What are some reasonable objections to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy?

Question

I just finished Atlas Shrugged and was blown away. But I often get blown away reading philosophy, as if I'll believe anything. So can anyone take the wind out of my sails and tell me why Ayn Rand is full of it?

Answer 1

Funny you should ask that. It's the same question I had when I first read Atlas in 1962. Everyone I knew seemed to disagree, but I didn't know why. So I decided to take a year before saying I agreed with her philosophy to find out the objections. All the objections I heard were like things she had already put into the mouths of the villains in her novels--she had anticipated them and, in effect, answered them already (by exposing what they actually meant).

That was in 1962, while I was an undergraduate at MIT. Subsequently, I became a philosophy major, then went on to get a Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University, and to teach philosophy at Hunter College (City University of New York) and, for a semester in 2002 at the University of Texas in Austin. Not to keep you in suspense, everything that I have learned since 1962 has only confirmed and strengthened my conviction that her philosophy, Objectivism, is true and revolutionary.

(On a personal level, I also got to know Ayn Rand herself well over the course of 18 years, and became a good personal friend of hers. I found her to be a wonderful person, very different from the completely distorted portrait of her painted by her enemies.)

It has been alleged here that she had no original ideas in philosophy. At her death, I published an article, "Ayn Rand's Philosophic Achievement," in which I singled out what I think are six of her most revolutionary and original ideas in philosophy, so let me list them here (with a little, sometimes technical, elaboration):

1. The primacy of existence (existence is independent of consciousness, existence is known before consciousness is known; consciousness is dependent on existence, extrospection precedes introspection).

2. The theory of concepts (concepts are formed by a process of "measurement-omission" as an integration based on differentiation within a "Conceptual Common Denominator")

3. The theory of free will (man's free will is his choice to think or not to think)

4. Man's Life as the standard of morality ("All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.")

5. The moral basis of individual rights (the right to life is the social application of the fact that reason is man's means of survival, that reason is an attribute of the individual, and that force is anti-reason)

6. The psycho-epistemology of art ("Art is a concretization of metaphysics.Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts.")

Some philosophers, notably Aristotle, came close to grasping the first one--the primacy of existence. But philosophy since Descartes has been dominated by the opposite view: the primacy of consciousness. The other 5 are wholly unprecedented in the history of philosophy. And I say that based on a life-long study (and teaching) of the history of philosophy.

There is much, much more to Objectivism than just these 6 principles, and they have no meaning if taken out the context of the whole philosophy. (In fact, contextual absolutism is another fairly revolutionary principle of Objectivism.) To see the whole system, as a system, read the definitive presentation of the philosophy by her best student, Leonard Peikoff: Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. But maybe you should begin by reading her own non-fiction works, starting with The Virtue of Selfishness. It is a cardinal principle of Objectivism that one judge for oneself. This is phenomenally important when judging a philosophy that has been subject to so much evasion and misrepresentation.

On your intellectual voyage, I wish you, as Ayn Rand used to say: good premises!

Answer 2

I am quite honestly shocked that so many people on this thread have not only failed to produce a significant objection to Ayn Rand, but have gone as far as to say she was the greatest intellectual in two thousand years. Ayn Rand reasons from the existence of a certain tendency in nature (the tendency to be selfish) to the way that, on the basis of that tendency, nature ought to be. Not only is this fallacious, but quite obviously so. Ethics is a system that determines a way in which rational individuals ought to act towards one another. How individuals do in fact act towards one another bears no relationship to how they ought to act towards one another.
Secondly, an implication of Ayn Rands ethics is that the act of sacrificing one's life for the life of another would not only be in direct opposition to the drive for survival, but also immoral. Being a former marine that deployed to Iraq this notion is absurd. Perhaps some people on this thread would benefit from reading a little Immanuel Kant. But then again, most Rand followers hold their beliefs more dogmatically than religious people, so I doubt any amount of argumentation would render their beliefs challenged.

