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Originally posted by mraynrand
As for her philosophy, most intellectuals are open to submit their work to their peers and let them ask questions. Not so with Rand. Her attitude is summed up in her own quote, "I am not looking for intelligent disagreement any longer.... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement."
Rand is probably one of the first philosophical writers many high school students would have encountered in their studies, during the last several decades. It is on the young, philosophically untrained mind, that her prose has the most sway; and once swayed, it is very hard to overcome her misperceptions, bitterness, and straw arguments. Lucky me, I encountered real philosophers before I ever heard her name, and so I could easily
dismiss her claptrap, and especially Piekoff's, as inconsistent, irrational, and preachy.
She preaches a Howard Roark, but delivers a Gail Wynand and a Peter Toohey. Her thought implicitly leads to the same uniformity of thinking and
living which she so ardently opposed, and that is due to the very basic assumptions with which she works.
For one example, if the senses are to be taken as necessarily valid, and if it is assumed that the senses perceive "facts," then there is hardly much room left for any type of creativity, or even slight difference of perception and opinion, is there? Each moment of perception from each person would be bound to the same truth, governed by a strict determinism, and no one would be capable of the least bit of freedom. There would not be the very possibility of an individual, to experience freedom in the first place.
Her thought boils down to a very clever type of religion, or pseudo-philosophy cult, in that it preys upon the unsuspecting mind and feeds it with lots of "newspeak" about individuality, honesty, consistency and happiness, when on closer inspection, it leads to the same totalitarianism, mysticism, and blind faith which it claims to avoid.
As for your existence point: She and Piekoff claim if one were to be rational, and honest, then one would have to take as granted that the fundamental edifice of Objectivism is the fact that existence exists. They further argue, if one were to deny this claim, then one is being irrational and dishonest, since it is a self-evident truth. This is a laugher.
First, I must refute "existence exists," and refute that one would be irrational to deny a fundamental tenet, qua tenet, since a tenet is not
an axiom. Then we should provide offensives against repetition, by challenging the value of such an edifice, in light of the very aims of Objectivism, and by turning the moralizing table on the Randists, by questioning the name calling function of "irrational and dishonest."
You see, the fact that you or I may need a complex system, is no indication of its universality to all humans, or that it should be applied in the same manner. This is one of my beefs with Randism; that once she set up the universal need for a system, it is all too easy to start dictating the characteristics of that system. From there, it is a skinny step to totalitarianism, or some kind of ethically justified power technique. This is in direct conflict with individualism, of which Rand claimed to be in support.
Couple of easy (way to easy points) about Objectivism.
There is no flaw in the fundamental principles of Objectivism,
but there is a very great flaw in some of Ayn Rand's applications and
interpretations of the fundamental principles of the Objectivist ethics.
This flaw is based on Rand's seeming inability to separate philosophy
from psychology, and her insistence on making unrealistic and
inappropriate moral judgments about other people. She makes claims
about human psychology that are never proved or defended. The claims
are simply asserted as self-evident philosophical truths.
These claims fall into 3 main areas:
1.Inherently dishonest ideas
2. Evasion
3. Evil
W/o going into each, The concepts of 'evil,' 'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest ideas' are psychological concepts that do not belong in philosophy. These concepts merely serve to give Objectivists unrestricted license to morally condemn other human beings. As a result, Objectivists end up treating their intellectual opponents (and each other) as people who can be despised and hated. This is what has torn the Objectivist movement apart for the last thirty years, and will continue to do so. The players change, but the game remains the same.
The power of moral judgment is enormous. The power to pronounce
someone as an evil evader is the greatest power of all. By making such
power available, subject only to whim, with no objective facts or principles to restrain it, Ayn Rand has unleashed a reign of intellectual terrorism. She has transformed many honest, well-meaning individuals into unjust dogmatic moralizers.
This propensity to engage in unjust moral condemnation is also what
keeps Objectivism a tiny, insignificant intellectual movement that has all
the appearance of a religious cult, and is seldom taken seriously in the
academic world.
Moral judgment of others is quite different from personal moral judgment. Unlike the contents of your own mind, the thoughts, reasoning, and volitional processes of other men are not available to you. Any attempt to morally judge someone else that depends on knowing the contents of his mind, will never be anything more than a guessing game. And it's an unjust game, guaranteed to alienate everyone in your sphere of influence.
Moral judgment that requires us to determine the mental state of another
man, is worthless. Ever since Rand proposed this impossible standard,
Objectivists have been scrambling to find ways to implement it. Their method...guessing.
Any proper moral judgment of other men must rely on facts that are readily available to anyone; not facts that only a trained psychiatrist could hope to obtain. What are the facts that can be used for moral judgment?
Ayn Rand wrote that, "Morality is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions, that determine the purpose and the course of his life." Accordingly, judging the morality of others requires that we judge how well they are adhering to a code of rational values, rather than trying to discern the actual motivations of another man's mind (as Rand and Peikoff would have us do).
Judgments are not always easy to make, and they can never be made quickly, but none of them requires us to determine if a man is 'evading,' or is advocating an 'inherently dishonest idea,' or is 'evil.' To try to answer any of these last three questions, is to push moral judgment into the realm of unjust fantasy.
How much more would you like me to go on about the ridiculousness of her philosophy. Sanctioning!!! LOL
She is a second rate thinker, a writer of pulp-fiction sensibilities with a knack for euphemizing greed in a spirit of self-help profundity.
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