Ayn Rand
This is not about Ayn Rand, it’s about philosophy. I would rather be using the name of a great twentieth century American philosopher, but unfortunately, there are none, and I have to settle for a novelist. At least she was a great novelist. Her novels were very philosophical, and in fact were embodiments of her philosophy. Ayn Rand readily admitted that she was not a philosopher. It was not her intention to be a philosopher. She was a novelist and knew what she wanted to write about was true heroes with true virtue, about good as the positive, and evil as a negative, and about life that was worth living. When she looked to philosophy for the principles that should have supported this view of life, she found there was none. If her novels were going to be anything more than mystic utopian romance, she needed the philosophical principles that would be the foundation upon which to build the living creation she envisioned. There was no such philosophy, she had to discovered it for herself.
Some would say she created it, but one does not create philosophy any more than one creates mathematics or chemistry. Unfortunately, some of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is created, and that fact is betrayed by one of her mistakes, she gave her philosophy a name, Objectivism.
The problem with giving a philosophy a name is that it indicates the philosophy is a mere matter of opinion, and, though it may be mostly right, it is in competition with all the other named philosophies for that honor which is not yet established. The fact that Ayn Rand’s philosophy did contain created elements as well as true philosophical discovery is the reason it is still call Objectivism, and not just philosophy.
As the philosophy required for the creation of her novels, her philosophy was a complete success, and for that alone we are eternally grateful. But her philosophy, including its faults, is the only genuine advance in the field of philosophy since Aristotle and Locke, and the advances she made in philosophy are not trivial.
Ayn Rand was a first rate mind, and even in those areas where she was mistaken, there is profound and clear reasoning enough to at least demonstrate how wrong almost all other philosophies in those areas are. She was wrong about the nature of government in some very fundamental ways, but her political philosophy is not only an improvement on anything to date, but completely demolishes every supposed philosophical basis for socialism, collectivism, and totalitarianism.
In the following areas, as far as she went, she discovered true philosophy:
Epistemology - except that the idea of “measurement” should be replaced with “differentiation of shared quality or qualities,” because some qualities have variations which are not measurable, but are clearly definable. (For example, emotions share certain common qualities, but individual emotions are not differentiated by measurable differences in those qualities, but other differences; also software includes many different particular “softwares” which share a common quality that is differentiated by qualitative differences that are not measurable. This error is so minor, however, it is almost like a quibble.)
Ethics - the egoistic ethics may have been discovered independently by Ayn Rand or developed from those leads provided by John Locke, but since she never even mentioned Locke’s rational self-interest, we may assume the principles were independently discovered. Rand’s ethics, at least, are totally rational, and rationally defended. For the first time the true basis for ethical (moral) principles are explicitly defined. All ethical questions can be resolved from these basic principles. Like all true principles, however, it is possible to deviate from them when attempting to extend their application, which Ayn Rand herself did when developing he political philosophy.
Social Ethics - as an extension of ethics, her development of the principles of the appropriate (morally correct) relationship between members of society, and therefore of society itself are new ground which philosophy was formerly completely devoid of. Unfortunately, in spite of the correct conclusions in social ethics, she went astray when developing them into her political theory.
Economics - strictly speaking, not a part of philosophy, but so closely related to social ethics and political philosophy, the essential principles of economics cannot be derived without them. A fully developed system of economics also requires metaphysics, the one area where Ayn Rand developed no new philosophy beyond a statement about the fact of the primacy of existence, which is necessary for all her other philosophy. Ayn Rand did not develop a complete system of economics, and many of the principles she wrote about were well known and discovered by others as well. However, it was her advances in ethics and social ethics that provided the correct moral basis for these economic principles.
In her book, “Philosophy, Who Needs it,” she explains why philosophy is essential to the life of man in this world. She did not put it this way, but it means the same thing, man needs philosophy for the same reason he needs food and water, it is a requirement of his nature. The difference is, food and water are requirements of his biological nature, while philosophy is a requirement of his psychological nature, his mode of consciousness, that is, his mind. Without it he will die, for without it, he will not even be able to provide himself the biological requirements of food and water.
This is true. Every man must have a philosophy, and every man does, but most people’s philosophy is by default, an eclectic bag of vague rules, slogans, community beliefs, and superstitions picked up along the way. A person’s philosophy determines everything about them, everything they think and believe, everything they value, everything they do, and everything they feel. If one’s philosophy is a jumble of unrelated and contradictory principles (or the non-principles prevalent today) their life will be a jumble of false starts, failures, irrational feelings, conflicting desires, fears, and confusion. (Does this help explain the society you live in?)
Man requires an integrated view of life, a set of principles that enable him to integrate all his experiences by discovering their relationships to himself, all his other experiences and to his own needs and desires. He needs principles that enable him to understand his own desires and feelings and how they relate to the world he lives in. Most people do attempt, especially in their late teens and early twenties to develop some kind of an integrated view of life, which they probably do not call philosophy, even though that is what it is. Unfortunately, the experts and authorities only confuse them more, “proving,” (they authorities say) the kind of truth they seeks is impossible to find, and who are they, after all, to want to understand what great minds, like Kant and Russel (or whoever) proved could not be understood.
What Ayn Rand proved, above all other things, is the world, and life, and your own nature can be understood, and that you can understand them. You do not need to be the victim of irrational passions you do not know the source of, you don’t have to live in confusion, or fear, or worse, terror, because the world and life are an incomprehensible hell. It is a perfectly rational and ordered universe, infinitely complex (interesting), surprising (suspenseful), even dangerous (adventurous) place, and the source of everything that is good and worth living for.
If you have never read Ayn Rand you are missing one of the greatest pleasures of life, no matter what you think of her as a philosopher, or even as a novelist. You are missing the pleasure of meeting a great mind, wide awake, and full of the joy of life.
With regard to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, there are those who understand her, and those who hate her.
You can tell a lot about someone by what they hate. It is obvious why some people hate Ayn Rand, but some of the hatred of Ayn Rand, is a bit of a mystery. What she promoted above all other things, was individual liberty. What she was opposed, above all other things, was oppression. What kind of people hate that? We assume most of the people who say they hate her really do not understand what she said, and are making their judgement on the basis of what the people in the next category say about her.
Some who hate Ayn Rand do understand her. They hate her for the same reason the cockroach hates the light.
Now those who make their living by expropriating the product of other people’s efforts in the name of noble causes, such compassion for the poor, compassion for the downtrodden, and compassion for the misfortunate, while passing laws and regulations that will insure there are always sufficient poor, downtrodden, and misfortunate to benefit from their programs and to elect them, all hate Ayn Rand, because she exposed them for what they are.
Ayn Rand made mistakes, and it’s a good thing too. If she had corrected them, those who only hated her would have murdered her. The evil hate the good, the perfectly good, they kill.
I don’t know if Ayn Rand would really have been martyred for the truth she taught. I do know, if it came to it, she would gladly have died rather than deny the truth, and I know, if she had seen the truth about government, and written about it, her life would have been in danger.
By the way, the idea for the above quip is partly based on an idea originated by George Bernard Shaw. In his “Notes for Revolutionaries,” from the play, Man and Superman, Shaw wrote:
“If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him. We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible we crucified it.”
If you haven’t read Shaw, you really ought to. At least read Man and Superman and all the rest of his plays. Then you ought to read, Hugo, Twain, and Dostoevsky, and Scott, and …. Look, if you want to start enjoying life again, shut the TV off and read.