Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Encyclopedia
Objectivism is a philosophy
created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand
(1905–1982). Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness
, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept
formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral
purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest, that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in laissez faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical
ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.
Rand characterized Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on earth," grounded in reality, and aimed at defining man's nature and the nature of the world in which he lives.
The name "Objectivism" derives from the idea that human knowledge and values are objective
: they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has. Rand stated that she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence
—"existentialism
"—had already been taken.
Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead
and Atlas Shrugged
, and other works. She further elaborated on them in her periodicals The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
and The Virtue of Selfishness
.
s: existence, identity
, and consciousness. Rand defined an axiom as "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
noted, Rand's argument for axioms "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."
Rand held that existence is the perceptually self-evident fact at the base of all other knowledge, i.e., that "existence exists." She further held that to be is to be something, that "existence is identity." That is, to be is to be "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes." That which has no nature or attributes does not and cannot exist. The axiom of existence is grasped in differentiating something from nothing, while the law of identity is grasped in differentiating one thing from another, i.e., one's first awareness of the law of non-contradiction, another crucial base for the rest of knowledge. As Rand wrote, "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A." Objectivism rejects belief in any thing alleged to transcend existence.
Rand argues that consciousness, "the faculty of perceiving that which exists," is an inherently relational phenomenon. As she puts it, "to be conscious is to be conscious of something," that is consciousness itself cannot be distinguished or grasped except in relation to an independent reality. "It cannot be aware only of itself—there is no 'itself' until it is aware of something." Thus, Objectivism holds that the mind does not create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality. Expressed differently, existence has "primacy" over consciousness which must conform to it. Any other approach Rand termed "the primacy of consciousness," including any variant of metaphysical subjectivism or theism.
Objectivist philosophy derives its explanations of action and causation
from the axiom of identity, calling causation "the law of identity applied to action." According to Rand, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity
. The way entities act is caused by the specific nature (or "identity") of those entities; if they were different they would act differently. As with the other axioms, an implicit understanding of causation is derived from one's primary observations of causal connections among entities even before it is verbally identified, and serves as the basis of further knowledge.
, as she holds that the skeptics' claim to knowledge "undistorted" by the form or the means of perception is impossible.
The Objectivist theory of perception distinguishes between the form and object. The form in which an organism perceives is determined by the physiology of its sensory systems. Whatever form the organism perceives it in, what it perceives—the object of perception—is reality. Rand consequently rejected the Kantian dichotomy between "things as we perceive them
" and "things as they are in themselves
." Says Rand, "The attack on man's consciousness and particularly on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality, since it is "processed knowledge...[but] all knowledge is processed knowledge—whether on the sensory, perceptual or conceptual level. An "unprocessed" knowledge would be a knowledge acquired without means of cognition.
Says Rand, "The fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic. The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)—while omitting the length, complexity or specific steps of the process of logical inference, as well as the nature of the particular cognitive problem involved in any given instance of using logic."
According to Rand, attaining knowledge beyond what is given in perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will) and adherence to a specific method of validation through observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive and deductive logic
. A belief in, say, dragons, however sincere, does not oblige reality to contain any dragons. For anything that cannot be directly observed, a process of "proof" identifying the basis in reality of the claimed item of knowledge is necessary to establish its truth.
According to Rand, consciousness
possesses a specific, finite identity, just like everything else that exists; therefore, it must operate by a specific method of validation. An item of knowledge cannot be "disqualified" by being arrived at by a specific process in a particular form. Thus, for Rand, the fact that consciousness must itself possess identity implies the rejection of both universal skepticism based on the "limits" of consciousness and any claim to revelation, emotion or faith based belief.
Rand rejected "feeling" as sources of knowledge. Rand acknowledged the importance of emotion for human beings, but she maintained that emotions are a consequence of the conscious or subconscious ideas that a person already accepts, not a means of achieving awareness of reality. "Emotions are not tools of cognition." Rand also rejected all forms of faith
or mysticism, terms that she used synonymously. She defined faith as "the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one's senses and reason... Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" Reliance on revelation is like reliance on a Ouija board
; it bypasses the need to show how it connects its results to reality. Faith, for Rand, is not a "short-cut" to knowledge, but a "short-circuit" destroying it.
The aspect of epistemology given the most elaboration by Rand is the theory of concept-formation, which she presented in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
. She argued that concepts are formed by a process of measurement omission. Peikoff described her view as follows:
According to Rand, "[T]he term 'measurements omitted' does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified. That measurements must exist is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity."
Rand argued that concepts are hierarchically organized. Concepts such as 'dog,' which bring together "concretes" available in perception, can be differentiated (into the concepts of 'dachshund,' 'poodle,' etc.) or integrated (along with 'cat,' etc., into the concept of 'animal'). Abstract concepts such as 'animal' can be further integrated, via "abstraction from abstractions", into such concepts as 'living thing.' Concepts are formed in the context of knowledge available. A young child differentiates dogs from cats and chickens, but need not explicitly differentiate them from deep-sea tube worms, or from other types of animals not yet known to him, to form a concept 'dog.'
Because of its view of concepts as "open-ended" classifications that go well beyond the characteristics included in their past or current definitions, Objectivist epistemology rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy and denies the possibility of a priori knowledge.
Objectivist epistemology acknowledges the facts that human beings have limited knowledge, are vulnerable to error, and do not instantly understand all of the implications of their knowledge. According to Peikoff, one can be certain of a proposition if all of the available evidence supports it, i.e., it can be logically integrated with the rest of one's knowledge; one is then certain within the context of the evidence.
