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PREVIEW-Episode 78: Ayn Rand on Living Rationally

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On Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967) and "The Objectivist Ethics" (1961).

This is a short preview of our full-length, vintage episode, which you can purchase by itself, or get our whole catalog free, beamed to your mobile device, by becoming a PEL supporter: see partiallyexaminedlife.com/support.

First Rand grounds everyday human knowledge, largely by dismissing the concerns of other philosophers (even those whom she unknowingly parrots) as absurd. Then she uses this certainty to argue for her semi-Nietzschean vision of Great Men who master their emotions and rely only on themselves. Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth are satisfied with neither effort.

Warning: This attempt to make sense of Rand's texts will likely offend any Randians out there, and our reading numerous passages from her alleged "texts" may offend the rest of you. When in doubt, curl up in the fetal position and moan "A=A!" over and over again until the bad sounds stop.

Read more about topic and get the texts (and check out the comments to see Mark debate a real-life Randian).

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Comments

  1. The biggest problem with Marxist analysis is Marx did not understand how markets work – as demonstrated by his losses when he dabbled in the stock market.

    Similarly, the problem with Ayn Rand is that she does not understand the process of creativity and engineering development. This is despite being after Edison and his invention lab, and significant engineering projects, such as the building of the Empire State Building. Rand also denies the most human endeavour occurs in a social context – and that the great individual is a myth.

    Seth’s characterisation of Rand’s writing – as a polemic – is very accurate. She hated rational argument and bullied people.

    Thanks for your effort with what is a fundamentally inconsistent worldview.

    Reply

    • “Everyone with an understand of markets naturally and inevitably chooses the right stocks,” appears to be the natural consequence of the assertion here.

      Reply

      • Actually, that is a reasonable proposition. It depends of course on what you mean by “understand”. A high frequency trading algorithm doesn’t understanding anything, let alone a complex dynamic system like the stock market, but still makes money.

        Reply

    • Rand never said anything about the degree of social context and great endeavors. You cannot show such an example and therefore you must be making things up.
      Marx losing money on the market means nothing in assessing his knowledge.
      Rand may have called people names but they deserved it and she never did so without logical argumentation to support the name calling.

      Reply

  2. Rand aside (for the love of g_d or whatever totems people honor) the point about a mediocre student with some pregnant but undeveloped responses does the raise the issues of to what degree one can popularize very difficult thinkers/texts. I’m with Rorty (and pace Heidegger) that this kind of under-laborer’s task of turning works of relative genius into everyday speech is in some sense necessary to bringing changes to our relationships/understandings but all too often people not only rush to a feeling of , and use of, author-ity, but unfortunately are also predisposed to turn the new and complex into the already-known and simple (Heidegger wasn’t entirely off base when it comes to the dangers of thinking being reduced to idle-chatter/gossip, especially in this e-commenting/liking world). One can see this as has been noted on this blog in the tensions in science writing and the general problem of how experts( and expertise) fit into, or not, democratic/popular processes is quite vexing.

    Reply

    • Good call mentioning Rorty’s great man picture of philosophy. Philosophy, according to Rorty, is the history of long periods of sterility, of people working out the implications of some genius’s radical work, until some new genius comes along and changes things again and the paradigm shifts. Rorty always subscribed to a Kuhnian account.

      Reply

      • I’m with you except for the “long periods of sterility” part to follow Kuhn a bit further, and to understand how via Dewey Rorty champions the under-laborer (see Locke), to say that “normal” philosophizing/thinking (like normal science) is the work that makes the ars of various geniuses more than some idiosyncratic expression and in some sense does the real day to day work that transforms a society, doing away with the nonsense great-man/epochal theories like saying that Descartes has an idea and all of the Europeanish societies suddenly shift their axes of understanding/organization.

        Reply

  3. Nietzshe somewhere notes the danger of his own spiritedness to go beyond some ethical line marking truth and will, in what he calls ‘the whitches brew’ of violence in a combination with sex. It seems to me, after reading only a couple of chapters of Atlas Shrugged, that this is the marked line Rand is crossing. Rand depicts a rape scene in the novel, I was told, and is affirming its justifiability. Any thoughts on this? (I did not read the whole novel.)

    Reply

    • It is the Fountainhead that has the main protagonist rape someone, and that causes the girl to fall in love with him. It is possibly one of the worst things I have ever read.

      Reply

        • I guess there exists a literature of offence to one’s own ego, the one I happen to like, and a literature that boosts one’s ego. There is a reference on this site in an earlier podcast to some Nietzschean scholar who proclaims some creed in the manner of: no excuses! which I think in some contexts is fine and healthy. To interpret such a creed, however, to mean that one is, not only free to rape, but is by nature insisted to rape, seems like an error of logic. And if it is not an error of logic, there seems to me, to be a general error in the field of logic. Let’s call this error: “the error of Rand”, or the “imperative-to-do-the-wrong-thing-because-it-pleases-me-for-the-moment”
          Is not Ayn Rand’s claim a perverse utilitarian view which is simply put: the most pleasure gained by the will to contradict the self evident is the good to be sought? Is it not, in short, sadism? Isn’t the pertinant question: why should one not yield to this philosophy, since it apparently gives the majority of readers great pleasure in being themselves a Galt (which in my native language etymologically means “young pig”)?

          Reply

      • Both essentially contain rapes. Atlas Shrugs has a nasty scene in which the female protagonist (sic) is raped by Hank Rearden but is dressed up in Dagny Taggert’s own bizarre desire to be overpower. Here’s the hot, sweaty deeply creepy and disturbing scene in all its awfulness:

        “It was like an act of hatred, like the cutting blow of a lash encircling her body; she felt his arms around her, she felt her legs pulled forward against him and her chest bent back under the pressure of his, his mouth on hers…. He was not smiling; his face was tight, it was the face of an enemy; he jerk her head and caught her mouth again, as if he were inflicting a wound.

        She felt him trembling and she thought that this was the kind of cry she had wanted to tear from him-this surrender through the shreds of his tortured resistance. Yet she knew, at the same time, that the triumph was his, that her laughter was her tribute to him, that her defiance was submission, that the purpose of all of her violent strength was only to make his victory the greater-he was holding her body against his, as if stressing his wish to let her know that she was now only a tool for the satisfaction of his desire-and his victory, she knew, was her wish to let him reduce her to that. Whatever I am, she thought, whatever pride of person I may hold, the pride of my courage, of my work, of my mind and my freedom-that is what I offer you for the pleasure of your body, that is what I want you to use in your service-and that you want it to serve you is the greatest reward I can have.”

        Reply

  4. As for your uncompleted hunt for an Ayn Rand impersonator: did you think to reach out to Dorothy Rabinowitz at the Wall Street Journal? In her video-editorial about the newly implemented bikeshare program here in NYC, she echoes many of Rand’s views, in my opinion.

    Here’s a link to an article about it: http://gothamist.com/2013/06/01/video_conservative_who_represents_m.php

    Here’s the actual video: http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-death-by-bicycle/C6D8BBCE-B405-4D3C-A381-4CA50BDD8D4D.html#!C6D8BBCE-B405-4D3C-A381-4CA50BDD8D4D

    Reply

  5. Thanks for the, as usual, thought-provoking podcast.

    One thing that I’ve noticed about Ayn Rand is that she is almost purely a U.S. phenomenon.

    I live in Chile and I’ve never seen her books here. The Chilean rightwing reads Milton Friedman and Von Hayek, but not Ayn Rand.

    Wouldn’t one test of a significant philosopher be the ability to travel and to function in other cultures, either among academics or among those non-academic readers who are interested in ideas?

    I’ve even seen Pirsig in bookstores and the public library here translated into Spanish, not to mention most of the academic philosophers you guys talk about (for example, Danto and MacIntyre).

    I’m not claiming that philosophical ideas must appeal to all cultures, but the fact that we still read Plato and Aristotle and Spinoza today, in cultures so different than those they lived in indicates that
    they have something to say to what is human in all of us. Of course, one could argue that Plato and Aristotle, etc., still say something to us because we were educated in that tradition.

    In any case, I doubt that Rand will obtain that status of a Nietzsche, that is, a critic of the tradition who has survived, paradoxically, as part of the tradition itself.

    Reply

  6. @ swalerstein

    I don’t know. Being in the U.S. myself I can’t say how far her books are distributed. I know they are translated into many languages including Spanish.

    http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ayn_rand_works_translations&JServSessionIdr004=fugyvft7t1.app205a

    There is one place she seems to be taking hold and that’s Germany. It remains to be seen how that goes.

    “The Germans are living it,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in California. But bringing Randian ideals to Germany, Brook predicts, will be harder than just publishing a fresh translation. The novel, Brook said, never caught on in Europe, with the exceptions of Britain and parts of Scandinavia. The Germans, he said, might find the book too simplistic. “The way (Germans) understand reality is through complexity and difficulty,” he said.”

    http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Ayn-Rand-s-timely-translation-in-Germany-3762772.php

    “Wouldn’t one test of a significant philosopher be the ability to travel and to function in other cultures, either among academics or among those non-academic readers who are interested in ideas?”

    That is a good question, but I can think of Kitaro Nishida who is a real philosopher but not too well known outside of Japan.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitaro_Nishida

    Or Hajime Tanabe, at Freiburg he studied under Husserl and was tutored by the young Heidegger.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajime_Tanabe

    As for the podcast. I’ve listened to it twice and it was a refreshingly honest analysis and critique of Ayn Rand and an attempt to represent it and make sense of it. Not an easy thing to do.

    My one critique would be regarding “natural rights”. There seemed to be a dismissal of her ideas and an assersion that “natural rights” come from “God”. But why?
    I don’t see why her attempt to make a theory/philosophy that grounds rights in actual nature/biology, even though the project is problematic,

    Hugh Gibbons has proposed a descriptive argument based on human biology.
    9/3/2004 PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 13
    DE SCIURIDAE ET HOMO SAPIENS: THE ORIGIN OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES
    http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/pilj/vol13no2/documents/13-2GibbonsArticle.pdf

    isn’t as valid as trying to ground rights in the “state/law” which is very problematic.
    As is any attempt to ground rights in “God/natural rights” is also problematic.
    Paul Ryan at his vice presidential acceptance speech said our right come from “God and natural law” and this went by as unquestioned. Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Hobbes, and Edmund Burke among others have argued against this.

    much respect to all

    Reply

    • I was thinking more about your question and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this video.

      It’s JamesSteele II Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom talking about Objectivism

      Objectivism | An Introduction to a Philosophy of Reason

      Reply

      • Qapla:

        Thanks for the links.

        I’m sure that Ayn Rand has been translated into lots of languages and that she has readers in many countries.

        That’s not my point, however.

        Since you live in the U.S., you probably do not understand how culture in this globalized world functions in what is still a dependent country like Chile. Much of our culture comes from the U.S. or Europe. In fact, most books in Spanish are published in Spain. We read American best-sellers, watch Hollywood movies and U.S. TV serials. You in the U.S. from time to time see a foreign language movie as a special event.

        So it is noteworthy that an author, Ayn Rand, who is very prominent, sells lots of books and is ranked as important in the U.S., is barely known in a country like Chile, where on the other hand, libertarian thinkers like Milton Friedman and Von Hayek are fairly well-known and those on the left (like me) read U.S. authors such as Chomsky and Naomi Klein to the point that Naomi Klein’s rather simplistic (in my opinion) account of the liberalization of the Chilean economy during the Pinochet dictatorship is cited as authoritative by many Chileans. Yes, there are Chilean authors on the right and on the left, but my point is that foreign culture from the U.S. and Europe is widely accepted as “authoritative” here, much more so than in the U.S.

        Why isn’t Ayn Rand accepted here, while others libertarian thinkers are?

        I don’t know for sure, but my informal hypothesis is that there is something very “American” about her.

        Reply

        • Qapla:

          I inadvertently left out what is my conclusion.

          A thinker who does not travel to or take root in other cultures is not a signficant thinker, especially not in our globalized civilization in which we have easy access to other cultures. Ayn Rand, after all, is not “waiting to be discovered”, but rather an author who is talked about in the U.S. media, whose books have been made into movies, who is a major figure in U.S. culture.

          Ayn Rand does not travel or take root in cultures other than the U.S.

          Ayn Rand is not a signficant thinker.

          Note: I’m not claiming that all thinkers who travel to or take root in other cultures are significant thinkers. That is, one (but not the only) criterion for being a significant thinker is traveling to or taking root in other cultures.

          Reply

          • she has jumped borders

            JamesSteele II Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom talking about Objectivism

            Objectivism | An Introduction to a Philosophy of Reason

            Born in Adelaide, Amanda Vanstone studied Arts and Law at the University of Adelaide and before entering politics worked in the legal area, retailing and small business.
            Amanda entered the Australian Parliament in 1984 and was a Liberal Senator for South Australia from 1984 to 2007.
            http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/amanda-vanstone/4102894

            Amanda Vanstone Ayn Rand’s Legacy
            http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/ayn-rands-legacy/3451344

            Australia’s 100 favourite books:
            91. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (not high, but being read)
            http://www.abc.net.au/myfavouritebook/top10/100.htm

            The Sydney Ayn Rand Meetup Group
            http://www.meetup.com/Ayn-Rand-Sydney/about/

            London Ayn Rand meetup
            http://www.meetup.com/London-Ayn-Rand-Meetup

            Foreningen for Studium av Objektivism
            At the University of Oslo, Norway .
            http://www.objektivisme.no/

            Objectivismo
            http://www.objetivismo.org/

            Montreal Objectivist Club
            https://sites.google.com/site/montrealobjectivist/

            Ayn Rand U.S, postage stamps
            http://www.artonstamps.org/champs/ayn-rand.htm

            Jerry Nilson is an Objectivist in Sweden

            The United Kingdom Objectivist Association

            There’s a site in Russian can be found. I can’t read Russian.

            Australia Radio National podcast/mp3

            http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bookshow/ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged-an-economic-solution/3138316

            much respect

          • Qapla certainly makes Swallerstein’s point. Most of the references are Australian – and the radio interview is with Don Watkins, who works at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, based in Irvine California, USA. The rest are a small group of enthusiasts: and we can find groups of enthusiasts everywhere – think of the opening of the film “Le diner de Cons”, one of the characters is throwing boomerangs in the park. There are many boomerang enthusiasts around the world, but that does not make them culturally significant.

            This type of argument is same as asserting that Shamanism is a huge influence in the world – pointing at the Shamanistic cultures in Eastern and Central Asia, the far North and parts of the North America. I could then point to the vast literature on Shamanism and even point to interviews. And then I would point to the Dalai Lama as a world figure deeply influenced by Shamanism.

            I could point out many Shaman groups – and I might include Tibetan Buddhism in that also – but there are many other worshipers outside of that tradition.

            But we do not see people getting very defensive about criticism of Shamanism.

            On balance, Shamanism has much more to offer than the vitriol offered by Objectivists.

          • This is really an anecdotal observation, but I’ve met quite a few non-American tech worker types who absolutely adore Ayn Rand. She seems especially popular amongst women who fit this description.

            Her work also seems to be wildly popular amongst the those with Transhumanist sympathies.

            This isn’t exactly a large group of people at the moment, but does seem to be an influential one from my seat here in the Bay Area.

            Great episode from an always great show.

          • Yes, the “be realistic!” part of the philosophy appeals to many tech folks, and the “be selfish!” part is one that is of great use to those women who feel like society is pushing them to sacrifice too much and not pursue their own dreams.

            So if you just read the Fountainhead, I could see how you could be inspired, in the same way that “Dead Poet’s Society” or many other things can be inspiring.

            So one of the interesting questions here was, then, is that all there is to putting forth a philosophy? I’m generally flexible about that and try to take authors on their own terms, so it’s really only that Rand fails by her own terms (so far as we could tell by reading her words) that makes the thing objectionable.

        • The most American thing about Ayn Rand is that she has her negative roots in communism, which she detests, hates, demonizes, or pick the term. Therefore she went the opposite and in favor of American independence, capitalism, again pick the term.

          What may be more interesting is what is Chilean, as I have been finding out:

          Humberto Maturano, a Chilean Biologist and Philosopher, who, with Chelean Francisco Varela (Biologist, Philosopher, Neuroscientist) authored “Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living” (1979)–all about the biology of cognition, and picked up by Deleuze and Guattari. Nothing short of impressive.

          Raul Moncayo, Ph.D. Analyst of the School Born in Chile and received psychoanalytic training in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Obtained a Ph.D. in social-clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in the tradition of the Frankfurt school of critical theory. He is the author of the recent book, Evolving Lacanian Perspectives for Clinical Psychoanalysis as well as the forthcoming book “The Emptiness of Oedipus. Identification and Non-Identification in (Lacanian) Psychoanalysis.” Again, nothing short of impressive.

          –see a couple of interviews with Moncayo, one on Shrink Rap Radio with David Van Nuys, and a more technical inverview on Wise Counsel, with Van Nuys as well, who asks Moncayo how Chile became a center for Lacanian analysis.

          While Chile may be influenced by American culture, it is apparently much more highly influenced intellectually by Europe than America ever hoped.

          I’m jealous –Wayne, a North American Gringo. We are lucky to have Moncayo in Berkeley, CA now.

          Reply

          • Wayne Schroeder:

            If you’re interested, here are some Chilean thinkers who are worth reading. Most of them are not translated in English.

            I’ll skip Humberto Maturana, whom you cite above and whose work on the biological of cognition, which you mention, is very interesting.

