-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The GOP hearts Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his father Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), all mention the works of Ayn Rand as being influential in their lives. Even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas references her work as influence in his autobiography. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an acolyte of Rand’s thinking and knew her personally.
I would like to focus on one aspect of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and its implications for Christianity.
Rand saw the role of any philosophical system as the understanding of reality. Reality (existence) and the ability to understand reality (consciousness) are at the heart of Objectivism. Considering existence (reality) and consciousness (man’s awareness of it), Rand assigns primacy to existence, “the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness).” In other words, “wishing doesn’t make it so.”
For Rand, consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists, “consciousness is consciousness of an object.” Eric Johnson, in a review of chapter one of Leonard Peikoff’s book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, wrote:
Since the nature (identity) of consciousness is to be aware of reality, existence is prior to, necessary for, and not subject to the control of, consciousness.
Consciousness cannot be conscious only of itself because you run into the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Consciousness requires objects to be aware of in order to create consciousness. Sensory deprivation does not validate the notion of consciousness without anything to be conscious of. Consciousness of objects, and their associated memories, were already formed before any experiments with sensory deprivation.
Rand’s primary axiom of Objectivism is the Primacy of Existence. In contrast is the Primacy of Consciousness, “the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both).” Rand’s Primacy of Existence is the reason for Objectivism’s position of atheism with respect to religion, especially Christianity and its “creator God.”
The Christian concept of God as a disembodied consciousness that created everything, except itself, is antithetical to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Objectivism provides a solid philosophical foundation for rejecting the Christian worldview.
The Primacy of Existence hasn’t received the media attention that it deserves, and I doubt that Rand’s fans in the GOP/Tea Party would understand its ramifications.
H/T: AlterNet, Anton Thorn, Dawson Bethrick, Objectivism Wiki, Ayn Rand Lexicon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxvaVhVN7A&feature=related
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxvaVhVN7A&w=425&h=349%5D
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
1, May 6, 2011 at 9:39 am
Woosty’s still a Cat 1, May 5, 2011 at 11:45 pm
IO…..are you Brian?
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I have never posted (and intend never to post) any comment here other than with my actual name (J. Brian Harris), highest university degree (Ph.D.), and professional registration (P.E.) included.
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then apologies are in order…and I am duly chastened. Please forgive my inappropriate comparison.
Tony C.
1, May 6, 2011 at 7:57 am
To say that men have “rights” means nothing if you ignore the actual, ugly, brutal human nature of using force, lies, subterfuge, and theft to acquire what one wants.
It is not enough for Rand to say, “That is wrong!”
Rights mean nothing without a way to secure them and ensure that those who would violate them are incentivized against such action, that is all there is to it.
Rand provides no means of securing the rights against those that would violate them, period. Her system is lawless.
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yup! I just heard on the radidio that CEO’s are now being compensated at pre-reession levels. I am packing boxes to send to the troops in Iraq….they are begging for soap, hard candies (cause they are in the desert….) , chapstick, sunblock, powdered drink mix and reading material.
Is Halliburton or Blackwater still the outsourced agent for providing for our troops over there?
Maybe the GOP likes Rand because she makes for good noisy rhetoric while they are being paid so well to duck thier responsibilities…
@Roco: Alright, but I think you miss the point. How does she fund this government?
There is only one way I can see that can possibly be fair to all, and that is by mandatory taxation of the citizenry, by force when necessary. Does Rand address how to PAY for this government?
(Regardless of what Rand says, YOU claimed that all taxes were theft. So how do YOU fund this government?)
Rand’s statement that The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence … /i> is just raw assertion; unproved, and the vast majority of people will disagree, including me.
I do not think the only rights people have are restricted to their physical person, because there are many ways to abuse and exploit people without physically harming them. Deception, theft, blackmail, extortion. Physical harm isn’t the only harm.
Mike Spindell:
Why do you think that it is magical thinking for human beings to respect the rights of others?
I believe that humans can and do. I respect the rights of others on a daily basis, I try to treat other people as I would want to be treated. When I enter into a business agreement with someone I try to make it a win/win proposition. Although I will admit I have alterior motives, namely that my customer be satisfied with my service and what they are getting so they come back and use me again.
Certainly we may not be perfect but we can try for continual improvement.
Tony C and Mike Spindell:
Rand was not an anarchist and understood what would happen in that type of society. It is one of the reasons the libertarians do not like her ideas. They truly do want a society ruled by the free market.
What I would like to see is a society in which the market is free but operates within the boundaries of the law. If a company screws someone by fraud or force, they should pay just compensation as determined by an objective set of laws.
Mike Spindell:
Read what I posted to Tony C above. I thought you were a Rand “expert”. Clearly that is not the case as evidenced by your complete lack of understanding of her ideas.
Tony C:
“Rand provides no means of securing the rights against those that would violate them, period. Her system is lawless.”
Yes she does, she says some government is necessary to protect the individual rights of men.
She says this:
“If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.
This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.
A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws.”
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.”
“The difference between political power and any other kind of social “power,” between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. This distinction is so important and so seldom recognized today that I must urge you to keep it in mind. Let me repeat it: a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: *coercive *action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury—the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.”
Gyges:
“Also, it wasn’t analogy, it was parody.”
First of all, everything can be improved but it takes knowing how to and what to improve and if it, in fact, needs to be improved.
Then your parody needs improvement.
Woosty’s still a Cat 1, May 5, 2011 at 11:45 pm
IO…..are you Brian?