Some commentators have asserted that the Objectivist epistemology is incomplete. Psychology professor Robert L. Campbell says the relationship between Objectivist epistemology and cognitive science remains unclear because Rand, Peikoff, and Kelley have all made extensive claims about human cognition and its development which appear to belong to psychology, yet Rand asserted that philosophy is logically prior to psychology and in no way dependent on it.
Rand defines morality as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." Rand maintained that the first question isn't what should the code of values be, the first question is "Does man need values at all—and why?" According to Rand, "it is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible," and, "the fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do.". Rand writes: "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action... It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death..." The survival of the organism is the ultimate value to which all of the organism's activities are aimed, the end served by all of its lesser values.
Rand asserts that the primary focus of man's free will
is in the choice: 'to think or not to think'. "Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." According to Rand, therefore, possessing free will, human beings must choose their values: one does not automatically hold one's own life as his ultimate value. Whether in fact a person's actions promote and fulfill his own life or not is a question of fact, as it is with all other organisms, but whether a person will act to promote his well-being is up to him, not hard-wired into his physiology. "Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."
Says Rand, "Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch––or build a cyclotron––without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think." In her novels, The Fountainhead
and Atlas Shrugged
, she also emphasizes the central importance of productive work, romantic love and art to human happiness, and dramatizes the ethical character of their pursuit. The primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality, as Rand meant it "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action."
The purpose of a moral code, Rand held, is to provide the principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires. Rand summarizes:
Rand's explanation of values presents the view that an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being—it is for his life and his self-interest that an individual ought to adhere to a moral code. Egoism
is a corollary of setting man's life as the moral standard. Rand believed that egoism was the logical consequence of humans following evidence wherever it leads them. The only alternative would be that they live without orientation to reality.
A corollary to Rand's endorsement of self-interest is her rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism
—which she defined in the sense of Auguste Comte's
altruism (he coined the term), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. Rand also rejected subjectivism. A "whim-worshiper" or "hedonist," according to Rand, is not motivated by a desire to live his own human life, but by a wish to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes my (human) life" as his standard of value, he mistakes "that which I (mindlessly happen to) value" for a standard of value, in contradiction of the fact that, existentially, he is a human and therefore rational organism. The "I value" in whim-worship or hedonism can be replaced with "we value," "he values," "they value," or "God values," and still it would remain dissociated from reality. Rand repudiated the equation of rational selfishness with hedonistic or whim-worshiping "selfishness-without-a-self." She held that the former is good, and the latter evil, and that there is a fundamental difference between them.
For Rand, all of the principal virtues
are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival: rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride—each of which she explains in some detail in "The Objectivist Ethics." The essence of Objectivist ethics is summarized by the oath her Atlas Shrugged character John Galt adhered to:
Many commentators have opposed Objectivist ethics. In the essay "On the Randian Argument", Robert Nozick
, while sympathetic to Rand's political conclusions, is particularly critical of Rand's foundational argument in ethics, which states that one's own life is, for each individual, the ultimate value because it makes all other values possible. He argues that to make her argument sound, one needs to explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values. Thus, her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is, in his view, essentially an instance of begging the question
. Nozick also argues that Rand's solution to David Hume
's famous is-ought problem
is unsatisfactory. In response, philosophers Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl have argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case. Robert Hollinger Charles King criticized the Objectivist ethics in his essay "Life and the Theory of Value: The Randian Argument Reconsidered". King criticized Rand's example of an indestructible robot to demonstrate the value of life as incorrect and confusing. In response, Paul St. F. Blair defended Rand's ethical conclusions, while maintaining that his arguments might not have been approved by Rand.
neutralizes the practical effect of an individual's reason, whether the force originates from the state or from a criminal. According to Rand, "man's mind will not function at the point of a gun." Therefore, the only type of organized human behavior consistent with the operation of reason is that of voluntary cooperation. Persuasion is the method of reason. By its nature, the overtly irrational cannot rely on the use of persuasion and must ultimately resort to force to prevail. Thus, Rand saw reason and freedom as correlates, just as she saw mysticism and force as corollaries. Based on this understanding of the role of reason, Objectivists hold that the initiation of physical force against the will of another is immoral, as are indirect initiations of force through threats, fraud, or breach of contract. The use of defensive or retaliatory force, on the other hand, is appropriate. As a corollary, Rand opposed taxation as she considered it theft and an endorsement of force over reason. However, she maintained that taxation should be phased out of a society gradually.
Objectivism holds that because the opportunity to use reason without the initiation of force is necessary to achieve moral values, each individual has an inalienable moral right to act as his own judgment directs and to keep the product of his effort. The fundamental right is the right to life, with other rights following from it, including rights to "liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness." "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." These rights are specifically understood to be rights to action, not to specific results or objects, and the obligations created by rights are negative in nature: each individual must refrain from violating the rights of others. Objectivists reject alternative notions of rights, such as positive rights, collective rights, or animal rights
. Objectivism holds that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism, specifically what Rand described as "full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism." Objectivism regards capitalism as the social system which is most beneficial to the poor, but that this isn't its primary justification. Rather, it is the only moral social system. Objectivism maintains that only societies seeking to establish freedom (or free nations) have a right to self-determination
.