            There’s Francisco Varela, who worked with Maturana, as you point out, and also did some stuff on Buddhism from a cognitive science viewpoint.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Varela

            Alfonso Gómez Lobo wrote on Socratic ethics, among other topics. Much of his stuff is in English.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_G%C3%B3mez-Lobo

            Carla Cordua has a very worthwhile general study of Wittgenstein as well as work on Heidegger and others. I don’t think that she has been translated to English.
            http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Cordua

            Tomás Moulian is a sociologist and political theorist. He is the best single source on the Pinochet dictatorship and the subsequent transition to democracy, pointing out how they changed our subjectivity. Again, there seems not to be much, if any, of his work in English.
            http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_Moulian

            Finally, Alberto Mayol is younger, sociologist and political theorist, the best single source on the changes in our subjectivity in the past few years, especially since the student movement in 2011 woke Chile from
            our neoliberal slumbers. He uses psychoanalysis, which seems to interest you (me too). Nothing of his in English from what I can see.
            http://www.albertomayol.cl/

  7. I was struck by the repeated descriptions of Rand as being like a mediocre sophomore, especially Dylan’s encapsulation of that feeling at the end. I haven’t read a lot of Walter Benjamin, but I have read a number of essays, including his famous “Work of Art” essay, his Baudelaire book and some others. My feeling in reading his work is the same as that described by Dylan in that there are a lot of interesting ideas, but they get swallowed up by Benjamin’s seemingly confused, aphoristic, or unclarified writing style. I think a lot of his collected work was unresolved notes for future essays, though I could be wrong.

    Nonetheless, the point is that Benjamin is sometimes pleasurable, often vexing and I feel like I’d get a lot more out of him talking to him than I do in reading. In fact, I got a lot more out of his work in grad school seminars than I did in just reading it.

    I wonder what the difference in this is, or if there is any. Do you guys find Benjamin more pleasurable, despite his contradictions and diamonds-in-a-lot-of-rough writing? If so, is it because he’s a more interesting writer? Is it because he isn’t constantly rejecting everything else in philosophy in order to give himself primacy? Is it because his kernels of ideas come out of an on-the-page wrestling with thought, rather than Rand’s sloppiness or declarations that dismiss, say, Wittgenstein in a sentence?

    I only recently discovered the podcast through Stitcher. I really have enjoyed it and have been working my way through episodes. Thanks so much for taking the time for such long, thoughtful, charitable, and clear discussions of the texts.

    Reply

  8. This comment section has surprisingly not exploded in the way I expected it to.

    Great episode guys. It’s interesting what you said about Rand’s epistemology being an ad hoc rationalization of her ethics, because I think that’s how people are drawn to her ideas. I would wager that most Objectivists don’t start with her epistemology, thinking “why yes, the world as it is is readily perceivable to me! A=A! Aristotle rules!” and *then* go from that to her ethics. No, people are drawn to her ethics at first.

    Reply

  9. “I’m one of the undeserving poor: That’s what I am,” intones Doolittle. “Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up against middle-class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.'” 
    “ I don’t need less then the deserving I need more. “I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more.” 

    Every society in human history has done pretty well at rewarding the smart the clever the lucky and the quick, it’s whats to be done with the great mass of useless people that is the trick. Just because a a person is of negative capital worth with no employable skills, doesn’t take away the body’s physical needs. A man who can not afford food, none the less needs to eat.

    The deserving poor are a select group. Our American saints. And like all saints they accept their penury with amazing grace. We want to aid the deserving poor. Of course we do, not even the most strident Ayn Rynd acolyte would deny aid to the deserving poor.
    It’s those undeserving wretches we want to weed out. The sinners from the saints the sheep from the goats. It’s what the poor exist for, to be judged. The price for all charity is public scrutiny of ones adherence to the boy scout code. A most careful forensic accounting of merit badges earned versus demerits.
    While the boundaries of pure capitalism are limitless, charity, there is only so much of that to go around. It’s only natural, we want to help people who have earned a right to a portion of our sympathy. And ohh how free we are with our sympathy to the deserving. We get drunk on the wine of our generosity of feeling as we smack our lips at the public feast of every privet misery. And you will be judged on presentation.
    A fair and just system as far as it goes. Buts whats to be done with the undeserving?

    We could round them up and put them in camps, to learn proper work habits. It’s been tried before never with aesthetically pleasing results.
    We could ignore them and hope they have the good sense to just disappear
    . As one suicide note put it: “Survival of the fittest. Adios. Unfit.”

    Reply

    • I’m sorry to say that but you sound a bit like a Fascist Leader (pick one). I’m German and we heard Hitler’s speaches in school over and over and there are similarities, e.g. there were camps too… And btw. : Who decides who deserves and who deserves not to be “weeded out”? You?

      Reply

    • @ adrienne warren
      Its hard to see an argument here, where it is easy to see personal discontent. But, to answer the tendendcy which might carry any argumentative weight, which is discernable enough for the attentive reader, and tell you the plain hard fact: society is moving towards equality, for good and bad. Ignoring this fact, can, with some warrant, be seen as an expression of no more than your own failings as a human being in the community you live in. This was.pointed out at the early stages of American democracy by a great french philosopher. If you don’t like this realization, do what Rand proposes: go away.
      “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” – Winston.C

      Reply

      • Hmm @Tobe I assumed @adrianne warrens comment to be ironic…if so then I particularly liked the capitalism being endless vs charity being limited line…

        Reply

    • I wish the entire comment had been in verse, not just:

      Every society in human history has done pretty well at rewarding the smart the clever the lucky and the quick, it’s whats to be done with the great mass of useless people that is the trick.

      I mean, how do you beat that?!

      Reply

  10. Interesting podcast. I thought the objectionist arguments were Rand’s way of intimidating people from challenging her opinions of private property, capitalism, and individualism, which is really where her emotions and thinking lay.

    Reply

  11. Most people, at least in the West, would agree that reason, freedom, individualism, and free market capitalism are largely positive things. These ideals don’t need Objectivism to justify them. I think these are the main problems people have with Objectivists: their very negative and judgmental attitude, their highly suspicious cultiness (which implies an ironic emphasis on control and restrictions of personal freedom), and the extra philosophical baggage they want you to accept in addition to what are really just standard classical liberal ideals.

