About Objectivism

Objectivist Center ^ | 2/2002

[RJCogburn]

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. — Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged

In her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and in nonfiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand forged a systematic philosophy of reason and freedom.

Rand was a passionate individualist. She wrote in praise of "the men of unborrowed vision," who live by the judgment of their own minds, willing to stand alone against tradition and popular opinion.

Her philosophy of Objectivism rejects the ethics of self-sacrifice and renunciation. She urged men to hold themselves and their lives as their highest values, and to live by the code of the free individual: self-reliance, integrity, rationality, productive effort.

Objectivism celebrates the power of man's mind, defending reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value.

Upholding the use of reason to transform nature and create wealth, Objectivism honors the businessman and the banker, no less than the philosopher and artist, as creators and as benefactors of mankind.

Ayn Rand was a champion of individual rights, which protect the sovereignty of the individual as an end in himself; and of capitalism, which is the only social system that allows people to live together peaceably, by voluntary trade, as independent equals.

Millions of readers have been inspired by the vision of life in Ayn Rand's novels. Scholars are exploring the trails she blazed in philosophy and other fields. Her principled defense of capitalism has drawn new adherents to the cause of economic and political liberty.

[Theo]

Well, I see the Rand-haters have already shown up, just as I predicted. Only took him 5 minutes from the time you posted until he had a cyber-hissy fit.

I see your first comment was a preemptive ad hominem attack, and your follow up is an out an out ad hominem attack. Very illogical for someone who espouses logic....

[PatrickHenry]

Check this out: Bible Atrocities.

[Theo]

Bible Atrocities....

The created (you) calling to account the Creator. How incongruent. Perhaps they seem like "atrocities" to you because you don't understand?

[OWK]

God's. He also never ordered the slaughter. That was an order attributed to Him, but originated the heart of man.

Well said.

That, is the only logical conclusion to be drawn, assuming the existence of God.

(but it means that people who've declared the Bible the "inerrant word of God" must come to grips with the fact that it is not).

God cannot be both good and evil.

Therefore, if one is to believe his existence, one must conclude that his definitions of good are reasonable, and that those actions attributed to him by tribal wanderers, were not God's at all.

Personally, if I maintained a belief in God, I would submit that the Old Testament represented a flawed and corrupt understanding of God, and that Jesus of Nazareth (whose teachings I greatly revere and respect) walked the earth, and set the record straight.

God is not about brutality, fear, vengence, and murderous tyranical rages (as described in the OT). God is about love, compassion, grace, voluntary interaction, and the golden rule.

But what do I know..? I'm an atheist.

[OWK]

Wow.

[PatrickHenry]

You see, it's all in how you look at it. (But that's not moral relativism.)
</some kinda mode>

[Joe Driscoll]

God cannot be both good and evil.

Can you have sunlight without shadow?

I'm smart enough to know that I don't know.

[OWK]

If I were an advocate of the existence of God, I'd find it far more reasonable to conclude that the Old Testament murders supposedly ordered by God, were in fact simply attributed to God by Joshua in order to justify them.

It would seem contradictory for God (not to mention evil) to hand down commandments against murder, and then tell his followers to murder.

[betty boop]

Hence the "good of society" (society being an abstraction anyway) is wholely contingent on preserving the good (rights) of individuals.

I strongly disagree with you, OWK, that society is an "abstraction." Quite the contrary -- and the Framers would agree with me. How else are we to understand the language of the Preamble of the federal Constitution? It says:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This is much more than the language of individual rights.

[OWK]

You see, it's all in how you look at it.

I think honestly, that a more accurate description would be "it's all in how you DON'T look at it".

When confronted with this obvious moral contradiction, honest evaluation goes out the window, people avert their eyes, and begin chanting comforting things about how we simply "can't grasp the ways of God".

[Roscoe]

As Ayn Rand would say, "blank-out."

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." --Paul Johnson

[PatrickHenry]

... chanting comforting things about how we simply "can't grasp the ways of God".

Of course we can't. The part that troubles me is when some people run around, feeling smug and superior, claiming that they can grasp such things.

[OWK]

I strongly disagree with you, OWK, that society is an "abstraction." Quite the contrary -- and the Framers would agree with me. How else are we to understand the language of the Preamble of the federal Constitution? It says:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This is much more than the language of individual rights.

Please explain how the general welfare can be promoted, without the specific welfare of each constituent member being preserved?

And explain further, how the state's actions which do not treat each individual's rights as precious, and unassailable, can possibly promote the "general welfare"?

Sounds to me BB, as if you've become an advocate of a "greatest good for the greatest number" philosophy.

I'm saddened by this.

[Roscoe]

Collectivism places the wants of "society" or "the majority" or "the collective", over the rights of individuals.

"Whosoever, therefore, out of a state of Nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power necessary to the ends for which they unite into society to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between the individuals that enter into or make up a commonwealth. And thus, that which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of majority, to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world." -- John Locke

[jimt]

The site misses my favorite, where Lot invites the men of Sodom to "do with as you will" to his daughters "who have not known men" if only they'll leave him alone.

A coward and a scum, to put it mildly.

[OWK]

Democracy, is not a moral end it itself.

It can be just as readily used to subjugate rights, as defend them..

[PsyOp]

I think you're pretty much spot on. I like her writings and think she and her objectivists contributed much that is good to the case for individual rights and the role of capitalism as a bulwark of freedom, but her philosophy of objectivism had major flaws.

Take the West Point speech for example. Great and moving. But her own philosphy of "selfishness" would in the end classify most in the military as fools for holding the beliefs that motivated them to join the military in the first place. The American soldier, is, ultimately an altruist in his or her thinking, and yet Rand rejected altruism as destructive.

The heroes of her fiction stand in stark contrast to the heroes of American Military history in their motivations and modes of thinking.

And, as you say, she was intolerant of any who expressed their philosophical "indiviualism" with regard to Objectivism. As an athiest, she was as religiously zealous as any inquisitor.

But, as I say, I much of what she wrote is worth reading and objectivist philosophy adds a net positive to the whole discussion. One just has to recognize where she fell short, and the inherent dichotomies in some of her philosphy.

Those that hate her throw the baby out with the bathwater, and those that blindly follow her every word are guilty of no less.

[betty boop]

Sounds to me BB, as if you've become an advocate of a "greatest good for the greatest number" philosophy.

OWK, this is not an either/or proposition. Wise statecraft must find ways to protect both the rights of individuals, and the "general welfare" -- that is, what the broad society requires for its good order over time. To say as much does not make me an ideologue of "the greatest good for the greatest number" school.

[tacticalogic]

Whosoever, therefore, out of a state of Nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power necessary to the ends for which they unite into society to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority.

Collectivists reject the notion of uniting into a community out of a "state of Nature". "Uniting" connotes a voluntary action. Collectivists see membership in the "community" as mandatory.

[Roscoe]

It can be just as readily used to subjugate rights, as defend them.

In America our representative forms of government have defended them to the extent that we have greater liberty and opportunity than mankind has ever known before.