Objectivism views the state
as both legitimate and critically important in order to protect individual rights. Rand opposed anarchism
because she saw putting police and courts on the market as an inherent miscarriage of justice
. Objectivism holds that the proper functions of a government are "the police, to protect men from criminals—the armed services
, to protect men from foreign invaders—the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws," the executive
, and legislatures. Furthermore, in protecting individual rights, the government is acting as an agent of its citizens and "has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens" and it must act in an impartial manner according to specific, objectively defined laws. Objectivists Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook
have since expressed support for other government functions.
Rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first-to-file basis as moral because she viewed all property as fundamentally intellectual. Furthermore, the value of a commercial product comes in part from the necessary work of its inventors. However, Rand viewed limits on patents and copyrights as important and held that if they were granted in perpetuity, it would necessarily lead to de facto collectivism.
Rand opposed racism
and any legal application of racism. She considered affirmative action
to be an example of legal racism. Rand advocated the right to legal abortion
. She opposed involuntary military conscription, but also thought those who avoided being drafted should be held criminally liable. She opposed any form of censorship
, including legal restrictions on pornography
. Objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly supported by both liberals and conservatives, including antitrust
laws, the minimum wage
, public education
, and existing child labor
laws. Objectivists have argued against faith-based initiatives, displaying religious symbols in government facilities, and the teaching of "intelligent design
" in public schools.
Some critics, such as Norman P. Barry and Chandran Kukathas
,have argued that her ethics are consistent with anarcho-capitalism
.
flows from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Rand's term for an individual's characteristic mode of functioning in acquiring knowledge). 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 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, including one's metaphysical value-judgments. Objectivism regards art as an 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 usually 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).
Rand held that Romanticism was the highest school of literary art, noting that Romanticism was "based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition," absent which, Rand believed, literature is robbed of dramatic power, adding:
The term "romanticism," however, is often affiliated with emotionalism
, to which Objectivism is completely opposed. Historically, many romantic artists were philosophically subjectivist. Most Objectivists who are also artists subscribe to what they call romantic realism
, which is how Rand labeled her own work.
, a comprehensive exposition of Rand's philosophy. Chris Matthew Sciabarra
discusses Rand's ideas and theorizes about their intellectual origins in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical
(1995). Surveys such as On Ayn Rand
by Allan Gotthelf
(1999), Ayn Rand by Tibor R. Machan
(2000), and Objectivism in One Lesson by Andrew Bernstein
(2009) provide briefer introductions to Rand's ideas.
Some scholars have focused on applying Objectivism in more specific areas. Machan has developed Rand's contextual conception of human knowledge (while also drawing on the insights of J. L. Austin
and Gilbert Harman
) in works such as Objectivity (2004), and David Kelley
has explicated Rand's epistemological ideas in works such as The Evidence of the Senses (1986) and A Theory of Abstraction (2001). In the field of ethics, Kelley has argued in works such as Unrugged Individualism (1996) and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand (2000) that Objectivists should pay more attention to the virtue of benevolence and place less emphasis on issues of moral sanction. Kelley's views have been controversial, with critics arguing that he contradicts important principles of Objectivism.
An author who focuses on Rand's ethics, Tara Smith, stays closer to Rand's original ideas in such works as Moral Rights and Political Freedom (1995), Viable Values (2000), and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics (2006). In collaboration with Peikoff, David Harriman has developed a theory of scientific
induction
based upon Rand's theory of concepts in The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics (2010).
The political
aspects of Rand's philosophy are discussed by Bernstein in The Capitalist Manifesto (2005). Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman
(1996) attempts to integrate Objectivist methodology and insights with both Classical
and Austrian economics. In psychology, Professor Edwin A. Locke
and Ellen Kenner have explored Rand's ideas in The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion & Reason. Other writers have explored the application of Objectivism to fields ranging from art
, as in What Art Is by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi (2000), to teleology
, as in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts by Harry Binswanger
(1990).
or The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
, but is the subject of entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, and The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers. A listing of Rand also appears in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, featuring the assessment "The influence of Rand's ideas was strongest among college students in the USA but attracted little attention from academic philosophers. Her outspoken defence of capitalism in works like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967), and her characterization of her position as a defence of the 'virtue of selfishness' in her novel of the same title (published in 1974), also brought notoriety, but kept her out of the intellectual mainstream."
In recent years Rand's works are more likely to be encountered in the classroom. The Ayn Rand Society, dedicated to fostering the scholarly study of Objectivism, is affiliated with the American Philosophical Association
's Eastern Division. Aristotle
scholar and Objectivist Allan Gotthelf
, chairman of the Society, and his colleagues have argued for more academic study of Objectivism, viewing the philosophy as a unique and intellectually interesting defense of classical liberalism
that is worth debating. Since 1999 a refereed Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
began. In 2006 the University of Pittsburgh
held a conference
focusing on Objectivism. In addition, there is a growing list of Objectivist philosophers, including Tara Smith and James G. Lennox
, who hold tenured positions at leading American philosophy departments. Programs and fellowships for the study of Objectivism have been supported at the University of Pittsburgh
, University of Texas at Austin
and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
.