    As the podcasters note, the whole Objectivist rhetorical approach is based in polemics, contrarianism, and ad hominem attacks; not rational argument. This is what Objectivists put out and receive in turn, and it becomes a loop that confirms that the evil altruistic world is against them. If they genuinely wanted to convince others of their position, they would use actual arguments for their beliefs in order to set them up as the best option among many. A small minority of Objectivist scholars take this approach, but the rest are rightly called Randroids. Confronting people does not predispose them to change or even necessarily to examine their beliefs. Objectivism needs to be freed from Rand and her bad attitude to flourish, but, without Rand, why not just identify as a classical liberal, as many ex-Objectivists have done?

    If I truly believe in freedom and my own rational capacity, then I will want to study philosophy for myself and come to my own conclusions about Kant and Heidegger and the rest, not accept prepackaged conclusions. The creators of this podcast are great examples. And, as a free, rational individual who relies on my own mind, I don’t want to be forced to accept that Rand is a good novelist, or that she is the best philosopher of all time, or that the Atlas Shrugged films are good, or to be told what other types of art I am allowed to enjoy, or what conclusions I will come to if I am being TRULY rational.

    If someone is truly concerned with your freedom, they will act and speak in ways that promote it rather than restrict it. This is why I am always confused about why people become Objectivists. If you believe in freedom, why would you pursue it through an intellectual context that is clearly not free? You are not allowed to be a free-thinking Objectivist. As Objectivists will tell you endlessly: If you alter Rand’s thought, even in a way that improves it, what you have is no longer Objectivism. Either accept the whole package or don’t. With that choice, the only option for a free thinker is to not accept.

    Reply

    • good point; I agree that objectivist vitriol is largely why they get scorned in turn. What I find amazing is that they are surprised by it. They get all doe-eyed and seem to be unable to understand why everyone else cannot accept their purportedly self-evident propositions.

      One thing though, you associate capitalism with “standard classical liberal ideas,” which is easily contested since the core of classical liberalism was formed before capitalist economy really became the dominant aspect of life. You can make the argument, as I do, that if you take the values of classical liberalism seriously and apply them consistently, classical liberalism is profoundly anticapitalist, in fact it leads directly to some kind of democratic socialism or anarchism.

      I don’t expect a response, I just needed to get that off of my chest since I see pretty watered down pronouncements about classical liberalism all over the place, mostly from so-called “conservatives,” or “libertarians” (as if they are the only ones who value freedom) trying to claim, spuriously, the honorable tradition of classical liberalism for themselves, when in reality they have stolen it and bastardized its central tenets.

      Reply

  12. Hi.

    I just finished your episode about Ayn Rand and wanted to add something to what you said about her influence on U.S. politics. I’m NOT an objectivist, and I agree with your thoughts about her alleged philosophy. (In fact, to call it a philosophy is to do it far too much dignity, but that’s another subject.)

    Based on your remarks early in the show, it seems that you believe her philosophy has had a great impact on U.S. politics. As someone who’s been a political consultant for 20 years and is also heavily involved in libertarian culture, I wanted to take issue with the popular idea that her philosophy has influenced anything of substance.

    Rand is something of a hero to many libertarians and some economic conservatives, but it has almost NOTHING to do with her philosophy. Rand reached conclusions about economics and property rights that are very similar to conclusions that libertarians and many conservatives reached, but those people for whom she’s a hero reached their conclusions for VERY different reasons. They love her because she expressed something they already believed, not because she convinced them. Most libertarians and conservatives outright reject her underlying philosophy, if they even understand its tenets. All they know is that someone was defending (in her novels) some of the core economic ideas that they believed for OTHER REASONS.

    So Rand was popular for her defense of a free market, but it wasn’t her philosophy that made all those people become free market advocates. Among libertarians, for instance, Austrian-school economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrick Hayek had much more to do with what they believed. Rand merely wrote a couple of books where the protagonists said things that they generally agreed with. But do you think that those people were reading her long-winded speeches that she has her characters say? For the most part, no. Everyone I know who enjoys “Atlas Shrugged,” for various reasons, skips the long and boring speech of John Galt that goes on for 30 or 40 pages. Nobody cares about her philosophy. They simply care that SOMEONE in culture was giving voice to a position they don’t see defended. (And, let’s face it, political and economic geeks tend to know very little about literature, so many of them don’t realize how lousy she was as a novelist.)

    Even her loudest political advocates — such as Ron Paul and his son, Rand — aren’t advocates of her philosophy. For instance, both of the Pauls are vocal Christians, which would be enough to make Rand turn over in her grave. They’re not objectivists. They’re merely people who see Rand as reflecting (in her policy recommendations) things they believe.

    If you’re interested in how mainstream libertarian thinkers see her, this article from Reason magazine in 2005 (on the hundredth anniversary of her birth) is a balanced and representative look at her and her influence, IMO.

    http://reason.com/archives/2005/03/01/ayn-rand-at-100

    It’s a mistake to think Rand’s PHILOSOPHY has had any influence on mainstream politics, IMO. Rand merely provided a voice for something that a lot of people wanted to see SOMEONE provide a voice for. As long as you see her novels as polemics — whose characters are merely cardboard pieces that she moves around to make points — the stories can be enjoyable. What’s interesting is that her novels got WORSE as she got more experience. Her first novel, “We the Living,” was actually pretty good, but it didn’t reflect an overt effort to push a mishmash of a philosophy. Her short novella, “Anthem,” is quite good as allegory if you happen to agree with it, although it gets bogged down at the end when she has to bang the reader over the head to make sure he understood. I find a lot of psychological value in “The Fountainhead,” if you decouple it from her goofy philosophy and see it as the story of a man who won’t give up on his effort to be true to his art or mission, even if everyone else opposes him. But by the time she wrote “Atlas Shrugged,” her characters had lost ALL nuance. If you just look at the plot, it’s interesting. If you look at it in terms of literary value — character development and so forth — it’s dreadful, because hardly anybody ever changes and hardly anybody is really human. They’re all either heroes or villains.

    My experience is that there are very, very few actual objectivists, but the ones who exist are brilliant in some narrow field — which makes them believe they know everything — and they’re among the most arrogant people on earth. You can’t have rational discussions with them about Rand, because they’re NEVER wrong on any point, in their own minds. They talk of objective logic being the basis of everything, but they quote Rand to you as though they’re religious people quoting scripture. Just in case I was being too subtle on this point, I really can’t stand most of these folks.

