Standing as a philosopher
Numerous professional philosophers have questioned whether Ayn Rand
was, as she claimed and as her followers claim, a philosopher owing to
what the former considered her failings to adhere to philosophical
method, including fairly stating the views of her opponents, not
engaging in the informal fallacy of ad hominem (which by imputing the
character or the motives of an opponent, renders a philosophical
debate pointless), and not engaging in verbal transformations without
actual effect.
Sidney Hook, although a "socialist" in Rand's eyes, was a professional
philosopher who became an anti-Communist activist owing to the Moscow
show trials and the Nazi-Soviet pact of the 1930s, and more than
sharing her convictions about the evils of totalitarianism and the
value of capitalist arrangements in the main, was also more active
than her in disseminating information about the evils of
totalitarianism. Although Hook remained a democratic socialist in his
ideals until the end of his life, he realized by the 1960s that
capitalism was the best system for the era he found himself in, and
Hook received an award from President Reagan for his lifetime journey.
In a 1961 review of "For the New Intellectual" ("Each Man for
Himself", review of "For the New Intellectual: the Philosophy of Ayn
Rand". New York Times, April 9 1961), Rand's 1961 book in which she
most clearly stated the three main theses of Objectivism (Aristotle's
logic, the virtue of rational selfishness, and the value of
capitalism), Hook stated those views clearly and addressed them in a
way characteristic of professional philosophers, not questioning her
motives or those of her backers and followers and acknowledging truth
where he perceived it.
Hook summarized Rand's views at the beginning of the article:
"Pruned of its repetitions, her philosophy reduces itself to three
main contentions. The first is that 'all the disasters that have
wrecked the world' can be traced to a disregard for the Aristotelean
laws of logic especially the law of identity, A is A. This law [per
Rand] is not only the cornerstone of reason but the rule of all
knowledge. The second thesis locates the poisoned premise of all
modern ethical theory and practice in the principle of altruism, in
the belief that 'man is a sacrificial animal that exists for the
pleasure of others.' The third is that capitalism and the free market
are the highest expression of human reason and justice; any limitation
on them opens the floodgates of irrationalism, mysticism and force."
This repeats the three Rand theses found on the modern Web site of the
Ayn Rand institute. Hook addresses each in turn.
Hook first addresses Rand's implicit contention that a law of logic
can have philosophical im****tance.
"The extraordinary virtues Miss Rand finds in the law that A is A
suggests that she is unaware that logical principles by themselves can
test only consistency. They cannot establish truth. Inconsistency is a
sign of falsity, but as the existence of consistent liars and
paranoiacs indicate, non-consistency is never a sufficient condition
for truth." Hook then addresses Rand's views on selfishness or
altruism.
"Just as paradoxical is Miss Rand's second contention that the world
suffers from excessive altruism or unselfishness. I must confess to
not having observed this myself, but this is only one man's evidence.
Readers will be startled by Miss Rand's emphasis on egoism or
selfishness as the categorical imperative of moral life. But despite
the harsh accents with which the view is expressed, it is not as
horrendous as she makes it sound. It testifies to confusion rather
than wickedness, and to an extensive unfamiliarity with a whole
library of literature on the subject." Hook avoids the trap of calling
Miss Rand merely wicked since he's acquainted with the history of
misreadings of emergent philosophies from the outside in which,
confused by terms of art, the lay judgers of philosophers execute the
philosopher, forcing him to commit suicide in the case of Socrates,
accuse him of Godless mischief in the case of Spinoza, or harass his
public lectures in the post-Hook case of Singer. He realizes the
im****tance of Rand's implicit operator word "rational" as applied to
her "selfishness".
Unfortunately, he finds that once "rational" is applied to
"selfishness", it turns out to label the same sets of conventional
behavior as "rational unselfishness", concluding that Rand's sound and
fury signify no real change. Hook even refrains from asking whether
the relabeling operation, being null, might mislead or corrupt the
young, extending Rand a post-Socratic charity that she did not extend
to her opponents.
Finally, Hook addresses Rand's very real and very non-verbal sup****t
for capitalism.
"Ayn Rand's third proposition about the high morality of capitalism is
defended by a very old gambit: like Christianity, capitalism has never
been tried! 'All the evils popularly ascribed to capitalism were
caused, necessitated and made possible ONLY by government controls
imposed on the economy'...one is appalled by the reckless disregard of
historic fact. For example, the horrible forms of child labor which
sprang up with the industrial revolution were certainly not caused by
government controls. On the contrary, they were eliminated by
government controls." Although Hook by 1961 and as a democratic
socialist sup****ted capitalism pragmatically, he was as a philosopher
unconvinced that "government regulation" could explain all the evils
of capitalism. In the absence of government controls on the length of
the working day, British workers worked 16 hours per day: in the
absence of government controls on the age of coal miners, children
were used, especially in spaces too small for adults. This is
generally understood to be the case by ordinary well-educated people,
therefore Hook is puzzled by the generalization from unintended
consequences of certain government programs to their universal
injustice, and found insufficient documentation of this in Rand's
book.
Generally speaking, despite Rand's self-labeling as a philosopher, and
despite publications and meetings long after Hook's review in which
her ideas were discussed by professional philosophers (as he, as a
philosopher, discusses her ideas in the 1961 review), professional
philosophers have in general had grave doubts as to whether Rand was a
philosopher, although they were prepared to admit that her ideas, like
so many concepts, things and ideas in the world, were grist for a
philosophical mill. Hook did not so much say that Rand was not a
philosopher as present an example of philosophical method as a
response: avoidance of individual ad hominem or its mass-production in
the form of conspiracy theorizing, argument by counter-example, fair
precis of the views addressed, and charity hopefully distinct from
altruism.
To many, this presents Rand with the problem of "Caesar's wife" who
famously should be above suspicion. Philosophy is a very big tent, as
is literature. In terms of political conviction, philosophy includes
not only Karl Marx but libertarians whose views are very close to Rand
like Robert Nozick, and even mentally disturbed individuals like
Nietzche. But, while not doing well at all on its assigned task of
telling the rest of us about the Meaning of Life, doing in fact a less
good job than Monty Python, philosophy has developed a lot of
recognizably philosophical tools and avoids other non-philosophical
tools. In Hook's article he used the counter-example of child labor to
refute the universal quantification assertion that all cases of
oppression under capitalism can be explained by government control.
He also uses a linguistic analysis to show that "rational" as applied
to "selfishness" makes Rand's anti-altruism a relabeling operation
which leaves the concepts underlying the words alone, whereas an
actual philosophical analysis tends to change ordinary usage; for
example, Aristotle's demonstration of the necessary instantiation of
Platonic ideas in reality meant that after Aristotle the radical
separation of an independent world of "forms" was unmaintainable.
These doubts were raised in 1961 and they remain.
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