According to one Rand biographer, most people first read Rand's works in their "formative years." Rand's former protégé Nathaniel Branden
referred to Rand's "especially powerful appeal to the young," while Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute
said Rand "appeals to the idealism of youth." This appeal has alarmed a number of critics of the philosophy. Many of these young people later abandon their positive view of Rand and are often said to have "outgrown" her ideas. Supporters of Rand's work recognize the phenomenon, but attribute it to the loss of youthful idealism and inability to resist social pressures for intellectual conformity
. In contrast, Jennifer Burns says some critics "dismiss Rand as a shallow thinker appealing only to adolescents," although Burns thinks the critics "miss her significance" as a "gateway drug
" to right-wing politics.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
(1905–1982). Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept
Concept
The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...
formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest, that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in laissez faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.
Rand characterized Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on earth," grounded in reality, and aimed at defining man's nature and the nature of the world in which he lives.
The name "Objectivism" derives from the idea that human knowledge and values are objective
Objectivity (philosophy)
Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...
: they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has. Rand stated that she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence
Existence
In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
—"existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
"—had already been taken.
Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
and Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
, and other works. She further elaborated on them in her periodicals The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1979, is Ayn Rand's essentialised summation of the Objectivist theory of concepts and solution to the problem of universals...
and The Virtue of Selfishness
The Virtue of Selfishness
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism is a 1964 collection of essays and papers by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden. Most of the essays originally appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter, except for "The Objectivist Ethics", which was a paper Rand delivered at the University of Wisconsin...
.
Metaphysics: objective reality
Rand's philosophy begins with three axiomAxiom
In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...
s: existence, identity
Law of identity
In logic, the law of identity is the first of the so-called three classic laws of thought. It states that an object is the same as itself: A → A ; While this can also be listed as A ≡ A this is redundant Any reflexive relation upholds the law of identity...
, and consciousness. Rand defined an axiom as "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
Leonard Peikoff
Leonard S. Peikoff is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is an author, a leading advocate of Objectivism and the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former professor of philosophy, he was designated by the novelist Ayn Rand as heir to her estate...
noted, Rand's argument for axioms "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."
Rand held that existence is the perceptually self-evident fact at the base of all other knowledge, i.e., that "existence exists." She further held that to be is to be something, that "existence is identity." That is, to be is to be "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes." That which has no nature or attributes does not and cannot exist. The axiom of existence is grasped in differentiating something from nothing, while the law of identity is grasped in differentiating one thing from another, i.e., one's first awareness of the law of non-contradiction, another crucial base for the rest of knowledge. As Rand wrote, "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A." Objectivism rejects belief in any thing alleged to transcend existence.
Rand argues that consciousness, "the faculty of perceiving that which exists," is an inherently relational phenomenon. As she puts it, "to be conscious is to be conscious of something," that is consciousness itself cannot be distinguished or grasped except in relation to an independent reality. "It cannot be aware only of itself—there is no 'itself' until it is aware of something." Thus, Objectivism holds that the mind does not create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality. Expressed differently, existence has "primacy" over consciousness which must conform to it. Any other approach Rand termed "the primacy of consciousness," including any variant of metaphysical subjectivism or theism.
Objectivist philosophy derives its explanations of action and causation
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
from the axiom of identity, calling causation "the law of identity applied to action." According to Rand, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity
Entity
An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, although it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate.An entity could be viewed as a set...
. The way entities act is caused by the specific nature (or "identity") of those entities; if they were different they would act differently. As with the other axioms, an implicit understanding of causation is derived from one's primary observations of causal connections among entities even before it is verbally identified, and serves as the basis of further knowledge.
Epistemology: reason
Objectivist epistemology begins with the principle that "Consciousness is Identification". This is understood to be a direct consequence of the metaphysical principle that "Existence is Identity." Rand defined "reason" as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." Objectivist epistemology maintains that all knowledge is ultimately based on perception. "Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident." Rand considered the validity of the senses to be axiomatic, and claimed that purported arguments to the contrary all commit the fallacy of the "stolen concept" by presupposing the validity of concepts that, in turn, presuppose the validity of the senses. She held that perception, being physiologically determined, is incapable of error. So optical illusions, for example, are errors in the conceptual identification of what is seen, not errors in sight itself. Rand consequently rejected epistemological skepticismPhilosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. Many skeptics critically examine the meaning systems of their times, and this examination often results in a position of ambiguity or doubt...
, as she holds that the skeptics' claim to knowledge "undistorted" by the form or the means of perception is impossible.
The Objectivist theory of perception distinguishes between the form and object. The form in which an organism perceives is determined by the physiology of its sensory systems. Whatever form the organism perceives it in, what it perceives—the object of perception—is reality. Rand consequently rejected the Kantian dichotomy between "things as we perceive them
Phenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
" and "things as they are in themselves
Noumenon
The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
." Says Rand, "The attack on man's consciousness and particularly on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality, since it is "processed knowledge...[but] all knowledge is processed knowledge—whether on the sensory, perceptual or conceptual level. An "unprocessed" knowledge would be a knowledge acquired without means of cognition.
Says Rand, "The fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic. The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)—while omitting the length, complexity or specific steps of the process of logical inference, as well as the nature of the particular cognitive problem involved in any given instance of using logic."
According to Rand, attaining knowledge beyond what is given in perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will) and adherence to a specific method of validation through observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive and deductive logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
. A belief in, say, dragons, however sincere, does not oblige reality to contain any dragons. For anything that cannot be directly observed, a process of "proof" identifying the basis in reality of the claimed item of knowledge is necessary to establish its truth.
According to Rand, consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
possesses a specific, finite identity, just like everything else that exists; therefore, it must operate by a specific method of validation. An item of knowledge cannot be "disqualified" by being arrived at by a specific process in a particular form. Thus, for Rand, the fact that consciousness must itself possess identity implies the rejection of both universal skepticism based on the "limits" of consciousness and any claim to revelation, emotion or faith based belief.
Rand rejected "feeling" as sources of knowledge. Rand acknowledged the importance of emotion for human beings, but she maintained that emotions are a consequence of the conscious or subconscious ideas that a person already accepts, not a means of achieving awareness of reality. "Emotions are not tools of cognition." Rand also rejected all forms of faith
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
or mysticism, terms that she used synonymously. She defined faith as "the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one's senses and reason... Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" Reliance on revelation is like reliance on a Ouija board
Ouija
The Ouija board also known as a spirit/fire key board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, the words "yes", "no", "hello" and "goodbye", and other symbols and words are sometimes also added to help personalize the board...
; it bypasses the need to show how it connects its results to reality. Faith, for Rand, is not a "short-cut" to knowledge, but a "short-circuit" destroying it.
The aspect of epistemology given the most elaboration by Rand is the theory of concept-formation, which she presented in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1979, is Ayn Rand's essentialised summation of the Objectivist theory of concepts and solution to the problem of universals...
. She argued that concepts are formed by a process of measurement omission. Peikoff described her view as follows:
To form a concept, one mentally isolates a group of concretes (of distinct perceptual units), on the basis of observed similarities which distinguish them from all other known concretes (similarity is 'the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree'); then, by a process of omitting the particular measurements of these concretes, one integrates them into a single new mental unit: the concept, which subsumes all concretes of this kind (a potentially unlimited number). The integration is completed and retained by the selection of a perceptual symbol (a word) to designate it. 'A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted.'"
According to Rand, "[T]he term 'measurements omitted' does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified. That measurements must exist is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity."
Rand argued that concepts are hierarchically organized. Concepts such as 'dog,' which bring together "concretes" available in perception, can be differentiated (into the concepts of 'dachshund,' 'poodle,' etc.) or integrated (along with 'cat,' etc., into the concept of 'animal'). Abstract concepts such as 'animal' can be further integrated, via "abstraction from abstractions", into such concepts as 'living thing.' Concepts are formed in the context of knowledge available. A young child differentiates dogs from cats and chickens, but need not explicitly differentiate them from deep-sea tube worms, or from other types of animals not yet known to him, to form a concept 'dog.'
Because of its view of concepts as "open-ended" classifications that go well beyond the characteristics included in their past or current definitions, Objectivist epistemology rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy and denies the possibility of a priori knowledge.
Objectivist epistemology acknowledges the facts that human beings have limited knowledge, are vulnerable to error, and do not instantly understand all of the implications of their knowledge. According to Peikoff, one can be certain of a proposition if all of the available evidence supports it, i.e., it can be logically integrated with the rest of one's knowledge; one is then certain within the context of the evidence.
Some commentators have asserted that the Objectivist epistemology is incomplete. Psychology professor Robert L. Campbell says the relationship between Objectivist epistemology and cognitive science remains unclear because Rand, Peikoff, and Kelley have all made extensive claims about human cognition and its development which appear to belong to psychology, yet Rand asserted that philosophy is logically prior to psychology and in no way dependent on it.
Ethics: rational self-interest
Objectivism includes an extensive treatment of ethical concerns. Ayn Rand wrote on morality in her works The Virtue of Selfishness and Atlas Shrugged. Rand has asserted that her development of rational self-interest contributes towards the construction of a consistent philosophy.Rand defines morality as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." Rand maintained that the first question isn't what should the code of values be, the first question is "Does man need values at all—and why?" According to Rand, "it is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible," and, "the fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do.". Rand writes: "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action... It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death..." The survival of the organism is the ultimate value to which all of the organism's activities are aimed, the end served by all of its lesser values.
Rand asserts that the primary focus of man's free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
is in the choice: 'to think or not to think'. "Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." According to Rand, therefore, possessing free will, human beings must choose their values: one does not automatically hold one's own life as his ultimate value. Whether in fact a person's actions promote and fulfill his own life or not is a question of fact, as it is with all other organisms, but whether a person will act to promote his well-being is up to him, not hard-wired into his physiology. "Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."
Says Rand, "Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch––or build a cyclotron––without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think." In her novels, The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
and Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
, she also emphasizes the central importance of productive work, romantic love and art to human happiness, and dramatizes the ethical character of their pursuit. The primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality, as Rand meant it "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action."
The purpose of a moral code, Rand held, is to provide the principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires. Rand summarizes:
If [man] chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course. Reality confronts a man with a great many 'must's', but all of them are conditional: the formula of realistic necessity is: 'you must, if -' and the if stands for man's choice: 'if you want to achieve a certain goal'.
Rand's explanation of values presents the view that an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being—it is for his life and his self-interest that an individual ought to adhere to a moral code. Egoism
Ethical egoism
Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is...
is a corollary of setting man's life as the moral standard. Rand believed that egoism was the logical consequence of humans following evidence wherever it leads them. The only alternative would be that they live without orientation to reality.
A corollary to Rand's endorsement of self-interest is her rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism
Altruism (ethics)
Altruism is an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve, or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self interest. Auguste Comte's version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others...
—which she defined in the sense of Auguste Comte's
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
altruism (he coined the term), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. Rand also rejected subjectivism. A "whim-worshiper" or "hedonist," according to Rand, is not motivated by a desire to live his own human life, but by a wish to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes my (human) life" as his standard of value, he mistakes "that which I (mindlessly happen to) value" for a standard of value, in contradiction of the fact that, existentially, he is a human and therefore rational organism. The "I value" in whim-worship or hedonism can be replaced with "we value," "he values," "they value," or "God values," and still it would remain dissociated from reality. Rand repudiated the equation of rational selfishness with hedonistic or whim-worshiping "selfishness-without-a-self." She held that the former is good, and the latter evil, and that there is a fundamental difference between them.
For Rand, all of the principal virtues
Virtue
Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....
are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival: rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride—each of which she explains in some detail in "The Objectivist Ethics." The essence of Objectivist ethics is summarized by the oath her Atlas Shrugged character John Galt adhered to:
I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Many commentators have opposed Objectivist ethics. In the essay "On the Randian Argument", Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
, while sympathetic to Rand's political conclusions, is particularly critical of Rand's foundational argument in ethics, which states that one's own life is, for each individual, the ultimate value because it makes all other values possible. He argues that to make her argument sound, one needs to explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values. Thus, her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is, in his view, essentially an instance of begging the question
Begging the question
Begging the question is a type of logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proven is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise....
. Nozick also argues that Rand's solution to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's famous is-ought problem
Is-ought problem
The is–ought problem in meta-ethics as articulated by Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume , is that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is...
is unsatisfactory. In response, philosophers Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl have argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case. Robert Hollinger Charles King criticized the Objectivist ethics in his essay "Life and the Theory of Value: The Randian Argument Reconsidered". King criticized Rand's example of an indestructible robot to demonstrate the value of life as incorrect and confusing. In response, Paul St. F. Blair defended Rand's ethical conclusions, while maintaining that his arguments might not have been approved by Rand.
Politics: individual rights and capitalism
Rand's defense of individual liberty integrates elements from her entire philosophy. Since reason is the means of human knowledge, it is therefore each person's most fundamental means of survival and is necessary to the achievement of values. The use or threat of forceForce (law)
In the field of law, the word force has two main meanings: unlawful violence and lawful compulsion. "Forced entry" is an expression falling under the category of unlawful violence; "in force" or "forced sale" would be examples of expressions in the category of lawful compulsion.When something is...
neutralizes the practical effect of an individual's reason, whether the force originates from the state or from a criminal. According to Rand, "man's mind will not function at the point of a gun." Therefore, the only type of organized human behavior consistent with the operation of reason is that of voluntary cooperation. Persuasion is the method of reason. By its nature, the overtly irrational cannot rely on the use of persuasion and must ultimately resort to force to prevail. Thus, Rand saw reason and freedom as correlates, just as she saw mysticism and force as corollaries. Based on this understanding of the role of reason, Objectivists hold that the initiation of physical force against the will of another is immoral, as are indirect initiations of force through threats, fraud, or breach of contract. The use of defensive or retaliatory force, on the other hand, is appropriate. As a corollary, Rand opposed taxation as she considered it theft and an endorsement of force over reason. However, she maintained that taxation should be phased out of a society gradually.
Objectivism holds that because the opportunity to use reason without the initiation of force is necessary to achieve moral values, each individual has an inalienable moral right to act as his own judgment directs and to keep the product of his effort. The fundamental right is the right to life, with other rights following from it, including rights to "liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness." "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." These rights are specifically understood to be rights to action, not to specific results or objects, and the obligations created by rights are negative in nature: each individual must refrain from violating the rights of others. Objectivists reject alternative notions of rights, such as positive rights, collective rights, or animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
. Objectivism holds that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism, specifically what Rand described as "full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism." Objectivism regards capitalism as the social system which is most beneficial to the poor, but that this isn't its primary justification. Rather, it is the only moral social system. Objectivism maintains that only societies seeking to establish freedom (or free nations) have a right to self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
.
Objectivism views the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
as both legitimate and critically important in order to protect individual rights. Rand opposed anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
because she saw putting police and courts on the market as an inherent miscarriage of justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
. Objectivism holds that the proper functions of a government are "the police, to protect men from criminals—the armed services
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
, to protect men from foreign invaders—the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws," the executive
Executive (government)
Executive branch of Government is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.In many countries, the term...
, and legislatures. Furthermore, in protecting individual rights, the government is acting as an agent of its citizens and "has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens" and it must act in an impartial manner according to specific, objectively defined laws. Objectivists Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook
Yaron Brook
Yaron Brook is an intellectual and political activist, and is the current president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a non-profit organization in Irvine, California, whose mission is to promote the novels of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.-Early life in Israel:Brook...
have since expressed support for other government functions.
Rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first-to-file basis as moral because she viewed all property as fundamentally intellectual. Furthermore, the value of a commercial product comes in part from the necessary work of its inventors. However, Rand viewed limits on patents and copyrights as important and held that if they were granted in perpetuity, it would necessarily lead to de facto collectivism.
Rand opposed racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and any legal application of racism. She considered affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
to be an example of legal racism. Rand advocated the right to legal abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
. She opposed involuntary military conscription, but also thought those who avoided being drafted should be held criminally liable. She opposed any form of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, including legal restrictions on pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
. Objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly supported by both liberals and conservatives, including antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
laws, the minimum wage
Minimum wage
A minimum wage is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the lowest wage at which workers may sell their labour. Although minimum wage laws are in effect in a great many jurisdictions, there are differences of opinion about...
