| Monday, October 20, 2008 |
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Getting Rand Wrong
By Brandon Byrd @ 12:01 AM   
As someone who takes ideas seriously, I've always found it frustrating when philosophers take it upon themselves to offer judgments on subjects they haven't bothered to devote serious time and attention to studying. The charge that philosophers (academic or otherwise) sometimes judge where the epistemically virtuous would fear to comment isn't new. (For instance, it isn't rare to hear someone claim that speculation from the philosophical armchair is a poor method of settling some contentious issue.) What makes this phenomenon -- the venturing of unwarranted opinions -- especially pernicious in the case of philosophers is that philosophers are supposed to be the guardians of rationality, revering the mind by sacrificing hasty conclusions at the altar of the well-formed argument. Philosophers are supposed to love wisdom and shun mere belief; when they make assertions that betray culpable ignorance, they sin against their profession as well as the truth.
I don't know what it is about Ayn Rand that makes many philosophers think they can get away with saying whatever they damn well please about her without having studied her work carefully and honestly. I suspect that the real explanation has less to do with Rand and more to do with personal biases on the part of her critics. But whatever the cause, the phenomenon is nevertheless real. It isn't just that many philosophers dislike Rand. We philosophers are an opinionated bunch; we dislike all sorts of things. Rather it's that many philosophers will attribute all sorts of nonsense to Rand without actually considering what she has to say.
To offer an example, below is a passage from Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. This work, published relatively recently by Oxford University Press, is intended to be used as a textbook on, unsurprisingly, virtue ethics.
"We can interpret Thrasymachus, and more obviously Nietzsche and Rand, as saying that, rather like hive bees, human beings fall, by nature, into two distinct groups, the weak and the strong (or the especially clever or talented or 'chosen by destiny'), whose members must be evaluated differently, as worker bees and the drones or queens are." Um... what? Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with Rand's ideas will realize that she believes no such thing. Rand's philosophical anthropology -- her theory of human nature -- does not recognize a distinction between types of human beings. Her ethical theory evaluates individuals on the basis of their choices, not their unchosen attributes, and she appeals to a univocal standard of moral evaluation -- not to distinct standards for distinct types.
Hursthouse does not provide any sources that might justify her 'obvious' interpretation of Rand's philosophy. But this totally wrongheaded interpretation of Rand was good enough for her editors and peer reviewers at OUP (as well as the numerous philosophers who gave her editorial comments on the final manuscript). Apparently that group of distinguished professors found nothing objectionable in Hursthouse's characterization of Rand. Of course, realizing Hursthouse's error would have required reading Rand.
(On a grimly ironic note, the above passage comes from chapter 11 of On Virtue Ethics. The chapter title? "Objectivity.")
Hursthouse isn't the only person who presents Rand's views incorrectly in a way that betrays ignorance. Chandran Kukathas's entry on Rand in the otherwise excellent Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is another example. No, Kukathas... Rand didn't think that integrity was "at the root of the idea of freedom," her "real concerns" were not "the defence of the value of integrity (to the point of self-sacrifice) in the face of evil and moral despair," and The Virtue of Selfishness was not a novel.
So far, we've seen a philosopher attribute views to Rand that she 'obviously' didn't hold, and we've seen another philosopher misunderstand the fundamentals of Rand's politics and misconstrue her central concerns. But Gerald Dworkin, a professor of philosophy at UC Davis, has recently exemplified yet another way of getting Rand wrong: saying that her ideas lead to catastrophe.
The forum in which Dworkin makes this charge is Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog -- a blog featuring "news and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture... and a bit of poetry." The blog is run by Brian Leiter, currently John Wilson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values. Leiter is also the editor of The Philosophical Gourmet, which ranks the top philosophy departments in the English-speaking world. I read Leiter Reports semi-regularly, as it is a good source of professional news related to academic philosophy (faculty hires, moves, deaths, retirements and whatnot). In addition to this valuable material, the blog also features occasional leftist cultural commentary of more dubious value. Of extremely dubious value is Dworkin's post "Blame it on Ayn Rand" in which he claims Rand is a cause of our economic troubles. Dworkin doesn't really provide much of an argument for this claim, so I'll attempt to provide him with a charitable reconstruction (a courtesy I'm not so sure he deserves... but for the sake of argument...).
Dworkin quotes a recent New York Times article on Greenspan's involvement in the current financial crisis. (That article seems to get Rand wrong too; Rand didn't have "a resolute faith that those participating in financial markets would act responsibly" but that's beside the point.) The article implies that Greenspan's positions on regulation -- specifically the regulation of derivatives markets -- were causally relevant factors in producing the recent financial crisis. Why did Greenspan hold his positions on regulation? Here, Dworkin invokes Keynes:
"...the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." (I can't resist noting that Rand held a similar view to Keynes about the importance of philosophy in history, though her insight was deeper than Keynes. Rather than viewing history as being primarily driven by political philosophy, Rand viewed metaphysics and epistemology as being much more influential. For more on Rand's insights here, consult the title essay of For the New Intellectual, as well as the title essay of Philosophy: Who Needs It. Peikoff develops Rand's insights on the philosophical motor of history in Ominous Parallels, the epilogue to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and in his forthcoming book on how epistemology shapes society.)