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Is the core enigma of deception simply that people who have been deceived are not aware of having been deceived, because, if a deceived person is aware of having been deceived, the aware person is not deceived?
More than one “Brian” has posted comments on the Turley blawg.
However, I have never posted (and intend never to post) any comment here other than with my actual name (J. Brian Harris), highest university degree (Ph.D.), and professional registration (P.E.) included.
Is it possible for those who are sufficiently deceived to become deceived about almost anything? Why else is there this curious phenomenon involving “Tea Party” politickling?
Roco:
I have read your reply, but do not have time at the moment to address it. I do want to pursue the Randian notions of force and consent, which I believe are erroneous. This also ties in to the comments of Tony C. and Mike S. on the issue of the enforcement of rights.
@Mike: An objectivist society would be quickly ruled by the sociopath and/or psychopath who had the most weapons or riches to afford troops.
Precisely; without collective action to preserve rights, the Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s of the world rule with bullets and torture and armies paid well (their own self-interest) with the forced tributes of oppressed citizens, not just tributes of money but of labor and lives. Those rape rooms of Saddam and sons weren’t for nuthin’.
“I Look at it this way: People in power tend to push whatever ideas keep them in power.”
Gyges,
Good comment that gives the schematic of the problem.
“A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life, nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue his happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent—his right has been violated.
Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division—not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man.”
“The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.”
Most here have not mastered that “feat of political thinking”.
Anyone who reads this without understanding that all the pretty statements of individual rights means nothing in the context of a society without a central government cannot reason above the
“magical thinking” level of a five year old. Declarations of individual rights are all well and good, but meaningless without
the means of enforcement. Any society adopting this modality would be ruled within a few years by despots. Sociopaths too believe in individual rights, their own. They see others as existing purely to serve their needs. An objectivist society would be quickly ruled by the sociopath and/or psychopath who had the most weapons or riches to afford troops. This is our sad history as humans and objectivism requires a ridiculous leap of faith to believe that somehow their model would change this. It
is really funny that such a belief, rational in the eyes of the believers, relies on each human to behave with respect for the rights of others. Ergo “Magical Thinking.”
@Woosty: Wow, good catch on IO; that would make sense.
@Roco: <Rand wrote this: “Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another."
To say that men have “rights” means nothing if you ignore the actual, ugly, brutal human nature of using force, lies, subterfuge, and theft to acquire what one wants.
It is not enough for Rand to say, “That is wrong!”
Rights mean nothing without a way to secure them and ensure that those who would violate them are incentivized against such action, that is all there is to it.
Rand provides no means of securing the rights against those that would violate them, period. Her system is lawless.
Which means her stated ‘rights’ are over-stated or incomplete; it is impossible to have a society or government that adheres to Rand rights.
In order to have a government, the cops and courts and army must be paid to hunt down the criminals that would hide their tracks. The more modern the world gets, the more intelligent and educated the criminals become, the more ways of committing and concealing crimes there are. We need investigators, forensics, armed police, jails and jailors to restrain the hordes of criminals that would oppress us.
Note I am not saying the American justice system or our myriad laws are a wonderful invention. I think quite the opposite. But my solution is not dissolution; I do believe laws and enforcement are absolutely necessary to modern economic life, and that requires payment.
Rand has no means of doing that, at least no fair means. Her philosophy as stated can’t get anywhere. The reason for that, in my view, is her idea that people have absolutely zero responsibility to anybody else, and this “Rand Rule” makes it impossible to form a fair system in which people are compelled to pay their share of a common cost, like law enforcement: Because they can just refuse, and by the Rand Rule, they cannot be forced, and by the Rand Rule, we cannot even prevent them from benefitting from an overall reduced rate of crime or otherwise improved living environment.
Agreeing to taxation as a fair system rejects the Rand Rule; admitting taxation admits that people have a responsibility to support a system that benefits them even if the benefit is indirect.
The Rand Rule is simply false. The natural state of people is not what she claims; the evidence is that for 100,000 years the modern human has been aggregating into societies. For 10,000 to 15,000 years we have been aggregating into specialist societies with varied ‘professions.’ THAT is the natural state of humans, cooperative societies. If a philosophy — any philosophy — of morality or government intended for humans does not include the idea of owing some responsibility to society as a whole, then it is not a viable philosophy of either morality or government.
Roco,
Surgery had been around for thousands of years. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.
Also, it wasn’t analogy, it was parody.
IO…..are you Brian?
“At the most fundamental level, that price involves accepting the idea that the rights of other individuals are entitled to the same protections as my own.”
that is not a cost. That others are entitled to enjoy the same rights you enjoy is self evident.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
and Rand wrote this:
“Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another.
For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man, and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do.”
“A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.”
Mike Appleton says-“No objectivist society exists and, were it attempted, my opinion is that it would quickly devolve into a Hobbesian nightmare.”
Based on what Rand says below, the probability of Objectivism leading to a “Hobbesian nightmare” is (nearly) impossible. To believe otherwise is to have no understanding of Objectivism.
“A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life, nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue his happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent—his right has been violated.
Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division—not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man.”
“The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.”
Most here have not mastered that “feat of political thinking”.
“Some small amount of sterilizing of surgical equipment is necessary, but if it was so patent, then why did it take several thousand years to institute completely sterile Operating Rooms?”
not a good analogy. people didn’t know about bacteria and other microorganisms for most of that several thousand years. The founders were familiar with taxation. Seeing as it has been around for several thousand years.