, public education
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
, and existing child labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...
laws. Objectivists have argued against faith-based initiatives, displaying religious symbols in government facilities, and the teaching of "intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
" in public schools.
Some critics, such as Norman P. Barry and Chandran Kukathas
Chandran Kukathas
Chandran Kukathas is a noted Malaysian-born Australian political theorist whose most famous contributions to the discipline have been in the debates concerning multiculturalism and liberalism...
,have argued that her ethics are consistent with anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
.
Aesthetics: metaphysical value-judgments
The Objectivist theory of artArt
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
flows from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Rand's term for an individual's characteristic mode of functioning in acquiring knowledge). 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 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, including one's metaphysical value-judgments. Objectivism regards art as an 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 usually 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).
Rand held that Romanticism was the highest school of literary art, noting that Romanticism was "based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition," absent which, Rand believed, literature is robbed of dramatic power, adding:
- What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values… Values are the source of emotions: a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement, and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life.
The term "romanticism," however, is often affiliated with emotionalism
Emotionalism
Emotionalism, in its meaning as a research paradigm, refers to an approach to conducting research studies that provides a gateway to understanding people's experiences through the use of social inquiry methodologies such as ethnography....
, to which Objectivism is completely opposed. Historically, many romantic artists were philosophically subjectivist. Most Objectivists who are also artists subscribe to what they call romantic realism
Romantic realism
Romantic realism is an aesthetic term that usually refers to art which combines elements of both romanticism and realism. The terms "romanticism" and "realism" have been used in varied ways, and are sometimes seen as opposed to one another....
, which is how Rand labeled her own work.
Post-Rand development
Since Rand's death, others have developed and applied her ideas in their own work. In 1991, prominent Objectivist Leonard Peikoff published Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn RandObjectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand is a 1991 book by philosopher Leonard Peikoff about the ideas of his mentor, Ayn Rand. Peikoff describes it as "the first comprehensive statement" of Rand's Objectivist philosophy. The book is based on a series of lecture courses that Peikoff first gave in...
, a comprehensive exposition of Rand's philosophy. Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Chris Matthew Sciabarra is a Brooklyn, New York-based political theorist. He is the author of three scholarly books—Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical; Marx, Hayek, and Utopia; and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism—as well several shorter works...
discusses Rand's ideas and theorizes about their intellectual origins in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical
Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical
Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is a 1995 book by Chris Matthew Sciabarra tracing the intellectual roots of 20th century Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand and the philosophy she developed, Objectivism....
(1995). Surveys such as On Ayn Rand
On Ayn Rand
On Ayn Rand is a book about the life and thought of 20th-century philosopher Ayn Rand, written by scholar Allan Gotthelf and published in early 2000 by Wadsworth Publishing in its Wadsworth Philosophers series.- Reception :...
by Allan Gotthelf
Allan Gotthelf
Allan Gotthelf is an American philosopher, and a recognized authority on the philosophies of both Aristotle and Ayn Rand.-Academic career:...
(1999), Ayn Rand by Tibor R. Machan
Tibor R. Machan
Tibor Richard Machan, Ph.D. is a Hungarian-American philosopher. A professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at Auburn University, Machan holds the R. C...
(2000), and Objectivism in One Lesson by Andrew Bernstein
Andrew Bernstein
Andrew Bernstein is a proponent of Ayn Rand's "Objectivism", an author, and a professor of philosophy.Bernstein holds a PhD in philosophy and is the author of The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic, and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire, Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Case for...
(2009) provide briefer introductions to Rand's ideas.
Some scholars have focused on applying Objectivism in more specific areas. Machan has developed Rand's contextual conception of human knowledge (while also drawing on the insights of J. L. Austin
J. L. Austin
John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford University. Austin is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech is itself a form of action...
and Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman
Gilbert Harman is a contemporary American philosopher, teaching at Princeton University, who has published widely in linguistics, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller...
) in works such as Objectivity (2004), and David Kelley
David Kelley
David Kelley is an American philosopher, author, and advocate of Objectivism. He is founder and senior fellow of The Atlas Society. He lives in Washington, D.C..-Education and career:...
has explicated Rand's epistemological ideas in works such as The Evidence of the Senses (1986) and A Theory of Abstraction (2001). In the field of ethics, Kelley has argued in works such as Unrugged Individualism (1996) and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand (2000) that Objectivists should pay more attention to the virtue of benevolence and place less emphasis on issues of moral sanction. Kelley's views have been controversial, with critics arguing that he contradicts important principles of Objectivism.
An author who focuses on Rand's ethics, Tara Smith, stays closer to Rand's original ideas in such works as Moral Rights and Political Freedom (1995), Viable Values (2000), and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics (2006). In collaboration with Peikoff, David Harriman has developed a theory of scientific
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
induction
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
based upon Rand's theory of concepts in The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics (2010).
The political
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
aspects of Rand's philosophy are discussed by Bernstein in The Capitalist Manifesto (2005). Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman
George Reisman
George Gerald Reisman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University and author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics . He is also the author of an earlier book, The Government Against the Economy , which was praised by F.A...
(1996) attempts to integrate Objectivist methodology and insights with both Classical
Classical economics
Classical economics is widely regarded as the first modern school of economic thought. Its major developers include Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill....
and Austrian economics. In psychology, Professor Edwin A. Locke
Edwin A. Locke
Professor Edwin A Locke is an American psychologist and a pioneer in goal-setting theory. He is a retired Dean’s Professor of Motivation and Leadership at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was also affiliated with the Department of Psychology...
and Ellen Kenner have explored Rand's ideas in The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion & Reason. Other writers have explored the application of Objectivism to fields ranging from art
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, as in What Art Is by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi (2000), to teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
, as in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts by Harry Binswanger
Harry Binswanger
Harry Binswanger is an American philosopher and writer. He is an Objectivist and was a long-time associate of Ayn Rand, working with her on The Ayn Rand Lexicon. His doctoral dissertation, in the philosophy of biology, presented a new theory of the goal-directedness of living action, in opposition...
(1990).
Intellectual impact
Academic philosophers have generally dismissed Rand's ideas and have marginalized her philosophy. Because of Rand's criticism of contemporary intellectuals, Objectivism has been called "fiercely anti-academic". David Sidorsky, a professor of moral and political philosophy at Columbia University, says Rand's work is "outside the mainstream" and is more of an ideological movement than a well-grounded philosophy. Rand is not found in the comprehensive academic reference texts The Oxford Companion to PhilosophyThe Oxford Companion to Philosophy
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy is a reference work in philosophy edited by Ted Honderich and published by Oxford University Press in 1995. A second edition was published in 2005 and included some 300 new entries. The new edition has over 2,200 entries and 291 contributors in 1,080...
or The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy is a dictionary of philosophical terms published by Cambridge University Press and edited by Robert Audi. The dictionary, having been in publication since 1995, is now in its second edition. There are 28 members on the Board of Editorial Advisors and 440...
, but is the subject of entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
, The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a free online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995. The current general editors are James Fieser and Bradley Dowden...
, and The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers. A listing of Rand also appears in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 . Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made available online on a subscription basis...
, featuring the assessment "The influence of Rand's ideas was strongest among college students in the USA but attracted little attention from academic philosophers. Her outspoken defence of capitalism in works like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967), and her characterization of her position as a defence of the 'virtue of selfishness' in her novel of the same title (published in 1974), also brought notoriety, but kept her out of the intellectual mainstream."
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...
's Eastern Division. Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
scholar and Objectivist Allan Gotthelf
Allan Gotthelf
Allan Gotthelf is an American philosopher, and a recognized authority on the philosophies of both Aristotle and Ayn Rand.-Academic career:...
, chairman of the Society, and his colleagues have argued for more academic study of Objectivism, viewing the philosophy as a unique and intellectually interesting defense of classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
that is worth debating. Since 1999 a refereed Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is an academic journal devoted to the study of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Established in 1999, its founding editor is New York University scholar Chris Sciabarra. At present, the other two editors are Stephen D. Cox and Roderick Long...
began. In 2006 the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
held a conference
Academic conference
An academic conference or symposium is a conference for researchers to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.-Overview:Conferences are usually composed of various...
focusing on Objectivism. In addition, there is a growing list of Objectivist philosophers, including Tara Smith and James G. Lennox
James G. Lennox
James G. Lennox is a professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary appointments in the departments of Classics and Philosophy. He a leader in the study of Aristotelian science in light of his groundbreaking work on Aristotle's...
, who hold tenured positions at leading American philosophy departments. Programs and fellowships for the study of Objectivism have been supported at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
, University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
.
According to one Rand biographer, most people first read Rand's works in their "formative years." Rand's former protégé Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden
Nathaniel Branden, né Nathan Blumenthal , is a psychotherapist and writer best known today for his work in the psychology of self-esteem from a humanistic perspective...
referred to Rand's "especially powerful appeal to the young," while Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute
Ayn Rand Institute
The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism is a 501 nonprofit think tank in Irvine, California that promotes Ayn Rand's philosophy, called Objectivism. It was established in 1985, three years after Rand's death, by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's legal heir...
said Rand "appeals to the idealism of youth." This appeal has alarmed a number of critics of the philosophy. Many of these young people later abandon their positive view of Rand and are often said to have "outgrown" her ideas. Supporters of Rand's work recognize the phenomenon, but attribute it to the loss of youthful idealism and inability to resist social pressures for intellectual conformity
Conformity
Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...
. In contrast, Jennifer Burns says some critics "dismiss Rand as a shallow thinker appealing only to adolescents," although Burns thinks the critics "miss her significance" as a "gateway drug
Gateway drug
The gateway drug theory is the hypothesis that the use of less deleterious drugs may lead to a future risk of using more dangerous hard drugs and/or crime...
" to right-wing politics.
See also
- Bibliography for Ayn Rand and ObjectivismBibliography for Ayn Rand and ObjectivismThis is a bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophical system initially developed in the 20th century by Rand.- Works by Ayn Rand:The lists below provide information on Ayn Rand's major works and collections...
- LibertarianismLibertarianismLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
- Libertarianism and ObjectivismLibertarianism and ObjectivismAyn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been and continues to be a major influence towards the libertarian movement. Many libertarians justify their political views upon aspects of Objectivism...
- Neo-ObjectivistNeo-ObjectivistA Neo-Objectivist is someone who subscribes to views similar to those promoted in Objectivism and opposes one or more aspects of the philosophy. Prominent Neo-Objectivists include Petr Beckmann, Walter Block, Nathaniel Branden, Edith Efron, John Hospers, David Kelley, Roderick Long, Wendy McElroy,...
- Objectivist movementObjectivist movementThe Objectivist movement is a movement to study and advance the philosophy of Objectivism. It was founded by novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead...