Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut

NRO ^ | 13 November 2009 | Peter Wehner

[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.

[Pessimist]

“The strength of a society is in its voluntary associations.”

Actually, that’s exactly what she said. People enter transactions for their mutual benefit. Otherwise, it’s coercion.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Ayn Rand was fundamentally wrong. She claimed that her books were all about the strength of the individual, but if you read them, in none of them did an individual succeed on his own. Her heroes succeeded as a part of a voluntary community.

Go back and read Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”. We are all pursuing selfish interests and by doing so the community is served. Try organizing a community sans self interest and you create hell on earth (i.e., gulags, concentration camps, re-education camps, etc.). Rand, like Smith, recognized that man pursuing his selfish interests creates greatness and demands equality. Try to get to equality via any other philosophy and you will find a society governed by the stick with no carrot.

[Revolting cat!]

To live for oneself? What a dismal prospect. I wonder if my ex got her crazy ideas from randy Rand.

[Recovering_Democrat]

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.

I have said in the past, and continue to believe:

Ayn had her economic philosophy correct, her moral philosophy was wrong.

I had not read the Buckley comments about her until I saw this article. He seems to describe her in accurate terms.

I saw her appearance on the "Donahue" show just a few months before her death (available on youtube, by the way), and she seemed to be a very sad lady. Still staunch in her beliefs, but sad.

If you've ever seen the 1999 bio-pic "The Passion of Ayn Rand", you might see some insights into her behavior before unknown to most. (Not that that is necessarily a documentary, but I think the basics are accurate.)

[Disambiguator]

Reminds me of independent motorcycle riders -— all dressed in black leather jackets, white shirt, blue jeans, black boots, and a Harley -— a Harley, mind you, not some “other” brand. (Not that Harley’s aren’t nice bikes, as they are, but the lemming issue is clear.)

LOL. All those "individualists" that all look so similar. What's up with that? If you really want to stand in the MC crowd, wear a tie.

For the record, I've been a Harley owner/rider since the early 1980s, so I know of what I speak.

[fwdude]

Mark for later.

[BfloGuy]

Here’s the problem with Galtism. He can’t do good for another because he thinks doing good is slavery. Why would that be slavery?

That's a typical mis-interpretation of Rand. Objectivism certainly does not forbid doing good for another person -- it simply states that it isn't man's highest moral purpose. The moral requirement that serving others is the purpose of life would, indeed, be slavery.

It's so tiring reading opinions of Rand based on second-hand knowledge.

[alexander_busek]

>>For example, she named "The pursuit of his ... his own happiness" as one of the "highest moral purpose[s] of his life." It's not rational that a highly subjective mental/physical state should be the highest moral goal of a supposedly rational and objective philosophy.<<

You are misunderstanding Objectivism.

It is only by accepting 'man's life' as one's primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness - not by taking 'happiness' as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take 'whatever makes one happy' as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims - by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know - is to turn oneself into a blind robot [...] This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism - in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. 'Happiness' can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard."

--The "Virtue of Selfishness," Chapter 1: The Objectivist Ethics, by Ayn Rand

Regards,

[Truth is a Weapon]

You picked up on a problem with Rand’s view point but calling it fundamentally wrong is an over reach. She did illustrate the need for community so she wasn’t against it. Like you said the success of their community was partially the result of voluntary association. But it also rested on each person’s rational, honest self-awareness so that relationships and transactions were based on understanding of relative worth of contributions. No one is forced to exchange. Without that foundation in a community, human nature will introduce politics which leads to someone trying to capture more value from the community through some means other than a free exchange.

Government seizing property from one group of people and giving it to another cannot in anyway shape or form be considered Christian charity. In fact, it robs the giver and recipient of the benefits intended by God from the act of giving. Voluntary giving to help another brings a joy to the giver and reinforces the giver’s gratitude and dependence on God. Accepting charity should be with humble gratitude to the giver and God. Knowing that someone else, with a face, sacrificed to help you is uplifting and inspiring to better your own condition. A government entitlement destroys most of those benefits.

Government transfers of property are the result of people shirking the virtue of charity and wanting someone else to help others so the don’t feel guilty when they don’t do it themselves.

[r9etb]

Chambers picked an unnecessary fight that lives to this day, where he distorted Rand’s message and brought his own judgment into question at least to that extent. Just my opinion.

I don't think it was unnecessary at all. There are a number of elements in Rand's philosphy that are actually pernicious.

Look at the whole self-interest deal, for example. It was an idea that resonated with the times -- she can't claim credit for it, but she was in part responsible for making it respectable. And that's a problem. See Chambers' review, where he talks about the problem of "pursuit of happiness as an end in itself."

The problem is that self-interest has to be tempered by "other-interest," or you end up with the sort of narcissistic and decadent culture that Chambers (correctly) predicted would result.

There are other, deeper intellectual problems with Rand's philosophy, in which it loses all contact with the real world. This is blindingly obvious, in fact. Rand's philosophy cannot even withstand the moral implications of something so common and natural as parenthood -- which is in direct conflict with her claim that "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others." We are, in fact, very much a means to our children's ends, and morally obligated to be so.

A philosophy that cannot reasonably deal with the propagation of the human species, is not to be taken seriously.

Any philosophy that so stridently claims to be "the One True Philosophy," and so clearly fails to live up even to its own premises, deserves to be rejected in the strongest possible terms -- especially when it has caught the attention of the public.

[CanadianLibertarian]

Ah the amateur philosopher/theologians come out to play.....

Happiness is a highly subjective state? Hell no. A healthy flourishing state of mind and body, self and world is objectively verifiable. Rand did consider introspection an objective means of validation, of objective thought turned inward. And if happiness is not the standard of morality - well that may be a Christian viewpoint, but it is profoundly anti-American and antilife.

And you have no evidence Rand's atheism was primary. She explicitly details why reason and reality are her givens, and that atheism is derived from that.

[CanadianLibertarian]

Ah the amateur philosopher/theologians come out to play.....

Happiness is a highly subjective state? Hell no. A healthy flourishing state of mind and body, self and world is objectively verifiable. Rand did consider introspection an objective means of validation, of objective thought turned inward. And if happiness is not the standard of morality - well that may be a Christian viewpoint, but it is profoundly anti-American and antilife.

And you have no evidence Rand's atheism was primary. She explicitly details why reason and reality are her givens, and that atheism is derived from that.

[azcap]

Every where I wear this shirt I get head nods, "great shirt!" and thumbs ups where a few years ago I would get puzzled looks and questions. Objectivism lacks the recognition of a Higher Power and respect for the fact that our rights are "God Given."  Atlas shrugged is a bit long and bloated in parts but it is a compelling story that can teach anyone regardless of their background (factory worker or PhD) the methods and horrors of collectivism. It is a 900 page fable that teaches a lesson Americans desperatley need to learn.

[cornelis]

Well said.

[wardaddy]

I wouldn’t say that but she was mighty horny...or was that Helen Mirren?

or both...
/s

[r9etb]

Rand wasn't much of a dancer, Alexander, but she's doing her damndest to dance in that passage.

Rand is simply asserting that there is an objective definition of "happiness," which somehow differs from mere hedonism. She never bothers to say what it is ... she only says that it's "good" happiness if and only if you got to it "rationally."

How ... useless. And how very, very sterile. It certainly has no connection with how real people experience happiness in the real world: happiness can come in many different forms, many of which are incidental and certainly not of our own rational making.

And what makes us happy today -- however rationally -- is not guaranteed to make us happy every day, which is what would have to happen if it were truly objective.

Rand does a lot of asserting. If you accept her assertions blindly, it all looks great. The problem is when you test her assertions against the real world... and then you realize that she's full of it.

[cornelis]

There’s a period in between those two. Rand doesn’t understand Christianity. Her understanding is Nietzschean.

[Vet_6780]

Rand believed that God gave us reason so who are we to reject it ?

Her followers claimed that she never lost a debate. She would relentlessly apply reason and logic until her opponent was destroyed.

[Califreak]

I’m reading Atlas Shrugged for the second time.

I was still kind of half asleep when I read it the first time, so I wanted to see what I missed.

I understand she was an atheist. I don’t agree with that in the least.

Some people say Atlas Shrugged is kind of a creative and epic framing of her philosophy. I am not a deep enough thinker to come to that conclusion.

What I do see while reading this book is a warning. She may not have been a believer but I do feel she was a prophet. The way the book talks about the looters and some of the laws they create-anti dog eat dog, gifting patented manufacturing processes to the government for the good of the people for example-and the way they squeeze out one big business and the devastating ripple effects that results because of it is stunning. The government described in her book is overreaching and completely destructive-very much like ours.

The book has so many parallels to what is happening now in this country.

I don’t agree with her philosophy but the book is a good read and it does point out the many dangers of a collectivist viewpoint.

[r-q-tek86]

Ayn Rand was fundamentally wrong. She claimed that her books were all about the strength of the individual, but if you read them, in none of them did an individual succeed on his own. Her heroes succeeded as a part of a voluntary community.

It's not about being able to succeed on your own, it is about seeking and obtaining success guided by your own best interest... even if that best interest is exercising your own choice to serve another. The "voluntary" part is the key.

My first exposure to Rand was Fountainhead. Howard could not complete a building without a client, but his internal moral compass and integrity prevented him from pandering to clients that did not appreciate his work. He chose to work in a quarry rather than sell out.

Self interest and selfishness are taken in the wrong context when people discuss Rand. The other key component in her characters was an unyielding moral compass. The villains in Atlas personified the ugly side of self interest and selfishness in that they were willing to take rather than trade.