Objectivist Philosophy

From Wikipedia

Rand's specification

Rand characterizes Objectivism as a philosophy "for living on earth", grounded in reality and aimed at achieving knowledge about the natural world and harmonious, mutually beneficial interactions between human beings. Rand wrote:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. 

Rand published most of her non-fiction essays in her own newsletter The Objectivist and earlier in the journal she edited, in which only those who largely agreed with Objectivism were published. She did not publish in conventional academic journals. Much of the non-fiction Objectivist corpus is available only in the form of audio recordings.

Origins of the name

Objectivism derives its name from its conception of knowledge and values as "objective", rather than as "intrinsic" or "subjective". According to Rand, neither concepts nor values are "intrinsic" to external reality, nor are they merely "subjective" (by which Rand means "arbitrary" or "created by [one's] feelings, desires, 'intuitions,' or whims" (like Wishful thinking) ). Rather, valid concepts and values are, as she wrote, "determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind." One cannot change reality by simply wishing it were different. Man must deal with reality by understanding it, accounting for its constraints, and interacting with it in accordance with one's power to effectuate material changes consistent with one's rational desires. According to Objectivism, a subjectivist would hold values as arbitrary, and an 'intrinsicist' would hold values as something unrelated to humans.

"Objectivism" was actually Rand's second choice for the name of her philosophy. Rand said that "existentialism" is the more appropriate term, because her philosophy recognizes both the metaphysical primacy of existence and the ethical goal of maintaining one's own existence. However, existentialist philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Soren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus had already taken this term for a different view.

Objectivist principles

Metaphysics: Objective reality

Main article: Objectivist metaphysics

The key tenets of the Objectivist metaphysics are captured in three propositions:

• Existence exists.
• Consciousness exists
• Existence is Identity.

The foundation of Objectivism is the doctrine of metaphysical realism, which holds that reality is independent of observation.Rand calls this the primacy of existence. Rand posits the axiom "Existence exists," which she considers a way of saying that something exists. Her argument for "Existence exists" being axiomatic lies on the grounds that the only way to deny the existential import of the claim is to use the existential import of the claim as a premise: Rand holds that to argue this point is to propound a contradiction. Whether or not referring terms have existential import is a controversial topic in logic which, historically, gave rise to attempts at developing a free logic. Rand's metaphysical system treats the problem of existential import as settled.

Objectivism maintains that which exists does not exist because one thinks it exists; it simply exists. Moreover, the world is as it is irrespective of the opinion of how it is. Rand's epistemic facet of Objectivism also holds that beliefs about what is true or false about reality are just that — beliefs. According to Rand knowledge is "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation." What Rand asserts as the rational method of arriving at true belief (knowledge) is covered in her epistemology.

Rand's belief that something exists leads to her "axiom of Consciousness." The axiom of Consciousness affirms that consciousness exists, with consciousness "being the faculty of perceiving that which exists." Rand holds that since one is able to perceive that existence exists, then consciousness must exist. It is important to note that existence is not held to be contingent upon consciousness, but consciousness is contingent upon existence. For Rand, there is no such thing as a consciousness that is conscious of nothing. That is, consciousness cannot be the only thing that exists. According to Rand, an objective reality independent of consciousness has to exist in order for consciousness to exist. "It cannot be aware only of itself — there is not "itself" until it is aware of something." Hence, for Rand, the mind cannot create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality.

According to Rand, for something to exist is for something to have "identity," which means it is "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes."Rand reasons that there can be no such thing as an existent that has no nature or attributes. That which has no attributes simply does not exist. Hence, Rand's formulation of the "Law of Identity" or "A is A" — a thing is what it is. Whereas "existence exists" pertains to existence itself (whether something exists or not), the law of identity pertains to the nature of an object as existing as distinct from other objects (whether something exists as this or that). As Rand says, "A leaf cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A."

Rand says, "An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it."As Leonard Peikoff notes, Rand's argumentation "is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable."This leaves the question as to how one can determine if the axioms are true. Rand's answer is that the axioms can be validated by using sense perception. One determines that existence exists merely by seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, or hearing something that exists. That our senses are being activated, proves to us that there is something that exists. Validating that consciousness exists rests on sense information as well, by noting that one is aware of sensations. Likewise for validating the law of identity; one validates this by seeing or touching a thing and noting that any entity has particular attributes or characteristics that distinguishes it from other entities, and thereby realizing that that is what makes a thing what it is. This leads one to recognize that a thing cannot be of a nature that is contrary to its nature or it would be something else (or A=A). Rand believes that individuals already hold these axioms implicitly, but that it is helpful to make them explicit to avoid philosophical errors. According to Peikoff, if individuals "[lack] explicit identification of this knowledge [of the axioms], they have no way to adhere to the axioms, consistently and typically fall into some form of contradicting the self-evident, as in the various magical word views, which (implicitly) deny the law of identity" or philosophers "who reject the self-evident as the base of knowledge, and who then repudiate all three of the basic axioms..."

In addition to these three basic axioms, Objectivist philosophy affirms the Law of Causality as a corollary of the Law of Identity. Rand says that "the law of causality is the law of identity applied to action."The Law of Causality states that things act in accordance with their natures. The way an object behaves when another object contacts it is simply a function of the specific nature (or "identity") of those objects; if one or both object(s) had a different identity, there would be a different result. "A thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature."The law of causailty does not assert that everything has a cause. Indeed, according to Rand, existence itself can have no cause on the account that there would have to be something outside of existence to cause existence. This would be incoherent, according to Rand, because that which does not exist could not do anything whatsoever. Also important to note of the Objectivist position, is that among those things or actions that are caused, "the causal link does not relate two actions."According to Rand, an "action" is not an entity;rather, entities act. Therefore, an action cannot be the cause of another action, as actions do not exist apart from the entities that produce them. To illustrate the Objectivist position, Peikoff says, "It is not the motion of a billiard ball which produces effects; it is the billiard ball, the entity which does so by a certain means. If one doubts this, one need merely subtitute an egg or soap bubble with the same velocity for the billiard ball; the effects will be quite different."

Epistemology: reason

Main article: Objectivist epistemology

Objectivist epistemology distinguishes the manner with which we can individually translate our perceptions, i.e., that which we acquire through our senses, into concepts that we can store in our minds. While we can "know" that there is existence by our perceptions, we can know what exists only by turning percepts into concepts. Objectivists then draw a distinction between valid concepts and poorly formed concepts, or what Rand calls "anti-concepts", by asserting that properly formed concepts must be the product of reason.

Objectivism states that by the method of reason man can gain knowledge (understanding the facts of reality) and rejects philosophical skepticism. Objectivism also rejects faith or "feeling" as a means of attaining knowledge. Although Rand acknowledged the importance of emotion in humans, she maintained that the existence of emotion was part of our reality, not a separate means of achieving awareness of reality.

Rand was neither a classical empiricist (like Hume or the logical positivists) nor a classical rationalist (like Plato, Descartes, or Frege). She disagreed with the empiricists mainly in that she did not consider the distinction between sensations and perceptions to be meaningful. Thus, she did not believe in the possibility of perceptual error or illusion, only the misunderstanding or improper conceptualization of perceptual data. Neither did she consider the analytic-synthetic distinction to have merit, including the view that there are "truths in virtue of meaning", or that "necessary truths" and mathematical truths are best understood as "truths in virtue of meaning". She similarly denied the existence of a priori knowledge. Rand also considered her ideas distinct from foundationalism, naive realism about perception like Aristotle, or representationalism (i.e., an indirect realist who believes in a "veil of ideas") like Descartes or Locke.

Objectivist epistemology, like most other philosophical branches of Objectivism, was first clearly articulated by Rand in Atlas Shrugged. However, it was more fully developed in Rand's 1967 work Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Rand considered her epistemology and its basis in reason so central to her philosophy that she remarked, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

Ethics: rational self-interest

Main article: Objectivist ethics

The essence of the Objectivist position on ethics was summed up by Ayn Rand in one sentence:

"To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem."

The ethics of Objectivism is based on the theory that each person is responsible for achieving his or her own rational self-interest. Rand wrote:

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice.

"A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

There is a difference, however, between rational self-interest and what she calls "selfishness without a self" - a state of range-of-the-moment selfishness to promote a self that has no esteem. Thieves, according to her, are not motivated by a desire to live (as the man of production is), but by the desire to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes the concept of human life" as their standard of values, they promote "that which I value" as the standard of value; thus leaving a blank check on what is and isn't moral. The "I value" in that sentence can be replaced with "we value", "he values", or "He values" and still be a blank-check ethics-killer, according to Rand. She is not asking you to believe that either rational selfishness and hedonistic selfishness-without-a-self should be considered good and evil at the same time (as "double-think" may ask) but that the former should be considered good and the latter evil and that there is a "fundamental" difference between them. A corollary to her embrace of self-interest is the rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism — which she defines in the sense of August Comte's altruism (he coined the term), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. George H. Smith says: "For Comte, altruism is not simple benevolence or charity, but rather the moral and political obligation of the individual to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of a greater social good. It should be noted that Ayn Rand did not oppose helping others in need, provided such actions are voluntary. What she opposed was the use of coercion — that is, the initiation of physical force — in social relationships. The doctrine of altruism, in Rand's view, is evil partially because it serves to justify coercion, especially governmental coercion, in order to benefit some people at the expense of others."

Central to Objectivist ethics is the concept of "value." Rand defines value as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." At the most fundamental level, the pursuit of values arises out of need; specifically, the need to determine what an individual should pursue in order to maintain his life if he so chooses to live. Rand does not hold that values are "intrinsic" — that there are values an individual must pursue by command or imperative ("reason accepts no commandments"). And, she does not hold that they are "subjective" — that there are values that should be pursued because an individual says they should be pursued. Rather, she believes that values are "objective." By this she means that there are values that should be pursued if one chooses to value his life. For example, food would be an objective value; in other words, it would be "objectively" true that food is required for survival. For Rand, all moral imperatives are hypothetical. There are no "categorical imperatives" as in Kantianism which an individual must perform regardless of the facts of reality. Rand says, morality is a "code of values accepted by choice." According to Leonard Peikoff, Rand holds that "man needs [morality] for one reason only: he needs it in order to survive. Moral laws, in this view, are principles that define how to nourish and sustain human life; they are no more than this and no less." Objectivism does not say there is moral requirement to choose to value life. As Allan Gotthelf points out, for Rand, "Morality rests on a fundamental, pre-moral choice."

Politics: individual rights and capitalism

Main article: Objectivist politics

The transition from the Objectivist ethics to the Objectivist theory of politics relies on the concept of rights. A "right", according to Objectivism, is a moral principle that both defines and sanctions a human being's freedom of action in a social or societal context. Objectivism holds that only individuals have rights; there is, in the Objectivist view, no such thing as a "collective right" that does not reduce without remainder to a set of individual rights. Furthermore, Objectivism is very specific about the set of "individual rights" that it recognizes; as such, the Objectivist list of individual rights differs significantly from the ones adopted by most governments, for example.

Although Objectivist literature does not use the term "natural rights", the rights it recognizes are based directly on the nature of human beings as described in its epistemology and ethics. Since human beings must make choices in order to survive as human beings, the basic requirement of a human life is the freedom to make, and act on, one's own independent rational judgment, according to one's self-interest.

Thus, Objectivism contends, the fundamental right of human beings is the right to life. By this phrase Objectivism means the right to act in furtherance of one's own life — not the right to have one's life protected, or to have one's survival guaranteed, by the involuntary effort of other human beings. Indeed, on the Objectivist account, one of the corollaries of the right to life is the right to property which, according to Objectivism, always represents the product of one's own effort; on this view, one person's right to life cannot entail the right to dispose of another's private property, under any circumstances. Under Objectivism, one has the right to transfer one's own property to whomever one wants for whatever reason, but such a transfer is only ethical if it is made under the terms of a trade freely consented to by both parties, in the absence of any form of coercion, each with the expectation that the trade will benefit them. Objectivism holds that human beings have the right to manipulate nature in any way they see fit, as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. From this, the right to property arises.

On the Objectivist account, the rights of other human beings are not of direct moral import to the agent who respects them; they acquire their moral purchase through an intermediate step. An Objectivist respects the rights of other human beings out of the recognition of the value to himself or herself of living in a world in which the freedom of action of other rational (or potentially rational) human beings is respected.

According to Objectivism, then, one's respect for the rights of others is founded on the value, to oneself, of other persons as actual or potential trading partners (whether it be trading in a material or emotional sense). Here is where Objectivism's claim about conflicts of interest attains its full significance: on the Objectivist view, it is precisely because there are no such (irresoluble) conflicts that it is possible for human beings to prosper in a rights-respecting society.

Objectivist political theory therefore defends capitalism as the ideal form of human society. Objectivism reserves the name "capitalism" for full laissez-faire capitalism — i.e., a society in which individual rights are consistently respected and in which all property is (therefore) privately owned. Any system short of this is regarded by Objectivists as a "mixed economy" consisting of certain aspects of capitalism and its opposite (usually called socialism or statism), with pure socialism and/or tyranny at the opposite extreme.

Far from regarding capitalism as a dog-eat-dog pattern of social organization, Objectivism regards it as a beneficent system in which the innovations of the most creative benefit everyone else in the society at no loss to anyone. Indeed, Objectivism values creative achievement itself and regards capitalism as the only kind of society in which it can flourish.

A society is, by Objectivist standards, moral to the extent that individuals are free to pursue their goals. This freedom requires that human relationships of all forms be voluntary (which, in the Objectivist view, means that they must not involve the use of physical force), mutual consent being the defining characteristic of a free society. Thus the proper role of institutions of governance is limited to using force in retaliation against those who initiate its use — i.e., against criminals and foreign aggressors. Economically, people are free to produce and exchange as they see fit, with as complete a separation of state and economics as of state and church.

Esthetics: Romantic Realism

The Objectivist theory of art flows fairly directly from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Objectivism's term for the study of human cognition as it involves interactions between the conscious and the subconscious mind). Art, according to Objectivism, serves a human cognitive need: it allows human beings to grasp concepts as though they were percepts.

Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" — that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form.

The human need for art, on this view, stems from the need for cognitive economy. A concept is already a sort of mental shorthand standing for a large number of concretes, allowing a human being to think indirectly or implicitly of many more such concretes than can be held explicitly in mind. But a human being cannot hold indefinitely many concepts explicitly in mind either — and yet, on the Objectivist view, needs a comprehensive conceptual framework in order to provide guidance in life.

Art offers a way out of this dilemma by providing a perceptual, easily grasped means of communicating and thinking about a wide range of abstractions. Its function is thus similar to that of language, which uses concrete words to represent concepts.

Objectivism regards art as the only really effective way to communicate a moral or ethical ideal. Objectivism does not, however, regard art as propagandistic: even though art involves moral values and ideals, its purpose is not to educate, only to show or project.

Moreover, art need not be, and often is not, the outcome of a full-blown, explicit philosophy. Usually it stems from an artist's sense of life (which is preconceptual and largely emotional), and its appeal is similar to the viewer's or listener's sense of life.

Generally Objectivism favors an esthetic of Romantic Realism, which on its Objectivist definition is a category of art treating the existence of human volition as true and important. In this sense, for Objectivism, Romantic Realism is the school of art that takes values seriously, regards human reason as efficacious, and projects human ideals as achievable. Objectivism contrasts such Romantic Realism with Naturalism, which it regards as a category of art that denies or downplays the role of human volition in the achievement of values.

The term romanticism, however, is often affiliated with emotionalism, which Objectivism is completely opposed to (though Objectivism seems to hold romanticism as more emotional [in the sense of merely being related to emotions] than most forms of art, and as less emotionalist i.e. relating to the use of emotions for decision-making.) Many romantic artists, in fact, were subjectivists and/or socialists. Most Objectivists who are also artists subscribe to what they call Romantic Realism, which is what Ayn Rand labeled her own work.

Some Objectivists use the term Byronic to label the sorts of romanticism with which Objectivists disagree.

Libertarianism

The libertarian Reason Magazine dedicated an issue to Ayn Rand's influence one hundred years after her birth.

Main article: Libertarianism and Objectivism

Libertarianism and Objectivism have a complex relationship. Though they share many of the same political goals, Objectivists see some libertarians as plagiarists of their ideas "with the teeth pulled out of them,"[1] whereas some libertarians see Objectivists as dogmatic, unrealistic, and uncompromising. Ayn Rand herself despised libertarianism. In Ayn Rand's own words,

"Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to 'do something.' By 'ideological' (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the 'libertarian' hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies."

[Ayn Rand, "What Can One Do?" Philosophy: Who Needs It], and

"For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called 'hippies of the right,' who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs."

[Ayn Rand, "Brief Summary," The Objectivist, September 1971].

According to Reason editor Nick Gillespie in the magazine's March 2005 issue focusing on Objectivism's influence, Ayn Rand is "one of the most important figures in the libertarian movement... A century after her birth and more than a decade after her death, Rand remains one of the best-selling and most widely influential figures in American thought and culture" in general and in libertarianism in particular. In the same issue, Cathy Young says that "Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rand’s ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild."[2]