    I enjoyed your dismantling of Rand’s bad joke masquerading as a philosophy, but I wanted to give you another perspective on her actual political influence. She didn’t start any parade. Some of the people in the parade merely chant her name because she’s a writer they assume agrees with them, when they would be appalled by much of her actual philosophy, much less her cultish life.

    Reply

    • Lousy as I consider Ayn Rand, the comparison to Gene Ray actually manages to be off-base. She was a strident polemicist for views she claims to have justified philosophically in spite either of being too lazy or not smart enough to do the necessary work to present anything but straw-men whose mis-characterized and/or misunderstood positions she then smugly dismisses. She reads like junior high school Nietzsche, but was not an out-and-out maniac. For what that’s worth.

      Reply

  14. Doug–
    I once had a great discussion with a lawyer who said she was educated by her parents to believe that prejudice is lazy thinking. This lazy, prejudice leads to solipsistic thinking, excluding other possible ways of thinking except one’s own, so that alternative positions increasingly become evidence of one’s own rightness. So lazy, leads to denial of alternative ways of thinking, leads to generalized prejudice (stupid, denial, increasingly closed thinking, intellectual incest and masturbation). Unfortunately, these individual vulnerabilities to gross error geometrically increase to the degree one becomes popular, and Randians and other forms of “Prejudicians” proliferate.

    Reply

  15. Ayn Rands philosophy is grounded in self-evident Axioms which must be accepted in an attempt to deny them. The axioms are Existence, Conciousness, and Identity. The first axiom is that Existence exists, which implies a corollary; your are concious that something exists as opposed to nothing, which means you exist. In performing that observation you are demonstrating the law of identity or non-contradictory identification or logic. Now, in order to deny any of these axioms you have to accept them. Take it simply, in order to deny that existence exists you must exist, in order to deny that you are conscious you must be conscious. Its that simple. I think one of the reasons people are tripped up by Rand is that she employs very little “post-modern jargon” if i may use such a phrase. She demonstrates the truth of her philosophy in plain English, so the “laymen” can understand instead of veiling her ideas in linguistic tricks which other philosophers employ. Such as Kant, who essentially uses Reason to deny Reason. Hahahaha! Its kind of like saying: there are no absolutes! Well, you just setup an Absolute that there is no Absolute. Its circular and illogical. The only way out of this trick is to recognize that Reason is the only Absolute. Reason is your standard of truth and it is the only standard of truth, everthing else is opinion. I dont really see an attempt to refute any of Rands fundamental ideas about epistemology and I would really love to hear what you guys think about it. That being said, the accusations of “randians” being intolerable is spot on. They are a bit snobbish…but I dont think we should let that hold us back from really examining our premises and see where they lead.

    Reply

    • Hi, Ed,

      We’re aware of her “self-evident axioms,” and tried to address that in this post: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/05/24/conceptual-primaries-rand-vs-deleuze/.

      In short:

      1. Nobody thinks that “nothing exists.” Even idealists think that there is something, and that science works to investigate it, but deny that what we perceive is independent of minds. When Rand presents this in her epistemology, she confutes “objective” (which just involves consciousness having an object; this is compatible with realism or idealism, as it doesn’t say anything about the nature of the object) and “intrinsic” (which refers to objects as they exist apart from any perception). Yes, perception makes the objectivity of objects self-evident, but it doesn’t imply that they are intrinsically anything like they are objectively, i.e. as they appear (indubitably, as you say) to us. Kant thinks we just can’t know if they are the same as they appear or not; Berkeley the classical idealist thinks that “intrinsic existence” is a contradiction in terms, with as little success as Rand argues that idealism is a contradiction in terms.

      2. Nobody denies the law of non-contradiction. Well, maybe someone does, but none of the idealists mentioned above, and just about no one else. What folks object to is the hacksaw way she thinks she can apply it, which involves falsely equivocating various concepts.

      3. To illustrate #2: Kant doesn’t argue that reason doesn’t exist or is bullshit. Yes, that would be a contradiction. He argues that Reason has limits of application. Using a faculty to determine that that faculty has limits does not involve a contradiction, i.e. Rand is conflating the weaker claim (that Reason has limits) with the stronger claim (that Reason is bullshit).

      Ultimately, I am a metaphysical realist, like Rand, but her arguments for this position as you’ve described them are not good. I encourage you to listen to the episode instead of just, as it appears, reading the blog post about it and assuming that we don’t understand Rand’s basic tenets.

      Reply

  16. Mark, simply analyze the statements you have made,such as this:”Even idealists think that there is something, and that science works to investigate it, but deny that what we perceive is independent of minds.” In this statement is implied that you already believe that there is a Reality independent of “mind”. If you are working to investigate something, it implies that you do not know the exact nature of what that something is, which implies that it is independent of you. How can the Idealists deny that what they investigate is independent of minds if they are using the word/concept ‘investigate”? If it is not independent of ‘mind’ then what are they investigating? Are they investigating themselves? If they are investigating themselves then all they can really say is that they are the INVESTIGATOR. If someone denies that the object of investigation is independent of “mind” then he is using a METHOD to deny that. What is that method? Is that method independent of his “mind”? If that method is not independent of his mind,that is, Objective, then it is merely his opinion which collapses back into the same question. You see, based on my understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, the whole idea of science is to have an Objective method independent of mans mind in order to come to conclusions. The method is not seperate from self evident Axioms which are involved in any statement of truth.

    Now, to address your statement about Rands ideas about what she means by Objective. Now please dont mistake me for a “Randroid’ here. I dont claim to know what Rand had in mind, I only speak from my understanding of the philosophy. When Rand is talking about Objectivity I think she is less concerned about the object observed and more about the METHOD used to observe it. For instance, before the scientific method it was believed that the world was flat. It took an Objective Method in order to prove that this OPINION was wrong.

