PSEUDO-BOOK REVIEW: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; The Virtue of Selfishness

As I was importing old Amazon reviews I came across a few reviews for Ayn Rand novels and philosophy books, specifically Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness.

These reviews were written by a younger, less sophisticated me from years bygone, back when I thought Objectivism as a philosophy was very flawed yet at least somewhat plausible. As time passed, I came to understand just how fundamentally flawed Objectivism really is.

So rather than reproduce these old reviews which fail to represent my current views, I will simply offer an overview of why Objectivism is totally unacceptable. But please note that this repudiation does not mean that I don't really like her novels. Atlas Shrugged, We the Living, and especially The Fountainhead are still great novels, whether you accept the underlying philosophy or not.

That said, for the philosophy itself I must emphasize that I am a harsh critic. Like I mentioned a moment ago, it seemed intuitively plausible to me when I didn't know any better, but ultimately I realized that its a tissue of all the most classically fallacious doctrines. You see, Ayn Rand is often said to be a "rationalist" and she talks a lot about the importance of man's ability to reason. But it is important to note that she is not: she is an empiricist to the bone. The entire backbone of her philosophy depends on a rather crude form of empiricism, one that had been satisfactorily refuted utterly by rationalist philosophers over the centuries in many incarnations. So if you accept rationalism, you basically have to reject Ayn Rand's philosophy by default.

Here are Objectivism's core principles in technical philosophical terms, and their explication:

1) Metaphysical realism - that reality exists independent from consciousness.
2) Epistemological empiricism - human beings beings attain knowledge of reality through perception.
3) Ethical egoism and/or eudaemonism - just actions are those where one pursues's one's own happiness ("virtue of selfishness" was one of her books).
4) Political Minarchism - the state should exist, and should provide only military, courts, and police. Everything else should be laissez-faire capitalism. Basically accepts the Hobbesian thesis about a Sovereign being required to ensure people will cooperate so mankind won't kill itself completely.

Now I don't accept any of this at all. I am firmly in the hardcore traditional libertarian-rationalist camp, which has, one way or another, refuted all these arguments long before Ayn Rand ever showed up to say she basically solved every philosophical issue after reading a couple of Aristotle books.

My response:

1) false. The basic argument is this -- If the rationalist thesis is correct, then Ayn Rand's crude form of realism cannot be correct. The rationalist thesis is correct that we attain objective knowledge about reality using our reason. Therefore crude metaphysical realism is false. Metaphysical idealism -- basically the idea that consciousness and matter are really the same 'stuff' -- is correct instead.

2) false - empiricism is ultimately contradictory, and rationalism is vindicated. Rationalism is correct about knowledge being attained by reason -- that is, the ability to grasp necessary connections.

3) false - the philosophical case against ethical egoism is pretty severe. Suffice to say rights are ultimately incompatible with this. I believe the Rothbardian/Hoppean (libertarian) theory of rights is correct. So ethical egoism is rejected.

4) false. As you may know, I am a libertarian-anarchist. The state, even Ayn Rand's ideal state that is limited to the role of protecting people's property (military, courts, police) must be rejected. This is because a) morally, the state depends on coercion to exist, and coercion is a rights violation, and b) economically I believe that Mises' socialist calculation argument ultimately applies to everything and anything the government does. So even military, courts, and police as functions of government cannot be justified on grounds of economic efficiency claims. The free market would provide better security and better judicial decision-making as a matter of economic law.

If you come from a substantially different philosophical viewpoint, however, you might not accept my criticism of Objectivism because you might not share my premises. In which case, I would say you are in error but I suppose I would need to elaborate with more than what I have offered in my little review-thing here.

If you think my assessment of Objectivism is mistake, contact me.