COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

At the costs of oversimplification and having to omit a great deal (including the specific arguments) here goes:

Ayn Rand is generally in the classical tradition of philosophy, not in the modern to post-modern tradition.

She does not agree with Kant, the existentialists, postmodernists, and others that reason cannot directly apprehend the facts of reality with certainty. First, in order to assert that it can do so, she and other Objectivists must directly challenge Kant's "Copernican revolution", the idea that we only get reality 'as processed' and this implies we aren't reliably in touch with it at all. There are a series of arguments in the Objectivist literature that the Kantian position (and the related positions of postmodernists and others that claims about reality are purely subjective or culturally relative or gender-determined or influenced by one's class) is self-contradictory. Secondly, the Objectivists must and do argue positively and at length for how we acquire hard and fast knowledge of reality.

The broad classical tradition that Rand falls into is the Aristotelian one, not the Platonic. The model for knowledge is empirical science rather than ultimate deduction from higher categories. Knowledge is based on and derived from our life in the world around us and a slow accumulation of data. She accepts and expands upon Aristotle's ancient answer to the Sophists with regard to how we can know certain basics such as that objects exist, our senses are valid, and we are in touch with reality: We presume these even in asking the questions. One reason that axioms can't be denied without self-contradiction is that you have to use them even in the attempt to deny them.

Building on arguments that external reality is objective (contra subjectivism or metaphysical idealism, it exists independently of what our wishes might prefer and we have to come to terms with it or into alignment with it, not the other way around), she makes a case that the senses are objective and concepts are objective (here, objective means valid and reliable forms of apperception).

Nonetheless, human beings can err and do so frequently, so she develops principles, guidelines for knowledge, or relies on previous methods, such as Aristotle's development of logic. These methods include some substantive discussions of how to reduce complex arguments back to direct evidence, how to prove your conclusions, how hierarchies of knowledge work, the use of abstractions vs. the use of concretes, and a great deal more.

These are all part of what is meant when it is said that Rand is a defender of reason.

But her concept of reason and its applicability is an all-encompassing one. It doesn't mean the denial or suppression of emotion. It doesn't mean just solving syllogisms. It is applied not merely to identifying facts about inanimate nature but to the realm of values and all the human sciences. Objectivism takes seriously the issue of how one gets the "ought" from the "is". The key (lead essay in "Virtue of Selfishness") is biological science, the nature of the organism. What an entity is (whether homo sapiens or a house plant) determines what it should do.

For Rand, how one should live, what constitutes a happy life or an ideal society or a world of justice, peace, and prosperity are vital, burning questions. Following the lead of biology, she makes a case for what man's nature is as an entity, how he is distinctive. She builds on this in arguing that his flourishing depends first on a careful use of reason to identify his needs and goals and, properly identified, on a conscious rejection of a life path of -- on the one hand -- doing whatever he feels like and trampling everyone who gets in the way (ethical subjectivism, Nietzschean egoism), and -- on the other hand -- living a life of denying himself and his needs and values and interests and sacrificing any or all of them to God or society or the state.

This then raises the question of what are the proper relationships between men that will allow this flourishing to take place. First, she agues that all human relationships should be voluntary or uncoerced -- men should deal with each other through persuasion and trade. Her concept of "trade" is, as are so many of the fundamental concepts she uses, wider in import than the traditional one. She means it to include non-material values as well as material: a friendship or a romantic relationship is a trade. You gain something from the presence of the existence or the happiness or the companionship of the other person and you give them something similar. Second, she argues for the inalienability of individual rights and, since the person whose property can be confiscated cannot exercise his freedom, this includes property rights. Third, she makes the case that if the day comes when people widely accept the rest of her philosophy up to this point, a society and economy based on laissez-faire will work to everyone's advantage, providing opportunities and a place in the sun for rich and poor, smart and dumb, industrious and relatively less ambitious. Fourth, since there are always criminals and predators on the fringes of any society, you still need a (limited) government, not to coerce people to do what society wants, but to prevent them from using coercion or fraud against each other and to protect against outside aggression.

No one was quicker than Ayn Rand to recognize how distant these ideals are. But working ultimately in their favor is the fact that, if children are educated well in a supportive society and their natural gifts and potential brought out, there is a natural joy in human beings that they are normally born to in the use of reason and emotion, in exploration, in producing and creating thing oneself rather than being a predator or a dependent. And, once philosophies change, this can result in creating a peaceful and prosperous and non-coercive world or, as she would put it, "living in full sunlight".

-- Philip Coates, Brown University B.A., University of Michigan, M.S. (posted 4/29, 8:38 a.m., E.D.T.)

previous response

next response

STEP 1: Your contact information (required)

Your name:

Your title & institution:

Your phone:

Your e-mail address:

STEP 2: Your comments (required)

STEP 3: Submit!

Check this box if you would like this submission to be considered for publication as a letter to the editor in the printed Chronicle.