Can someone give me some criticisms of Ayn Rand’s views? Preferably in a few sentences?
Does she believe in free markets? If not fully, please, in a few sentences point out where she is flawed?
As I see it, Rand didn’t consistently believe in free markets, because she advocated a minimal state (courts, police, and military).
I’ve no quarrels with Rand apart from her minarchist leanings and some of her more bizarre quirks. I personally don’t waste time criticising her because I think there’s far bigger fish to fry. Rand’s philosophy by and large is agreeable, and although her arguments don’t always stack up, I think her positions are defensible. I don’t think she had a good grasp on intellectual history though.
Oh, I also take issue with her value objectivism.
Well, she was kind of collectivist (if she really said that we should help the Israelis out because they’re more civilized) and she liked patents.
I also prefer Dr. Rothbard’s non aggression principle to the “selfishness is the ultimate virtue”.
Of course, Dr. Rothbard and Rand were not polar opposites, so I’m failing to see the big picture as usual.
Rand liked IP because her entire business model depended on it.
Indeed they weren’t. Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty makes the same fundamental argument as Rand did in her “Objectivist ethics”.
Seems like a good place to repost this 
[view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mGpMpaHGM4]
I was immersed in Rand before reading Rothbard, this is particularly hilarious.
Oh, I also take issue with her value objectivism.
Which in particular?
The entire thing. Value is subjective.
Rand was what I’d call a radical individualist. Other than that, I see no comparison between her an us Voluntaryists. And as somebody in this thread also said, Rand acted quite bizarre. It almost seems like she could have been downright obnoxious.
Yeah, chalk me up as another lover of Rand the author/philosopher (hence my username), but not Rand the woman, lol. All kinds of really strange anecdotes about her personal life floating around. For instance, I heard she insisted that her husband wear this chain or something so that she could always hear him around the house.
I too was a bit shocked when I heard her justify Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians. I guess in her mind, people she feels are ‘incapable of reason’ are not as valuable. She seemed to succumb to a kind of neo-con attitude in foreign policy, unfortunately.
Other than that though, she gave us a lot. While the usual conservative argument for capitalism was that it just ‘works better’, she was at the forefront of championing it as also the only MORAL system.
Oh sure, I certainly won’t deny her contribution to libertarianism. Speaking of which, I just recently watched the old black-and-white adaptation of The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper.
At the courtroom scene, I was saying “hell yeah!” Haha.
As was discussed in a recent thread, it’s much easier to criticize Rand that Rand’s beliefs. Rand was an intolerant dogmatist who lead a cult of personality (Mozart was a red is an absolutely brilliant parody of this). Rand’s beliefs were well considered, thorough, and intelligent, with attention paid to the little things. I think that Rand is criminally ignored in modern philosophy, especially in terms of moral philosophy/political theory. The strength and scope of her vision can only be matched by powerhouses in philosophy like Marx. Indeed it could be argued that only Rand and Rothbard actually succeeded in making a coherent (although I believe ultimately false) political philosophy based upon individual morality.
I have never heard a thorough cirticism that didn’t come from the left (and was bullshit) but here’s a summary on what I see as the failings of objectivism
-
It fails to reject the is/ought dichotomy, I believe that this is because Rand misunderstood it. Rand never said why I SHOULD value life, nor has any objectivist I have ever talked to
-
It is filled with a huge amount of undue conflation. For instance: Man’s life depends upon creative work and labor (I have some problem with this premise in the first place but we’ll take it as true for now) therefore, because man values his life he must value productive work and labor IN ALL CASES. This is absolute bullshit, I will value productive labor only insofar as it advances my life. It’s a marginal thing. Both 1 and 2 can be disproved through economic
-
It assumes a lot about the psychology of individuals. Rand’s work is filled with this. For instance she says that if a man has sex with a slut who doesn’t respect herself then a lot could be determined about this individual’s soul and personality, ultimately we can tell that he’s depraved and doesn’t respect himself. Why? Maybe he just likes the experience of getting laid and doesn’t care who provides the service, or maybe the woman in question is just extremely… Experienced… There’s a whole lot of weird and utterly unscientific psychology which leads to weird and unscientific conclusions. Depression is a thing and Rand isn’t the answer in many cases.
-
It assumes things which you cannot prove about reality. For instance their statement “existence exists”. You can’t prove that, it’s an assumption. One that ultimately we have to make, but not one that we can prove, while the objectivist says that you can prove it. A is A don’t ya know?
-
Objectivism assumes a perfectly causal physical universe, yet it somehow assumes that man has a choice which is not predetermined by the physical universe. This is a contradiction, and yet the world is supposed to have no contradictions, as was stated repeatedly in Atlas Shrugged.
Rand’s message is strong and a lot of things about objectivism make a lot of sense and are very good for the individual. For this reason I don’t hesitate to call myself partially objectivist, but ultimately an objectivist who benefits from the Austrian insights. Objectivism has good values, but they are just that, they are values, not THE values. They are not objectively or universally true.
Other than that the only problems I have with objectivism are Rand’s minarchism (which many modern objectivist deny) and her stances on military inverventionism, which I would say are not only contrary to the entire philosophy, since there WILL be civilian casualites.
It’s evil to confiscate someone’s property to feed someone else. It’s perfectly okay to kill that person, as long as it was by accident, if you’re trying to overthrow a dicatator. That’s absolutely disgusting. It is also unscientific in terms of how it views society, since the objectivist government would probably, not certainly, be unstable anyway.
I’d prefer to look at Lysander Spooner as the Karl Marx of Libertarianism.
I think that’s wildley inaccurate. Insofar as such a comparison would be made I’d say that Rothbard (maybe Mises) was the Marx. Spooner would probably be the Owen.
I have to disagree. In my view Lysander was like the very first anarcho-capitalist…and an active one, for that matter.
By the way, you should watch School Days.
I’d say Rothbard was our Stalin.
- Rand’s moral philosophy is bizarre and anti-human. She advocates precisely the sort of vulgar misconception of Epicureanism that Epicurus denounces in his letter to Menoecus - people who distort the basic Epicurean principle of pleasure and pain as the twin governors of virtuous living:
The Randian conception of self-interest is to Epicurean/Misesean rationality what the Cyrenaic hedonism was to Epicurean pleasure. Pleasure-as-a-duty (even at the price of pain) is a contradiction as is self-interest-as-a-duty (even at the cost of isolation/alienation). We have no duty to be self-interested in any particular way and Epicurean philosophy clearly shows the juvenile error in this view. Rather, the Epicurean principle is simply an exposition of the natural facts of the human condition: act contrary to your nature and you will suffer pain, act consistently with your nature and you will avoid pain and attain the supreme pleasure of an unperturbed mind.
- Objectivist metaphysics is confused and contradictory. “Existence exists” I’ve heard a self-described Randian say. What the hell does that even mean? Statements about existence are no different than any other kind of statement except in the degree of their pretentiousness - a statement about what exists is a statement which claims for itself an infallibility … “this is the way the world really, really is and no one in the course of human history will be able to explain it any otherwise… these are the facts of existence and they are objectively true.” A less pretentious approach to making claims is to simply take an inventory of what one knows and then derive conclusions on the basis of this a priori knowledge. That’s all, in fact, that any human has ever done, irrespective of his or her fantasies.
Both points 1&2 are related as it is the metaphysical dogma that is the basis of the moral dogma. While there is an objective aspect of morality, it is not in the sense that Randians think (objective moral duties). But the Randian moral philosophy is built on their specious metaphysics and the dogma of their metaphysics is the basis for their moral dogma.
It’s a big pile of steaming crap. I wouldn’t last 5 minutes at Cato or any other organization that had a whiff of sympathy for Rand.
Clayton -
I don’t think Cato is all that libertarian, to tell you the truth.