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Rand Gets No Respect

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While I do not consider myslef an Objectivist, I am a great fan of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

So whenever I happen across a survey of philosophy book or website I always look first to see what they wrote about Ayn Rand.

Quite often, she is not even listed in the index. Never is she given a chapter of her own. Are there any philosophy professors who describe themselves as Objectivist?

Why doesn't Ayn Rand get the respect she deserves?

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Are there any philosophy professors who describe themselves as Objectivist?
Yes. There are, in fact.
Why doesn't Ayn Rand get the respect she deserves?
Two main reasons. First, her philosophy is incompatible with accepted views in academic philosophty. Second, her works did not appear in peer-reviewed academic journals (Philosophical Studies, Synthese, The Philosophical Review, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, etc).
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Why doesn't Ayn Rand get the respect she deserves?

A somewhat serious joke: Philosophy has speculation and mindless rambling as it's standard of value, so anything that puts an end to speculation and mindless rambling is evil and must be avoided. Ayn Rand and Objectivism does that. It cuts thru the useless philosophical fog (for not saying BS) and says clearly and without rhetoric how things are. It is a rational philosophy that is grounded in reality and not on imagined scenarios and vacuous speculations.

In short, as another poster said, it makes the philosophers look like fools.

Evo

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There's certainly more to add in response. I was just thinking about how many (maybe all?) of the members of ARI's Speakers Bureau are academic professionals. Likewise, the people who speak at ARI's annual Summer conference have normally trained with (or had the equivalent to) ARI's graduate (academic) center and have cut their teeth by teaching at various universities.

I also have to mention Dr. Gary Hull in specific. I seem to recall that he got a bit of a break in getting a position at Duke. That isn't to say that he didn't deserve it or that he shouldn't have taken advantage of it. Think of the fact that if he _hadn't_ taken that position it would be unlikely that he would now be in the position of helping the founding of Founder's College.

I also have to mention that while I generally tend to agree with noumenalself, I have to respectfully disagree with his assessment of Dr. Hull's speaking skills. I don't know what prompted NS to make the evaluation which he did, but my experience has been decidedly different. To this very day(!), I still cherish one of the very first classes I ever took under an Objectivist academic. I attended GH's "Integration" class, and now I wish I had my notes with me. I think it was one of the best classes which I have ever taken hands down.

A further point is this: People are only starting to witness Objectivism... being taught by Objectivists! I think as more people such as Tara Smith, Eric Daniels, and John Lewis make their respective ways through academia things are going to change for the better. For example, students won't just get the content of Objectivism, they will be getting a better understanding of Objectivist _methodology_. In my mind, that is where some hidden gold is. I'm betting that if Ayn Rand were to live another decade or so, she might have very well spent more time mining her own work (and I don't think that this would exclusively amount to studies in Induction either!)

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I've studied philosophy for three years and the reason that she gets no respect for the majority of philosophers comes down to the same reason Howard Roark was shunned by the majority of arcitects; because she gave a valid, logical argument for all her positions and essentially answered all the questions that philosophers spend countless hours debating but not answering.

In short, their afraid of her.

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I've studied philosophy for three years and the reason that she gets no respect ...
Do you think academic philosophers are really familiar with Rand's philosophy, or do many of them have only a vague idea of what she said?

My guess would be that the reason that David Odden mentioned is a big part of why Rand has not penetrated academic circles. Rand was, first and foremost, a novelist. Not until OPAR was there a single text that presented all vital aspects of the philosophy systematically. Other than ITOE, Rand's other non-fiction works are anthologies of articles rather than start-to-finish treatises on a branch of philosophy. Given that beginning, not until other texts explore and expand on the work (e.g. Tara Smith's work) will Rand get a decent hearing.

The fact that Rand says much that is contrary to what philosopher's think is definitely an aspect of it, and that will remain a hurdle, even when interest grows. Still, I suspect that interest is still the main thing that's lacking, and that will only come as more academics publish more about Rand, and as more non-Objectivist academics are made aware of the depth of Objectivism (as in the recent conference in Pennsylvania).

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Here is a classic case in point:

http://plato.stanford.edu/

I did a search for "Ayn" and "Objectivism" and found no main entries and only a couple very tangential citations.

Here is Wikipedia's description of the academic response to Objectivism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%...emic_philosophy

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I haven't seen any evidence to believe that academics are afraid of Rand, but rather they seem to hate her because she is seen as giving unsophisticated arguments that do not appreciate the complexity of the issues she addressed--which I think is a fairly superficial judgement.

However, that is changing and, in my academic life, I have seen no truly categorical hatred of Rand. The worst are looks of disapproval and disinterest. But people never seem to hold it against you and remain open and receptive to conversation.

The times, they are a changin'.

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... her works did not appear in peer-reviewed academic journals (Philosophical Studies, Synthese, The Philosophical Review, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, etc).

