Objectivist philosophy: Encyclopedia II - Objectivist philosophy - Objectivist principles

Objectivist philosophy - Objectivist principles

Objectivist philosophy - Metaphysics: Objective reality

Main article: Objectivist metaphysics

The key tenets of the Objectivist metaphysics are captured in three propositions:

• Existence exists.
• Existence is Identity.
• Consciousness is Identification.

The axiom of Existence affirms that reality (the universe, that which is) exists, and that it exists independently of human consciousness. The Law of Identity states that anything that exists is determinate, that is, has a fixed, finite nature (i.e., "A is A"). The axiom of Consciousness affirms that one is conscious and that the function of consciousness is the identification of reality.

In addition to these three basic axioms, Objectivist philosophy affirms the Law of Causality as a corollary of the Law of Identity. The Law of Causality states that things act in accordance with their natures. These propositions are all held in Objectivism to be axiomatic. According to Objectivism, the proof of a proposition's being axiomatic is that it both (a) is self-evident and (b) cannot coherently be denied, because any argument against the proposition would have to suppose its truth.

Objectivist philosophy - Epistemology: reason

Main article: Objectivist epistemology

Objectivist epistemology distinguishes the manner with which we can individually translate our perceptions, i.e., that which we acquire through our senses, into concepts that we can store in our minds. While we can "know" that there is existence by our perceptions, we can know what exists only by turning percepts into concepts. Objectivists then draw a distinction between valid concepts and poorly formed concepts, or what Rand calls "anti-concepts," by asserting that properly formed concepts must be the product of reason.

Objectivists believe that reason can yield knowledge in the sense of certain truths about our world, and rejects philosophical skepticism. Objectivism also rejects faith or "feeling" as a means of attaining knowledge. Although Rand acknowledged the importance of emotion in humans, she maintained that the existence of emotion was part of our reality, not a separate means of achieving awareness of reality.

Rand was neither a classical empiricist (like Hume or the logical positivists) nor a classical rationalist (like Plato, Descartes, or Frege). She disagreed with the empiricists mainly in that she did not consider the distinction between sensations and perceptions to be meaningful. Thus, she did not believe in the possibility of perceptual error or illusion, only the misunderstanding or improper conceptualization of perceptual data. Neither did she consider the analytic-synthetic distinction to have merit, including the view that there are "truths in virtue of meaning," or that "necessary truths" and mathematical truths are best understood as "truths in virtue of meaning." She similarly denied the existence of a priori knowledge. Rand also considered her ideas distinct from foundationalism, naive realism about perception like Aristotle, or representationalism (i.e., an indirect realist who believes in a "veil of ideas") like Descartes or Locke.

Objectivist epistemology, like most other philosophical branches of Objectivism, was first clearly articulated by Rand in Atlas Shrugged. However, it was more fully developed in Rand's 1967 work Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Rand considered her epistemology and its basis in reason so central to her philosophy that she remarked, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

Objectivist philosophy - Ethics: rational self-interest

Main article: Objectivist ethics

If one had to reduce to a sound bite Ayn Rand's ideas on how humans ought to live, one would perhaps choose one statement that she wrote:

"To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem."

The ethics of Objectivism is based on the theory that each person is responsible for achieving his or her own [rational] self-interest. There is a difference, however, between rational self-interest and what she calls "selfishness without a self" - a state of range-of-the-moment selfishness to promote a self that has no esteem. Thieves, according to her, are not motivated by a desire to live (as the man of production is), but by the desire to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes the concept of human life" as their standard of values, they promote "that which I value" as the standard of value; thus leaving a blank check on what is and isn't moral. The "I value" in that sentence can be replaced with "we value", "he values", or "He values" and still be a blank-check ethics-killer, according to Rand. She is not asking you to believe that either rational selfishness and hedonistic selfishness-without-a-self should be considered good and evil at the same time (as "double-think" may ask) but that the former should be considered good and the latter evil and that there is a "fundamental" difference between them. As a corollary to her embrace of self-interest is the rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism --which she defines in the sense of August Comte's altruism (he coined the term), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. George H. Smith says: "For Comte, altruism is not simple benevolence or charity, but rather the moral and political obligation of the individual to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of a greater social good. It should be noted that Ayn Rand did not oppose helping others in need, provided such actions are voluntary. What she opposed was the use of coercion--that is, the initiation of physical force--in social relationships. The doctrine of altruism, in Rand's view, is evil partially because it serves to justify coercion, especially governmental coercion, in order to benefit some people at the expense of others." ^[2]

Objectivist philosophy - Politics: individual rights and capitalism

The transition from the Objectivist ethics to the Objectivist theory of politics relies on the concept of rights. A "right", according to Objectivism, is a moral principle that both defines and sanctions a human being's freedom of action in a social or societal context. Objectivism holds that only individuals have rights; there is, in the Objectivist view, no such thing as a "collective right" that does not reduce without remainder to a set of individual rights. Furthermore, Objectivism is very specific about the set of "individual rights" that it recognizes; as such, the Objectivist list of individual rights differs significantly from the ones adopted by most governments, for example.

Although Objectivism does not use the term "natural rights", the rights it recognizes are based directly on the nature of human beings as described in its epistemology and ethics. Since human beings must make choices in order to survive as human beings, the basic requirement of a human life is the freedom to make, and act on, one's own independent rational judgment, according to one's self-interest.

Thus, Objectivism contends, the fundamental right of human beings is the right to life. By this phrase Objectivism means the right to act in furtherance of one's own life — not the right to have one's life protected, or to have one's survival guaranteed, by the involuntary effort of other human beings. Indeed, on the Objectivist account, one of the corollaries of the right to life is the right to property which, according to Objectivism, always represents the product of one's own effort; on this view, one person's right to life cannot entail the right to dispose of another's private property, under any circumstances. Under Objectivism, one has the right to transfer one's own property to whomever one wants for whatever reason, but such a transfer is only ethical if it is made under the terms of a trade freely consented to by both parties, in the absence of any form of coercion, each with the expectation that the trade will benefit them. Objectivism holds that human beings have the right to manipulate nature in any way they see fit, as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. From this, the right to property arises.

On the Objectivist account, the rights of other human beings are not of direct moral import to the agent who respects them; they acquire their moral purchase through an intermediate step. An Objectivist respects the rights of other human beings out of the recognition of the value to himself or herself of living in a world in which the freedom of action of other rational (or potentially rational) human beings is respected.

According to Objectivism, then, one's respect for the rights of others is founded on the value, to oneself, of other persons as actual or potential trading partners (whether it be trading in a material or emotional sense). Here is where Objectivism's claim about conflicts of interest attains its full significance: on the Objectivist view, it is precisely because there are no such (irresoluble) conflicts that it is possible for human beings to prosper in a rights-respecting society.

Objectivist political theory therefore defends capitalism as the ideal form of human society. Objectivism reserves the name "capitalism" for full laissez-faire capitalism — i.e., a society in which individual rights are consistently respected and in which all property is (therefore) privately owned. Any system short of this is regarded by Objectivists as a "mixed economy" consisting of certain aspects of capitalism and its opposite (usually called socialism or statism),^[3] with pure socialism and/or tyranny at the opposite extreme.

Far from regarding capitalism as a dog-eat-dog pattern of social organization, Objectivism regards it as a beneficent system in which the innovations of the most creative benefit everyone else in the society at no loss to anyone. Indeed, Objectivism values creative achievement itself and regards capitalism as the only kind of society in which it can flourish.

A society is, by Objectivist standards, moral to the extent that individuals are free to pursue their goals. This freedom requires that human relationships of all forms be voluntary (which, in the Objectivist view, means that they must not involve the use of physical force), mutual consent being the defining characteristic of a free society. Thus the proper role of institutions of governance is limited to using force in retaliation against those who initiate its use — i.e., against criminals and foreign aggressors. Economically, people are free to produce and exchange as they see fit, with as complete a separation of state and economics as of state and church.

Objectivist philosophy - Esthetics: Romanticism

The Objectivist theory of art flows fairly directly from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Objectivism's term for the study of human cognition as it involves interactions between the conscious and the subconscious mind). Art, according to Objectivism, serves a human cognitive need: it allows human beings to grasp concepts as though they were percepts.

Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" — that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting metaphysics concretely, in perceptual form.

The human need for art, on this view, stems from the need for cognitive economy. A concept is already a sort of mental shorthand standing for a large number of concretes, allowing a human being to think indirectly or implicitly of many more such concretes than can be held explicitly in mind. But a human being cannot hold indefinitely many concepts explicitly in mind either — and yet, on the Objectivist view, needs a comprehensive conceptual framework in order to provide guidance in life.

Art offers a way out of this dilemma by providing a perceptual, easily grasped means of communicating and thinking about a wide range of abstractions. Its function is thus similar to that of language, which uses concrete words to represent concepts.

Objectivism regards art as the only really effective way to communicate a moral or ethical ideal. Objectivism does not, however, regard art as propagandistic: even though art involves moral values and ideals, its purpose is not to educate, only to show or project.

Moreover, art need not be, and often is not, the outcome of a full-blown, explicit philosophy. Usually it stems from an artist's sense of life (which is preconceptual and largely emotional), and its appeal is similar to the viewer's or listener's sense of life.

Generally Objectivism favors an esthetic of Romanticism, which on its Objectivist definition is a category of art treating the existence of human volition as true and important. In this sense, for Objectivism, Romanticism is the school of art that takes values seriously, regards human reason as efficacious, and projects human ideals as achievable. Objectivism contrasts such Romanticism with Naturalism, which it regards as a category of art that denies or downplays the role of human volition in the achievement of values.

The term romanticism, however, is often affiliated with emotionalism, which Objectivism is completely opposed to (though Objectivism seems to hold romanticism as more emotionalal [in the sense of merely being related to emotions] than most forms of art, and as less emotionalist i.e. relating to the use of emotions for decision-making.) Many romantic artists, in fact, were subjectivists and/or socialists. Most Objectivists who are also artists ascribe to what they call Romantic realism, which is what Ayn Rand labeled her own work. Rand has claimed that.

Main article: Libertarianism and Objectivism

Libertarianism and Objectivism have a complex relationship. Though they share many of the same political goals, Objectivists see some libertarians as plagiarists of their ideas "with the teeth pulled out of them,"[4] whereas some libertarians see Objectivists as dogmatic, unrealistic, and uncompromising. According to Reason editor Nick Gillespie in the magazine's March 2005 issue focusing on Objectivism's influence, Ayn Rand is "one of the most important figures in the libertarian movement... A century after her birth and more than a decade after her death, Rand remains one of the best-selling and most widely influential figures in American thought and culture" in general and in libertarianism in particular. Still, he confesses that he is embarrassed by his magazine's association with her ideas.[5] In the same issue, Cathy Young says that "Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rand’s ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild."[6]

Though they reject what they see as Randian dogmas, libertarians like Young still concede that "Rand was the most successful and widely read popularizer of the ideas of individual liberty and the free market of her day. In the 21st century... Rand’s message of reason and liberty... could be a rallying point" for a less dogmatic political movement with similar goals like libertarianism.

Ayn Rand herself claimed to despise libertarianism, and this is the position of most of her dedicated 'orthodox' followers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Objectivist principles", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki