Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism

[robvalue]

[Mister Agenda]

Unless you bother to understand how she defines altruism, which is the same way previous philosophers such as August Comte, who described altruism as 'living for the sake of others'. James Feiser says altruism means that 'An action is morally right if the consequence of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent.'

That degree of self-abnegation being comparable to a sort of 'suicide of the ego' is not a reductio ad absurdum nor any other fallacy. However treating her specifically defined use of the word altruism as though she meant the common use is an example of equivocation if done intentionally.

It's been so long since I've read her stuff that I had forgotten that she had her own definition. I don't remember her using the term "suicide of the ego", either. Did she?

Glad to hear some confirmation that this particular turn of phrase is probably my own. I don't remember her using the phrase in so many words either.

[GUBU]

I recently discoved Ayn Rand and learned about her philosphical views. I found it extremely interesting. The idea that "altruism is immoral" completel goes against all my previous ideas and intuitions, and therefore is quite an uncomfortable idea to entertain, but when I pushed through and read more about what she meant by it, it makes a lot of sense to me. To put it in my own words, she argues that people should not sacrifice themselves for other people if it does not fit with their own needs, because it is equal to suicide. If you help someone, do it because you have a need to do so, not because you think you should do that because you want to be a good person. You are responsible for your own life, and your own happiness. This sounds very healthy to me. I want people around me to live like this, I want my loved ones taking good care of themselves. Most people also have a need to take care of the people around them and to connect with them,  so I don't think that this philosophy leads to people to live self centred lives. It is very counter-intuitive, but it makes sense to me.

What do you think? Do I describe her philosophy well? Is there a flaw in this reasoning? Has this philosophy impacted your ideas as well?

Rand's philosophy can be boiled down into five words"Fuck you, I got mine".

Remember this was a woman whose perfect man was a psychopatic serial killer.

[GUBU]

I recently discoved Ayn Rand and learned about her philosphical views. I found it extremely interesting. The idea that "altruism is immoral" completel goes against all my previous ideas and intuitions, and therefore is quite an uncomfortable idea to entertain, but when I pushed through and read more about what she meant by it, it makes a lot of sense to me. To put it in my own words, she argues that people should not sacrifice themselves for other people if it does not fit with their own needs, because it is equal to suicide. If you help someone, do it because you have a need to do so, not because you think you should do that because you want to be a good person. You are responsible for your own life, and your own happiness. This sounds very healthy to me. I want people around me to live like this, I want my loved ones taking good care of themselves. Most people also have a need to take care of the people around them and to connect with them,  so I don't think that this philosophy leads to people to live self centred lives. It is very counter-intuitive, but it makes sense to me.

What do you think? Do I describe her philosophy well? Is there a flaw in this reasoning? Has this philosophy impacted your ideas as well?

An important thing to remember about Objectivism is that she, as philosophers are wont to do, is using some words in a non-standard way. It's okay, because she's explicit about what she means, but it makes her extremely easy to take out of context. Even in context she has some problems.

By 'altruism' she means helping others in a self-sacrificing way in return for nothing, even the satisfaction of helping others. That's not too far off from the dictionary definition of 'disinterested or selfless concern for the well-being of others'. Naturally she's not going to think much of anything that smacks of abnegation of self. She's talking about a kind of false charity motivated by guilt and/or shame rather than genuinely wanting to do it. Think of Rearden in Atlas Shrugged writing checks for charities that don't want to be associated with him because he's an 'evil industrialist' because it's 'what he is supposed to do'. If he were donating to a cause he believed in because he wanted to further its agenda or live in a world where that charity is well-supported, he would not have been committing a 'Randian sin'.  

By 'selfishness' she means 'enlightened self interest', which is particularly confusing because selfishness ordinarily means helping yourself without regard to others and enlightened self interest in realizing that you can help yourself by helping others.

You seem to understand her pretty well. Her key error was not exactly her fault, since the research had not yet been done, but it turns out that we have innate drives to compassion, empathy, and even self-sacrifice that aren't easily resolved as merely weaknesses that make us susceptible to 'the looters'. Even guilt and shame are part of our heritage as a social species and they played a role in our survival to this point. To at least some degree, the ideal Randian hero was a sociopath.