    One of Rands central tenets was that the Essence of Man IS Epistemological. So the Objective/Instrinsic dichotomy which you seem to build in point number 1 collapses right away. Rand doesnt confute Objective with intrinsic, she considers them to be essentially the same thing. When you are investigating the intrinsical nature of an object you are essentially investigating the Objective nature of an object. Because you can only investigate about what an object is using an Objective method. Which means the investigator is intrinsically equipped with an Objective method, that is, Reason, to determine the outcome of any investigation. When it comes to Kant saying ‘we cant know” if objects are as they appear or not I would turn your focus to his use of the word/concept “cant”.We cant know according to what standard? Can we know if that standard is as it appears? Can we really know if the world is flat or round?

    When it comes to point number 2, where does Rand falsely equivocate various concepts? By what standard do you say that Rand falsely equivocates concepts?

    And now to point number 3: You said:”Kant doesn’t argue that reason doesn’t exist or is bullshit. Yes, that would be a contradiction. He argues that Reason has limits of application. Using a faculty to determine that that faculty has limits does not involve a contradiction, i.e. Rand is conflating the weaker claim (that Reason has limits) with the stronger claim (that Reason is bullshit).” By what standard does Reason have its limits? How can you say that using a faculty to determine that that same faculty has contradictions is not a contradiction? You literally used that faculty to come to the conclusion! Which makes your very statement a contradiction! If I say that based on Science, Science is wrong, then even that statement is wrong because you made the statement based on a wrong standard, that is, Science. Which collapses back into the same point that we were at to begin with.

    Well, thats really all I have to say. Im an amatuer so forgive my laymen language. I really love the podcast. Its such a juicy dose of good conversation everytime theres a new one released so keep them coming!

    Reply

    • Hi, Ed,

      First, re “investigation.” Freud and Jung have a model of mind whereby there’s plenty to investigate, i.e. that’s independent of current, conscious experience or whim, even within mind. An idealist like Berkeley has to explain how different minds experience the same thing, so he used the “mind of God” as an independent repository of mind-stuff that’s outside of my mind and your mind. Kant, like Rand, thought that the basic structure of experience does require that there be something outside of any particular mind, and used this “thing-in-itself” to ground the fact that we all seem to experience the same things, but still thought that the contents of the world as we experience it were in some sense mental, in that they were constructed by categories of our mind (unalterable by us). Other transcendental idealists thought that these categories were not so fixed by human nature.

      I raise these options just to reiterate the point that idealism is not the same as subjectivism, and objectivism (in the sense that experience is of an object that transcends that particular experience) does not entail metaphysical realism, or its more specific variant materialism. Now, it’s fine to go through and debunk all those variations, but you can’t just pretend as Rand does that the basic argument “I experience an object that is independent of me in the sense that I can investigate it therefore metaphysical realism is true” is legitimate without further argumentation against those views.

      More later… out of time for the moment.

      Reply

      • Second: can you use a faculty to determine the limits of that faculty? (Note that I’m not saying that you can use a faculty to learn that that faculty has contradictions. Faculties do not have contradictions. Statements/propositions are the only things that can contradict, or people making statements/propositions.)

        Example 1: the faculty of jumping, which presumably has limits in how high anyone can jump. There are various ways one could determine that there is a limit, but the obvious one is just trying to jump, seeing how your jumping improves with practice, and concluding that there will be limits in how much you can improve, even with mechanical aid, and while you may not be able determine the EXACT limits, you can certainly take an example like “to the moon” and simply rule it out.

        Example 2: the faculty of expressing emotion through art. This is something that we barely understand, and the only way we can see if it works or not is to try it, or to experience others’ art and discuss it with people. If you’ve done this enough, you’ll know that there are limits in what you can express.

        Example 3: the faculty of imagination. I can imagine a lot, but not a “round square,” for example. How do I know I can’t accomplish this? Primarily by using that very faculty of imagination.

        With some effort I could come up with a dozen more examples. Therefore, the argument that you can’t use a faculty to determine the limits of that faculty is invalid, and if you want to look further into why Rand’s argument SOUNDS plausible, then you’re getting into diagnosis, and decoding her idiosyncratic vocabulary.

        For example, this whole talk of objective method of epistemology vs. subjective method. As per my first point in the immediately preceding post, “objective” just requires non-arbitrariness, not separation from me. Example: How can I calm myself down when I’m about to lose my temper? There are objective matters involved: chemicals pumping through my body, and a fact as to whether I end up losing my temper or not. To calm myself, I have to manipulate objective forces, by slow breathing or focusing my mind on a pleasant field or what have you, and yet none of this is, as far as the procedure goes, outside of my mind.

        By “objective” when talking about a method for evaluating the truth of claims, we want to say idiot-proof, not open to bias, but there’s no method that’s immune to this, least of all Rand’s. For example, one of the things she considers indubitable is our own freedom. I wrote a post here http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/08/19/the-architecture-of-compatibilism-are-we-really-free/ about the limits of our self knowledge in this respect; I think she’s wrong. Even in just evaluating the validity of one of her own arguments that I’ve tried to debunk above, you can see in the fact that two reasonable people apparently disagree shows that there’s some non-trivial “judgment call” involved in evaluating any real-world issue, what Aristotle calls a practical wisdom in evaluating arguments. Many philosophers have tried to develop some infallible “method” for doing philosophy, and it never works.

        But the cure for Rand is not just reading more Rand and what would Rand say in response to any of this, but to read other people, and in that spirit I recommend that anyone still leaning Randian actually reading the Popper “Conjectures & Refutations” essay that we’re working on for the current podcast. Popper was someone that had a real respect for objectivity and how science actually works. He classifies many philosophers (Rand would be included) as “epistemological optimists,” meaning that unless we’re drunk or something else obvious is going wrong, then we get knowledge through ordinary experience. Popper thinks that this (as well as its opposite, epistemological pessimism) is not the way it works. Yes, you can retreat to talking about appearances and say “well, I’m certain about this appearance, even if I’m wrong about the explanation for it,” but that’s a philosopher’s bullshit: what we care about in science, what we consider real knowledge, are the explanations, the theories: is the world really round, not does it appear flat. Even individual observations, on Popper’s view, involve such theories, such that he doesn’t think induction, i.e. viewing individual instances and deriving a general theory from them works: you’d have to know what counts as an “instance,” which means already having the theory in question.

