On Apr 20, 11:56 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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.
Really? Then what was the first world war? What was that if not
millions
of people being willing (at least initially) to sacrifice themselves?
What was
the Nazi system, and the Soviet one? If there was not a willingness
to
sacrifice oneself to the "greater good" neither of these systems would
have
got off the ground.
> 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.
I very much doubt that is true. Rand's ideal were quite clearly
about selfishness,
with others being given things solely as a means to express one's own
values.
> 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.
>
What? Since when has Rand been non-verbal about sup****ting
capitalism?
She really couldn't shut up about it.
> "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.
Well actually a great many of them were as Rand explained in one of
her essays. Hook's reckless disregard for historical fact is evident
in
his contention that the industrial revolution led to "horrible forms
of child
labour" when in fact it improved conditions of work for all workers
including
(indeed especially) children. Those who contend that the child
workers
of the mills had it bad are invited to spend one day doing the
agricultural
jobs they would otherwise have been doing. I'd invite them to do it
for
a second day but it's embarrassing to have to accept a refusal.
> On the contrary, they were eliminated by
> government controls."
No they were eliminated by the increased marginal utility of labor
which
made competition for good factory workers more intense and thus led
to better conditions.
> 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.
Then he should name one that was not explained by such.
> In the absence of government controls on the length of
> the working day, British workers worked 16 hours per day:
And that ended well before government controls were implemented.
Indeed it was the progress made possible by lack of government
controls
that made their abolition possible.
> in the absence of government controls on the age of coal miners,
children
> were used, especially in spaces too small for adults.
Again, this was eliminated only by the increase in capital and thus
productivity that made child labor unnecessary for working families.
If
government controls had been necessary to eliminate this practice
pray
tell, what would the unemployed children have eaten?
> This is generally understood to be the case by ordinary well-educated
It is not generally understood to be the case by those who know the
facts
of the matter.
> people, therefore Hook is puzzled by the generalization from unintended
> consequences of certain government programs to their universal
> injustice, and found insufficient do***entation 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,
The problem is that conspiracy theorizing is not a form of ad
hominem
and any philosopher would know that.
> argument by counter-example, fair precis of the views addressed,
The problem is that nobody ever gave an example where Rand didn't
fairly express the views of her non-libertarian opponents.
> 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
I'm sorry but that's bull****. If Rand is not a philosopher then by
no
means is the king of tendenciousness 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.
>
Except that he doesn't. Child labor was the result of poverty. To
prove
that all cases of oppression under capitalism does not result from
government control he'd have to prove the poverty does not come from
government control.
Oh yes and he'd have to prove that the child labor was evil, rather
than
something he found distasteful personally. I very much doubt he did
this.
> 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.
No they don't.
>
> Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ayn_Rand"
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