank”. This alone disqualifies it from being great literature.
(However, I keep imagining a cage match between John Galt and Ernest Everhard of Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. “The Iron Heel” is sort of like a socialist version of “Atlas Shrugged”, except that it’s shorter and better. In fact, it would work even better as slash fiction.)
Fountainhead is somewhat better. However, I tend to see it as the lonely struggle of a young architect, Peter Keating, who tries to survive in a world inhabited with people whose motivations aren’t even remotely human-like.
In the already mentioned essay by Michael Shermer, he talks about several instances where Rand threw people out of her group because they didn’t agree with her objective assessments of composers. His essay is based on eyewitness accounts from former members of the cults.
Well, I never had a Rand stage, but I did go through the process of believing in some equally stupid things during the halycon days of my youth. Is that good enough?
I read Atlas Shrugged cover to cover, including Galt’s speech.
Afterwards I thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it. Ignoring all the pretentious/elitist mumbo-jumbo, I asked myself, “What the hell is she trying to say? What is her message?”
And then it dawned on me: there is no difference between her philosophy (“Objectivism” or whatever :rolleyes: ) and Satanism.
The whole of The Romantic Manifesto goes on (and on) like this.
Just for fun, check out books 6, 7 & 8 on this list. There she is in her rightful place.