Philosophy Attacks Objectivism and objectivity

[Victor]

Philosophy Attacks Objectivism and objectivity

By Victor Pross

Did you know that Ayn Rand was a Nazi? Oh, you didn’t know that? It was a shock to me. An anonymous McGill philosophy professor has declared the following:

“I was shocked to learn…that my department has even considered an offer to endow an Ayn Rand Chair. Imagine the department of political science considering an offer to endow the Adolf Hitler Chair in international politics.”

A university newspaper reports that private donor Gilles Tremblay submitted the Ayn Rand Chair. His purpose was to establish in perpetuity a professorship for teaching the ideas of Ayn Rand, a philosopher who currently receives no exposure within the entire McGill university academic corpus. He offered 1.8 million dollars to establish the Chair. Mr. Tremblay’s goal was to “expose Ayn Rand’s philosophy to the average student.” He noted that Rand’s is a “practical philosophy that applies to everyday life,” and that this is in marked contrast [italics mine] to academic philosopher’s who “go on and on about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or all sorts of esoteric questions that only other philosophers are interested in.”

In making the statement that links Rand with Hitler, this professor is making a devious claim that Rand’s ideas are essentially similar to Nazism and racism. Such a claim is ludicrous on its face. Here’s a philosophy that holds that reality, reason and individual rights form the basis of a free society and the key to human life. The administration’s failure to note the easily available evidence of the importance of Ayn Rand’s system—and what her system actually stands for---is so clearly a demonstration in hostility and dishonesty.

This type of dishonesty and philosophical corruption is all too typical, and not merely restricted to McGill University. Why is this?

“Although Ayn Rand was most obviously controversial in her ethical and political views,” Ronald Merrill writes in his book, The Ideas of Ayn Rand, “the case could be made that it was her epistemology that was most radical. What has really driven opposing philosophers up the wall has been less her individualism or egoism than her claim to certainty. Vital to structure—and Objectivism is its promise of route to knowledge—real knowledge, certain knowledge.”

Today’s intellectuals, media commentaries, or just standard-issued people with intellectual inclinations are predominately products of the modern education system which has bombarded them with the tenets of skepticism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, altruism, pragmatism: knowledge is impossible, no one can know anything for certain, there is no independent reality, all ethics are arbitrary, the individual is evil or impotent to deal with the challenges of life, the collective—or the state—is all, self sacrifice is the moral ideal, sacrifice progress to the ‘environment,’ submit to the dictates of the tribe, etc, etc, etc. None of these systems or ideologies purports to be systems of objectivity. Very much the opposite: they are openly hostile or subtle in their attacks upon the concept. The hatred of Objectivism is the hatred of objectivity.

The philosophy of Ayn Rand, Objectivism, is unique in its position in the modern world—and that is why this philosophy is particularly vilified than what has ever been accorded to other philosophies.

Here are a few reasons as to the reason why: Ayn Rand’s theory of concept formation provides a radically original, and correct, solution to philosophy’s central issue: the problem of universals. This problem concerns the relationship between abstract ideas and particular concretes in reality. By identifying the basis mechanism of concept formation, Rand validated the objective relationship between correctly formed ideas and their referents. This watershed achievement fulfills philosophy’s most dire need, a need unmet since Plato. It is the very concept of “objectivity” that has driven opposing philosophers and intellectuals over the edge. Now, I don’t care to become an alarmist announcing proclamations of inevitable destruction for the world, as do the “Orthodox prophets of doom”—as a poster put it. Such apocalyptic declarations are not mine. That is, I agree with Ayn Rand: there is no “historical necessity” or “historical determinism” to dictate that Western culture is due for ultimate destruction--or continued progress. There is no guarantee at all. Men have free will. That says it all. But I do say that the current intellectual climate is hostile to all the central ideas that make up “Western civilization.” This hostility is created and maintained by today’s intellectuals.

This hostility and dishonesty is not a recent phenomenon. It goes back to the early days of Objectivism. As Nathanial Branden wrote:

“Ayn Rand’s opponents have found it preferable to debate straw men, to equate her philosophy with that of Spencer or Nietzsche or Spinoza or Hobbes and thus expose themselves to the charge of philosophic illiteracy—rather than identify and publicly argue against that which Ayn Rand actually stand.”

Most humanities and social science professors are anti-capitalist or outright Marxist. Many of them teach a distorted view of capitalism. They brush over the essence of capitalism, that it is the protection of individual rights, including property rights and the rights to life. And while is may be argued that communism is dead it can be argued that statism is alive and well. These teachers distort capitalism by telling students that it causes unfair differences in wealth, enslaves workers [so-called “wage-slaves”], exploits third world countries, dehumanizes the human soul and creates environmental degradation. It’s no wonder that many students choose to study science because they are weary of the “isms” found in the humanities. They avoid the humanities because most of the courses are irrational and worthless. This is to say that they are NON-OBJECTIVE.

Today’s students do not learn the important ideas were discovered by Western intellectuals—such as free market economics, individualism, limited government, the role of reason in history. Students aren’t taught that western wealth has improved our lives dramatically, and that this wealth is the result of the fact that capitalism made it possible, and that the root cause of it all is human reason. The industrial Revolution proved that man’s survival and progress depend on science and technology. Of course Ayn Rand was an ardent advocate of reason, science, capitalism and technology. Being the twentieth-century’s greatest champion of reason and individualism, this makes her an outsider among today’s intellectuals—collectivist intellectuals of either the old Left or the New Earth First Left variety.

Then there is ethics: The moral philosophy of relativism is widely taught in universities. Relativism is the idea that moral values are neither scientific nor absolute, that morality is determined by the feelings of the individual or the group. Most people believe that morality comes from God or is either an arbitrary social injunction. This is the popular viewpoint with the public at large! If one reads Ayn Rand’s “The Objectivist Ethics” in the The virtue of Selfishness, one will learn that Objectivism is the polar-opposite of this whole approach to the field of ethics. The fundamental question of ethics is: To be or not to be. It is the science of survival, which is not automatically known or guaranteed to man. Ayn Rand's position crashes in the face of the modern approach to ethics.

****

When I attended University, I was struck by the brazen irrationally that was rampant all around me. There was a definite deterioration of course content. For example, the classes I attended had a particular axe to grind for the Western canon. [“Yo! Yo! Western culture has to go! Yo! Yo! Western culture has to go!”] However, luckily for me, I did take Objectivist professor John Ridpath’s class “Intellectual history.” This class was an A to Z in intellectual history starting with philosophical titans Aristotle and Plato culminating to the Postmodernist philosophies of the twentieth century and Ayn Rand.

My eyes were opened. I was privileged to witness a living microcosm of Ayn Rand’s “philosophy: Who needs it” when I was able to trace the broad casual philosophical musings of my peers to the philosophers I was learning about: “There are no absolutes!” and “Ethics is a matter of subjective opinion!” and “Man is destroying the planet!” and “knowledge is not possible!” and “We have a right to education!” This was merely a tip of the iceberg. What surprised me was not that these old canards were trotted out. It was the failure of the students to be even slightly embarrassed by them. In some cases, they were announced with a kind of “hold page one for this item” confidence that totally belied their hoariness.

Another unique University experience was when Objectivist Gary Hull delivered a lecture at my university. I’ll never forget the incident that occurred the evening he gave his speech. I forget the lecture topic, but I do recall Mr. Hull speaking at one point of the “absolutism of reason and reality”—and bam! A ruffled man stood-up and shouted out “HAIL! HAIL!” while giving Mr. Hull the Nazi salute. He was asked to leave. After the lecture I went to the university bar with some friends to down a few. Imagine my surprise when I saw “Mr. Hail” and learned that he was a TA! Downing a beer, he recognized me from the lecture and decided to join my table to discuss the speech. He took to critiquing Mr. Hull’s talk and it amounted to bashing not only politics but also the validity of sensory-evidence. And more: He claimed that Mr. Hull was, in effect, a “metaphysical dictator.” What nerve Mr. Hull has in excluding all the other philosophies as being “true.” Why can't they be true? And who is to say what truth is? Why is it that only “objectivity” that has the exclusive rein? Who the fuck does he think he is?

I have learned of another interesting university incident. “Since its inception,” writes Ray Girn, editor of The University of Toronto Objectivist Club, “the Objectivist club has attracted a lot of controversy. The ideas published in our newspapers have raised the ire of many people on campus. The fact that we have caused so much offense is not a reflection of any intention on our part to offend. Rather, it is a symptom of the radical gulf between our ideas and those that are popular on campus."

To conclude:

The philosophy of Objectivism is not a separate, independent “species” of objectivity. It is the very concept of “objectivity” (little ‘o’) that Ayn Rand has identified and then proceeded to build her monumental system from. In philosophy, objectivity is known as the “correspondence theory of truth.” Many of today’s “Liberal art” intellectuals and professors, as an example of their colossal ability for intellectual dishonesty, treat the concept of “objectivity” as merely a member among a species of subjectivity. And that "species" are, for example, dialectical, feminist, analytic, Jungian, orthodox, religious, skeptics, etc. They merely bunch Objectivism in the mix. They regard the entire enterprise of a mankind’s capacity to philosophize as an indulgence in parlor game word tactics. They don’t regard philosophy as an urgent and inescapable necessity of survival—they regard it as all “linguistic contortions” whereby one merely paints the other guy into a verbal maze. Objectivism, for them, cannot be tolerated, it cannot be apart of any intellectual discourse—because it blasts away all of their torturous equivocations and evasions.

It is important to understand that philosophical perspectives penetrate the culture. People are not philosophers and are always caught in some general propositions which they accept from their culture as being true and right. The power of philosophy is absolutely dominate, even though most people don’t even know that they have a philosophy. We can trust that today’s university students—especially those in the humanities—will become tomorrow’s haters of Objectivism. If they don’t become too familiar with Ayn Rand—they will, given today’s intellectual climate—become haters of objectivity and rationality. Objectivity, in metaphysics, ethics or epistemology is NOT POPULAR. It is not popular in the universities. It is not popular in the culture. Today’s intellectuals have all but excluded the concept.

***

Edited June 3, 2007 by Victor

[Mammon]

Very true.

I think I'm the only Objectivist on my campus of like 10,000 students and even the faculty and staff.