        So we are not “epistemological animals” with any guarantee that clear & distinct perceptions yield true scientific knowledge. Instead, we make a leap and posit an explanation of something, a way of characterizing the particular as an instance of the general, and then if we’re properly critical (and this critical attitude had to be historically developed), then we consciously try to come up with predications that that theory would imply that, if false, would show that the theory is false, and insofar as those predictions hold, then we provisionally keep with that theory, and insofar as they are falsified, then we keep modifying the theory. We can know with some degree of certainty (we may be wrong in admitting the disconfirming observation, of course), that a theory has been disconfirmed, but we can’t know no matter how many corroborating instances we see that it’s true, just that it hasn’t yet been disconfirmed.

        There’s no way in a summary comment like that that I can convert anyone to Popper’s view (or some other more modern take on knowledge) and away from Rand’s archaic and oversimplistic one. All I can do is recommend that one engage in the ongoing exploration on the podcast here with us, listen to the whole Rand ep, listen to the whole Kant-on-epistemology ep, and try to engage with this upcoming Popper one. It’s a big world, and Rand’s was a narrow, myopic view of it.

        Reply

          • You realize you’re jumping into a thread from multiple years ago, right? Maybe instead of obsessing about Rand and looking for places on the web to defend her honor, listen to any of the other 140 episodes posted here to learn about ANY OTHER PHILOSOPHER.

  17. I must confess to being greatly disappointed in one aspect of this episode, and that is having not brought in a credible pro-Rand guest. I may have written this elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here, that Roderick Long would have been the right choice to provide an educated and respectable, entirely non-wild-eyed version of Rand’s thought, having edited the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and being a Harvard and Cornell grad in philosophy (B.A. and Ph.D, respectively). He has taught at Michigan. is currently is at Auburn where he teaches Greek moral philosophy, is a co-founder of The Alliance of the Libertarian Left, and would have been great. He’s all over YouTube, should a “philosophy of the social sciences” episode ever be considered–one which I still hope to someday try to start a Not-School discussion group for–and I hope there is a way he could someday be fitted into a PEL podcast. Thanks.

    Reply

  18. Rand never said you can’t use reason to LIMIT reason. Since she identified what reason can and can’t do in her philosophy (ie. determined the limits of reason’s capacity.) Presumably she used her reason to do this. She said that you can’t invalidate reason using reason. You can’t PROVE that reason is incapable of proving as such.
    Jumping, imagining and emoting are not analogous to this argument. These are not means of knowledge.
    Imagine creating a super computer that can give you the answer to any question. Now program it to prove that it doesn’t exist.

    Reply

  20. This podcast is hilarious! Please do more podcasts dissing on Ayn Rand. I like Ayn Rand, ironically, but you guys put in her in her place so well.

    Perhaps some more podcasts making fun of other over-rated “gurus”?

    Keep up the good work!

    Reply

  22. I know you guys really didn’t want to do this and perhaps think it made no real difference but this was really helpful to me. Part of why I am into philosophy now is because of a cult like this. At the risk of sounding like a crazy lady, though I’m pretty sure I earned that title a while back, I’ll hope you can take me somewhat seriously for a moment when I say – it really fucks you up to join a cult. It’s not that I was so brainwashed and was going to drink poison cool aid or something – it was the fact that I didn’t understand or see how my thinking could be manipulated. Looking back I felt that if I had just even understood the concept of philosophy I would have not been prey to that. And I’m not so different than most everyone I know who has a set of beliefs they seem to be so bound to believing that they acquired them of their own volition. This cult was a spin off of Ayn Rand. The guy running it, Keith Reniere, was profiled in rolling stone and was a guru for many high profile people. Part of what he peddled was something he was trying to get a patent on called rational inquiry. So much of what you guys talked about with these definitions seriously made me tear up a little. As I sat their being questioned about what the definitions of things like good, bad, justice, and rights meant and then had them fed to me as though there could be no other way to understand them was unsettling, but I didn’t have the skill set to understand why it felt so wrong. The definitions would be added to this sort of web of crazy thought that would lead you to conclusions that were kind of nuts. Some of it was eye opening and inspiring as all things that are cult like must be on some level. It was only when you scratched the surface that you began to see the pitfalls of this sort of obsessive rational thinking, but questioning meant that you were “not being rational”.

    Anyway – it’s been a while and I didn’t stay on long but was embarassed that I could be swept up in something like that. Hearing you guys thoughtfully point out what o didn’t have the language or ability to really articulate kind of allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief. One of the pitfalls of leaving a cult is that there is this part of you that fees like maybe it wasn’t a cult and that you just didn’t want to see “the truth”. That’s how good they are at mind manipulation. PEL has seriously been part of my deprogramming and I would say that philosophy is the antidote to this kind of thing ever happening to begin with. So thank you guys. You meant the world to me for the last 2 hours.

    Reply

  23. Unpleasant! Reductionist! Dogmatic!

    Naive! Graceless to other ideas!

    Blind to psychological subtleties in real people! Dishonest!

    Bad attitude to women and various ‘inferior’ categories of people!

    Created a dangerous cult!

    Excellent analysis.

    Wait .. you’re seriously not talking about K Marx?

    Reply

Trackbacks

  8. […] Randians, in particular, should really like idealism in the way that it avoids all of the above. Berkeley, like Rand, says that we have a knowing faculty that allows us to get at reality itself, and not just appearances, and that knowledge is a matter of discovering objective facts. Someone like Popper might say that a real respect for objectivity requires acknowledging skepticism and trying to become “less wrong” through attempted falsifications of hypotheses, but that would be tantamount to Kantianism: to saying that the world in-itself is ultimately unknowable. Berkeley and Rand say well, of course there are aspects of reality that will inevitably remain unknown for practical reasons, but that does nothing to impugn the validity of the objects of my immediate experience. There are of course other reasons Rand would reject Berkeley (like the God part), but he’s A-OK by this standard so far. […]

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About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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