From: pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Why I am not a Big O Objectivist
Organization: Partnership for an America Free Drug
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:02:34 GMT

baruch@nynexst.com writes:
>----On the "tenets of faith" of Objectivism:
>
>I defy you to deny the law of identity.  This is not faith, but reason.  To
>deny the law of identity is to deny myself, and to consider myself as
>self-defeating.  In that case, I may as well spare myself the agony of not
>knowing whether my senses are true (or whether my agony is true!) and kill
>myself.

I would not deny the truth of the law of identity, although I believe
it for purely subjective reasons. However, I would deny that Ayn
Rand's full exposition of reality in any way could be derived from her
"logical axioms". Lets just take the fettishization of smoking as an
example. Here is a person, supposedly operating entirely on logic and
on the rational desire for self preservation, who killed herself with
cigarettes, all the while denying that there was anything wrong with
them. We can also take her apparent rape fantasies (which show up in
in her writing) and her fascinating conclusion that women are "natural
hero worshipers" and similar rot.

Ultimately, Rand didn't follow logic -- she followed her own whims.
Many of her ideas are quite sound -- I believe strongly in the notion
that selfishness is a virtue, for example. I largely, but not
completely, agree with her notions on how to live. However, Rand, in
the end, was a dogmatist who condemned people for being illogical when
all they were really doing was disagreeing with completely subjective
opinions she had developed about various things, some of those
opinions being irrational in the extreme in spite of her constant
protestations to the contrary.

The horrible, hiddeous, disgusting irony of her whole life has been
this: Rand was a great thinker, and pointed the way towards a good and
sound way of life. Unfortunately, like all humans, she had character
flaws, extremely bad ones in her case, and some of those flaws led her
to irrational mental leaps. She also actively encouraged a cult of
personality to grow up around her, conducting miniature Stalinist
purges and condemning people for deviationism. Leonard Peikoff, the
high priest of the Church of Rand, which should be embarassed to call
itself objectivism since it operates not on rational discourse but on
revealed truth, continues in this tradition.

Rather than following her primary dictum, however, and simply ignoring
her flawed ideas after rationally considering them and getting on with
their lives, regardless of what the Peikoffs of the world might think,
many of her followers have chosen to participate in the apotheosis and
elevate Rand into a secular god.  If she believed it, the Randroids
say, it must be true and logical, even though no logical method exists
for explaining such bizarre notions as why women are hero worshipers.
(My personal favorite is the irrational claim by many Objectivists
that they are not libertarians, which is much like a claim by them
that they do not have feet. A simple aristotelian sylogism proves
whats wrong with their position: "Libertarians are defined as all
people who oppose the initation of force. Objectivists oppose the
initation of force.  Therefore, Objectivists must by definition be
libertarians.")

Many times, Rand produced wonderful, trenchant essays. At times,
however, she produced garbage. This is only natural -- she was human.
I'm particularly disturbed by many times where her logic follows the
"I can't think of a way out of this problem, so this must be a
contradiction" attitude -- the example that comes most clearly to mind
being her condemnation of anarchism on the basis, more or less, that
since she couldn't think of how to get it to work there must not be a
way, never mind that other people can not only make plausible
arguments but also can present historical evidence that flatly
contradicts her supposed logical conclusions -- such as the fact that
the merchant courts that developed her beloved contract law
essentially operated in an anarchist framework.

I consider myself to be a "small o" objectivist in the sense that some
people who are libertarians but don't subscribe to the notion of a
"Libertarian Party" call themselves "small l libertarians". I believe
that Rand was correct in much of what she said. However, I refuse to
worship her in the "All That Ayn Rand Said Was True" manner that some
seem to follow. I deride these people as "High Church Objectivists".
They operate as if there is a revealed truth, the corpus of her
writings, and as if anything she said must of needs have been logical.

Rand's most important dictum was to be rational. If being rational
conflicts with what she had to say, I have no trouble tossing what she
had to say out. She wasn't a god. She was human. She made mistakes.
Not everything she said or thought made logical rational sense. Rather
than throw out the baby with the bathwater, I follow those ideas of
hers that make rational sense to me, and reject those that seem
irrational to me.

I will doubtless be pilloried for being a deviationist from the
doctrines of the "High Church", but frankly I don't care. I'm happy
with my own path, and my ideas seem to work fairly well for me; in the
end thats all that really matters. In the end, all theories must be
tested by practice, or you are liable to conclude that birds can't fly
based on incorrect aerodynamic models and similar mistakes. Thus far,
I'm happy with the results in my own life. Those that prefer to follow
the "High Church" doctrine are free to follow that path if they like
-- my care is for my own happyness, not for theirs.


--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
Laissez faire, laissez passer. Le monde va de lui meme.
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism