Objectivism

Origin

Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand (1905–1982), a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher who developed her system over the course of her career, from her arrival in the United States in 1926 to her death in 1982. Rand called Objectivism "a philosophy for living on earth," and she presented it as a complete worldview: a metaphysics, an epistemology, an ethics, and a politics. The name "Objectivism" refers to her central thesis about knowledge and reality: that reality exists independently of consciousness (objectively), and that reason is the means by which human beings grasp it. Her novels — above all The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) — were written to dramatize her philosophy, and they made her, for decades, one of the most influential and controversial public intellectuals in America.

History

Objectivism developed through three phases. In the 1930s and 1940s, Rand worked out the core of her ethics and her critique of collectivism, first in the unpublished manuscript The Moral Basis of Individualism and then in the novels We the Living (1936), Anthem (1938), and The Fountainhead (1943). In the 1950s, she systematized the philosophy in the essays and lectures that became The Objectivist Ethics (1964) and the journal The Objectivist, and in 1957 she published Atlas Shrugged, her summation of the system. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Objectivist movement took institutional form — the Nathaniel Branden Institute, the Ayn Rand Institute — and Rand became the leader of a school with its own journals, courses, and disciples, increasingly isolated from the wider philosophical profession, which mostly ignored or dismissed her work.

The reception of Objectivism has been double. Within the academy, professional philosophers largely ignored it during Rand's lifetime, and many still regard it as a dogmatic and internally contested system rather than a scholarly tradition. Outside the academy, its influence has been enormous: Rand's defense of capitalism, her celebration of the entrepreneur, and her critique of altruism have made her a central figure of American libertarianism and conservatism, and her novels sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year decades after her death.

Core Principles

The core principles of Objectivism are stated by Rand as a sequence of four axioms. Metaphysics: reality exists independently of consciousness. Epistemology: reason is the only means by which human beings acquire knowledge, and the test of knowledge is its conformity to reality. Ethics: the standard of value is the life of the individual, and rational self-interest is the moral ideal. Politics: individual rights are the only legitimate foundation of government, and laissez-faire capitalism is the only system that respects them.

The metaphysics of Objectivism is a form of realism and, in Rand's own terms, "the primacy of existence": existence exists, and consciousness is a faculty of a living being that perceives it. The epistemology is rationalist in the broad sense: Rand held that concepts are formed by a process of abstraction from perceptual experience, and that reason is "man's only means of knowledge." The ethics is egoistic: Rand argued that every living being's survival is its ultimate value, and that for a rational being, the rational pursuit of one's own life and happiness is the standard of morality. The politics follows: since the individual's life is the standard of value, and since reason cannot be forced, the only legitimate function of government is the protection of individual rights — life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness — through the police, the courts, and national defense. Any other use of force is, for Objectivism, a violation of rights.

Important Figures

Ayn Rand is the sole founder and systematizer of Objectivism; no other figure contributed to the core of the system during her lifetime. The movement she founded produced important interpreters and popularizers — above all Nathaniel Branden, who developed the Objectivist account of psychology (and whose later break with Rand split the movement) — and, after her death, the Ayn Rand Institute under Leonard Peikoff, Rand's designated heir, has continued to defend and develop the system. Among economists and political theorists, Murray Rothbard and the libertarian movement drew on Rand's defense of capitalism, though Rothbard rejected her philosophy of reason. Among the critics, the most important have been the philosophers who have attacked her ethics and her epistemology, and the novelists and cultural critics who have questioned her portrait of human life.

Modern Influence

Objectivism's influence is felt in three domains. In politics, it has supplied the philosophical vocabulary of American libertarianism: the defense of individual rights, the critique of the welfare state, the celebration of the entrepreneur, and the rejection of "altruism" as the morality of the collectivist state. In popular culture, Rand's novels have shaped generations of readers, particularly in technology and business, where her celebration of the productive individual has resonated — a resonance visible in the figures of the heroic engineer and the creative entrepreneur that recur in American culture. In philosophy proper, the influence is more diffuse: Objectivism is a standing challenge to the ethical consensus, and its insistence that self-interest is not a vice to be excused but a value to be pursued continues to provoke debate. Its critics on the left regard it as a rationalization of inequality; its critics within philosophy regard it as philosophically unsystematic; and its defenders regard it as the only consistent philosophy of freedom.

Criticism

Objectivism has been criticized from almost every direction. Ethicists object to its egoism: the claim that the individual's own life is the standard of value is criticized as arbitrary, and the dismissal of altruism as a coherent ideal is disputed. Epistemologists object to its rationalism and to the account of concept formation, which critics argue is philosophically naïve. Political philosophers object to its account of rights: the claim that rights are discoverable by reason and that government may only protect them is criticized as both question-begging and insufficient to secure the conditions of a just society. Feminist and cultural critics have questioned Rand's portrait of the heroic individual and her neglect of the social conditions of human life. And the movement's own history — the dogmatism of Rand's circle, the famous expulsions of her followers, and the cult-like character of the Objectivist subculture — has been cited as evidence against the system's claims about reason and freedom. Defenders reply that the criticisms rest on misreadings, and that the core of the system — reality, reason, self-interest, rights, capitalism — stands on its own.

Sources

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Ayn Rand" (iep.utm.edu/ayn-rand)
• Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.
• Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1964.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1991.