What's Wrong with Ayn Rand?
The Summer 2004 Wilson Quarterly discusses the article “Who Was Ayn Rand?” by Gene H. Bell-Villada, in Salmagundi (Winter-Spring 2004):
As Bell-Villada, a professor of Romance languages at Williams College, explains, objectivism “is the idea that selfishness is good, greed is admirable, and altruism is evil. Unfettered capitalism is the only true moral system in history. The successful businessman is the ideal hero of our time.” Reason—really a kind of hyper-rationality—is the highest value; emotion, kindness, and compassion get nothing but scorn in the Randian scheme of things. She reviled the kind of social welfare system embodied by the New Deal. Her protagonists—brilliant, principled Howard Roark, the unyielding architect in The Fountainhead, and John Galt, the übermensch inventor in Atlas Shrugged—are portrayed as godlike heroes dragged down by the unthinking masses.
Today, her books sell in the hundreds of thousands, especially among the young, and her ideas are influential in some conservative circles. ... Yet the novels “failed to garner the intellectual prestige and respect Rand hungered for.” ... Atlas Shrugged in particular suffers from “relentless speechifying.” Its climax is a 70-page speech by her hero Galt.
It’s not just that the writing is relatively poor; even the ideas don’t have much attraction to most people — including, it seems, Rand herself:
Rand’s steely, self-reliant individualism and contempt for the “weak”—such as the “emotional parasites” who give up work for family life—seems hollow in light of her own experience. She was, after all, helped by many people, including her devoted followers, who cared for her as she was nearing her death from cancer in 1982.
Not long ago I received heated complaints from an Objectivist who was apoplectic that I hadn’t included Ayn Rand in my list of American philosophers. I have several pages of links and information dealing with Objectivism and Ayn Rand — as is appropriate, since Objectivism is an atheistic ideology and this is a site that deals with atheism.
My Objectivist correspondent was unimpressed; more than once she obliquely questioned whether Rand’s absence for the list was a consequence of “some latent sexist bias” on my part and that the site is engaging in “censorship” because I don’t allow readers “access to all pertinent data.”
There’s good reason why I don’t list Ayn Rand as an American philosopher: I don’t consider her a philosopher. Neither do other philosophers — you won’t find her works taught in most (any?) philosophy departments. You also won’t find her discussed in any standard works on the history of philosophy — either in general or specifically American philosophy.
At least, I haven’t seen her mentioned in any of the works I’ve read and used. She doesn’t appear to be in Grayling’s two volume introduction to philosophy, the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, or Kuklick’s history of American philosophy — just to name a couple of sources at hand. I suppose there must be some philosophy reference works out there which at least mention Rand and Objectivism, but it doesn’t appear to be common — and for good reason, I think.
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Nice explanation.
I thoroughly enjoyed both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I really didn’t find them tedious at all, because I enjoyed the background of the times and how the characters each played a specific role.
Still more, I’m an extremely Emotional person. I have to work exceedingly hard to subdue certain of my emotions in daily life, as they are certainly important influences on what I do, but terrible primary guides.
Rand’s work has helped me focus on “selfishness” in the same way the Airline direction to apply the O2 mask to yourself before your dependant is efficacious. But her emphasis on the “irrelevance of society to the virtue of it’s individuals” is utterly non-sensical sophomorism from an evolutionary perspective.
You simply CAN’T have the latter without the former being healthy and well-maintained.
And, quite frankly, her adherents are truly NOT the supermen (und fraus) they like to think they are. It’s really sad that objectivity appears to be, in practice, only a nominal element of Objectivism.
I have found the idea of Objectivisim very intriguing and attractive, and I believe that I possess a relitively good understanding of what Ayn Rand suggests through the books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Given this point of view, I don’t understand why Austin Cline should, for any reason, be required to include Ayn Rand in any list he chooses to create. He is an individual who is free to accept or reject Ayn Rand’s work as philosophy or as a canon benificial or inconsequential to his own philisophical work.
Austin,
You said “you won’t find her works taught in most (any?) philosophy departments.” Actually, for your information: I benefitted from a few Objectivist-oriented classes during undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin. UT has one permanent Objectivist Professor (Tara Smith) and every year sponsors a visiting professor from the Ayn Rand Institute. I took Intro to Ethics w/ Smith and Intro to Epistemology w/ Amy Peikoff.
