Objectivism, the Unknown Ideal

Joy Pullmann of the American Enterprise Website reviews the new Atlas Shrugged movie and concludes, “Most Americans will find Ayn Rand’s worldview distasteful, immoral, and absurd:”

Rand’s philosophy is solipsist: since, for consistency if nothing else, man must have guiding principles, institutions, or ideas, she removes all others and places herself in their stead. Rand preaches innovation, creativity of thought and expression, self-direction, and the overruling demands of Nietzschean super-geniuses. But she never allowed deviation from her rules and preferences among her followers, even to the most minuscule instances. She liked Chopin and disliked Bach; therefore for anyone else to enjoy Bach indicated mental weakness. She wanted to have an affair with Nathaniel Branden, a married man; therefore, it was rational for her to do so and destroy his marriage and wife.

This mode of living she celebrated as exemplifying the “virtue” of selfishness. As she said, “My personal life is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: And I mean it.” If anything, her life and novels as illustrations of and promotions for her philosophy illustrate exactly the dangers and shortcomings of Objectivism, not just personally, but morally, and for society. Perhaps Rand didn’t care for society, except of her own making—that’s probably why her geniuses in Atlas Shrugged withdraw to a secluded mountain to let the rest of humanity crumble under its own weight. But most Americans, as human beings and citizens with a national heritage of voluntary community resourcefulness and charity, would find this not only distasteful, but immoral and absurd.

I think in Goddess of the Market, her 2009 biography of Rand, Jennifer Burns discussed Rand first being philosophically influenced by Nietzsche (around the 1930s, if I’m remembering correctly), and then later denying his influence by the time Objectivism reached maturity in the 1950s and early 1960s. But like Nietzschism and Marxism, Objectivism, particularly as expressed in Rand’s nonfiction, seems to have almost as high a “Start From Zero” factor as those other “isms.” Perhaps that’s why it seems like it works best — maybe only can work — in a closed loop, much less so out in the real world competing with other philosophies.

Rand certainly saw her philosophy as take it all or leave it. Fortunately these days, as Burns explained to me when I interviewed her last year, the Tea Party and other free market conservatives can take the elements they like and discard the rest:



(H/T: OJ)