What contribution, if any, did Ayn Rand make to philosophy?

Great Debates
141

Guin, in some respects you are absolutely right. But in others I think Rand was right. Philosophy is based on questiong things, and the line of philosophy that brought us to the current day has come to assert things like “we can never know anything” or “that which we know with the most certainty does not apply to reality” (the latter is especially the case for analytic a priori knowledge… and if anyone wants me to cite philosophers that said that just ask, I can do it to the page number in some cases), or that we can never know if what we know is really knowledge or just formalism, which to her was disgusting. Here was the study of philosophy, to Rand one of the most important pursuits ever, and it was being spearheaded by a individuals who forced everyone into accepting distinctions which demanded that we are left almost paralyzed by the very tools we want to understand reality with.

Math doesn’t apply to the world since it is analytic a priori and tautologous in nature. Our senses don’t constitute real knowledge because they are blinders to the essential nature of things. In the case of nominalism, our very concepts cannot apply to reality because of their generality when in fact reality is only made of specifics.

Now, was Rand correct in that assessment of academic philosophy? I do feel it was a bit hyperbolic, but I do not feel she was so far off base in that regard. Distinctions between contingency and necessity have long served to create the schism between pure knowledge and subjective interpretations within some (possibly arbitrary, depending on who you ask) framework, the latter of the two what we deal with most often in regards to morality, for example, or social structure.

To Rand, philosophy was an ongoing investigation. It was a science… the science of sciences, in fact, and it deserved the same treatment than the other sciences got. If the FDA demanded the same standards of truth that philosophers did no drug could ever come to market, because we could never know that it was safe. And if we did know, it was because we inherently had that knowledge by virtue of existing in a specific, contingent universe, or it was because we had deluded ourselves into thinking we experienced something, or it was because after all was said and done we could find no other explanation, but no guarantees!

So let’s look at what Rand says Objectivism says about that. Rand admitted several times in interviews and dictated directly to paper the notion that man wasn’t infallible. Truly, I would have no problem dismissing her without a second thought if she had. But she did say man had to come to know things about himself and the place he has in reality by investigating it, and knowing it. Above all, reality can be known.

Now, let me diverge directly from Rand for a moment to respond to a quick objection I’ll raise myself. “But how can we know that we know?” I used to think this was a legitimate question. Now I feel like I am the zen master in a koan when I say that I want to throw a rock at these people and see if they duck. If their standard of knowledge is such that they couldn’t say they ducked because they knew the rock was going to hit them in the head and hurt, then should have nothing more to say to them but “mu”. This is why, earlier on, I mentioned GE Moore’s “In Defense of Common Sense” in which his proof for knowing he has a hand is to wave it in front of your face. :slight_smile: (snide aside remark: is that a contribution to philosophy?)

But that is me, and that is part of what I took from Rand. If we reach the point where we are ever tempted to say that we know nothing, it is because we have left reality. I said this before, but I think it deserves repeating. She explicitly referred, via an analogy, to the act of eating a healthy, nutritious diet. No one would throw their hands in the air and declare that we can never really know what is nutritious. We just need to investigate the matter. No one would say we were born with an inherent sense of how to eat healthily. We just need to investigate the matter. And to Rand this was more than an analogy, or rather, it wasn’t an offhand analogy: philosophy, to Rand, fed man’s mind, and just as a man could choose to eat McDonalds every day, he could also choose a balanced diet that worked best for him as a modification on what was determined as being the best diet for the species.

These are not the expression of a force that is unresponsive to criticism. Now, should Rand have practiced what she preached we would be in an entirely different situation today, wouldn’t we?

Rand often said that we can avoid reality, but we cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. IMnsHO, Rand avoided reality, and those consequences contribute to this day to the destruction of what could otherwise have been a very positive force.

But what can we say of, for example, Wittgenstein? most academics agree that the man was a genius. But “Wittgensteinisms” are incredible assertions like (paraphrased) “My job as a philosopher is to enable you to turn disguised nonsense into patent nonsense” ; “The propositions of logic all say the same thing; to wit, nothing”. And I don’t offer those quotes out of context; to Wittgenstein (those are from his Tractutus), all propositions of deductive logic were tautologies, and all tautologies were true no matter what, and so they could say nothing about reality (since they could never be false… have a ring of Popper’s falsifiability here?). (not to paint Wittgenstein in a bad light, I agree wholeheartedly with the accolades many shower him with, and he is currently my favorite philosopher, but those quotes are not taken out of context)

Rand directly referenced the quote about logic saying nothign from him to show why she disagreed so much with popular philosophy. In a breath it was stated that the tool man has used to wonderous effect for thousands of years was actually complete nonsense. (to be fair, he later switched sides in Philosophical Investigations and On certainty… but to also be fair I must mention that it was this very work which got him his PhD in philosophy in the first place!)

So Objectivism is open to criticism, and in fact, as it is stated desires it. It needs it! How else are we to find the correct way to live, or the proper way to think (no, this isn’t Orwellian), if we do not criticize and refine and push on? But when we turn to objectivists and we turn to Rand herself, we start to see some serious issues.

Popper wants me to believe that I do not know that water always boils at 100 degrees centigrade (or worse yet, that 100 degrees centigrade, if it is defined as the temperature at which water boils, may shift wildly at any instant). Rand wants me to believe that I know water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, and that it will continue to do so until it is observed otherwise, at which point we will need to reconsider our understanding of water (and adjust our concepts appropriately to reflect this). It seems to be a petty distinction, and Rand is viewed as “simplistic” or “naive” because of it.

So you be the judge there, Guin.

142

No you did not. You provided a list of philosophy professors who have written about Rand. This does not mean that she comes up in their regular courses at all, much less that she is “an important and prominent part of their courses.”

Forgive me if I am not impressed by your documentation, an opinion poll of Americans that asked them to name a book that affected their lives. Atlas Shurgged may have come in at number two on this list, but that doesn’t make it “second only to the Bible in influence”. It doesn’t make it a significant philosophical work, either. (Plenty of university philosophy programs don’t cover the Bible, and I doubt that any cover Gone with the Wind.) It only means that Ayn Rand is an important and influential popular writer, and I don’t think anyone here has disputed that.

143

Eris

An incredibly insightful post, well thought out, and compelling!

Lamia

What did she write about?

144

Managing transcontinental railroads.

But I know the answer you want is “Philosophy”, and perhaps it is even true. It is certainly true that Margaret Mitchell wrote about history. That doesn’t make Gone with the Wind an important historical work that should be required reading for all students pursuing a history degree. If people want to read it on their own time, fine. If they want to bring it up during a discussion session in a college course when they think it is relevant, fine. But people do not go to college to read popular works or to have popular works explained to them. They don’t need to. That’s what distinguishes popular works from academic works, the fact that the general populace can read and understand them on their own!

145

That’s your criteria for academic philosophical work?

146

How weird and spooky — ancient clerical fops in their long robes, bearing severe and morbid expressions, dispensing holy inspiration to the unwashed masses. How long has academia been such a joke?

147

But wait! I was told I didn’t understand Rand, etiher, so that makes her an academic philosopher!

148

Since always. I’m sure you’re pleased to be done with it. But maybe someday, when the revolution comes, we can kill the old professors and the bespectacled intellectuals and hold a big bonfire to get rid of those dusty old tomes taking up space in the library. Then maybe we can get some real learning done.

149

Well, unles I’m mistaken, Lamia, you are the only one who is trying to assert that Rand isn’t a real philosopher and isn’t really worth learning.

I highly doubt that Lib feels, and I know that I don’t feel, that most philosphers aren’t worth reading. But we aren’t trying to exclude them as naive, simplistic, unoriginal, obviously contradictory, wrong, or as non-philosophers, either. It is just short of shocking to know that if the public understands it, it ain’t real philosophy. But, if that is your standard, then I think you are correct: Rand contributed nothing to philosophy.

Point conceeded.

150

Lib: . It’s like a course in science never mentioning Popper, or a course in economics never mentioning Mises.

Or a course in Film History never mentioning Lois Weber!

For the unwashed, Lois Weber was a pre-code film director whose films addressed topics such as birth control and class frictions. Most of her work was done from 1911 to 1927. It’s not clear to me whether she made any talkies.

The preceding information was gleaned from Lib’s helpful link. I should note that I had never heard of her and that the text Film Art: An Introduction (Bordwell & Thompson, 1993) has no mention of L. Weber in their index.

I can’t judge the work of Weber as I have not seen it. I think it’s fair to say that she hasn’t been particularly influential in recent years, partly due to the fact that the great majority of her films are lost. (If I understand the web site correctly.)

151

Note quite. What I said is that the mere statement that some Ph.D.'s take Rand seriously is unimpressive, in light of the claptrap that often passes for modern philosophy. Please note that I cited a very clear example of self-refuting, Ph.D.-level “philosophy.”

Also, please remember an important distinction that I pointed out. The fact that these Ph.D.'s take Rand seriously does not necessarily reflect any merit on her part. It is entirely possible to take someone seriously, without believing that person’s ideas to have rigor or merit.

Since you ask, I do have an official doctorate. That is why I know enough to respect what doctorate holders say, while at the same time recognizing the tremendous amount of crap that some of them can spew.

152

I can understand it if a high-school course on philosophy includes only the likes of Kant, Aristotle, and Descartes. But I certainly expect a college course (particularly one stretching all the way to the doctorate level) at least to cover the minor philosophers like Rand, Popper, and Gassendi. And bragging that it didn’t is somehow bizarre.

How can you possibly understand Hume in a right context if you’ve never even touched upon Xenophanes? How can you understand the philosophies of nonwestern cultures if your professors don’t mention Rushd’s criticisms of al-Ghazàlì? Is there also no mention of Sina’s commentaries on Aristotle? Or Benedetto’s noncognitivistic artistic intuition? Or Malebranche’s ideas on occasionalism?

Rand made important commentary on normative theories of ethical egoism, and was particularly critical of Kant. Have your professors never covered criticisms of Kant? And if so, how could they miss those of a near contemporary?

When all is said and done, I suppose it is a matter of whether a person’s goal is to obtain a piece of parchment or whether his goal is to learn as much as he can about a field that he loves. Perhaps the former, following the lead of his myopic mentors, could skip over someone like Rand. But the latter will pave his own scholarly path and refuse to limit himself to a high-school view of philosophy.

My challenge to anyone working toward an advanced degree is to investigate Rand and show in your thesis why she is important and what contributions she has made. Maybe your shoulders can manage the weight of lifting academia to the standards of the masses. A man with his nose stuck in a hundred-year-old dictionary will be lost when he walks outside his ivory tower. Show your professors that dictionaries don’t determine what words people use, but rather that it is the other way around.

Flowbark has shown how college courses on cinema can manage to ignore the most important woman in cinematic history (Weber). And others have shown how college courses on economics can ignore whole schools of thought held by Nobel laureates (Hayek). Don’t be lemmings. Learn something on your own if your classes don’t cover it. And then show those who should have known in the first place what they’ve missed.

153

[…brief hijack…]

Flowbark

I’ll be discussing her (and her film, Hypocrites) in my upcoming thread for Cafe Society, “The 50 most important Hollywood films”. After nearly four months of research, I’m almost done with it. Should be ready within the next couple of weeks.

Lamia

Lest I leave you the wrong impression, I have no college degree, and in fact attended college for only one semester.

154

A high school that offered even that much would be well ahead of the curve, as there are precious few high schools in the US that offer anything in the way of philosophy at all.

Of couse, a lot of high schoolers do read Rand.

I haven’t seen anyone bragging. Perhaps you are being overly sensitive.

Again, most high school students have never read anything by any of the truly great minds in philosophy, but quite a few have read Rand. If there is such a thing as a high school view of philosophy, then I think that would be the view that Rand is the be all and end all of philosophy.

Lib, truly, you wound me. I have been a lifelong advocate of people learning on their own. I think very little of people who do not make an effort to learn things outside the classroom or lecture hall. I would never, ever suggest that anyone should avoid learning about something simply because it was not a part of a class. I would never suggest that anyone should avoid the works of an author I do not think highly of, or with whom I disagree. I even said, in the very first sentence of my very first post in this thread, that someday I am going to get around to reading Rand myself, although it is admittedly not high on my “to-do” list.

Yet this is not good enough for you. Instead you insist that Rand must be covered in all college-level philosophy programs, and challenge me to petition the department at my own school to make this change! You would even have me devote myself to the cause with such enthusiasm that I would write my thesis on the subject! If such views are common among Rand’s admirers, I can understand why they are often refered to as cult-like.

155

:smiley:

I’m hardly a “Rand admirer”. I’ve been assailed by Randistas (including Binswanger himself, Rand’s High Priest) who insist that I have mutilated her philosophy beyond all recognition in adopting it as (one of) my own. She despised libertarians, and I are one. She despised Christianity, too, and I are that as well.

Of course Rand must be covered at any serious academic level of philosophy study. So must all the others that I named that you overlooked. I’m not defending Rand; I’m defending philosophy.

Certainly, as I’ve already said, Rand is far from the be-all and end-all of philosophy. In fact, as I also said (what, twice?) she was only a minor philosopher when compared to the likes of Wittgenstein or Nietzsche. But if all colleges do is cover Kierkegaard and Aquinas, then there are scores of important men and women who have been neglected to the detriment of the students.

I issued my challenge about Rand because she is the topic here, but there are many other philosophers who could be the subjects of a stellar thesis: Susanne Langer’s adaptations of Cassirer, studying the expression of human emotion by the aesthetic analysis of music; idealist Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, who developed a remarkable theory of an epistemic metaphysic tied to human personalities; or Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, who explained Locke’s empiricist philosophy better than Locke did.

No one is suggesting that Rand is the most important philosopher who ever lived. But the fact remains that Objectivism was a new offering that merits at least a passing familiartity to anyone who deigns to call himself a philosopher. The fact that she is popular, that her philosophy resonates so well with so many people, is hardly a disqualifier of her contributions.

156

You seem to be defending your personal idea of what the canon of philosophy should consist of.

I believe we have very different ideas as to what sort of thing is an essential part of any course of study. I take it you have some long and exhaustive list of philosophers, both major and minor, that you think every student of philosophy must learn about, and if they miss a single one then their degree is a joke.

I have never been a fan of this way of thinking. It deprives both students and instructors of freedom, and reduces education to joyless rote memorization.

There are philosophers who I think every student of philosophy must study because their work is so important in the field, but it is a very short list: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. If pressed, I think I could reduce that list to a single name, Plato. This is not to say that I feel anyone who has studied only Plato, or even only my nine-name list, has a satisfactory backing in philosophy. These are just the only names that I feel are important enough that their work must be a mandatory part of all philosophy programs. Further study should be required of anyone looking to earn a philosophy degree and is essential to anyone who wishes to be considered knowledgeable in the field, but people should be allowed some degree of freedom with the rest. This is especially true as one moves from major philosophers to middling and minor ones.

I have never said that people should not be allowed to study Rand if they want to, or that any instructor who already includes Rand in his or her syllabus should toss her into the circular file. I merely object to the idea that she is anywhere near important enough to be required reading for all philosophy students, or that anyone who hasn’t studied her is some sort of disgrace to the discipline.

**

Any philosopher could be the subject of a stellar thesis. The quality of a thesis depends primarily on the quality of thought, research, and writing that goes into it.

The fact that she is popular does, however, mean that many people have a passing familiarity with her even if they have never studied philosophy. I had a passing familiarity with Rand before I was even in high school, and I didn’t go into philosophy until my sophomore year in college. Her name and ideas are far more familiar to the general public than those of many more significant philosophers.

So we have someone whose work is popular, well known, and widely read by high school students, but whose contributions to the field of philosophy are at best minor. This is very far from making her essential in my book, and I am surprised that anyone would think that a good use of valuable (and expensive!) college class time would be forcing philosophy students to study a figure who is not merely a minor one in the field but one with whom almost all of them must already have a passing familiarity.

157

Far be it from me to begrudge you your druthers. And I agree with you that Plato is the fountain from which all else wells (for western philosophy), much like number theory is for mathematics. Your nine-name list is a laudable one (though I’m sure you would agree that a different nine-name list could be constructed and be equally important). And you’re right that I have a “list” of philosophers; actually, I have a library of works by and about philosophers.

Though I’m not degreed, I have studied philosophy and philosophers for about twenty-five years. I certainly don’t believe that that necessarily amounts to the equivalent of a formal doctorate, but I do feel qualified to offer an opinion or cite a philosopher here and there.

I still don’t understand why there’s an argument here. The Opening Post asked about Rand’s contribution, if any, to philosophy. We said that she is a minor philosopher who contributed a brand new metaphysic-epistemology-ethic construct called “Objectivism”. She wrote both nonfictional essays to explain the philosophy formally and fictional novels to illustrate what she believed to be practical applications of it. It seems wrong, somehow, to penalize her for being popular. At least to me it does.

But even worse is the patronizing, contrived insistence that she is nothing better than fodder for dull minds or children. I really don’t think you need to go that far because frankly, although the unwashed masses could be entertained by her fiction novels for their sheer epic sweep and their torrential love stories, most of those readers didn’t even know that they were being taught a philosophy. Aquinas was a literary figure too, but surely you don’t deny that he was a philosopher or suggest that he is best relegated to high school students.

And I’m sorry, but I just can’t buy the we-don’t-have-time excuse. It tells me that, from your short list, you’re being exposed to Kant, for example, but clearly not to his critics nor to those who interpret his synthesis/analysis model differently. Plus, your list just seems so archaic: where are the modern philosophers of science and logic, and why are they not important?

From what you’re telling me, I’m glad that I elected to study it on my own. There are nonlinear connections among so many of history’s great thinkers from many cultures, and I think that a grounding in the minor ancient Greeks, for example, helps me better to understand the modern Islamics (who have an incredibly rich history of philosophy that by your list would be summarily ignored). You make me feel that by studying it formally, I would have missed an awful lot.

158

It might surprise you to know that in academic philosophy Descartes is considered modern! And so he is, compared to the pre-Socratics at least. I think you meant to point out the absence of any contemporary philosophers from my nine-name list. Of course there are important contemporary philosophers, and I would be quite comfortable saying that some sort of course on contemporary philosophy should be required of all philosophy majors everywhere.

What I would not be comfortable doing would be forcing instructors and students to devote themselves to the memorization of an exhaustive, carved-in-stone list of the names and accomplishments of every significant philosopher ever to live. I can think of no more certain way to kill the love of knowledge in a student’s heart, and that is what philosophy is all about. What’s more, while a solid grounding in the history of philosophy and a working knowledge of the theories of the major players are essential parts of an education in the subject, I personally consider them less important than the study of logic, rhetoric, and critical reasoning.

You seem to be suffering from the mistaken idea that my little list is the basis of my school’s (or any school’s) philosophy program, or that I would have people ignore all names not on the list. I’m not sure why, as I said quite plainly in my earlier post that it was my list and that a failure to go beyond it would not result in a satisfactory education. I consider this little list of mine to be merely the foundation for a solid education in the history of Western philosophy.

I do not know that my instructors, or any professors of philosophy, would agree with my list. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t want any of my nine names removed, but they might well have many more they’d want to add on as being absolutely essential. A list of philosophers covered in the courses required of philosophy majors at my school would certainly be much, much longer than nine names, and would in fact include many of the ancient Greeks both major and minor, far more of the moderns and early moderns than I listed, a good many contemporary philosophers. It would not, unfortunately, have much in the way of Eastern philosophers, as at my particular school the only courses with that subject as their primary focus fall outside the department and are only recommended, not required, for philosophy majors. But one must put up with some of these kinds of problems if one insists upon attending a small school, and I did.

159

Good post, Lamia. I respect your position. If nothing else, there’s one thing we certainly can agree on:

Amen! Interestingly, that coincides with Objectivism’s epistemology. :wink:

160

I’d better come up with a few extra tenants for my radical philosophy of Lamiaism, then! Wouldn’t want to be considered too derivative. :slight_smile: