OK Ham, To conclude the third part of my reply to you:
Hamilton Priday stated May 5th 2013: > Incidentally, I noted that your response to my Apr 14th message was largely > a diatribe against my "right wing" views, including the 'Wicked Witch of > Westminster' quotes and characterization of Ayn Rand as a "hippie". So, > perhaps this assignment was directed toward my conservatism as much as it > was a request to provide a position statement of my philosophy viz-à-viz > Pirsig's MOQ. If you had a metaphysical purpose, however, I'll be most > happy to elaborate on any aspect of Essentialism you don't understand. > Ham, The impression I have of Ayn Rand is derived from two sources; two authorities if you like: The first is an article termed "Confessions of a recovering objectivist" by Victoria Bekeiempis. It can be found via the following link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/10/confessions-recovering-objectivist-ayn-rand The second authority is Dr Greg Alvord (the guy who wrote the Pirsig PhD Commentary which can be found via the following link: http://robertpirsig.org/PhD%20Addendum.htm ). ---------------- Now the Guardian newspaper is a little bit "establishment" for my liking but, as Pirsig also recognises, its opinions can - on the whole - be trusted. I therefore didn't get a good impression of Rand (or her ideas) when I read the following: "Much to the lament of my philosophy classmates, I was that girl who frequently (and loudly!) argued in favor of Rand's illogical claims that altruism doesn't exist; that selfishness is a virtue; and that 'rational egoism' is the only right way to live." "Thankfully, I grew out of that phase. Not surprisingly, but a few years of minimum-wage work cleaning up cat faeces, without benefits, and other thankless, unstable odd jobs made me question Objectivism's foundations and rekindled an earlier interest in anarcho-syndicalism. Eventually, leaving Rand was no more different or difficult than, say, leaving a friend who had grown to annoy me over time – sure, I was very intimate with her ideas, but that just gave me more insight into their outright dysfunctionality, and the strength to say 'sayonara!'What's scary is that so many Americans have not grown out of that mentally puerile phase. Instead, this contingent – now largely comprised of Tea Party radicals – remains mired in her pop philosophy..." And then later on, in the article, the following: "Granted, it's doubtful that any political group so suspicious of the intelligentsia would actually read Rand's 1,200 page magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, but her ideas are clearly being used to justify inequality, giving credence to institutionalized wealth-based elitism.This has to stop, and stop now. But not just for the reasons that typically get brought up. Anti-Rand commentators have long pointed out both the pragmatic and personal problems with Rand. As evidenced by the Great Recession, for example, anything even remotely close to the unfettered capitalism advocated by Rand plainly does not work." "As a teenager in Russia, 'she watched her family nearly starve while she treated herself to the theater.' She railed against government benefits but cheerfully collected social security and Medicare. She championed integrity, but bastardized Nietzsche's best ideas..." "That said, her theory – and summarily, its corollaries – are belied by the abject sketchiness of their most basic premise: rational egoism. Far smarter, more articulate people than me have pointed this out, but what needs to be emphasized is that Rand conflates descriptive psychological egoism (people act in their self-interest) with normative ethical egoism (acting in self-interest is the right thing to do). Part of this "ought-from-an-is"-type assumption is that altruism does not exist – very much the backbone of her belief system." "West Valley College's Sandra LaFave does a great job following this line of thought and pointing out why it doesn't work. The basic claim of egoists, LaFave notes, is that people 'always and invariably act in their self-interest'. However, most moral codes call for altruism, which, in egoists' account, is 'demanding the impossible'. Moral codes, so egoists' thinking goes, should not demand 'the impossible', so we should take up a 'more realistic' system such as – ta-da! – ethical egoism." "To accept this conclusion, you have to accept the premise that psychological egoism is a given fact in the first place. To date, neither Rand nor anyone else has been able to prove definitively that the proverbial soldier who dives on a grenade acts selfishly, not altruistically." "Even if, for the sake of argument, we accepted that all acts were selfish, there certainly seem to be a great many unselfish-looking selfish acts (diving on the grenade to save your comrades), as well as selfish-seeming selfish acts (blowing your kid's college tuition money on a shopping spree.) LaFave points out that this 'empirical distinction' renders across-the-board selfishness more of a semantic trick than something that meaningfully describes ethics. Go ahead and claim all human acts come from self-interest, fine. This seems kind of silly, however, when the morality of said selfish acts will still be measured by how altruistic they seem." With finally, Bekeiempis concluding: "The kernel of this belief system is nothing more than a philosophically hollow shell. It should absolutely not play a role in policy-making – especially when the end result would be disastrous. I outgrew Rand; now I wish America would, too." ----------------------------- Now my second authority for Rand is Dr Greg Alvord, who like Bekeiempis "fell under Rand's spell" as a young undergraduate and then "grew out of" her ideas when he discovered East Asian philosophy and then Pirsig. Alvord read "Atlas Shrugged" in his 20s, took the protaganist in the book as a role model for a few years but now dismisses it as young person's folly. Likewise only a fool would dismiss Alvord's opinion in this regard; he has published over a 100 academic papers (not even many full-time academics do that in a lifetime!) and is now Director of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland. I therefore have difficulty in taking Rand seriously as a philosopher even worth looking at. I hope you can also see from the above why I defined Rand as essentially a hippy; that is to say essentially "a freedom loving irresponsible drag on society"! The more worrying issue - as an outsider to American politics - is that such a writer is being taken seriously (at least on the surface) by some elements of the Republican party. Then again, maybe this should come of no surprize because if the American Right took on board a philosopher (such as Noam Chomsky) who promoted global intellectual values (such as free speech and justice for all) rather than biological or social values (as Rand seems to be doing) then its policies would be in danger of becoming too progressive! Best wishes, Anthony . Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