As far as I understand, more and more universities are beginning to offer small Objectivism programs such as the one at UT, w/ a rotation of visiting professors from the Ayn Rand Institute. So while it is true that academia has largely ignored and even scoffed at Rand’s ideas, her work *is* slowly finding its way into philosophy departments these days. After her stint at UT Ms. Peikoff was actually on her way to the University of North Carolina– Chapel Hill, which is kind of a high profile public university.
While I understand your aversion to Rand’s ideas I totally disagree with your position that her work is unworthy of being taught or discussed in philosophy classrooms and books (”I suppose there must be some philosophy reference works out there which at least mention Rand and Objectivism, but it doesn’t appear to be common — and for good reason, I think”). The scope of her influence on Libertarians and liberty-minded Conservatives is undeniable. Ask any young intern at the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, (people that will be working to form our nation’s public policy in the coming decades), etc. about Ayn Rand and I’m willing to bet they will know who she is, what her ideas were, and will have an opinion about her one way or another. Yes, most liberals I know despise Rand but the point is that Rand had more of an impact on my generation than on the generation of those folks that wrote the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy and that is why we should be discussing the merits of her ideas in philosophy classes.
I finished “Atlas Shrugged” a couple weeks ago and was fairly impressed with it. I have mixed feelings on Objectivism; some of its ideas I find quite attractive, and many of the complaints against it strike me as being sour grapes by people who decided a priori that they didn’t like Rand because of her political, economic and/or atheistic views.
At the same time, I would not call myself an Objectivist. Their dismissal of altruism, while not meritless, goes a bit overboard I believe, and their idolatry of Saint Rand is a bit too cultish for me. “Randroids” also have an annoying belief that since they use rationality, then everything they do, say, decide, and believe is correct, and is the only correct way. Objectivists I’ve met don’t seem too keen on the concept that two perfectly rational people can still disagree.
One of the things I do find appealing about Objectivism is also one of its most misunderstood aspects. Its appeal to the concept of the Nietzschean “superman” is something very empowering. Despite Rand’s frequent division of people into either “supermen” or oblivious “sheeple”, I think her concept of the superman was meant as an inspiration rather than as a class division. While the Nazis used the concept as a divider to proclaim their own superiority, the superman concept in Rand’s literature seems more like a challenge to the reader to do more, think more, be more than they are now. To be in control of your own destiny. And not be bogged down by artificial, meaningless limits placed upon us by society, culture, tradition, religion, or other institutions which impress conformity upon its members.
I think that some people think low of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism because they do not realize that philosophy is just a part of our life, and its principles must be broken at times for our comfort without which most of us would be unable to find happiness.
Ayn Rand had no choice. Standardising these breaks in a philosophical system is completely unacceptable for the intellect because at each break there is a letting go of some value for a personal preference. Values are chosen by the individual him or herself, and there is nothing wrong with trading more for less, so long as the intellect is perfectly conscious of the magnitude and the consequence of the trade. I think Objectivism must be as rigid as it is in regard to altruism and selfishness because it is a standard by which a person learns to control his thoughts to be able to choose as he wishes without becoming the victim of his actions. Philosophy teachers who prefer to exclude Objectivism from their classes missed the whole point of Objectivism, and they think it is a set of rules that must not be disobeyed. It is just the black-and-white principles of what is and isn’t right for the intellect, intended for personal use.
Always looking for good critiques of Ayn Rand, and once again I’ve found another article that deals with no issues directly. For this to be intellectual, explain how life saving drugs are not produced by selfish incentive, or reason is invalid, or why her ideas about capitalism are wrong. Anecdotal evidence of a Rand follower or someone’s list of “philosophers” is not a substitute for critical thinking.
For anyone not familiar with Ayn Rand, her premise begins with existance does not change with one’s wishes, life is the ultimate standard of value, and reason is man’s method of survival. That which is good for life is the moral - that which destroys life is the immoral. It relies on existance to explain existance - not a noumenal world of thought devorced from reality (Plato, Kant, or any variant) or reality divorced from thought (Nietzche). Intuition or feeling should not guide your life, but rather the evaluations of reality should.
If these premises are wrong, explain it in your own words. Don’t rely on someone’s dictionary to tell you what is relavent in philosophy. Here’s a starting point - explain why loving someone is selfless and you get nothing from it.
Eric Von Kruse
The burden of proof lies with those who claim that Rand should be taken seriously. The fact that she isn’t a part of standard philosophy courses and texts shows that Randians have failed to accomplish this with professional philosophers. You haven’t even tried here.
I read Anthem and the Fountainhead in high school because I was required to read them. She’s annoying, sanctimonious, and has all the subtlety of a chainsaw. Not one of her characters has borne any resemblance to any real person I have ever encountered. I also find her habit of having the protagonist give a speech outlining her ideology at the end of each novel to be particularly aggravating. She must not have felt very confident in her ability to communicate her theme (in spite of her literary heavy-handedness) if she felt the need to have the main character literally spell it out. It always has the feeling of “in case you didn’t catch this in the previous six hundred pages, here’s what I’m trying to say…”
I can see why her writing appeals to people my age. After all, what young person doesn’t want to be told that they can look out for number one and not consider the needs of anyone else? People seem to go through an Ayn Rand phase in their youth - but it rarely seems to be more than that.
“Ask any young intern at the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, (people that will be working to form our nation’s public policy in the coming decades)”
Yikes! That scares the hell out of me!
One thing in particular that disturbs me about Rand, Objectivism, and some Libertarianism is this.
They operate under the premise that individuals act, achieve, and are successful due solely to their own efforts. This is clearly poppycock! We as humans are socially interdependent. While we often give credit to single individuals for various achievments, scrape under the surface and you will find many contributors to this success. Economic wealth in particular is created collectively, while the benefits are often disproportionately shared.
Randians are like furries. You never see them in Real Life. They’re everywhere online. And no decent individual would ever admit being friend with one…
Although I am no longer a fan of Rand’s and find it slightly embarrassing to admit that I once was, I think some of the positive aspects of her ideas aren’t explained very well and are even misrepresented in the article referenced.
While she did advocate “selfishness”, there was nothing inconsistent about her accepting help from caring friends. She wrote plenty about the great value that friends can offer. Even in The Fountainhead, Roark takes good care of his dying mentor. She doesn’t define selfishness the way it’s normally thought of - it was frequently referred to as (somewhat redunantly) “rational self-interest” to emphasize that it did NOT mean doing short-sighted petty things (what people normally call selfish) that aren’t actually good for one’s real, long-term best interests.
While I no longer think of “selfishness” as a good basis for morality, I do think her writing offered me some insights into the immediate practical value for individuals behind a lot of acts that people consider “selfless”. It was also refereshing to see a challenge to the idea that if someone has a “need” someone else must be robbing the person or being evil by not taking care of that need. I think sometimes people who “need” help really just need to get off their butts and work. OTOH, there are people who genuinely need help and will make good use of that help. I do what I can for those.
More seriously though. The market isn’t an objective feature of the universe, it is a social creation. It was created by state fiat, so to talk of a market without state interference is nonsense.
The feudal lords took the land from the village communes. The colonists took the land from the natives. From that first act of primitive accumulation resulted serfdom and slavery, and the gains made during that period were then doled out to the descendents of these thieves. These gains were then invested into capital, and thus the captains of industry were born. Not out of their entrepreneurial skills, but out of rapine and the interests gained from investing the capital previously stolen.
To simply click your fingers and go “Alright, now everyone is free to trade as they see fit!” does not reverse the original theft. Without land reform and collectivization of the gains made from centuries of theft and investment of stolen capital, ‘free trade’ is just a bad joke.
Reading a far right wing screed is required in the schools. Why wasn’t a book by Upton Sinclair included as well?
I have never seen a book by a supremicist that didn’t appeal to people who would like to think they are part of an elite.
Face it: she led a cult of unreason ! See objections about her thoughts under objecivism and Ayn Rand. She could not fathom oxymoron is neither laissez -faire or socialism [A= A ]
Our regulated free market [no oxymoron] is neither [b]laissez-faire capitalsim nor [c]socialism ,for A=A !
Re: Comment by BlackBloc — March 23, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
If something exists, then it’s part of our objective universe. A market (commerce) exists. It’s objective.
Social creation does not mean government regulation. Social creation means communication of desire to buy and sell, not restricting goods and busting down doors and robbing people.
Commerce was around long before fiat money was around. Barter and trade began with intrinsic commodities. Fiat only screws economies over by forcing companies to raise prices to match a devaluing dollar. Fiat creates nothing. It causes no industry, it leads no industry, and it performs no miracles. Fiat is the equivalent of that play money you get when you buy a monopoly gameboard.
If you like fiat so much then I say, good for you. You can build congress’s mansions and fund their activities with your entire savings you have stuffed into the bank. When all other attacks fail, simply encourage inflation. All fiat is doomed to collapse. Speed the collapse.
Talk about a market without state interference is nonsense? Interference is destruction - the opposite of creation. Interference can create nothing, it can only destroy. There’s a reason why they call it ‘the free market’. Because when government puts reigns onto it, it’s no longer a free market. Just a market filled with worthless oak leaves and its currency.
You also claim that someone can be born, do no wrong to anyone else, and still be punished for the crimes of their great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Are you looking for peace or for more struggle? If you’d like a chance at getting some of that stolen wealth back then I suggest you stop saving your labor in fiat. That way you won’t have a collectivist communal purse available to be 100% emptied at the whim of the people who are in office, the very people who hold all of the wealth you say is still stolen. They hold it because people like you use their fiat play money.
Allen Bloom (the iconic conservative author) refered to “The Fountainhead” as a “sub-Nietzschian soap opera”. I think thats the best description of Rand’s work I ever come across.
it is true that ms rand’s ideas are not taught in philosophy courses, and she is not part of the mainstream discipline of philosophy. however, she would be glad for this, if she could see the state of modern philosophy today. pervaded with nihilism in epistemology, subjectivism in ethics, and pragmatism over principle, modern philosophy has lowered itself even to denying the concept of reality itself, i.e. the abandonment of all reason (let us not forget, as ms rand teaches us, that A is A).
modern philosophy has lost track of the real meaning of philosophy: to seek truth and knowledge AT ALL COSTS. most philosophers of today do not seek knowledge; they seek to confuse and hide knowledge, and therefore to escape from facing a cold and immutable reality. as ms rand says, reality does not care about your feelings. your good feeling will not grow a crop to eat, or build a house to shelter you. rand had serious contempt for the lack of integrity and moral fortitude that constitutes much of the watered-down, irrational views by modern philosophers.
modern philosophy turns its students into intellectual leeches, teaching them that they need not seek the truth, but need only to criticize others views, and use all means at their disposal (in particular students learn the value of a cleverly-disguised irrational argument) to shoot down someone elses beliefs. if you can discredit someone, these students are taught by example, then you are above them. this is the attitude of modern philosophy today, and the reason why someones views like ms rands are so misrepresented, ostricized and ridiculed, despite that objectivism is a clear, consistent and rational approach to the questions of ‘what do we know?’ ‘how can we know what is true or false?’ and, ‘what should we do?’. these are the questions that philosophy historically asks, and in spite of ms rands clear answers, she is marginalized and ignored by most philosophers, who thereby expose their desire to create intellectual fantasies and vaccuums to play in, divising ever more confusing and complex logical puzzles and theories, and embracing a reducionalism and pragmatism that allows them to circumvent their (otherwise) rational mind and stay safely inside the egg of their warm, (supposedly) altruistic mental worlds.
Silvermane, you are completely off base. Ethics has become overwhelmingly realist (i.e. not subjectivist) over the last 50 years, epistemology is not ‘nihilistic’ by any stretch of the word. I don’t even know what you could mean by this. To say the least, there is virtually nobody who claims we know nothing in the profession.
I think you are confusing what Rand says about a particular philosophical movement *in her novels* with the state of modern philosophy *in the real world*. Typical.
Rand is not to be taken seriously because her work is tripe. In her entire inventory of published work, she never considers a possible objection to her view. She is not a philosopher, she is a religious figure.
And the kicker - she and her people *coined* the term ‘objectivist’ to describe her work. That is the most pretentious thing I have ever heard. Clearly, she has no problem with excessive pride and vanity. She might as well have called it ‘truthism.’ And you people would still buy it. Idiots.
The author here gets it, but he is trying to be kind to you.
Objectivism appears to promote rational self-interest where the word “rational” would indicate ethical behavior towards others. When most people think of Ayn Rand they think of someone promoting greed in its worst form, not “rational self-interest”. What just happened to our economy was the result of irresponsible short-sighted greed, not the rational behavior of long-term rational self-interest that I believe Mr. Greenspan expected of financial institutions. Being Romantics, I believe most Objectivists give too much credit to society at large. The success of pure laissez-faire capitalism would require that we all operate using rational self-interest and not greed and because of our somewhat irrational society, this will never truly work as Mr. Greenspan’s and Bush’s experiment has proven; however, as past administrations have proven, a mixed economy that is has a somewhat laissez-faire approach providing a responsible framework within which free enterprise can operate works quite nicely. Objectivism taken to an extreme is rubbish as are most ideas when taken to extreme practice. The same thing can be said for Socialism. The Greeks may have had something in their quest for moderation!
If we examine our own US History we’ll see that our most stable economic periods were the product of a mix of political ideals and influences.
Sure Al, the Greeks were just splendid! You know, the ones that actually self-destructed and were lazy. Al, you seem like you’re much more intelligent then this bleak clutter of incoherence. Also, weren’t women at the bottom of the social ladder in Greek society? Also, they killed their own children in their quest for purity. Moderation was great! If they were so intelligent, why can’t we find any evidence-besides their writings-that they were such an extraordinary society? The reason is work. Once a society stops working, it self-destructs. Bush has the right attitude, but it’s because of the way banks make money in general that the bubble has burst. What is so creative about making money off of interest? I don’t have a problem with that idea or even greed. I have a problem when the government rescues them. Our politicians-who do not have any talents-make money by taking from people. It is the same thing as stealing. It concerns me that we are giving our Secretary of Treasury full control over our economic well-being. I believe that I know what my well-being is. Our own U.S. history is beautiful because people haven’t been murdered for the sake of an ideology. We are the last great hope for mankind. Economic period will always have waves, but a free mind will always last. We need to protect those ideas. By the way, what’s wrong with being objective? I think that you are contradicting yourself when you talk about Socialism. Socialism is a collective bargaining whereas Objectivism is bringing the best in yourself by thinking objectively about yourself. Tell me what’s wrong with that?
By the way, I want to ask the atheists one question: Where did man’s ideas come from?
Eric above has it right. Rand is a stage one goes through usually beginning in high schoo and lasting no longer than junior year in college. Then you grow up.
Chris has it right too!
Sheldon has it right too and by “Eric” I mean the Eric without any last name not the other the Von Cruse Eric who makes no sense at all. Happy to find others out there that don’t automatically suscribe to Randism - “O”bjectivism = “A”narchy
Brian, please get a grip on yourself. Surely you don’t believe that, “Our own U.S. history is beautiful because people haven’t been murdered for the sake of an ideology. We are the last great hope for mankind.” You are either a moron or a superficial historian of the worst sort. Pathetic!
brian, i’m sorry you are so ignorant.
Bryan, there are no contradictions.
Your attempt to indict Ayn Rand is fallacious. You state that she appears ro recant her philosophy in this paragraph
“Rand’s steely, self-reliant individualism and contempt for the “weak”—such as the “emotional parasites” who give up work for family life—seems hollow in light of her own experience. She was, after all, helped by many people, including her devoted followers, who cared for her as she was nearing her death from cancer in 1982″
Where does she recant? It seems that she continues to believe that the morality of man lies solely in the reason of man. If you coose to be with me upon my deathbed, then you are part of my life.
I have seen often the idea that self interest is a negative thing. This is the most ridiculous asumption ever. we ALL act in self interest. ALL behavior is predicated on an expected outcome. ALL BEHAVIOR! To state otherwise is to ignore scientific evidence and the absolute bedrtock of scientific principle.
I didn’t write that paragraph. I also don’t see in it the claim of her recanting that you do. Before you accuse others of “fallacies,” you might want to work on “reading comprehension.”
Right, because there is no scientific studies anywhere of altruism.
Before you make claims about “absolute bedrock of scientific principle,” you’d better be able to cite the science — which you clearly can’t here.
read The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand