Ayn Rand
April 30, 2008
Objectivism and Individualism, in a nutshell will be posted eventuall. However, here is the eye-opening piece from the Ayn Rand Institute.
If you haven’t read any Ayn Rand books, you should. My personal favorite is Anthem. You can read it free here.
EARTH HOUR: the fallacy
we need to make a decision as to what direction our country is going in.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Ayn Rand characterized Objectivism as a philosophy “for living on earth” grounded in reality and aimed at defining man’s nature and the nature of the world in which he lives. Rand wrote:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Rand presented her philosophy through her novels The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and other works. She elaborated on her ideas in The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, The Ayn Rand Letter, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and other non-fiction books.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy is based on three axioms: the Axiom of Existence, the Law of Identity, and the Axiom of Consciousness. Rand defined an axiom as “a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” As Leonard Peikoff noted, Rand’s argumentation “is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable.”
Objectivism states that “Existence exists” (the Axiom of Existence) and “Existence is Identity.” To be is to be “an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.” That which has no attributes does not and cannot exist. Hence, the Law of Identity, A is A: a thing is what it is.
{ARISTOTLE: “Now ‘why a thing is itself’ is a meaningless inquiry (for—to give meaning to the question ‘why’—the fact or the existence of the thing must already be evident—e.g., that the moon is eclipsed—but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given in answer to all such questions as why the man is man, or the musician musical, unless one were to answer, ‘because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just meant this.’ This, however, is common to all things and is a short and easy way with the question.)” }
Whereas “existence exists” pertains to existence itself (whether something exists or not), the law of identity pertains to the nature of an object as being necessarily distinct from other objects (whether something exists as this or that). As Rand wrote, “A leaf cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A.”
Rand held that when one is able to perceive something that exists, then one’s “Consciousness exists” (the Axiom of Consciousness), consciousness “being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.” Objectivism maintains that what exists does not exist because one thinks it exists; it simply exists, regardless of anyone’s awareness, knowledge or opinion. For Rand, “to be conscious is to be conscious of something,” so that an objective reality independent of consciousness has to exist first for consciousness to become possible, and there is no possibility of a consciousness that is conscious of nothing outside itself. Thus consciousness cannot be the only thing that exists. “It cannot be aware only of itself — there is not ‘itself’ until it is aware of something.” Objectivism holds that the mind cannot create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality.
Objectivist philosophy regards the Law of Causality, which states that things act in accordance with their natures, as “the law of identity applied to action.” Rand rejected the popular notion that the causal link relates action to action. According to Rand, an “action” is not an entity, rather, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity. The way entities interact is caused by the specific nature (or “identity”) of those entities; if they were different there would be a different result.
Emotion is a result of subcpncious feeling and can not be used to determine reality.
Because a concept is only known to be valid within the range of the measurements by which it was validated, it is an error to assume that a concept is valid outside this range, which is its (contextual) scope. It is also an error to assume that a proposition is known to be valid outside the scope of its concepts, or that the conclusion of a syllogism is known to be valid outside the scope of its premises.
According to Objectivist epistemology, states of mind, such as happiness, are not primary; they are the consequence of specific facts of existence. Therefore man needs an objective standard, grounded in the facts of reality, to achieve happiness. The human faculty of happiness is a biologically evolved measuring instrument that measures how well one is doing in the pursuit of life. Therefore the standard by which one can judge whether or not some action will lead to greater or lesser happiness is, whether or not it promotes one’s life.
My personal belief: What Ayn Rand would call a ‘mixed economy’, that which is mainly capitalist with some shared property that belongs to the people as a whole, though this may lead to conflict. I see how this could present problems, but it is impossible to avoid with humans, social creatures that we are.
Objectivism defines “art” as a “selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments”—that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form.
The human need for art, on this view, stems from the need for cognitive economy. A concept is already a sort of mental shorthand standing for a large number of concretes, allowing a human being to think indirectly or implicitly of many more such concretes than can be held explicitly in mind. But a human being cannot hold indefinitely many concepts explicitly in mind either—and yet, on the Objectivist view, needs a comprehensive conceptual framework in order to provide guidance in life.
Art offers a way out of this dilemma by providing a perceptual, easily grasped means of communicating and thinking about a wide range of abstractions.
Objectivism regards art as an effective way to communicate a moral or ethical ideal. Objectivism does not, however, regard art as propagandistic: even though art involves moral values and ideals, its purpose is not to educate, only to show or project.
Moreover, art need not be, and often is not, the outcome of a full-blown, explicit philosophy. Usually it stems from an artist’s sense of life (which is preconceptual and largely emotional).
Rand held that Romanticism was the highest school of literary art, noting that Romanticism was “based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.”
She warned her readers that, “If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship for the parts you agree with — and then indulge any flights of fancy you wish, on your own.”
Political Individualism: In political philosophy, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should take a merely defensive role by protecting the liberty of each individual to act as he or she wishes as long he or she does not infringe on the same liberty of another. This contrasts with collectivist political theories, where, rather than leaving the individual to pursue his or her own ends, the state ensures that the individual serves the interests of society when taken as a whole.
individualism in pakistan at individualland
