A very detailed critique of Objectivism is Michael Huemer’s Why I’m Not an Objectivist, although I disagree with some of his points. Most damning to me is her utter confusion about universals, which she mistakenly seemed to believe was an epistemological issue—more or less ignoring the real “problem” entirely. (Apropos of nothing, I was amused to learn that the anonymous “profs” in the dialogue at the end of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology were graduate students at the time.)
All of this insistence that you can’t find professors who do the Rand thing strikes me as odd. To me it’s always been clear that she has a strong appeal to many people who are cloistered in the academic world; it just vanishes when they hit the real world. But I had a philosophy professor in college–Jim Wright of Harvey Mudd–who was a Randroid through and through. As I understand it he assigned healthy chunks (perhaps I should say “unhealthy chunks”) of Rand’s “nonfiction” in all his classes. In my political philosophy classes we read Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Marx, and Mill before starting on Rand. This was a big mistake, since the latter looks so utterly juvenile when compared to the former.
I’ve forgotten most of the details of what Ayn Rand wrote but I do remember a statement to the effect that United States was an entirely free country, with no unprovoked initialization of force, until the progressive era and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Ludicrous statements like that are why the overwhelming majority of people can’t take the woman seriously.
I think we can safely say that Objectivism isn’t part of academic philosophy. As for politics (per the OP), I suspect she has had a significant impact on the political philosophy of many, probably most, Libertarian political thinkers. She certainly had a significant impact on the thinking of Alan Greenspan, arguably one of the most powerful people in the world during his tenure as Chairman of the Fed.
But I believe she considered herself first and foremost a writer of fiction. The philosophy part was secondary. **Panache45 **can probably expand on that from his personal experience.
And some people are Trekkers or Hobbits through and through in their real life, but academically are quite serious. A lot of people do embrace her “world” and apply it to how they have their own personal outlook. But it isn’t real philosophy, it’s an outlook or an attitude. As someone mentioned, it’s filled with straw-men and excluded middles. She had a point, that seizing property, compromising artistry and bullshit are really bad things. They are. But she wasn’t a philosopher about these things anymore than some people in rubber suits at Star Trek conventions are Klingons or Ferengis.
And as for the OP, those of us who mock Rand’s pretensions of philosophy don’t really hate her, she’s dead and she was mentally unstable. We are frustrated that her acolytes won’t stop comparing her to real philosophers and don’t understand the difference. Fools like Alan Greenspan, a real acolyte of Rand, substitute her suppositions for independent thought and screw up the economy when there is real science, albiet limited, behind economics that can be used.
Two things: First, her shortest, and imho best work of fiction, Anthem, leads me to conclude that Rand would have done better to have presented her outlook as a science-fiction writer, like Heinlein for example, rather than an amateur philosopher. Second, Rand really did way, way too much meth.
Given a thousand years of people working over my inane posts on this message board, they could probably come up with something that would be eligible to enter the general pantheon of philosophy, too. Sure as hell doesn’t mean what I’ve posted constitutes a coherent, rigorous philosophical treatise.
How can an ethical system be true or false?
Primarily insofar as it begins with true premises and proceeds without contradiction. If an ethical system is not the sort of thing that admits of veracity, then there isn’t much reason to have a discussion in the first place.
Indeed. But, the point is that it’s an irrational expectation to think that a coherent, rigorous philosophical treatise is possible without thousands of years to develop it when your point of comparison is something which has had a thousand years of development.
I’m not so sure Wittgenstein or Russell or Heidegger or Walter Benjamin or, say, the existentialists or post-structuralists would agree with you. They were all 20th century philosophers who were able to do far, far more than Rand did, and have made it into the “official” pantheon of philosophy.
Wittgenstein: “was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in the areas of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.”
Let’s look at the origins of those:
Logic - Ancient Greece
Philosophy of Mathematics - Ancient Greece
Philosophy of Mind - Ancient Greece
Philosophy of Language - Not sure
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your argument - are you claiming Objectivism doesn’t have its roots in older systems of thought?
She wrote a book, *Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, *which has been expanded by Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger. She knew it was only an “introduction,” and had intended to expand on it, had she lived long enough. Peikoff has done a great deal of work fleshing out Objectivism, though I’m not exactly a fan is his.
On a very personal level, she said that the purpose of writing *Atlas Shrugged *was the creation of John Galt (an “Ideal Man”) . . . for her own selfish pleasure of creating a man she could “worship.” Toward this end, in order to make him as real as possible, she had to create all the other characters, the events of the novel, and the philosophy. Her intelligence (which was extraordinary) and imagination wouldn’t let her stop until she had created an entire world. I don’t know what would have happened had she actually met her “ideal man” in reality. It certainly wasn’t either of the two men in her life.
I’m doubting seriously that Ayn Rand made a particular study of philosophy before creating her own philosophy. Obviously, we all live in a world where we pick up tidbits of information about things from different sources about different topics, so certainly we can assume that Objectivism wasn’t 100% created in a vacuum. But, the amount that you just “overhear” and how rigorously defined that generally is, is pretty measly. If you ask your average Catholic about his beliefs, what relation that actually has to the official, rigorously defined doctrine of the Catholic church that’s been developed over the last thousand years is pretty often going to be nill. You would do just as well to say that, while the man-on-the-street’s version is certainly rooted in Catholic thought (through however tortured and maimed a path), it’s essentially it’s own thing that’s the creation of the now, rather than of thousands of years.
Comes off sounding like a juvenile wish-fulfillment fantasy, IMO. She’d never have met her ideal man, because perfection isn’t a quality humans possess.
ETA: In response to panache45.
You can almost see the flop-sweat…
Do you have any evidence whatsoever for what Ayn Rand did or did not study? Either in the way of biographical details or a genetic study of her own literary output?
Because to me it looks like you were called out on a piss-poor argument and are now engaged in Dio-style flailing in an unsuccessful attempt to distract us from that.
Nope, I know little-to-nothing about her. I only know that her arguments didn’t pass muster with professional philosophers and that in any specialty, like Law, Economics, etc. minus training, you’re probably going to fail to make what would be seen as a worthwhile argument if you haven’t had significant training in that field. Witness the recent legal troubles of Stoid, for example.
The only other reason I can think of to not pass muster, besides not having the training, is by simply not being very good.
Either way, the point remains that the quality of an argument and the value of an argument aren’t necessarily linked. If something is tossed based on quality, that doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about the value. Obviously, there will generally be a positive correlation between quality and value, of course, as someone with training and skill is more likely to come up with something novel and well-considered. But, in terms of having effect in the greater world, simple, unrefined ideas generally resonate louder, and most philosophies did begin in such a form. You’d really have to compare those earlier forms to Objectivism, to say how well it compares, not the modern, refined versions.
She had a degree in philosophy and history from the University of Petrograd. So ya missed that one. My guess is she knew a heck of a lot more than you or I. And I was a philosophy major for a while*.
Slee
*Until I figured out that I needed to be employed at some point.
Ayn Rand was a philosophical charlatan in the same way that Sean Hannity is a charlatan of journalism. She was not a genuis. Her literature is second rate at best and her philosophy filled with fallacies. A moral philosophy isn’t true or false, it is valid or fallacious given the premises it is based on and the correctness of the logic. The fact that people are entitled to their opinion that they find her writings satisfying is nothing more than a report on the state of their personal predilections kinda like I enjoy a meat lover’s pizza. The fact that she sells a lot of copies of her works doesn’t make it good literature or good philosophy, it means she writes popular literature, much like Danielle Steele, but not as popular.
But, no ethical system begins with true or false premises, or can.