Greenspan was a student of Rand, and Rand argued for the principled separation of the state and economics, and thus for an absence of government interference in voluntary economic exchanges. She was a categorical opponent of governmental regulation in financial markets. Greenspan opposed regulation of derivatives markets. The current financial crisis was supposedly brought on by an absence of regulation in these markets. Thus Dworkin claims that Rand is "an important cause of the catastrophe we are in."
Let us examine this argument.
This argument gets its force from the claim that Greenspan was practicing what Rand preached. In an update to Dworkin's post, Leiter snarkily remarks that "Greenspan was not only a friend of Rand's, but a lifelong devotee of her ideas and her 'philosophy,' such as it is." While it is true that Rand and Greenspan were friendly toward one another, it is demonstrably false that Greenspan was "a lifelong devotee of her ideas." It doesn't take a hell of a lot of legwork to discover this; thanks to Google, I didn't even have to leave my armchair.
In The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan's recent autobiography, Greenspan discusses the important formative influence Rand had on his intellectual development. In his discussion, he talks about how Rand encouraged him to look beyond mere economic data and more deeply into the values and ideas that move history and influence human action (including economic action). She was credited with broadening his perspective on the world and helping him reject logical positivism. He even describes himself as "writing spirited commentary for [Rand's] newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte...". But this enthusiasm was not to last; Greenspan's autobiography claims that Rand's philosophy has inherent contradictions, and that his "fervor receded."
So Greenspan isn't an Objectivist. His policies, as we shall see, reflect this fact.
We're in the midst of a recession, teetering (some might say) on the precipice of a depression. What were Rand's views about recessions and depressions? Well, Dworkin doesn't say. His blog post doesn't even bother to discuss which of Rand's ideas were supposed to get us into this mess. He doesn't explicitly discuss her ideas at all. If one consults Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal to discover her views on the causes of recessions and depressions, one is directed to the works of Ludwig von Mises. It is important (for getting Rand right) to recognize that while Rand found Mises's economic analyses convincing, she had substantial philosophical and methodological disagreements with him. Mises was a Kantian who viewed economics as a primarily deductive enterprise (and thus was inclined toward epistemological rationalism). He also attempted to do economics in an ethical vacuum, divorcing economic analysis from any underlying normative framework. Rand, of course, rejected Kantianism, rationalism, and a strict division between morality and economics. But despite his errors, Rand thought that Mises's economic theories represented a significant achievement.
At this point, I don't want to provide a lengthy, detailed summary of Mises's views on the business cycle. I may write something in the near future about the causes of our current economic woes, but I'll hold off for now. The following short summary should provide a general indication of the economic views Rand found most convincing.
The most salient aspect of the Austrian theory of the business cycle is that implicates central banks as the fundamental cause of depressions and recessions. Ah! The plot thickens! Wasn't Greenspan the head of our central bank? He was indeed. How do central banks cause recessions?
In a free market, the interest rate (the price of money) is determined by the law of supply and demand. Roughly, the supply of loanable funds that banks have (our savings) determines the interest rate, when taken in conjunction with the overall demand for money and the riskiness of potential debtors. Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, distort this market mechanism by setting artificially low interest rates (interest rates below the market rate). What happens next? I defer to Wikipedia:
Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money, through the money creation process in a fractional reserve banking system. This in turn leads to an unsustainable "monetary boom" during which the "artificially stimulated" borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. This boom results in widespread malinvestments, causing capital resources to be misallocated into areas which would not attract investment if the money supply remained stable. A correction or "credit crunch" -- commonly called a "recession" or "bust" -- occurs when credit creation cannot be sustained. Loose monetary policy by central banks leads to people taking on more debt than they otherwise would. Artificially low interest rates allow more credit to be extended to risky borrowers. In our current case this lead to skyrocketing real estate values, since there was an increased demand for houses (made possible by banks extending credit to more and riskier debtors). This effect is obvious enough in the case of commercial banks, which more than doubled the amount of real estate loans they made (thus allocating large amounts of resources into the real estate market -- allocations that wouldn't have occurred in a free market for money and credit.
And then there's the welfare state. Don't let's forget about Fannie and Freddy. The former is a holdover from the New Deal; the latter is a "government sponsored enterprise" created by the Emergency Home Finance Act of 1976, and designed to increase home ownership. Both of which did their part to screw us all by spurring on the housing bubble... and they were able to borrow money at a (de facto, if not de jure) subsidized rate in the marketplace because the public viewed them as being low risk (since the state would presumably bail them out, should the need arise).
All of a sudden, everyone's in debt and no one wants to lend. Small wonder. Small wonder that risky investors are defaulting on their mortgage payments. Small wonder that the derivatives markets are screwing up (I'd argue that we can only make sense of the kerfuffle in the derivatives market in light of monetary policy). Small wonders that major financial institutions are losing their credit rating because they took on too many risky debtors.
We frequently hear that that the market got drunk. What was it drunk on? Cheap credit. Who was the man behind the bar? You can probably guess.
In May of 2000, the Fed Funds rate was 6.5%. By June of 2003, Greenspan had slashed it to 1%, and it stayed there for more than a year (and remained ridiculously low for much longer). Would Rand have found this type of monetary policy commendable (or even tolerable)? Of course not. She'd read her Mises. Moreover, she regarded central banking as morally repugnant and politically unnecessary.
There's much more to be said about our current credit crunch and how to evaluate it in light of Rand's moral and political philosophy. But it should now be evident that Dworkin (and Leiter) are wrong on all counts. They were wrong about Greenspan; they were wrong about Rand. Their errors on these subjects betray a culpable ignorance. One needn't do much research to figure out Greenspan's real views on Rand, or Rand's views on economics. Twenty minutes with Google and Wikipedia would probably have gotten the job done. If a philosopher is going to assert, in a public forum, that another philosopher's ideas lead to disaster, then they have an obligation to carefully consider that thinker's ideas, to understand them, and to show how (in practice) they would result in catastrophe. When a philosopher fails to do that, they do a disservice not only to the thinker they criticize, but also to the truth, to their profession, and to themselves.
Academic philosophers often get Rand wrong. They often have only themselves to blame.Labels: Academia, Economics, Ethics, Finance, Objectivism, Politics
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| Comments on "Getting Rand Wrong" |
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 | Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 23:19:46 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: hardy(at)math.umn.edu
So you believe in "epistemic virtue".
Can you elaborate on that theory for the benefit of us illiterates?
John Searle has written about "epistemic objectivity", which I've seen some philosophers deny having heard of, although it's commonplace to hear of journalists saying they should be "objective", and of lawyers asking prospective jurors if they can be "objective" in judging the facts of a particular case. What's your take on that idea?
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| Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 23:19:46 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: hardy(at)math.umn.edu
So you believe in "epistemic virtue".
Can you elaborate on that theory for the benefit of us illiterates?
John Searle has written about "epistemic objectivity", which I've seen some philosophers deny having heard of, although it's commonplace to hear of journalists saying they should be "objective", and of lawyers asking prospective jurors if they can be "objective" in judging the facts of a particular case. What's your take on that idea?
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 0:11:00 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Graig Janssen
E-mail: varxia85(at)gmail.com
Your explanation of the current credit crunch really cleared up some things for me. I hope you can do a full post on it in the near future.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 0:30:26 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Aaron Davies
E-mail: agd12(at)columbia.edu
Reminds me of the intro to the Lexicon, where Rand is quoting as saying that people will now be able to check under "B" to determine whether or not she advocated eating babies for breakfast.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 0:30:28 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Mike
E-mail: atlas51184(at)comcast.net
This is a great post. I follow Leiter's blog for much the same reasons as you. He's written a few posts on people who pontificate about philosophers they don't understand or haven't taken the time to understand. Shame he would then commit that sin himself. And hasn't he been at UT-Austin until very recently? If he wanted to know about Rand he could have walked down the hall and asked his colleague Tara Smith.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 0:36:49 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: maurizio natali
E-mail: maunat(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://perloggettivismo.blogspot.com/
Superb post Diana!
Maurizio Natali (Italy)
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 6:24:23 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
FYI, Brandon wrote that post, not me.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 6:59:40 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Thomas Shoebotham
E-mail: celloshoe(at)yahoo.com
"This argument gets its force from the claim that Greenspan was practicing what Rand preached."
See, that was always the danger and problem with all those articles and such I've seen for the last 15+ years that tied Greenspan to Rand. It was always nice to see the Ayn Rand mentions in the paper, but it didn't take too long, even during the good times, to see that what Greenspan was doing as Fed Chairman had pretty much nothing to do with Objectivism, or even, more generally, real free market economics. Sooner or later all this was going to come back and make us look bad. I'm glad at least that most ARI, etc., people have made sure to make it clear their disagreements with Greenspan for much of his tenure, in spite of calls from some people over the years that we should be "cashing in" on his former association with Rand, along with his fame and (seeming) success in the 90s and early 00s.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 7:20:10 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
"Academic philosophers often get Rand wrong. They often have only themselves to blame."
Often? That's an understatement.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 7:44:24 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Nick Stanley
E-mail: bfmv1020(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://processofcivilization.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the post Mr. Byrd.
I often refer to Rand as "arguably the most hated philosopher of all time". I am not particularly sure why this is, however. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that she is constantly misinterpreted and misrepresented. And, to repeat what Mr. Samuelsson said, Rand and Objectivism is constantly being attacked by, well, most of the so-called "intellectuals" who have heard of her is quite more than often.
Also, I love how it is often said that Objectivism holds "contradictions" as Mr. Greenspan said, but is never specified. I would be laughing at their crap if it was not for the fact that these people are the majority.
*sigh*
ARI, hurry up! As I always say, these people need to be smacked hard in the back of the head with a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Sincerely, (especially the last part :P)
Nick Stanley
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:24:00 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: John Campbell
E-mail: johnnyca(at)shaw.ca
Money is broken.
Markets suddenly realize money is broken.
Don't worry - governments will "fix" money - they will reinflate money to set the stage for the next bubble.
I have heard others suggest that alternative forms of energy will be the next bubble - who knows, but the next bubbles will come.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. ...sigh
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:43:23 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Brandon Byrd
E-mail: practicallyideal(at)gmail.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/
Mike Hardy:
All I intended by "the epistemically virtuous" are those individuals who exhibit good critical thinking skills. I didn't mean anything more mysterious than that.
With respect to your second question about objectivity, it would be helpful to distinguish between different senses of the term 'objectivity' as it's commonly used. When people say that they would like for jurors to be objective, they typically mean that the jurors should be free of arbitrary bias, that they should not give undue preference to one party at the expense of another. In the case of journalistic objectivity, people typically mean that journalism should be, in some sense, 'value free' - that reporters should strive to record events but not analyze or interpret them within any sort of moral or conceptual framework. Objectivity is also an epistemic concept that means (this close to Peikoff's definition) "volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic." There may be other senses of the word, but they don't really concern us here.
Some of these types of objectivity are better than others. It is good for jurors to be free of arbitrary bias, and it is good to use logic to form one's beliefs. Objective journalism, construed as value-free journalism, is not really as valuable as people tend to make it out to be. Yes, it is important that journalists get the facts right. But what facts a journalist presents to us, what things they select to communicate to their audience, do (and ought to) involve value judgments. The things journalists choose to report to us are going to be things that they regard as important. Journalism thus reflects value judgments. But journalism at its best will reflect a keen sensitivity to values. As an example, in Rand's article "The 'Inexplicable Personal Alchemy'" (anthologized in The Return of the Primitive), she praises an article from the New York Times about trials of student protesters in Moscow. The journalist, she wrote:
"knew how to observe essentials and what questions to raise. It is a simple, straightforward, factual account, but its very simplicity and its heartbreaking perceptiveness give it the qualities, not of a news story, but of a work of art: beauty, grandeur, a desperate honesty and a quietly unstressed cry for help - a cry addressed to no one in particular, carried between the lines from the frozen cobblestones of Moscow's twilight to the universe at large."
The article got the facts right, but it certainly wasn't value free. I don't think genuinely objective journalism (objective in the proper sense) is value free either, but I can't go into why here.
Aaron Davies:
That comment about the introduction to the lexicon is spot on. I hadn't ever read the introduction to that work, but I went back after reading your comment and had a good chuckle.
Nick Stanley:
You're welcome! I should add to your post, however, that Greenspan did specify one supposed contradiction in Objectivism in his book (having to deal with government financing), but it wasn't really a contradiction so much as it was a disagreement about the practicality of voluntary (as opposed to confiscatory) taxation.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:47:04 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Caroline
Many of the economically ignorant journalists, politicans and other public figures have attempted to put the blame for the financial crisis on the usual populist bogeymen, i.e. greed, bankers, capitalism, free markets, deregulation, Republicans and even the influence of Ayn Rand on Greenspan. Some recent press underscores the necessity of capitalism and free markets, and points, instead, to the absence of the gold standard, the Fed's easy money policies under Greenspan, and the challenge of valuing derivatives in an overly regulated market. Increasingly, the lack of freedom in the market, and the anti-capitalism blundering from Washington appear to be magnifying the crisis. Attached are two interesting articles, from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
"The Confidence Game"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122428355436946301.html
"Is Capitalism Dead?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/19/AR2 ...
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:52:03 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
I quite agree. It's perfectly legitimate to disagree either with Rand's conclusions or with her arguments for them, or to question them. But disagreement or questioning needs to be founded on reading what Rand actually says about the matter, and thinking carefully about the actual meaning of her statements. That's just basic scholarly integrity. A lot of scholarly discussion of Rand is the moral equivalent of political attack ads that quote a candidate out of context and distort or lie about their actual statements.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:53:51 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
A person by the name of Larry Sechrest has written quite an informative essay on Alan Greenspan, which you can read here:
http://mises.org/pdf/sechrest-greenspan.pdf
(Sechrest is obviously a "sciabarrian" who writes for JARS. And he has at least one stupid comment om Objectivists in general in his footnotes. But this doesn't detract too much from his essay.)
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 12:33:01 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: IchorFigure
Ugh. There have been at least two dozen articles in the past few weeks that try to blame the financial mess on Rand via Greenspan. If any more pop up from now on I'm just going to leave a link to this post in the comments.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 14:01:42 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
Well, there is nothing new under the sun. The complaint that Ayn Rand is attacked with strawman arguments, and that her actual views are not addressed, was raised by Nathaniel Branden (while-he-was-still-a-hero) in "Who Is Ayn Rand?" (1962). It is as true now as it was then.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 14:05:05 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Kyle Haight
E-mail: khaight(at)alumni.ucsd.edu
URL: http://www.leftist.org/haightspeech/
The thing that blows my mind are the people who say that recent events have somehow 'refuted' Rand, even as the daily news sounds increasingly like something ripped from _Atlas Shrugged_.
Rand wrote about a banker who made loans without concern over the borrower's ability to repay. His bank collapsed, causing substantial economic damages. She called it "Eugene Lawson's Community National Bank". Today's headlines call it "Countrywide", "IndyMac", "Washington Mutual", "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac".
Rand wrote about industrialists pressured into signing over ownership rights of key assets to government. She called the company "Rearden Steel", the asset was the patent on Rearden Metal, and the arm-twister was Floyd Ferris. Today's headlines call the companies "Bank of America" and "Wells Fargo"; the assets are stock shares; the arm-twister is Henry Paulson.
Rand wrote about the blame for economic collapse being placed on greed, with calls for increased sacrifice advanced from all sides as the solution. So do today's editorial pages.
Such examples can be multiplied easily. I'm sure more will be forthcoming in the days ahead. Rand refuted? To me, she looks prescient.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 15:33:38 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Michael Labeit
E-mail: logician179(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://themethodoflogic.blogspot.com
Mr Byrd writes,
"In a free market, the interest rate (the price of money) is determined by the law of supply and demand."
I would say that interest rates represent the price of credit or of loanable funds, not of money. Purchasing power is the price of money. This is but a technical point. Other than that, Byrd's essay is elucidating.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 16:04:27 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Chris Baker
E-mail: chrisbaker(at)iname.com
URL: www.chrisbaker.net
One thing I have noticed about Objectivists (including Rand) is that there is always a person or two who gets a free pass. It seems that Rand had some kind of sentimental attachment to Greenspan. My hunch is that Greenspan reminded her of someone she loved from her past life.
Mises student Murray Rothbard called Greenspan a "Keynesian." Regardless of your or Rand's feelings toward Rothbard, I think that label is accurate. People got thrown out of Rand's circle for much lesser offenses than this. What is it that kept Greenspan in Rand's good graces? I seriously doubt that we will ever know.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 16:29:21 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: New-Be
E-mail: SteelJaw22(at)yahoo.com
Excellent blog post. I too look forward to Brandon's analysis of the economic collapse.
As for why Rand is so hated today, I think we need look no further than the fact that she rejected the fundamentals of today's intellectual climate: skepticism, relativism, egalitarianism and most of all altruism.
Leftists hate Rand because she argued for absolutes in knowledge and morality. Scratch a Leftist and you will find the soul of a hippie; ie someone who hates absolutes and standards as such. Also, Leftists believe in the sanctity of altruism. To challenge self-sacrifice is to admit to being a moral monster. Leftists are children who don't want to grow up. Ayn Rand won't let them get away with their whim-worship. They hate her for this.
The pragmatist Right hates Rand for much the same reason as the Left. The Religious Right hates Rand because she rejected their claim to fame; namely that only religion and the religious can provide for absolute truth, absolute morality and a foundation for society. Rand blasted religion, faith, tradition, original sin and all related nonsense. The Right hates her for this.
Ayn Rand challenged the foundation of both the Right and Left, of both mysticism and skepticism. I think it can be said that she went against the grain of her historical era more than any other philosopher in history. Its unavoidable that she will be hated. Actually, I think it is probably a yardstick of how influential she is becoming that she is openly being linked with capitalism and thus condemned. I believe Harry Binswanger said that it will be a good sign when Ayn Rand is so popular that every collectivist intellectual goes out of their way to attack her. It means that she can no longer be ignored.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 16:31:12 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: Kyle Haight
E-mail: khaight(at)alumni.ucsd.edu
URL: http://www.leftist.org/haightspeech/
It may be worth noting that Rand died in 1982, while Greenspan assumed the Fed chairmanship in 1986. She never had a chance to see or react to his actions in that role. We know she supported him in 1974 when he was appointed to Gerald Ford's council of economic advisors. Was he giving "Keynesian" advice to Ford at that time, or did his problematic actions only become apparent after Rand's death?
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 16:41:41 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
I don't know how practical this would be for those of you in and around academia, but I would attempt to log each such occurrence for the bigger names, and especially for the hypocrites like Brian Leiter, and simply store the ammunition for the day you need to take down their credibility.
Regarding the famous Gandhi quote ("First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."), these guys sound like they are still in stage 2.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 16:42:15 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Mike
E-mail: atlas51184(at)comcast.net
Why is it the Greenspan got a "free pass" and not that stories of people being "thrown out" by Rand are overblown?
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 18:34:52 mst
Comment ID: #25
Name: Clay
E-mail: ClayHellman(at)gmail.com
Something that I've noticed lately which is a minor part of this story is that for years Rand's critics attempted to "tar" Greenspan with the brush of his association with Rand.
Part of me now wonders if on some level that they knew that it wasn't so b/c now that things have gone horribly wrong they are attempting to "tar" Ayn Rand with the black as pitch Alan Greenspan?