Actually you've got her definitonal mix up backwards, at least wrt selfishness. For rand a selfishness which didn't hold regard for the needs of others was "enlightened self interest". From her writings and her prsonal actions it is clear that Rand was a woman incapable of thinking of others as people, but only as automatons there solely to cater to her wants. And that is her philosophy of "objectivism".

[Mister Agenda]

"The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964

[thesummerqueen]

Ayn Rand's philosophies only work in the context of her fictions. Even if we take Mister Agenda's explanations, the world doesn't uniformly work that way, and her stories are delusions of grandeur writ large.

Someone said she seemed sexually frustrated. She used her non-fiction writings about her philosophies to argue why she should be allowed to take a younger lover - and did.

Atlas Shrugged was internally inconsistent even at its end, when a good, hardworking intelligent individual is left in the dust not because he's a moocher but because the main character didn't give two fucks about him, despite years of loyal service. The book seemed to say, at least as far as the love-triangles involved, that of course the absolutely beautiful wish-fulfillment Dagny would only fuck "worthy" men until she found the human equivalent of "the most alpha". But her assistant? Not even worth rescuing as this alpha burned the world down.

Fuck her and her philosophies. It's terrible literature and terrible to base your life on.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

[bennyboy]

Hahaha I love that quote!

[CapnAwesome]

Ayn Rand's worldview is very cold, bleak and materialistic. Sorry if there are more ways to enjoy your life then making a whole lot of money. Hers is a world where hitchhikers, hippies and free spirits don't exist or are scorned. Where artists are second to industrialists, where the only purpose for creativity is to make money. Ironically we sort of live in an Ayn Rand world. Even people on the left feel that they would be happier if they just had a little more money. Money isn't the key to happiness. It never has been and never will be.


Also Goddamn is Atlas Shrugged a boring boring boring book. It's the same speech 20 times, getting longer and duller each time. I find her non-fiction a little better written, but sometimes with unintentioned irony. For example she wrote an essay called 'the art of smearing' which was a critique of Lyndon Johnson's smear campaign tactics. Although I agreed with her article, which was a good critique of what has now become common place campaign hysterics focused on non-issues, it's almost impossible to get through an Ayn Rand essay without her insulting and smearing someone.

[GUBU]

"The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964

Look at what she practised. For Rand free love was a-ok, as long as she was snagging other women's partners. Once the men deserted her for other women then unfaithfulness became a bad thing again.

For years she railed against the idea of having the safety net of social security, not saying that people abusing it were wrong but that the whole system was stealing food out of the "makers'" mouths, yet when she fell on hard times, then social security suddenly became a-ok.

Even her fiction is impregnated with this immoral self regard. She talks about the "makers" in Atlas Shrugged as if those at the top running companies are the only ones doing any work or making anything of value (protip 1; in real life if you've made it to boardroom level, nine times out of ten your time working long hours is long past, if you ever had to. Protip 2; most of the "makers" she talks about would, in real life, have inherited their wealth never having to do anything to become rich) forgetting completely the fact that in an industrialised society most of the work done (and most of the value added to an economy) is done by blue collar industrial workers not top level management or owners. Her fiction implies that the top level people would do fine without anybody else around, forgetting about the farmers, the miners, loggers, the factory floor workers, servants and all the myriad other jobs that make the products and provide the services they use. To her mind anybody below very upper middle class was, at best, an automaton to be exploited until they gave out. Her philosophy pretty much demanded that the majority of people be kept in a stage of slavery or serfdom.

[ohreally]

A thought I had was that less altruism is happening currently not because people are any more or less nice to each other but the average number of hours of free time we spend with friends in general has gone down. It's seems like you would have overall less opportunities to be kind to people when you spend less time with them.

Also I think of myself as average at applying altruism yet I find that I am pretty selfish so even though I look on Rand with a windy sigh I probably uphold part of the behavior.

But it was just a thought.