I can understand, to a certain extent, why Miss Rand would spend her time perfecting her philosophy instead of formulating part of it and then spending huge amounts of time with peer-reviews, but are there any current plans to present her ideas and defend them in a peer-reviewed format (or is this already being done by the people you linked to in your post?)?

I saw that Tara Smith has published some works, but are these peer-reviewed or in the vein of Miss Rands non-fiction?

Edited by LaVache
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I saw that Tara Smith has published some works, but are these peer-reviewed or in the vein of Miss Rands non-fiction?
Professor Smith has a number of peer-reviewed books and articles. I've read two of her academic books, the most recent published by the highly prestigious Cambridge University Press, and one of her articles (in Journal of Value Studies). She does have some works made available only through ARI, but that is separate from her fully self-sustaining and highly productive career as an academic philosopher, with a high rate of publication in top journals (of course, my professional area is not philosophy, but because it happens that I must pass judgment on the scholarly productivity of philosophers, I'm not totally unfamiliar with the standards of the field).
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I must say that I am somewhat dismayed by the attempts to go inside the heads of other philosophers. Some claim that they are afraid of her, others think they just hate her. But fear and hate are such strong emotions. If there are any emotions at all among professional philosophers I suspect most of them are along the lines of contempt -- complete and utter disrespect. They think Rand was a crackpot, a simple minded thinker, and I don't think that this view is based on actual assessments of her ideas, but rather of popularized strawmen.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think Thomas Kuhn's ideas about the sociology of science might provide some insight. He argued that in debates between radically different scientific "paradigms," it is as if they two sides were speaking different languages. It's not that one side disagrees with the other, as much as the very nature of the way each side approaches problems (and indeed the way they definte the nature of the problems) is radically different. Objectivism wasn't just a different "philosophy"; it was a different "paradigm." Right now North American academic philosophy is dominated by two paradigms:

A) Anglo-American "analytic" philosophy (e.g., the logical positivists of Rand's day)

B) Continental philosophy (Kantians, Marxists, poststructralists, etc.)

Most philosophers wouldn't even care about the questions debated in the other camp.

Objectivism didn't fit into either "paradigm," so it didn't really enter the philosophical debates that define American academic philosophy.

I would like to echo the sentiment that theorizing about the psychological motivations of philosophers is dangerous. I doubt many philosophy professors fear Objectivism; more likely they don't even think about it.

Edited by Korthor
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In the library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, arguably the most prestigious academic library in Israel, there are four books that concern AR (except for four that were written by her): Journals of Ayn Rand, Tara Smith`s Ayn Rand’s normative ethics : the virtuous egoist , David Kelley`s The contested legacy of Ayn Rand, and Jeff Walker`s The Cult of Ayn Rand. Four books, and this is one of them. :dough:

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  • 2 weeks later...
I think Thomas Kuhn's ideas about the sociology of science might provide some insight. He argued that in debates between radically different scientific "paradigms," it is as if they two sides were speaking different languages. It's not that one side disagrees with the other, as much as the very nature of the way each side approaches problems (and indeed the way they definte the nature of the problems) is radically different. Objectivism wasn't just a different "philosophy"; it was a different "paradigm." Right now North American academic philosophy is dominated by two paradigms:

A) Anglo-American "analytic" philosophy (e.g., the logical positivists of Rand's day)

B) Continental philosophy (Kantians, Marxists, poststructralists, etc.)

Most philosophers wouldn't even care about the questions debated in the other camp.

Objectivism didn't fit into either "paradigm," so it didn't really enter the philosophical debates that define American academic philosophy.

I would like to echo the sentiment that theorizing about the psychological motivations of philosophers is dangerous. I doubt many philosophy professors fear Objectivism; more likely they don't even think about it.

This is my first post on this board, its been really informative so far. I have one foot in the Academic philosophy world, and in my experience it isn't true that Rand has been completely ignored in Philosophy courses. I remember one prof who had his students read the Virtue of Selfishness in his "Human Nature" course. The professor was himself a "classical" Marxist, that is, a Marxist from a reading of Marx and his intellectual predecessors.

I also think there is something to the Analytic/Continental divide in philosophy (not to mention the innumerable divisions within the major divisions). Most of my work has been in classical philosophy and in Continental thought. However, I have never met a Kantian (I know some Kant scholars but they aren't themselves Kantians). I think that there have been developments in some corners of the Continental/Analytic divide where the two have come together, especially in the Philosophy of Science, and to some degree in Political Philosophy (post Marxists such as the latter Frankfurt School).