Even a perfunctory reading of Altas Shrugged would make it clear that Miss Rand was every bit as opposed to so-called "crony capitalism," as she was to any other system that promoted the sacrifice of one individual or group to another.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 19:30:08 mst
Comment ID: #26
Name: Wayne
blaming the blowup of part of a mixed economy on Ayn Rand? Isn't that like blaming the blowup of the Hindenburg on oxygen?
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 21:03:33 mst
Comment ID: #27
Name: sam
Mrs. Hsieh,
The philosophers you quoted were way off the mark. I agree that not having any understanding of Ayn Rand and then criticizing her for things she never really believed is a mistake. But I must argue that Rand and Peikoff are guilty of the same thing about two people in particular: Freud and Nietzsche. Their comments on them two reek of mis-attribution and lack of perspective. I have an affinity for many aspects of Rand's philosophy but after reading Walter Kaufmann's books on Nietzsche and Freud I found Peikoff's and Rand's comments guilty of "hasty conclusions."
I'm glad you brought this point up because its exactly what I don't like about Rand and Peikoff. I think their analysis of Kant is great but as far as Nietzsche and Freud go it appears really shallow. I hope you don't think I am stupid; I am trying to be sincere here. I am assuming you agree with Rand on Nietzsche and Freud. I wish I could ask Rand and Peikoff to consider Kaufmann's perspective as well to fill out the image of two people who are more than the monsters Rand and Peikoff make them out to be.
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| Monday, October 20, 2008 at 21:24:32 mst
Comment ID: #28
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Sam -- As the page indicates and as I've already said, it's not my post: it was written by Brandon. I've not read Freud, but I've read lots of Nietzche -- and I don't disagree with AR's reading of him. However, I have no idea as to what you find objectionable. Perhaps you can give some specifics?
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 0:49:56 mst
Comment ID: #29
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2
Sam,
Have you read Nietzsche and Freud in the original German, or are you relying on Kaufmann's interpretations? I ask because on one occasion Ayn Rand answered a question I had asked her about Nietzsche by quoting his original German text, from memory. I later checked her quote, because it did not jibe with the secondary sources that had prompted me to ask the question. Rand had given me an entire paragraph-long sentence exactly as Nietzsche had written it. Maybe I was young and easily impressed, but John Ridpath, in his lecture on Nietzsche at the 2008 OCON spent some time discussing the tendency of many a scholar to propound his own "personal Nietzsche," in place of what Nietzsche had written himself.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 5:53:26 mst
Comment ID: #30
Name: Maurizio Natali
E-mail: maunat(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://perloggettivismo.blogspot.com/
Yes I did a mistake. So accept my apologies and let me express my appreciation to your post Mr. Byrd.
However Diana you built this blog so accept my compliments.
MN
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 6:16:21 mst
Comment ID: #31
Name: greeneggs
it's true that philosophers ignore epistemology and make assertions from the armchair. Peikoff has done it with denying the big bang. Philosophically something can't come from nothing, so it's impossible the explosion happened, he says. The mass that exploded definitely was something, and something very large can obviously result from the explosion of something very small. There is evidence of the big bang through residual radiation, and the big bang theory only describes the explosion, not how the mass was originally formed. Peikoff really did not devote serious thought to this if he did't even know that the theory doesn't describe how the mass originated. Rand also has made assertions about human nature with no research of evolutionary psychology or neuroscience.
Objectivism is a great philosophy, but I think I'll stick with reason and science rather than the proclamations of Objectivists when I want to learn about reality.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 7:04:16 mst
Comment ID: #32
Name: sam
Mrs. Hsieh,
Looks like I made a hasty conclusion myself by attributing this post to you! My apologies!
Adam Reed: I have not read Nietzsche (nor Freud for that matter) in the original German. I completely agree with you on the tendency of authors to propound their own personal Nietzsche, but thats exactly why its important to read many different perspectives on Nietzsche.
I am not saying I agree with Nietzsche 100% but I can't wrap my head around why Rand just dismmisses him out right.
And if you read Peikoff's comments on Freud you would think he is trying to scare you. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/freud.html
Freud was probably not right about a lot of things but again to just completely dismiss him that way is perplexing to me. Freud was not a philosopher, in fact he had no feeling for philosophy and actually despised Kant. But his contributions to psychology are enormous and he taught us to think about life in a totally new fashion.
My whole point is this, you have nothing to lose by studying Nietzsche and Freud, you actually have a lot to gain. So its discouraging when Rand and Peikoff say the things they did about them, especially since they say so little about them.
A side note: I have only read published works of Rand and Peikoff. I have no special knowledge of their unpublished thoughts. I also have no knowledge from the lectures John Ridpath and Andrew Bernstein gave on Nietzsche.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 7:25:37 mst
Comment ID: #33
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Sam --
To make a case that AR and LP did wrong by Nietzsche and Freud, you'd have to (1) actually discuss the substance of what AR and LP wrote, then (2) show that they were wrong by citing some relevant text. If you're so convinced that AR and LP have done these two thinkers wrong, you should be able to point out a concrete example or two without too much trouble.
Your vague assertions of wrongdoing -- saying that AR just dismissed Nietzsche or the LP was attempting to frighten us with his discussion of Freud -- are of no real value. (They're also not accurate.)
Similarly, your mushy, vague praise of Freud is of little interest; you would need to discuss some specifics of his views that were of value. However, I doubt that you can do that, as LP's description is the same in substance (albeit with more color) as what I've read about Freud from non-Objectivist sources.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 8:06:50 mst
Comment ID: #34
Name: Spoudaios
>Freud was not a philosopher, in fact he had no feeling for philosophy and actually despised Kant.
In order to be a psychologist, he had to rely on certain philosophical premises. Regardless of whether Freud "despised Kant," why is the following by Peikoff (in your quoted link) wrong:
>As this theory makes eloquently clear, Freud’s view of reason is fundamentally Kantian. Both men hold that human thought is ultimately governed, not by a man’s awareness of external fact, but by inner mental elements independent of such fact. Both see the basic task of the mind not as perception, but as creation, the creation of a subjective world in compliance with the requirements of innate (or “introjected”) mental structures . . . .
Whether or not Freud despised Kant doesn't change whether or not the above is true.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 8:24:09 mst
Comment ID: #35
Name: Burgess Laughlin
E-mail: burgesslaughlin(at)macforcego.com
URL: http://www.aristotleadventure.blogspot.com
> "I am not saying I agree with Nietzsche 100% but I can't wrap my head around why Rand just dismmisses him out right."
Perhaps studying and learning would be a better approach than _wrapping one's head around_ an alleged conclusion--an intrinsicist approach, if I have ever seen one.
I have not studied Ayn Rand's writings specifically for this subject. But I have gathered enough information about Ayn Rand to suggest that your conclusion is mistaken--the notion that she was "just" dismissive. In her final overview of Nietzsche, e.g., in _For the New Intellectual_, p. 39 (hb), Rand rejected him outright in terms of what he had to offer as objective fundamentals (nothing). However, she certainly did not immediately dismiss him when she began reading his works. Her evaluation of him changed over the years as she read more of him and saw more deeply the implications.
You can start reading about her evolving evaluation in:
- Robert Mayhew, "_We the Living_: '36 and '59," in _Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living_, editor Robert Mayhew, Lexington Books, 2004, pp. 205-214. See also index under Nietzsche.
- Shoshana Milgram, "The Fountainhead from Notebook to Novel," in _Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead_, editor Robert Mayhew, Lexington Books, 2007, various pages listed in the index under "Nietzsche."
Jeff Britting's little biography, _Ayn Rand_, also briefly mentions steps in her evolution, if I recall correctly. However, the two works edited by Dr. Mayhew are later, more complete, and more up to date in terms of archival research.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:23:43 mst
Comment ID: #36
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
"I wish I could ask Rand and Peikoff to consider Kaufmann's perspective as well to fill out the image of two people who are more than the monsters Rand and Peikoff make them out to be."
Neither Rand nor Peikoff has ever depicted Nietzsche as a "monster". They both regard him as a "mixed case".
It is also well known that Ayn Rand was heavily influenced by Nietzsche in her youth, but that she gradually changed her mind. And, if someone can still find a copy of the Brandens' old book "Who Is Ayn Rand", it is mentioned in Barbara Branden's biographical sketch that the turning point for Ayn Rand was reading his "Geburt der Tragoedie". (I think the point is mentioned in her "Passion" book as well. Not that I recommend this book...)
For Ayn Rand's view of Nietzsche, one should also read the introduction to "The Fountainhead". And also her essay "Apollo and Dionysus".
This is also true of John Ridpath. I haven't heard his recent lectures on Nietzsche, but I've heard his older lecture series from the 80's, which was also published in "The Objectivist Forum". He is critical, but he doesn't call him a monster.
Freud is a different matter. My "stomach feeling" is that he *was* a monster. I can hardly read a single page of Freud without my stomach getting turned.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:33:40 mst
Comment ID: #37
Name: Vicki
E-mail: vgenther(at)gmail.com
Another nice piece! It's great to see you on here Brandon.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:39:17 mst
Comment ID: #38
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
And, as for Ayn Rand's view of Freud, there is an interesting discussion in "Letters of Ayn Rand", p. 521ff (this is in one of her letters to John Hospers).
As for other Objectivists' criticism of Freud: apart form the quotes from Peikoff that have already been given, Jonathan Rosman once gave a short lecture series on Freud. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that Freud's theories are more convoluted than I could ever imagine.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:45:15 mst
Comment ID: #39
Name: Michael Labeit
E-mail: logician169(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://themethodoflogic.blogspot.com
Nietzsche belongs to the "non-rational" group of philosophers including Heidegger, individuals who questioned logic itself. Conflicting ideas in ethics and politics is one thing, but "critiquing logic" is flagrantly self-conradictory.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 10:07:22 mst
Comment ID: #40
Name: Kyle Haight
E-mail: khaight(at)alumni.ucsd.edu
URL: http://www.leftist.org/haightspeech/
Peikoff's presentation of Nietzsche in his "Modern Philosophy" lectures also evaluates him as a mixed case.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 10:13:11 mst
Comment ID: #41
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
Per-Olof:
You mention that "it is mentioned in Barbara Branden's biographical sketch that the turning point for Ayn Rand was reading his "Geburt der Tragoedie"." Thanks for bringing that up; I was trying to remember it, but I don't have "Who Is Ayn Rand?" on my shelves. It's actually one of the points where I question Rand's judgment, because I have read many volumes of Nietzsche (in English translation; my casual acquaintance with German isn't remotely up to that challenge), and in the course of doing so, I discovered that Nietzsche himself repudiated "The Birth of Tragedy" in his later writings. Did Rand not read "Ecce Homo"? Or did she believe that whatever ideas Nietzsche put forth at any time in his life must have expressed some fundamental premise that he held with complete consistency and could not ever have changed (which would be surprisingly deterministic, coming from her)? Because it can happen, even with someone as brilliant as Nietzsche, that a young thinker can come under the influence of ideas that they later repudiate when they develop their own ideas: in this case, Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy and Wagner's music.
I haven't reread Nietzsche in years and years, and never in the original, so I'm certainly not competent to discuss the details of his philosophy. But I've thought for a long time that Rand was hasty in judging him.
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 11:18:51 mst
Comment ID: #42
Name: sam
To all who have responded to my comments:
Thank you for your responses. I have to rethink a lot of what I wrote!
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| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 13:06:56 mst
Comment ID: #43
Name: Brandon Byrd
E-mail: practicallyideal(at)gmail.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Looks like Leiter and Dworkin are at it again. Same BS, different day:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/the-end-of-libe.html
Of course, there's nothing new to say in response to the post, since it says nothing we haven't heard before.
Also, I just ran across an article about John Allison (CEO of BB&T) and his take on the bailout:
"BB&T chief blames crisis on government" - http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2008/10/13/daily ...
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| Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 8:27:18 mst
Comment ID: #44
Name: Brad Williams
URL: http://scripsit.blogspot.com
Thank you, Brandon, for this clear description of the boom and bust. I also recommend the blog of Mish Shedlock for anyone interested in the global economic outlook.
PS: Peikoff criticizes Nietzsche in _The Ominous Parallels_, a book which Rand enthusiastically endorsed.
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| Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 9:17:17 mst
Comment ID: #45
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
William Stoddard: I'm not the world's foremost Nietzsche scholar, and "Ecce Homo" I haven't even read. But anyway:
Ayn Rand's main objection to "The Birth of Tragedy" was that Nietzsche in this book downplays or dismisses the "Apollonian" side of man in favor of the "Dionysian" side - which means he downplays or dismisses rationality in favor of emotionalism.
Now, I found an English translation of "Ecce Homo" on the web:
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/eh.htm
I skimmed through the chapter on "The Birth of Tragedy", and I don't find that Nietzsche repudiates the "Dionysian stand" in his earlier book. What he seems to regret is a different point. If I got it right, he regrets that he read "pessimism" into the Greek tragedies, when he should have read "optimism" into them.
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| Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 21:46:59 mst
Comment ID: #46
Name: pjs
Hi B,
Interesting post. I wonder whether your intent is primarily:
A. to expose particular instances of academic sloppiness/negligence/ignorance/whatever, or
B. to suggest that cases of such activities are, when concerned with Rand & Objectivism, somehow different in kind from your ordinary garden-variety sloppiness/negligence/ignorance/strawman-ing.
pjs
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| Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 12:39:24 mst
Comment ID: #47
Name: Brandon Byrd
E-mail: practicallyideal(at)gmail.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
PJS,
My intent was somewhere in between A and B. I wanted to provide a few instances of sloppiness as evidence of a general tendency amongst academics with respect to Rand. Being insufficiently careful when characterizing the views of others is not uncommon, and the world will probably never be rid of the problem. So in this respect, the phenomenon isn't new. But it seems that Rand's views are mischaracterized disproportionally more without there being much of a backlash. I can't think of another English-speaking philosopher whose views are more frequently distorted.
On another note, Leiter's at it yet again:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/rand-follower-g.html
Once again he hurls an ad hominem at Rand. And again he attempts the whole 'guilt by association' BS with Greenspan. You know, it's pretty gross when someone makes this kind of error once. But Leiter & Co. are up to (I believe) FOUR posts on the whole Rand/Greenspan/crisis thing. Shame on them.
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| Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 13:41:04 mst
Comment ID: #48
Name: Per-Olof Samuelsson
E-mail: per-olof.samuelsson(at)swipnet.se
URL: http://www.nattvakt.com
Adam Reed: "...on one occasion Ayn Rand answered a question I had asked her about Nietzsche by quoting his original German text, from memory. I later checked her quote, because it did not jibe with the secondary sources that had prompted me to ask the question. Rand had given me an entire paragraph-long sentence exactly as Nietzsche had written it."
I'm intrigued by this. Could you tell us some more about what the question and the answer were? And did she actually quote it in German, or did she translate it?
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