Aristotle: Ayn Rand's Acknowledged Teacher

The Autonomist ^ | 4/26/04 | Edward W. Younkins

[BfloGuy]

I do not judge her, but I do not admire her either

Ayn Rand had a brilliant mind.

But our society is so caught up in the cult of the personality (and too many Objectivists are as well) that we can't separate the ideas from the person.

I find Any Rand's novels almost unreadable. They're stultified, cement-ridden screeds. The characters are wooden and her opinions on a woman's place are from the Stone Age. Rand was not born to be a novelist.

But if any of you would go beyond "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" and read her essays on philosophy or her brilliant "Objectivist Epistemology", you'd see that she backed up her prose with solid argument.

Alas, she had failings. I disagree with her on abortion and homosexuality (to name just two). I only wish I could have the opportunity to discuss those issues with her.

In the end, she teaches us how to think. Her junkies just hang on her every word. They're wrong.

She put forth a guide to how to think. It's really brilliant. That she didn't always live up to her own ideals only shows that she was human too.

[Ronzo]

You may believe that, but I certainly don't, and I have never seen any evidence to support your theory.

Feel free to enlighten us.

No thanks. Too much work for a posting debate.

The proposition is true for me, if not for you.

However, if you would like to disprove my proposition by demonstrating that there are philosophers who have a different ultimate starting point, like math or existance or something else, feel free to do so.

Seeing how I stated the question, such a thing should be rather easy to do...

[Misterioso]

Alas, she had failings. I disagree with her on abortion and homosexuality (to name just two). I only wish I could have the opportunity to discuss those issues with her.

Are you saying that you defend homosexuality?

But our society is so caught up in the cult of the personality (and too many Objectivists are as well) that we can't separate the ideas from the person.

We? Speak for yourself.

Rand was not born to be a novelist.

Even though she is one of the most widely read novelists of all time?

In the end, she teaches us how to think. Her junkies just hang on her every word. They're wrong.

Can you name one of her "junkies" for me? Of those posts attacking Rand in this thread, yours is the least vexing, but it still suffers from ignorance of the topic at hand.

[PatrickHenry]

A hundred years from now, if the US still exists and speaks English, and if our schools can ever return to sanity, the two most important authors of the 20th century will be Heinlein and Rand. Indeed, if our schools become sane and the country continues to exist, it will be largely because of writers like Heinlein and Rand.

[tpaine]

Ronzo wrote:

Whether or not there is a god or gods is the ultimate starting point for a train of thought regardless of the philosopher.

You may believe that, but I certainly don't, and I have never seen any evidence to support your theory.
Feel free to enlighten us.

No thanks. Too much work for a posting debate.
The proposition is true for me, if not for you.

As I commented, feel free to believe that.

However, if you would like to disprove my proposition by demonstrating that there are philosophers who have a different ultimate starting point, like math or existance or something else, feel free to do so.

Why should I belabor the obvious?

Seeing how I stated the question, such a thing should be rather easy to do...

Not true.. -- You stated a questionable opinion as though it was fact. -- You've been called on it, and folded.

[tpaine]

[Rand] detested libertarians precisely because they have no philosophy -- and they're rather proud of it.


She put forth a guide to how to think. It's really brilliant. That she didn't always live up to her own ideals only shows that she was human too.
-Bguy-
______________________________________


Too bad you seem unable to use her guide to re-think your sophistry on libertarian philosophy.

[laotzu]

Thanks for the ping.

A bit of rambling rant here:
I grow so weary of mindless sheep using ordained excuses to jump on any they are told don't run with the herd.

Republicans don't starve children, or lynch blacks.

Libertarians are not godless, or without any base philosophy, and don't look to Rand as their leader.

I am a conservative, and remain a Republican, despite the influx of sheeple. Libertarians are conservatives, and have my respect.

I expect lies, and propoganda from liberals. It sours my Republican party when so many, so easily attack with those same mindless, liberal tools.

[society-by-contract]

Atlas Shrugged is the book that started me down the path to embracing human liberty, but I've been on a Rothbard kick for a couple of years now and thought you all might like this essay:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult

by Murray N. Rothbard

Written in 1972, this was the first piece of Rand revisionism from the libertarian standpoint.

In the America of the 1970s we are all too familiar with the religious cult, which has been proliferating in the last decade. Characteristic of the cult (from Hare Krishna to the "Moonies" to EST to Scientology to the Manson Family) is the dominance of the guru, or Maximum Leader, who is also the creator and ultimate interpreter of a given creed to which the acolyte must be unswervingly loyal. The major if not the only qualification for membership and advancement in the cult is absolute loyalty to and adoration of the guru, and absolute and unquestioning obedience to his commands. The lives of the members are dominated by the guru’s influence and presence. If the cult grows beyond a few members, it naturally becomes hierarchically structured, if only because the guru cannot spend his time indoctrinating and watching over every disciple. Top positions in the hierarchy are generally filled by the original handful of disciples, who come to assume these positions by virtue of their longer stint of loyal and devoted service. Sometimes the top leadership may be related to each other, a useful occurrence which can strengthen intra-cult loyalty through the familial bond.

The goals of the cult leadership are money and power. Power is achieved over the minds of the disciples through inducing them to accept without question the guru and his creed. This devotion is enforced through psychological sanctions. For once the acolyte is imbued with the view that approval of, and communication with, the guru are essential to his life, then the implicit and explicit threat of excommunication – of removal from the direct or indirect presence of the guru – creates a powerful psychological sanction for the "enforcement" of loyalty and obedience. Money flows upward from the members through the hierarchy, either in the form of volunteer labor service contributed by the members, or through cash payments.

[betty boop]

eudaimonia

Interesting word, Hank. It means the human happiness that derives from being "one with the God," of participating in and reflecting the divine nature to the fullest extent that human nature admits. This is the goal of the spoudaious, the wise or "mature" man -- the goal of reason itself. (Note the word spoudaious incorporates the root that references God.)

The fact is (made very clear in Nichomachean Ethics) that Aristotle believed in God, and saw the entire moral universe as having its source in the divine. In this he followed his great teacher, Plato.

I'm afraid Ms. Rand -- atheist and proud of it -- has edited this part of Aristotelian thought out of the portrait of her "greatest philosopher." However, she kept the parts that confirmed her own views. With this maneuver, she tended to falsify this great philosopher every time she spoke of him.

Good post, Hank. Thanks!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for that insight, betty boop!

[LogicWings]

Honestly, if you ever read a biography of Rand, she was a drunken old twat

thanks for proving you know nothing.

[LogicWings]

She was also one of the first people to give a solid MORAL justification for individual freedom and economic liberty...something sorely lacking at the time,

Not just then, NOW !!!! Hayek, Mises, Mencken, and RAND. We still haven't, as a society, fully embraced these ideas and concepts. Capitalism is MORAL.

[LogicWings]

Atlas Shrugged makes a great doorstop.

Since you are intellectually challenged try "Sometimes a Great Notion" by Ken Kesey. It is even larger and will make an even better doorstop. Even though it is a masterpiece. But then, you don't know the difference.

[LogicWings]

The irony is that Rand herself would be barely capable of understanding what Kant was trying to establish - or rather, trying to overthrow. Namely, the primacy of Reason over dogma. Mainly Aristotelian dogma.

No, this is exactly backwards. Kant was trying to establish the primacy of faith over logic, not the other way around. Rand understood this perfectly. Kant was a lousy logician.

Perhaps my favorite example of exposing Rand as a philosophical lightweight is her praising Aristotle to the heavens for inventing logic, followed by her own metaphysical axiom the 'A=A'. Ahem, 'A=A' is not even an intelligible statement in symbolic logic (that's the kind of logic Aristotle is credited with inventing).

What is “an example?” What is a “lightweight?” What is “logic?” If “A = A” is invalid, then what do any of these words mean? For those of you that are following this, this is the perfect example of a “Stolen Concept,” which Rand discovered. This writer seeks to discredit Rand by the very fallacy she revealed.

The rest of this diatribe is silly. To quote:

Any successful capitalistic society, such as she adores, requires self-sacrifice to defend it.

Ignorant crap. Mutually exclusive terms. Capitalism doesn’t require self sacrifice, by definition.

But why not weasle out of one's duty whenever possible.

What “duty?” I will undertake an ‘obligation’ if I choose, but society cannot impose upon me a “duty.” Socialism imposes duty.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

What “duty?” I will undertake an ‘obligation’ if I choose, but society cannot impose upon me a “duty.” Socialism imposes duty.

You recognize no objectively imposed duties? Like taking care of your family, defending justice, fighting to preserve it if you are blessed to live in a society that values it? If 'life' is the supreme value to Randists, it means only 'my particular life', and others only if convenient, or so it appears to me. This is why I say that Randists, taken at their word, are morally unreliable, for they recognize no transcendant moral imperatives.

Perhaps this is why Rand hated Kant so vehemently. Kant a 'hippie'? Like I said before, Rand is much closer to Rousseau than Aristotle, for she takes Nature (yeah, that capital 'N', indicating 'god substitute) as her sole guide. But Nature doesn't write philosophy books, people do, imposing their preconceived notions about how 'things ought to be'.

Thus, swearing by the laws of Nature, and eschewing all convention, Rousseau, Jack London, and Ayn Rand arrived at their particular, and widely divergent, views about morality and the purpose of life.

[beckett]

Hayek, Mises, Mencken, and RAND.

Nothing is stopping you from associating these four names in your own personal philosophy, but it would be a real stretch to call any of the three men Objectivists.

Von Mises fled from Objectivist meetings at NBI (the Nathaniel Branden Institute). His wife, who accompanied him to the one or two meetings he attended, later complained that they were smoke-choked spectacles of humorless cruelty where Rand glowered and sneered at the audience.

Rand called Friedrich Hayek "poison." She hated Hayek because for him "reason is limited." Also for him market intervention is anathema, but "redistribution is quite another matter...For instance social safety nets, subsidies for the arts, school-vouchers, and taxes on luxuries and 'sins' do not seek to alter or replace the market. Rather they merely redirect demand within it."

Mencken died in 1956, thirteen years after the Fountainhead was published but before Rand became well known for her philosophical dabblings. It's a very good bet he never heard of Objectivism.

[Stagerite]

Rand will be acknowledged as a great philosopher when Aristotle is forgotten but not before that time.

The basis for your opinion, please.

[Stagerite]

They were all a pile of drunks from all I have read. They were all a pile of drunks from all I have read.

You are calling Alan Greenspan a drunk.

"He (Alan Greenspan) never allowed himself to be publicy put on the defensive regarding his friendship with Rand. Whenever the media inquired about their association, he responded in ways that played up her seriousness as a thinker and his earnest debt of gratitude to her. This comment to Newsweek is typical: "When I met Ayn Rand, I was a free enterpriser in the Adam Smith sense, impressed with the theoretical structure and efficiency of markets. What she did was to make me see that capitalism in not only efficient and practical, but also moral."

-- Justin Martin, "Greenspan: The man behind money," pgs 100-101.