Answer 3

I personally like Ayn Rand. I read Atlas Shrugged years ago and was also quite taken with it. I think the biggest objection to Ayn Rand is she is so shrill and dogmatic. If you don't believe as she does you are some sort of miscreat!
But I do think she makes an important point which is that it is producers who create wealth, not governments, government policies or wealth redistribution schemes. We now have more people directly or indirectly dependant on government than who are wealth-producers and that is dangerous.

Answer 4

Ayn Rand inspires an unreasonable devotion in her followers. Witness comments like these:

"Ayn Rand is the greatest intellectual in two thousand years."
"If you don't believe as she does you are some sort of miscreat!"

These viewpoints are clearly a bit extreme. I mean, suppose I like Heidegger (and I do). I might make specific claims about Heidegger in relation to other thinkers, like that I prefer Heidegger's existentialism to Sartre's, and his later embrace of analytic philosophy to his existentialism. But I would be unlikely to claim that he was the greatest intellectual in the last two thousand years, or that anyone who didn't believe in his particular brand of philosophy was some kind of miscreant, because those claims are ridiculous. In fact, they are characteristic not of a preference for a given philosophy but rather of a religious devotion. Objectivism is very much like a cult.

People are so devoted to it for two reasons: firstly, it's inherently elitist. We all, as humans, want to think of ourselves as better than other people, and Objectivism panders to that base desire. Secondly, despite being elitist, Objectivism is *resolutely anti-intellectual*. You can observe this in Chip's exhortation to "ignore these people who condemn her with floating abstractions and other vagueries. They are non-thinking parrots from academe." When you combine these two elements, elitism and anti-intellectualism, you end up with a system wherein anyone can be part of an elite without getting a fancy education. In fact, people getting a fancy education are just letting themselves be deluded -- they don't get to know the *truth*. It's an enormously appealing idea, because just by accepting a few key tenets of Objectivism, the average person can transform themselves into someone who is "better," more enlightened, than all of those professors and liberals and so on.

This is the part of Objectivism that I would encourage you to question. Ayn Rand was a second-rate philosopher and her ideas were unoriginal, but that's of secondary importance. It's not so much the substance of Objectivism that I have trouble with -- it's the form. There are plenty of other libertarian or anarcho-capitalist critics and philosophers out there that don't insist that you discount all previous philosophy. Objectivism is a *religion,* and even if some of the ideas are worthwhile, they're better found elsewhere.

Don't end up like Chip, insisting that Rand is somehow beyond criticism. This is exactly -- EXACTLY -- the same thing that fundamentalist Christians do when confronted with arguments for evolution. They don't actually go and read Darwin or Dawkins or Gould or whoever; they listen to other fundamentalists tell them why evolution is impossible. Objectivism is an intellectually closed system; it is not open to change and it is not willing to consider other (valid) opinions. In this it is not fundamentally different from Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, Mormonism, etc.

Answer 5

Ayn Rand is the greatest intellectual in two thousand years. I am jealous of you for having such a great new world ahead of you. Read on! Read the first essay in Philosophy: Who Needs It next.

Ignore these people who condemn her with floating abstractions and other vagueries. They are non-thinking parrots from academe.

Answer 6

Lack of bravery is the only reason.
I read Fountainhead 2 yrs ago and Atlas Shrugged last month.... Both are marvelous according to me. Objectivism is all about sticking to your virtues which the weak hearted cant!

Answer 7

It doesn't fit with human nature, in that we are social animals and other people do have a major role in our lives.

Answer 8

It's a novel.
It's a straw man.

She constructed a false world, and then knocked it down.
Great~

She also conveniently avoids all philosophical debate,
all social theory, oversimplifies, has got some screwed up ideas on the female gender, and plain robs ideas to fit her pablam paradigm of rationality.

I hate that book, it's drenched with pedantic metaphor.

Answer 9

The evil destroyer is taking away the creative geniuses...
Need i say more?