Having read quite a bit of the available literature (OPAR, Anthem, We The Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Return of the Primitive, and The Virtue of Selfishness), I’ve decided that I agree with all of the basic principles of Objectivist philosophy;
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As a result of my ponderings, I began to wonder who could call themselves Objectivist, since I’m willing to bet that no one consistently and in every instance behaves exactly as Ayn Rand would have counseled, nor does anyone always think or behave even in accordance with her written work.
To be an Objectivist you need to have, first, exercised your own judgement on the truth or otherwise of anything, including Objectivism, accepting what you validate for yourself and not accepting what you can’t see for yourself or disagree with, and second, agree with the principles of Objectivism as a consequence of the foregoing independent judgement. People who do the second without the first, those who are unwilling to contemplate saying “I don’t agree with Miss Rand on point X,” are an annoyance known by the term “Randroids,” who give the rest us who do perform the critical first part on independent judgement a bad name.
Now, as part of that independent judgement, you also need to figure out what is in fact part of the philosophy of Objectivism, what is Miss Rand’s application of the philosophy to particular issues that are themselves not part of philosophy, and what is an expression of Miss Rand’s own value judgements that she measured according to her own standard of value and so which may not at all apply to you. A particular thing she said isn’t part of Objectivism just because she said it! In regards to smoking, for example, some say there’s no problem whatever, some that it’s just a classic case of all things in moderation, and some who don’t agree with smoking at all, but none of the three camps can say that the members of the other camps are or are not Objectivists based solely on that point. The same reasoning applies to other controversies with in Objectivism. Another particular that once caused some grief with people was her position in “About a woman president.” Sooner or later, once your reading gets wide enough and your judgement thorough enough, you will come the conclusion on some point: Miss Rand made a mistake here. What then, you ask? Of those three divisions I mentioned about what Miss Rand said, if your own judgement leads you to disagree with the philosophy itself, then at that point you should stop calling yourself an Objectivist until such time as you determine for yourself that your judgement was mistaken and that Miss Rand was right. If, on the other hand, you agree with the philosophy itself but not its particular applications or Miss Rand’s particular value judgements, then you are indeed still an Objectivist despite your disagreements. Others will argue with you on those points, sometimes even vehemently so, but they (if they are themselves bona fide Objectivists) wont tell you to stop calling yourself an Objectivist unless their own rational judgement based on the evidence you give them leads them to believe that you aren’t exercising your own. Likewise, you shouldn’t be telling others that they shouldn’t call themselves Objectivists except on the same grounds.
So, for the same reason you aren’t automatically precluded from calling yourself an Objectivist merely because you disagree with something she said - it depends on how you came to disagree with it and its position in relation to the philosophy itself. The position part you will have to judge for yourself (feel free to ask questions here, it’s what the forum is for), but at the very least you need to judge for yourself and agree with the content of OPAR and then once you have thoroughly digested that I recommend the lecture series Understanding Objectivism by Dr Peikoff, available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. There are many other lecture series available there, too, that you might want to examine.
I should also add that should you honestly judge that Miss Rand was mistaken in some part of the philosophy of Objectivism itself, you will still be respected so long as it is your best rational judgement that lead you to that conclusion. You will get a fair hearing from Objectivists if you seek a rational discussion of your disagreement and are fully open to evidence and logical argument. This includes not just this forum here but other good quality Objectivist forums and places of discussion.
Then I remembered a quote of Ayn Rand’s that Dr. Peikoff used on p 2 of OPAR (mine was published December 1993) in which she says that, not only does everyone need a philosophy, everyone in fact has one, whether they acknowledge it or not. She defines a philosophy in this context as “an integrated view of existence”. This led me to the thought that Objectivism is literally “The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, and in the sense that she describes philosophy in general, could not possibly be anyone else’s, since everyone’s integrated view of existence is necessarily going to be unique to that person. Based on this, I can only conclude that no one is an Objectivist, since Ayn Rand is now dead.
That’s a non-sequitur, ie it does not follow. You’re right that the quote means that each of us has to take charge of our minds and figure out what philosophy to follow lest we be lead by the nose by a philosophy of dubious provenance, but it does not follow that the philosophy that we would thereby figure out is unique to each of us. It is the philosophy of Ayn Rand insofar as she discovered it, not that it is uniquely applicable to her alone. It is as nonsensical to say that only Miss Rand is an Objectivist and permitted to use it to live as it is to say that only Newton is permitted to make use of Newtonian mechanics in physics.
The philosophy she discovered is universal to all men, because it is based on the same set of facts faced by us all; that we are physical beings of a certain type, including possessing conceptual consciousnesses operating in the same fashion, living in the same one causal universe whose laws stand independent of our minds and which we must discover by means appropriate to the nature of our minds if we are to be successful at living in that universe. What is discovered on that basis is applicable to all of us: if we each look at reality, carry out the proper thinking method appropriate to our kinds of consiousness, then we will all come to the same conclusion about, and form the same general view of, existence. What differs after that is the concrete applications, such as what concrete purpose one chooses in life. Sorting this distinction out is included within what you’ll learn from Understanding Objectivism.
Miss Rand was a trailblazer, and now that she has made the trail the rest of us can follow it more easily than were we left to our own devices. We still have to figure out for ourselves that what she said is right, but her having discovered solutions to problems makes the job a lot easier and quicker than it would otherwise be for us. Some then go on to blaze further trails of their own. There are a number of philosophers and related new intellectuals, here and elsewhere, taking up where Miss Rand left off, adding their contributions to human knowledge and likewise continuing to make life for the rest of us that much better. You, too, can do that, and still be an Objectivist.
JJM
. In my view there are millions of Christians in the world. I think of Christians as people who believe in Christ as an incarnation of God or at least as the primary, never-outdone prophet. (Therefore, Muslims aren’t Christians, though Mohammed came pretty close to being one.) I also think that a general agreement with Christ’s alturistic message is and essential, although holding the view that 'we’re all sinners", I also include folk who want to be like Mother Teresa, but are really quite far away in practice. People like Mormons may be outside this concept, or they may be on the borderline. Either way, for my purposes, it does not matter.