# What is Ayn Rand's contemporary status as a moral and political philosopher? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990 "2010-08-11T22:32:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/1 "2010-08-11T22:32:47Z")
Re [Ayn Rand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand) do most modern political and moral philosophers take [objectivism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)) (as she espoused it) seriously as a moral and social philosophy or not? The wiki section seems to suggest a somewhat dismissive attitude, but people keep buying her books and admiring aspects of her philosophy, especially Libertarians of various types. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/2 "2010-08-11T22:42:29Z")
When I got my philosophy degree in the 90s, Rand was never mentioned. Within the academic field of philosophy she has zero currency. Rightly or wrongly, she is simply not taken seriously as a philosopher by other philosophers, outside of the various organizations the she set up to propagate Objectivism. I recall hearing about some attempts to bring her into the academy. Those attempts failed because the philosopher either gave up, or had to modify what she proposed to eliminate obvious philosophical problems with her work. Unfortunately, Rand explicitly disallowed any modifications to, or further work on, Objectivism. You’re either convincing people that what she wrote is perfect and done, or you’re not an Objectivist. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/3 "2010-08-11T23:30:40Z")
I’m not sure if philosophy is something which presents much that can be called falsifiable, nor am I sure that the philosophers of academia produce anything that will ever be read by anyone outside of other philosophers. Essentially, you have two brands of philosophy that are as unrelated as, say, architecture and physics. There’s the religious sort of philosophy, which is a rule for how to live, as handed down by some wise person. And then there’s the academic philosophy, which is basically literary criticism of other academic philosophers. Whereas you can get a book which explains the philosophy of Objectivity, Confucianism, etc. you can’t really get a book of “modern philosophy” that will tell you how to live your life. An academic philosopher might, be some chance, come up with a way of living that he could publish as its own book, but I don’t think that would really fall under the heading of academic philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/4 "2010-08-12T00:56:21Z")
There is much in Objectivism (especially its epistemology) that cries out for revision, but there is much to admire as well. The problem is that, in spite of her genius, Ayn Rand the person and Ayn Rand the writer get in the way of Ayn Rand the philosopher. Someday, someone will clean up the philosophy and turn it into everything Rand envisioned but couldn’t herself accomplish. I believe that Rand will eventually be known as the essential Proto-Objectivist philosopher. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/5 "2010-08-12T01:08:21Z")
The TVTropes UsefulNotes page on [Objectivism](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Objectivism?from=Main.UsefulNotesObjectivism) puts Rand’s system in general philosophical context (and points out how, as a philosopher, Rand was only half-sophisticated on certain points). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/6 "2010-08-12T01:14:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Essentially, you have two brands of philosophy that are as unrelated as, say, architecture and physics. There’s the religious sort of philosophy, which is a rule for how to live, as handed down by some wise person. And then there’s the academic philosophy, which is basically literary criticism of other academic philosophers. No, no, not just two. Your first sentence is referring to ethics, which (1) certainly is not exclusively the province of philosophers, which may give rise to some confusion, and (2) is only one of several [branches of philosophy.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy#Branches_of_philosophy) The other branches . . . well, they may not have as much apparent relevance in daily life, but some of them are of enormous relevance to the sciences, and all of them are much, much more than “literary criticism of other academic philosophers.” ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/7 "2010-08-12T02:45:05Z")
In my long-ago days as a philosophy grad student, one of the classes I TA’d looked at a bit of Rand’s stuff. From a philosophical perspective it was atrocious - chock full of straw men and excluded middle fallacies. And just blatant untruths. However, moral views much like Objectivism (usually called Ethical Egoism or some variant of that) are taken quite seriously, and plenty of ink has been spilled over them going back at least to Sidgwick. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/8 "2010-08-12T04:23:05Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Essentially, you have two brands of philosophy that are as unrelated as, say, architecture and physics. There’s the religious sort of philosophy, which is a rule for how to live, as handed down by some wise person. And then there’s the academic philosophy, which is basically literary criticism of other academic philosophers. Whereas you can get a book which explains the philosophy of Objectivity, Confucianism, etc. you can’t really get a book of “modern philosophy” that will tell you how to live your life. An academic philosopher might, be some chance, come up with a way of living that he could publish as its own book, but I don’t think that would really fall under the heading of academic philosophy. Both law and political science are, at their root, branches of philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/9 "2010-08-12T05:10:27Z")
From [_The WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener,_](http://www.amazon.com/Whys-Philosophical-Scrivener-Martin-Gardner/dp/0312206828/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281589255&sr=1-1) by Martin Gardner, Chapter 7: “THE STATE: Why I Am Not an Anarchist”: > [@](#): > > Nozick’s libertarianism has much in common with the philosophy of the Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand. Rand’s cult of “objectivism,” combining free-market libertarianism with a moral code based on “rational selfishness,” made its biggest splash on college campuses around the turn of the fifties to the sixties. Its fading during the seventies was due mainly, I suspect, to its strident atheism, and its loathing of all forms of altruism and self-sacrifice. There is no mystery about why Roman Catholic conservatives, and Protestant fundamentalists of the new right, have little use for a hybrid produced by mating Milton Friedman with Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Nevertheless it is a sobering thought that Alan Greenspan, who was President Ford’s top economic advisor, started his career as an avowed Randian. > > Rand died in 1982. William Buckley, who couldn’t abide her, wrote an amusing obituary in which he described his first meeting with the lady. Her opening icebreaker was: “You ahrr too intelligent to believe in Gott.” Buckley quotes from a review that Whittaker Chambers wrote of one of Rand’s books: “Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which the tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve, its dogmatism without appeal.” ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/10 "2010-08-12T05:29:54Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Both law and political science are, at their root, branches of philosophy. Political theory, you mean. The bulk of political science is a social science. I mean, unless you want to take things really deep, in which case just about every human thought is a form of philosophy. As for law, well, perhaps applied philosophy, in the same sense that engineering is an applied science? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/11 "2010-08-12T05:31:43Z")
It’s fiction based on made up situations and characters. It is not philosophy. While many people who like her politics and her fiction treat her works, as she wished, as the be all and end all of philosophy, you’d be hard pressed to find a single tenured professor of philosophy at an accredited university (real accreditation, not Rand Paul accreditation) who would admit even while drunk that Ayn Rand was a philosopher even if it coincided with his/her politics. Simply put, there are better philosophers making similar points elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/12 "2010-08-12T05:32:24Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Both law and political science are, at their root, branches of philosophy. As a lawyer I can tell you, law is **not** a branch of philosophy. There is such thing as philosophy of law, but it’s not something a practicing attorney – or judge, for that matter – needs to know about. Even most law professors can do without it. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/13 "2010-08-12T05:34:23Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > In my long-ago days as a philosophy grad student, one of the classes I TA’d looked at a bit of Rand’s stuff. From a philosophical perspective it was atrocious - chock full of straw men and excluded middle fallacies. And just blatant untruths. > > However, moral views much like Objectivism (usually called Ethical Egoism or some variant of that) are taken quite seriously, and plenty of ink has been spilled over them going back at least to Sidgwick. This is really it: the core precepts of Objectivism have plenty of parallels or precedents within philosophy; there are lots of points of contact. The idea that there is an objective reality has a long pedigree and lots of spilt ink behind it; likewise, ethical egoism is pretty well explored, as are the philosophical underpinnings of free markets and radical individualism. None of these are unquestioned truths, but neither are they fringe ideas. But Rand wasn’t interested in “ghetto-izing” Objectivism in universities by engaging philosophy, she was revealing the truth to the world, so she didn’t bother comparing Objectivism to existing philosophy, thus avoiding already discovered problems with her axioms or arguments, or making it rigourous enough to withstand the academy’s scrutiny. When philosophers read her stuff, they find something childish that makes basic errors, and covers ground already much more effectively explored by much better authors. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/14 "2010-08-12T05:43:46Z")
> [@straight\_man](#): > > As for law, well, perhaps applied philosophy, in the same sense that engineering is an applied science? Only in a very tenuous sense and to a very limited extent. For the most part, what the law applies is a combination of tradition, ethics – more traditional than philosophical – and public policy. The public-policy aspect is the work of both judges and elected legislators; and few politicians are much influenced by philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/15 "2010-08-12T05:50:58Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Both law and political science are, at their root, branches of philosophy. Neither one of which is falsifiable. There may be loads of material written about them, but whether a state-centric or federal-centric government is better is something that’s largely opinion, regardless of how rigidly you define your argument. Recursively taking points, defining them with greater specificity, taking those specifics and breaking them into smaller points which can be defined with greater specificity, etc. doesn’t make the argument more correct. And yet that is largely what most professionals of philosophy, law, and politics busy themselves with. In terms of law, greater detail is probably a good thing, but in the others, while it helps to find sections of the argument which conflict with one another – so that the argument can be refined – there’s still no absolute truth that’s being approached. Merely an internally consistent argument. Rand was proposing an argument. People _could_ go in and refine away at it and turn it into an academic philosophy, but the sort to do so, looked at it, spotted a few internal inconsistencies, and wrote it off as rubbish because of them. They forget that their own philosophy – probably descended from the Greeks and the Abrahamic religions – started off in a similar shape and is only more polished thanks to many centuries of refinement. But, minus that refinement, there’s no way for _anything_ new to work its way in from the outside, let alone something that is unlikely to appeal to a majority of academics. Given a thousand years of people working over Objectivism, it could (and possibly will) become something that is of sufficiently rigorously defined arguments to enter the general pantheon of Philosophy. That it hasn’t yet isn’t proof of much of anything. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/16 "2010-08-12T05:53:46Z")
> [@hansel](#): > > > [@Gorsnak](#): > > > > In my long-ago days as a philosophy grad student, one of the classes I TA’d looked at a bit of Rand’s stuff. From a philosophical perspective it was atrocious - chock full of straw men and excluded middle fallacies. And just blatant untruths. > > > > However, moral views much like Objectivism (usually called Ethical Egoism or some variant of that) are taken quite seriously, and plenty of ink has been spilled over them going back at least to Sidgwick. > > This is really it: the core precepts of Objectivism have plenty of parallels or precedents within philosophy; there are lots of points of contact. The idea that there is an objective reality has a long pedigree and lots of spilt ink behind it; likewise, ethical egoism is pretty well explored, as are the philosophical underpinnings of free markets and radical individualism. None of these are unquestioned truths, but neither are they fringe ideas. > > But Rand wasn’t interested in “ghetto-izing” Objectivism in universities by engaging philosophy, she was revealing the truth to the world, so she didn’t bother comparing Objectivism to existing philosophy, thus avoiding already discovered problems with her axioms or arguments, or making it rigourous enough to withstand the academy’s scrutiny. When philosophers read her stuff, they find something childish that makes basic errors, and covers ground already much more effectively explored by much better authors. I think that points up what’s really wrong with Rand’s system: It’s all about ethics and politics – nothing wrong with that in itself, but her metaphysics and epistemology are dishonestly retconned into it and then purported to be the actual substructure from which all follows. I’ve seen Libertarians wearing buttons that say “A = A” – IOW, the validity of Objectivist ethics/politics is logically self-evident and uncontrovertible. George Orwell once wrote, “The Communist and the Catholic are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.” The same applies to Objectivists. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/17 "2010-08-12T06:11:42Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Rand was proposing an argument. People _could_ go in and refine away at it and turn it into an academic philosophy, but the sort to do so, looked at it, spotted a few internal inconsistencies, and wrote it off as rubbish because of them. They forget that their own philosophy – probably descended from the Greeks and the Abrahamic religions – started off in a similar shape and is only more polished thanks to many centuries of refinement. But, minus that refinement, there’s no way for _anything_ new to work its way in from the outside, let alone something that is unlikely to appeal to a majority of academics. Except that Rand wasn’t starting from scratch the way the Greeks were, she was proposing a lot of ideas that had been proposed before, and tying them together without checking how those ideas had worked before. There really wasn’t a lot of originality in anything she offered up. She was akin to a scientist proposing a new theory of gravity without first learning Newton. Just as most scientists would ignore something like that when they discovered the person hadn’t done their homework, philosophers quickly realized that she wasn’t offering anything particularly new or interesting, and had failed to address the basic issues that had already been identified. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Given a thousand years of people working over Objectivism, it could (and possibly will) become something that is of sufficiently rigorously defined arguments to enter the general pantheon of Philosophy. That it hasn’t yet isn’t proof of much of anything. Doubtful. Objectivism has been rejected because it’s bush league stuff that the field has already gotten past. Something like it may come again, but that won’t be Rand’s legacy, it’ll be the legacy of someone who does the hard work of building it on solid foundations rather than argument by strident (and longwinded) assertion. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/18 "2010-08-12T06:17:38Z")
> [@Martin Gardner](#): > > Its fading during the seventies was due mainly, I suspect, to its strident atheism, and its loathing of all forms of altruism and self-sacrifice. Rand did not loath all forms of alturism and self-sacrifice. Rather, she abhorred the kind of altruism and self-sacrifice that requires a someone to put the interests and well-being of others ahead of their own. She felt that altruism and self-sacrifice were fine provided one didn’t have to do without or otherwise harm themselves in order to do so.[Cite](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51pMod2Aaso&feature=related) (beginning around 0:45) > [@Martin Gardner](#): > > Rand died in 1982. William Buckley, who couldn’t abide her, wrote an amusing obituary in which he described his first meeting with the lady. Her opening icebreaker was: “You ahrr too intelligent to believe in Gott.” Buckley quotes from a review that Whittaker Chambers wrote of one of Rand’s books: “Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which the tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve, its dogmatism without appeal.” Gardner is wrong about Buckley’s being “unable to abide Rand”, as well. I don’t have time right now to ferret it out, but on one of Buckley’s appearances on the Charlie Rose Show he spoke of his relationship with Rand and he said they were friendly until he published Chambers’ review in his magazine, and that subsequent to that she refused to have anything to do with him, even going so far as to decline social and speaking invitations upon learning that Buckley would be in attendance. And Buckley recounted amusingly being told by Rand that he “was too intelligent to believe in Gott.” He charmingly commented to Rose that he told her he’d “have to see some documentation on that.” 🙂 Frankly, based upon his errors in just the short quote posted by **BrainGlutton** , I’m not all that sure that Gardner really knew what he was talking about. Either that, or he was just plain biased and intent on portraying her negatively however he could. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/19 "2010-08-12T06:23:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > [@straight\_man](#): > > > > As for law, well, perhaps applied philosophy, in the same sense that engineering is an applied science? > > Only in a very tenuous sense and to a very limited extent. For the most part, what the law applies is a combination of tradition, ethics – more traditional than philosophical – and public policy. The public-policy aspect is the work of both judges and elected legislators; and few politicians are much influenced by philosophy. Yah, I would tend to see it as you say. But I was trying to be more reconciliatory than that. Anyway, “at its core” is very different from “in practice”. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990/20 "2010-08-12T06:43:57Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > She felt that altruism and self-sacrifice were fine provided one didn’t have to do without or otherwise harm themselves in order to do so. I’m looking for a way to interpret that as other than obviously self-contradictory nonsense, but I’m just not seeing it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-ayn-rands-contemporary-status-as-a-moral-and-political-philosopher/549990.md?page=2)