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.
Everyone has a sense of smell, the problem is that some succeed in suppressing it with their handkerchief!
Save yourself some trouble. I am quite familiar with Christian theologoy, all it’s flavors. There is a reason where there are so many flavors, of course.
My question was a light way of asking if you are a universalist, in the old sense. If Christ really died for all the sins of the world, and anyone still goes to hell, payment for some sins is being collected twice. Is that just?
If you are not a universalist, then you really don’t believe in “free” salvation, because an individual has to do something to be save, and save from what?
Ah, now it get’s interesting. Turns out people are “born sinful.” What does that mean—either they are already sinners in Adam (as some hold) or they have a sinful nature inhereted from Adam, which causes them to sin. In either case they are condemned to eternal torment for that sin unless they are saved, right?
And that torment is described as, “payment for sin.” Please explain how pain and torment are a “payment for sin,” and who exactly is collecting that payment, and why they enjoy it so much that they are willing to accept it as payment.
About the only thing I’m certain came out of Christianity are the concepts of revenge and retributive justice.
(That’s a bit of exaggeration. I have frequently defended Christianity. For example:
http://theautonomist.com/aaphp/articles/article80.php )
Hank
(Come to think of it, a person who is convinced that the mind is in the brain, and thoughts are located in the brain, would find it objectionable too.)
Of course, the dictionary exists to get us to use our words straight. I'm discussing a point that's germane to a philosophy class, so it shouldn't be construed as a criticism of the dictionary.
God helps those who help themselves.
Be that as it may, it is essentially the same definition that Ayn Rand used.
As for thoughts in general being "objective," that's actually somewhat irrelevant to the point at hand. Rand stated that "Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears."
She furthermore claimed that the moral principles she espoused, were in some way objective, according to that definition: discernable through the exercise of logic and reason, applied to the evidence of objective reality provided by our senses. Among other things, for these things to be objective, this implies a requirement for her principles to be measurable.
And thus when Rand claims that "the pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life," she either means it according to the dictionary definition, or she is willing to accept a subjective state as the "highest moral purpose" of her philosophy.
We must take her at her word that she envisions "happiness" as a fully objective property. And thus the requirement that "happiness" must be observable, measurable, and in some sense part of objective reality, independent of hopes, fears, and so on.
The problem comes, not from the definition of objective, but rather the insistence that "happiness" is somehow objective: it is a fact,"independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears."
Just to place happiness that context is to highlight the irrationality of Rand's claim.
What Rand's point is, is that these people VOLUNTARILY help those they love, rather than helping because they are made to feel that they "owe" their labor./em>
That is what they are doing, but that's not the language Rand uses to describe what they are doing, and it is not the message that most people who read her works come away with.
I don’t have to follow Rand to critique Socialism. I’d prefer
Von Mises.
Typical response from a cultist.
I think there is a place for this. Atlas Shrugged is essentially a Superman-style superhero comic in novel form.
As far as morality is concerned, I believe she is correct with relation to public political behavior. A principle should stand on its own basis and not on the morality of the person holding it. Private moral behavior however, should be rooted in the Bible. So while a politician who advocates and legislates for strong marriages but has an affair should not have to suffer consequences politically, privately his wife is morally correct to make him suffer a divorce.
Based on government intervention, they should not. Private charity should handle these cases. This method adds the extra feature of being able to appeal to the government if there are abuses in the charity.
If the government becomes a charity, who then can we turn to in order to stop abuses?
Based on the statements following it doesn't seem like this is true.
If you are not a universalist, then you really don’t believe in “free” salvation, because an individual has to do something to be save, and save from what?
First, a free gift must be accepted. Second, we must be saved from the inevitable spiritual consequences of our lives on Earth.
Please explain how pain and torment are a “payment for sin,” and who exactly is collecting that payment, and why they enjoy it so much that they are willing to accept it as payment.
Hell is the result of separation from God. It is not an active torment anymore than the pain of deciding to live in space without a spacesuit would be the active torment of Earth. God doesn't want to torment you. And God doesn't owe you salvation from a state that you actively seek (distance from God).
“First, a free gift must be accepted.”
Well of course is doesn’t have to be accepted. But a “gift” is one thing, paying for everyone’s sins is another.
If someone goes to all those I owe money to, and pays those depts, I don’t have to do a thing to be free of those debt.
If someone offers to pay those debts if I make some act of “acceptance,” then it is not free.
“God doesn’t want to torment you.”
Huh? Does not your God claim to be omnipotent? Why would he do something he does not want to?
No, do not answer. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m not trying to convince you. Perhaps you’ll understand why I cannot ascribe to Christian doctrine. It does not mean you have to agree with my reasons.
I wish you well in everything.
Hank
Are you suggesting that it's not?
I don't see how her own definition of objectivity can be deemed to be "essentially" the same as the dictionary's. She doesn't mention independence from the mind in her own.
If it's a figment of a single mind, it's not objective.
Ah, Hank. You give up to soon. If you wrestle with God, hold ‘em by the ankle.
Jesus again
John 10:11"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
And again a few sentences later
John 10:17The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."
If happiness is objective, then why do so many people get divorced.
I contend that happiness is both an emotion and a frame of mind or outlook.
A friends uncle, one of the warmest people you could ever meet, was married for a number of year, and then his wife got a dibilitating disease. He had to pick her up out of bed or a wheel chair to bathe her or take her to the bathroom. She became a very demanding and bitter person. My buddy's uncle had a couple of businesses he was operating during this time also, so he hade a HUGE load on his plate. UNTIL he came down with cancer, 15 years later.
He fought cancer for 3 years, and even through the pain of cancer, my buddy described his uncle as happy AND inspiring.
Why do some people get married and talk about how happy they are, and then 5-7-10 years later get divorced? Why does someone else, with the weight of the world upon them choose to stay faithful and committed, and are still described as happy?
Feelings come and go. One can wake up happy and by noon be in a foul mood. The next day they might be happy again.
A happy outlook isn't quite as fickle, BUT still must be developed and excercised and protected.
Some might say Pursued.
A Christian, a real one, with a relationship with the living God sees life beyond his/her self. God is their source for everything. Their source for provision. Their source for outlook. And their source for sustainance and/or hope.
When I read the books of the Apostle Paul, I get the sense of someone who is under great trial, AND YET his spirit IS NOT defeated.
As I get older, bit by tiny bit, I understand and empathize with Paul when he says:"to live is Christ, to die is gain".
To be "happy" in life, with whatever trials, so that I may know and proclaim Christ. Or to view death as finally seeing and experiencing my savior.
“Ah, Hank. You give up to soon. If you wrestle with God, hold ‘em by the ankle.”
No thanks. He’ll break my hip.
Hank
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