Posted on 11/13/2009 7:51:55 AM PST by cornelis
Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut [Peter Wehner]
According to Politico.com, Ayn Rand — the subject of two new biographies, one of which is titled Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right — is “having a mainstream moment,” including among conservatives. (Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina wrote a piece in Newsweek on Rand, saying, “This is a very good time for a Rand resurgence. She’s more relevant than ever.”).
I hope the moment passes. Ms. Rand may have been a popular novelist, but her philosophy is deeply problematic and morally indefensible.
Ayn Rand was, of course, the founder of Objectivism – whose ethic, she said in a 1964 interview, holds that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She has argued that “friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.” And about Jesus she said:I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn’t that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.Many conservatives aren’t aware that it was Whittaker Chambers who, in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement. The most striking feature of the book, Chambers said, was its “dictatorial tone . . . Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal . . . From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’”
William F. Buckley Jr. himself wrote about her “desiccated philosophy’s conclusive incompatibility with the conservative’s emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral; but also there is the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable.”
Yet there are some strands within conservatism that still veer toward Rand and her views of government (“The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force,” she argued. “This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.”), and many conservatives identify with her novelistic hero John Galt, who declared, “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
But this attitude has very little to do with authentic conservatism, at least the kind embodied by Edmund Burke, Adam Smith (chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow), and James Madison, to name just a few. What Rand was peddling is a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy. No society could thrive if its tenets were taken seriously and widely accepted. Ayn Rand may have been an interesting figure and a good (if extremely long-winded) novelist; but her views were pernicious, the antithesis of a humane and proper worldview. And conservatives should say so.
"Interpreted" is a bit weak ... Jesus came right out and demanded it.
Actually, the dreariness of society is one part that she pretty much got right ... probably based on her personal experience of Soviet Russia.
The problem is that her heroes are just as dreary.
It struck me as being a species of philosophical egoism, of an extreme sort. Useful in small doses as a medicine to counteract Communist propaganda, but in larger doses a moral poison.
As a roadmap, it's a path to anarchy, albeit from a different route than that followed by traditional socialism and communism.
It's not just anti-Socialism and anti-Communism; it's anti-Society.
If followed to its logical conclusion, its result would be not a utopia but a wilderness. A wilderness of dragons.
Recently, my distant (in more than one sense) sister accused me in a poison pen letter e-mail of being like your male friend. She was mistaken, but through her subsequent manipulation she has managed to bring it about. I've lost my bearings. I've lost what I consider foundations of happiness.
And that I think is the key. Everyone of us seeks at the minimum foundations of happiness. They are different for each of us, and apparently the woman you describe has them, while the man does not. Perhaps his minimum requirements are too high, while hers are very low.
Depends on what one means by moderate.
There are scales of moderation, like anything else.
Hence, even moderation should be taken in moderation.
My post was written from the perspective of a non-believer such as Ms. Rand.
There is no way she would believe in the ongoing redemption of the world you mention.
Western Civilization not only does not seem to presently be undergoing even “on-going, gradual, incomplete” redemption at the present time. It appears to be going in reverse over much of its former area, at least if we use moral standards and belief in Christ as the standard. Most of Europe is essentially post-Christian at this point.
Thanks for an outstanding comment!
Well there is that bit where he begged his Father not to make him do it, but in the end said, "Let thy will be done."
Doesn't sound entirely voluntary, or at least not particularly cheerful about it.
Ah, now I get it ... having seen your posts elsewhere, I was a bit puzzled by it.
It appears to be going in reverse over much of its former area, at least if we use moral standards and belief in Christ as the standard. Most of Europe is essentially post-Christian at this point.
True ... but does that stand as a refutation of the efficacy of Christian belief, or as confirmation of it?
Thanks.
I’ve been popping in on occasion, but I never post because the threads are old.
It’s interesting to see how everyone breaks it down.
Not sure what you mean.
I think Europe is in the end-stages of squandering its moral capital accumulated over centuries of Christian belief and will soon descend into the abyss. Possibly a Muslim one, but it will be some sort of atrocious end.
The US is fighting an epic, although so far more or less nonviolent, civil war right now to determine whether we follow them into the abyss.
Not cheerful ... but somewhere in John doesn't he make clear that he does it of his own free will?
“How about having a doubly aduterous affair with a young married man some thirty years her junior while she, too, was married at the same.”
Well, at least she was not as bad as the rich guy with the two wives who not only bedded them but each of their maids as well and had twelve kids with them collectively. You know, what’s his name, Jacob, or Israel. In your words, his “personal life, values, and morals were perfectly atrocious.” But I bet you think he was just great.
Now I can point to exactly where that guy’s life is documented, so you do the same for Rand, and the accusations you’ve made, if you can, please. Aren’t you embarrased to be spreading unsubstantiated slander?
Hank
“How about having a doubly aduterous affair with a young married man some thirty years her junior while she, too, was married at the same.”
Well, at least she was not as bad as the rich guy with the two wives who not only bedded them but each of their maids as well and had twelve kids with them collectively. You know, what’s his name, Jacob, or Israel. In your words, his “personal life, values, and morals were perfectly atrocious.” But I bet you think he was just great.
Now I can point to exactly where that guy’s life is documented, so you do the same for Rand, and the accusations you’ve made, if you can, please. Aren’t you embarrased to be spreading unsubstantiated slander?
Hank
“There’s plenty of odor there, Hank, for those who have a sense of smell.”
Yes, you are right. I small scandal-monger and liar.
Hank
A note: using that standard, properly modified, you can't prove that the existence of the sex drive is an objective phenomenon. Your challenge seems loaded.
If it's "loaded," it's because of the claim that happiness is an objective property: "of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind ..."
Nobody denies that "happiness" is a real thing. The question is, rather, whether a state of happiness satisfies the criteria of objectivity.
Similarly, nobody denies the existence of a sex drive. But it is not a completely objective thing, either. Consider: Most guys don't want to have sex with every woman they see, and they don't even want to have sex all the time. The criteria for what makes you want to have sex with one woman and not another ... or now but not yesterday ... those are bewilderingly complicated, to say the least, and they're different for different people.
It's not enough to note the objective fact that there's a sex drive, or a human capacity for "happiness," however defined; the thing is that it operates on highly subjective criteria.
“Define in measurable terms the objective basis of ‘happiness,’ keeping in mind that to be objective, any given basis must infallibly produce ‘happiness,’ for all people at all times.
And while you’re at it, why not define happiness itself, in objective, measurable terms?
Your are a presumptive ... You don’t know me, so I’ll say gently, no one tells me what to.
I’m not a Randian and have no intention of defending her philosophy. (I could certainly do it, but won’t, mostly because I do not agree with much of her philosophy, but for reasons no one on this thread would understand, especially the idiots.)
Only an ... would say, “Define in measurable terms the objective basis of ‘happiness,’ keeping in mind that to be objective, any given basis must infallibly produce ‘happiness,’ for all people at all times.”
What, you think happiness is like a secretion that is produced by, what, some glandular process? Happiness is not a something, it is a state and since everyone is different, there can never be something that “produces” or “defines” happiness for everyone.
I know what happiness is for me, and how to achieve it. I have no idea what would make an idiot happy.
I’m not interested in defending Rand’s philosophy, only interested in giving some balance against the ignorant smears and slander spread by supposed “conservative” people.
Hank
Why are you pretending not to know what happiness is ? Even a dog intuitively knows what happiness is. "Measurable" is not synonymous with "objective" in Objectivism. That is the prevalent view of scientists and empiricist philosophers of science, but not in Objectivism.
Oh, boo hoo. Sorry, Hank. I don't have the patience to deal with your passive-agressive behavior today.
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