[conservativephilosopher] Edward C. Feser: One Cheer for Ayn Rand

[conservativephilosopher at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Edward C. Feser:
One Cheer for Ayn Rand
http://www.conservativephilosopher.com/posts/1127720312.shtml


   Ayn Rand=E2s faults are readily apparent. As a philosopher, she was an
   amateur, and her philosophical musings were, accordingly, often
   amateurish. She was a village atheist of the most shallow and boorish
   kind. She was, shall we say, not entirely sensitive to the moral
   duties the strong sometimes have to help their weaker fellow human
   beings. And her treatment of her hapless and cuckolded husband Frank
   O=E2Connor was reprehensible. Still, it is hard not to have a soft spot
   for a novelist and screenwriter who poured so much well-deserved
   vitriol on socialism in all its forms, and who evinced such a sincere
   immigrant=E2s love for the United States, warts and all, in an era in
   which pampered intellectuals and Hollywood types were bending over
   backwards to deny or excuse the crimes of the former and minimize the
   virtues of the latter. (Though come to think of it, this era hasn=E2t
   quite ended, has it?)

   ([1]show)

   Though she styled herself the founder of a new philosophical system,
   =E2Objectivism,=E2 it seems certain that it is only her novels which will
   survive (despite the specifically Objectivist content, not because of
   it). That is not because there isn=E2t anything good in Objectivism, but
   rather because what is good in it (e.g. Aristotelianism and
   capitalism) isn=E2t new, and what is new isn=E2t very good. Rand wants to
   be an Aristotelian of sorts without endorsing the Aristotelian dictum
   that man is a social animal. Lots of people on both the communitarian
   left and libertarian right seem to think that to admit such a thing
   would be to commit oneself to some kind of egalitarian or
   redistributionist economic order, but this is just silly. To be a
   social animal is not to be a socialist animal, though it certainly is
   to recognize that our relations to one another are not, at the deepest
   level, the product of a social contract or worthwhile only because of
   the mutual benefit we might derive from them. The correct alternative
   to Randian capitalism is not socialism, but rather the sort of market
   economy Burke would have favored, i.e. one balanced by robust moral
   and religious institutions and conservative government.

   Not to recognize that we are social animals is quite obviously bound
   to lead to all sorts of distortions in one=E2s conception of what human
   life is like, can be like, and should be like. Her novels illustrate
   this perfectly. Notoriously, there does not seem to be any clear place
   for children and family life in the ideal world she tries therein to
   describe. The perfect society, she seems to think, would be populated
   by hyper-rationalistic careerists, who copulate sterilely with
   whomever they happen to be interested in this week, and whose only
   offspring are the products they can put on the market or the artistic
   creations or inventions they can put into the history books. This is a
   vision of human life no less grotesquely one-sided than that of the
   touchy-feely hippies and egalitarian feminists Rand so despised,
   precisely because it is no less hostile to the traditional family than
   their worldview is. The right direction to take Aristotle is the one
   the mainstream Western tradition in general took him: the natural law
   tradition, which puts the family, and not the individual or =E2society,=
=E2
   at the center of social and political thinking.

   All the same, Rand=E2s novels do have a certain charm, if only because
   their celebration of capitalism, and of business as an honorable
   calling, runs so counter to the standard, tiresome Death of a Salesman
   shtick. Her dialogue is famously wooden and her characters are
   ridiculously idealized, bordering on the cartoonish, but somehow it
   all works in its own way, at least if you think of it as a kind of
   science fiction. (Sometimes it even works on film: [2]The Fountainhead
   gets mixed reviews, I think, but the less well known [3]We the Living
   is well worth tracking down, and the [4]history of how it got made and
   what happened to it afterward is interesting in itself.)

   Ultimately, Rand=E2s importance probably lies in her having provided, in
   her novels, a corrective to the anti-capitalist propaganda that
   pervades the rest of popular culture. This is especially important
   where young people are concerned, for they often have an attraction to
   her work that they are less likely to have for a more serious defender
   of capitalism like Hayek. (Better Rand than Chomsky.) And, since we
   all have to grow up some time and put away our adolescent fantasies,
   having read Rand at least makes it more likely that these young people
   will grow up to be conservatives rather than liberals. Algis Valiunas
   has a piece on Rand in this month=E2s [5]Commentary, which I think ends
   with an accurate assessment of her ultimate significance: =E2In Rand,
   soundness and charlatanry commingle. In the end, charlatanry
   prevails.=E2 But at least she=E2s our charlatan...
   ([6]hide)

References

   1. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/conservativephilosopher/posts/112=
7720312.html
   2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041386/
   3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092194/
   4. http://www.wethelivingmovie.com/
   5. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/
   6. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/conservativephilosopher/posts/112=
7720312.html