Rand simply isn't addressing issues that these thinkers find interesting, that is, she seems to be trying to be in discourse with Kant and previous philosophers, that is, her concerns are dated. For example, as far as I know the Continental/Analytic divide goes back to Fichte/Hegel, with Analytic philosophy rooted in Fichte and moving from there, while most contemporary Continental philosophy is anti-Hegelian. For both schools Kant is a historical figure, pre-Fichte/Hegel. He retains importance, but only bits and pieces for philosophers, and for understanding what latter post-Kantian philosophers (Hegel/Nietzsche) where writing against. So in this respect, the attack on Kant, could be seen as beating a long dead horse.

I'm also not sure that there is anything that is "properly" Rand's thought, that is, thought that is not attributable to Aristotle for example. Quite a few contemporary philosophers, many Continental, wouldn't accept Rand's Axioms, f.ex. Deleuze's whole philosophy is founded in an Ontology of Difference rather than a Metaphysics of Identity. However, the whole issue of Axiomatics has been reinvigorated in French thought, but not for Rand, rather the Mathematician-Philosopher Alain Badiou; though I doubt he would have much in common with Rand (he's rather left).

Again, all this is from my Continental background, I am a bit out of the loop on the Analytic end (though a good friend of mine is a respected Analytic philosopher).

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  • 3 months later...
What has Ayn Rand added to philosophy? Some of the ideas of her philosophy had been figured out prior to her, so what things had she herself figured out for philosophy?

1) The justification for the proper standard of ethics ("It is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible.")

2) A solution to the Problem of Universals (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

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1) The justification for the proper standard of ethics ("It is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible.")

2) A solution to the Problem of Universals (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

Also, the addition of hierarchy and context to logic. The validation of the fact that existence is primary, not consciousness, and of the fact that man has free will. I might also include the non-initiation of force principle in politics, and the strongest validation of freedom I’ve ever seen.

What's really neat is that Ayn Rand was a system builder. She built an integrated philosophical system from the ground up based on her theory of concept formation. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics all fit cleanly into the system. With the system, everything can, and should, be validated or proven by tying it back to reality, since reality is primary in her system. System building harkens back to the likes of Aristotle and Plato. Philosophers today frown on this idea, and from what I understand this is the biggest problem most of them have with her. Lots of them are analysts who want to break things down.

But, to be sure, her philosophy is getting into universities today, albeit slowly.

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1) The justification for the proper standard of ethics ("It is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible.")

2) A solution to the Problem of Universals (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

1. Nobody before her thought the standard of ethics should be based on each person's life?

2. Do you remember what chapter in ITOE?

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1. Nobody before her thought the standard of ethics should be based on each person's life?

Nobody before Ayn Rand proved why it must be the only valid standard of ethics. Her identification of the relationship between values and life is unique. So is her argument as to why man needs morality based on the requirements of man's nature.

2. Do you remember what chapter in ITOE?

The whole darn book.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Nobody before Ayn Rand proved why it must be the only valid standard of ethics. Her identification of the relationship between values and life is unique. So is her argument as to why man needs morality based on the requirements of man's nature.

That's a bit questionable. Epicurus made moral arguments "based on the requirements of man's nature". Arendt and Agamben have shown that life, (Grk zoe & bios) have been central to philosophy since the begining, not to mention Nietzsche, who writes at length on the affirmation of life.

And the favorite whipping boy of Objectivists, Kant, explicitly has a moral philosophy grounded in an individual's life; the Categorical Imperative.

First formulation:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals p.30)

Second formulation:

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (ibid, p36)

Third formulation:

"Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends." (ibid, p43)

Is the Categorical Imperative (ignoring the rest of Kant for the time being) antithetical to Objectivist values?

As to why Rand get's no respect, I wouldn't take it too hard, there are a lot of philosophers, some taken to be more or less important in the history of philosophy, and contemporary philosophy departments. Major philosophers are forgotten all the time, some just waiting for a student to reflect on how important or original their thought was.

How about in literature departments, is Rand regularly taught? It seems to me that's where one should ask first given the success of her fiction.

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"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Notice that this is stated in terms of wishes and other predicates of consciousness, without reference to actual hardcore reality.
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means"
The "whether" part is where he runs off the rails -- that means that I should act with others as a goal.
"Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends."
What does that even mean? That's like something that Wes Studi's character in Mystery Men would say. Well, I'm pretty sure it's wrong, because it basically says that one man's mean is every man's meat, which is untrue.
Is the Categorical Imperative (ignoring the rest of Kant for the time being) antithetical to Objectivist values?
Pretty thoroughly.

The idea of a floating imperative is at the root of the problem, IMO. God utters imperatives, and if you have to ground your ethics in an imperative theoretically uttered by a non-existent being, or pretend that there are imperatives just "out there" not uttered by god but that would be what god would say, if he existed, then you are kind of sauteed, philosophically speaking. Of course, the notion of a categorical imperative is also utterly antithetical to Objectivism, and it's caca as well. I cannot think of a single categorically true moral prescription -- every one of them is dependent on some fundamental contextual fact.

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