Better living through music and film

One of the central branches of philosophy is aesthetics, the study of the beautiful (which may well align with the good in such a way that good living is living to kalon, that is, for the sake of the noble, beautiful or fine) and the relation of human artistic creations to the beautiful.  Any study of this branch of knowledge requires inductions from a vast aggregation of concrete instances.  My research in this area has brought me to rank-ordering units within two key artistic genres: Music and Film.

(I also have on the same website, in addition to a rank-ordering of favorite music artists [here], an increasingly-outdated, to-be-updated list of philosophy books that I consider worth studying.  An updated list would include books such as this one.  While it is out of print, it is available online, but in not nearly as useful and accessible a format as the print edition.  Can one do one's wisdom-oriented homework thoroughly without it?)

While there is a need for aesthetic theory (for which I can only refer readers at this point to the likes of Adorno, Aristotle, Barzun, Danto, Hegel, Hospers, Hume, Huxley, Kant, Rand, Schopenhauer, Scruton, The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, goodreads lists, etc.) to account for all this rank-ordering, we first need to have, and there is plenty positive to say about, the aesthetic experience themselves.

Enjoy!

Today (2/20/2013)

That date could mean only one thing - the two-month mark on the countdown to the 4/20 Ultimate Cliff. Yes, for any newbies reading this, that's the date I've set for going "on strike," withdrawing the products of my mind from public circulation, unless a number of eminently reasonable demands are met by that date, including the legalization of cannabis for all adults 21 and over in all jurisdictions in the United States (preferably coupled with a solid program of public education on the effects of cannabis, to go along with education in tons of other subjects the totality of which form an integrated conceptual whole very much needed by the youth, who naturally yearn for cognitive integrity in their most intellectually-formative years).  The right to toke is there in the Ninth Amendment, and it's what Jefferson would support in a heartbeat.  It's a right Bob Marley would get up and stand up for.  It's a cognitive Saganizer for many, and potentially many more.  (So who are the effing idiots standing in the way, exactly?  They should be pushovers.)  Put that material in your in your "primacy of intellect" pipe and smoke it.

Mental exchange of the day:

CRITICS OF AYN RAND: "You have no children in your novels."

AYN RAND TO CRITICS: "Those authors you like so much? They have no heroes in theirs."

CRITICS OF AYN RAND: "Touche!"

AYN RAND TO CRITICS: "Checkmate, assholes."

Is this like shooting fish in a barrel, or what? :-D  Man, if only the Left (and its comically-ignorant reddiot spawn) could mount a remotely respectable criticism of Ayn Rand of all people, a full half-century after the publication of Atlas Shrugged....  Instead, what we get today from them is mostly intellectually-childish imbecility.  What we have here is a failure to integrate, and therefore a loss of great amounts of intellectual credibility for leftists.  Viz.:

"The political aspects of Atlas Shrugged are not its theme.  Its theme is primarily ethical-epistemological: the role of the mind in man's existence - and politics, necessarily, is one of the theme's consequences.  But the epistemological chaos of our age, fostered by modern philosophy, is such that many young readers find it difficult to translate abstractions into political principles and apply them to the evaluation of today's events.  This present book may help them.  It is a nonfiction footnote to Atlas Shrugged." -Ayn Rand, "Introduction," Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, p. ix (pb).

I dare anyone to go find and someone who's read through Rand's corpus of writings thoroughly (it couldn't exceed a dozen or so volumes, could it?  how effing hard can that be to do?), and engaged the secondary literature (including the spoken canon - in other words, the infamously excruciating mind-numbing drudgery of Leonard Peikoff lecture courses), and still come out talking the same shit - or anything remotely like that shit - about her.  I effing double and triple dog dare anyone to do it.  I think if there were such an individual, I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about her/him by now.  (I consider myself to be pretty thorough/perfectivist about this kind of shit.)  The only thing that the Left has got her on is her bad polemics, and the Left ain't no sweetie-pie itself in that department, all the academic resources at its avail notwithstanding.  Anyway, the role of the mind in man's existence is key for Rand, and absolute independence of the mind (given the nature of the mind and its functioning) is thereby also key.  None but poorly-trained intellectual imbeciles - like Donny, out of his element, like a little child wandering into the middle of a movie - would have a problem with that, right?

So.  Where does that put our cultural discourse, going forward?  Is it more intellectually-childish imbecility from leftist player-haters, or more in the way of heroes, the benevolent universe premise, sense of life, and such?  Does this here blog more or less become Ground Zero for that cultural discourse in the near future?  If so, why?  If not, why not?  Something to think about.  Glenn Beck is already outdoing you leftist fools in the intellectual department, for crying out loud, and he's yet to even take a Peikoff course, or read Norton's Personal Destinies, or log thousands of hours of Howard Stern show listening, or Saganize his cognition, or memorize much of the film canon and then work to integrate it into a functioning mental unit for later processing.  And yet, while Beck discusses Ray Kurzweil ("The Singularity Guy"), the media "progressives" focus instead on the latest cabinet nominee filibustering; do you see some effed-up priorities on someone's part here?  If these fools can't tell by now that the theme of Atlas Shrugged is not empathy-disregarding capitalist ubermensch-ism (a chicken-shit strawman in any event), but the role of the mind in man's existence, that's Exhibit A right there that they're doomed as an intellectual and political movement.  Exhibit B would be when they claim that the fundamental virtue for Rand is "selfishness" instead of the correct answer as to the chief Randian virtue: (Aristotelian) rationality.  Such piss-poor comprehension of ideas!  Whence does this pathology emerge and fester?  By golly, I put it in the most extreme terms applicable and it's still 100% spot-on, as any objective truth-observant light of history shall document.  Not too bad, huh?)

Also, you can't separate aesthetics from the rest of the philosophy.  Just thought I'd throw that out there off the cuff for consideration.  (Benevolent universe premise and heroism and sense of life - they being as much at the core of Rand's philosophy as her method of intellectual integration and her advocacy of reason as human beings' only absolute.  Why does the Left hate all that so efffing much, or so it would appear?)  Also, how does that principle integrate with the film canon, anyway?  Anyway, the goal remains: a neo-Aristotelian utopia.  Aristotle and Jefferson rolled into one, minus the slavery stuff and other imperfections.  Doable.  But how quickly?  Keep in mind that Jefferstotle doesn't suffer fools gladly.  Checkmate in 3...2...1...

Quote of the Day

"If [Andrei Tarkovsky's] Sculpting in Time could be distilled to a single message, it would be this: Content and conscience must come before technique—for any artist in any art form."
(Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Mind = Blown

In the "Spiritual Uplift" department . . .

On tonight's tentative playlist (I might improvise on it, of course):

John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
Radiohead, OK Computer
Euphoric Classics
The Most Uplifting Classics in the Universe
The Most Inspiring Classics in the Universe
Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 (Levi/Cleveland SO)
The Beatles, 1
Simon and Garfunkle's Greatest Hits

As Linz Perigo would say, that's KASS! :-)

EPIC WIN.

OMG, Miss Rand!?

You're just totally fucking wrong about Beethoven, Miss Rand, and I'm most assuredly not a politeness-and-manners-dropping hippie in saying so!

Pastoral Symphony, op. 68 in F Major.

First movement: "Awakening of Cheerful Feelings Upon Arrival in the Country."

Third movement: "Merry Gathering of Country Folk."

Last movement: "Shepherd's Song: Happy and Thankful Feelings After the Storm."

MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE? Man's heroic fight against destiny and eventual DEFEAT? The opposite of your sense of life? (Ref.: 1981 Ford Hall Forum Q&A.) How 'bout: the exact effing opposite of Ludwig Van's?

WTF?

tisk, tisk, tisk

Oh, but I still love ya, though. Just gotta check those premises more perfectively, mmmkay?



But . . .










































Miss Rand, you've been vindicated yet again. I'm gonna go sit in the corner now.

Your Loyal and Humble Servant,

Individualism and Modern Philosophy

In a very recent post, I cited Nozick's offered explanation for the opposition amongst the Intellectuals to capitalism. Nozick suggests basically a psychological explanation. But of course I had to press the issue to the question not just of capitalism, but of individualism. (In turning my mind to the subject of moral individualism in relation to the state of modern philosophy, I find that my thoughts keep expanding; an adequate treatment of the subject might have to be chapter-length, so I couldn't post in depth on the subject here and now.)

One might think that while opposition to capitalism among many philosophers is readily understandable psychologically, the decided lack of interest among philosophers on the subject of individualism is bizarre. If individualism extols as a primary virtue "thinking for oneself," you'd think the philosophers would be most interested in the subject. But what academic literature is there out there on the subject? Aside from Norton, and a few Rand-influenced ethical philosophers (Machan, Mack, Rasmussen and Den Uyl), and parts of Lomasky and Nozick, what literature have professional philosophers generated on the subject in recent memory? Why does so deeply American a subject as individualism interest America's intellectual class so little?

I came to these thoughts when working through possible non-psychological explanations for the widespread antipathy to capitalism among intellectuals. At some point during one of Peikoff's lectures, a short and simple philosophical explanation was given: the widespread acceptance of "altruistic" morality in its various forms (e.g., Christianity, Kant, Mill, Marx, Rawls). But I'm not really satisfied with that explanation. Among the intellectuals, the antipode of altruism is not capitalism or individualism, but egoism, and the intellectuals have been hard at work devising moral theories that work somewhere in between the antipodes of egoism (e.g. Rand) and altruism (e.g. Comte). They find such extremes unacceptable because (aside from any pathologically pragmatistic opposition to extremes) altruism runs up against problems of rational motivation (which Nagel's The Possibility of Altruism makes a thorough effort to confront), while egoism supposedly - supposedly - runs up against the problem of respecting all moral agents over and above their serviceability to the agent's own interests.

But what about individualism? The most widely accessible and widely-read "text" on individualist ethics is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. The theme is "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics but in man's soul." The political themes are there, but mainly by implication. The full implication would have to wait another 14 years. But aside from the supposedly "weird" characterizations and narrative that drive many a reader to miss the point, what about the Roarkian individualist ethos makes professional philosophers so uninterested? True, there are professional philosophers aplenty who openly oppose egoism, but I don't know of any that would dare openly oppose individualism, certainly not in America. Instead, on the subject of individualism, there's one conspicuous fact here: silence.

This might reduce back to some psychological explanations. The Fountainhead is, after all, about individualism and collectivism in the human soul, and provides certain archetypes of motivation. Roark finds himself in fundamental opposition to what, for a long time, he can only term "The Principle Behind the Dean." Keating embraces that principle; it's about the only principle a pragmatist, for all the pragmatists' opposition to principles, can willingly accept. One thing about Rand's style of writing is that she would directly confront, in the most extreme and oppositional terms, the psychology of her readers. The Roark-Keating opposition is pretty deep, and being more fundamentally a psychological rather than intellectual one, it carries more fundamental explanatory power about how people behave. (It would explain, for instance, why someone would turn toward a less intellectual life as such, as distinct from turning to an intellectual life that is, say, socialism-friendly. It also explains Ayn Rand's - the real Ayn Rand's, not the caricatured, distorted, misrepresented and smeared Ayn Rand's - behavior in regard to those who disagreed with her. She valued intellectuality above agreement as such. (There are rare exceptions, like with her treatment of Kant, but she simply did not get Kant or his context.))

This gets to something very fundamental, perhaps not as fundamental in Rand's philosophy as it was in her very soul and being: sense of life. One's views about a thing such as individualism are fundamentally conditioned by one's sense-of-life. Now, either you share Rand's basic sense of life, or you don't. (I like to think that I share her sense of life, and then some.) With Rand, on the subject of individualism, there is heroic and passionate affirmation and praise and benevolence. With someone who doesn't share Rand's sense of life, the response is one of so much indifference.

The logical conclusion to draw here is that the mainstream of the Intellectual Class does not share Ayn Rand's basic sense of life. The American People, on the other hand - the best within the American people, of course - well, they do share her basic sense of life.

And that's how modern "canon" philosophy has defaulted on its task and failed the people. Can I not help but think that modern "canon" philosophy's days are sooooo numbered?

:-)

[ADDENDUM: See any entry under "Individualism" here? For that, you have to go here. CASE CLOSED.]

Ayn Rand: A Mini-Guide

(For both scholars and laypersons.)

Ayn Rand's philosophy, which she called Objectivism, has received widely varied reception, from "It's the key to solving our crises of civilization" all the way to "It's a pseudo-philosophy not worth taking seriously." (Disclosure: My own view is much, much closer to the former than the latter, with some reservations and qualifications.) This guide is meant to convey what a serious scholar (or "student of Objectivism") might come away with after a careful study of Rand's ideas. I will go over Rand's views on philosophy, branch by branch, and indicate what strengths (and, in some instances, weaknesses) a student of philosophy can expect to find therein.

First, Rand summed up her philosophy as follows: "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."
(http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivism.html)

Now, to see how this bears on subject matter in philosophy:

Metaphysics

Rand's views here are not much advanced beyond the ancient Greek - namely, and especially, Aristotelian - conception of the world as existing independent of us and ordered according to "natural law." Her axioms of existence, identity and consciousness are fundamental-level identifications implicit within all other statements, and are denied upon pain of contradiction. Her neo-Aristotelian metaphysics might best be identified as a standard statement of "classical realism" - the view of the world essentially contained in "common sense": we come to the world without any power to alter or construct it; it is absolute and unyielding; it exhibits causal regularity to which we have to conform to achieve any kind of cognitive or practical success.

Rand's views on the subject of God are "hard-line" and philosophically controversial. The arguments offered by Rand and others on this are unlikely to convince believers or theologians. They amount in effect to the claim that the universe - which is considered synonymous with "existence" or the totality of all that exists - could not come into or go out of existence, and that traditional talk of God leads to a negation of a rational understanding of the world. In an interview on the Donahue show, Rand made a comment that "There is no such thing as a disorderly universe," the implication being that there is no need to posit God to explain the order in the world. While the universe being orderly of necessity falls out of Rand's classical-realist metaphysics, and its being orderly needn't require an order-er or creator or designer, it's far from clear how this rules out God's existence by Rand's hard-line reasoning.

Rand did not get into the subject of God beyond some basic metaphysical claims; she did not talk about the Problem of Evil, for instance. Neither did she talk about God, much, period: it wasn't a subject of interest to her in itself, apart from the historical-cultural phenomenon of belief in such a deity or higher power. There do appear to be two distinct strands offered, however: the usual "there's no compelling proof" one shared by a whole host of non-believers, on the one hand, and the hard-line metaphysical one in which God's existence implies a contradiction or rejection of the axioms, on the other.

Rand rejects the "materialist" label, where that means being committed to the view that all reality is ultimately material; she associated such a label with "vulgar materialism" which denies an irreducible reality and causal efficacy to conscious processes. It is hard to escape this label, however, if materialism amounts only to the view that existence exists independently of consciousness, per classical or "common sense" realism. Rand is of the view that existence existing independent of consciousness implies that there can't be a God, which is presumably defined such that it is a conscious entity that exists ontologically prior to the world. This seems to miss the claim of theologians that God is at once existing and conscious (just like us), without any claim that God's consciousness is somehow prior to existence. It is unclear from her or her designated spokespersons' extant written arguments how the axioms can be invoked to handle challenges like this one.

In sum, I don't think there's much to be gotten out of Objectivist metaphysics than some pretty standard classical-realist claims and some strange-looking arguments against God's existence and against other things which Rand and others claim violates the axioms. We can already appeal to Aristotelian or other arguments in favor of classical realism and get much the same idea about the world and our relation to it.

Epistemology

To understand Rand's epistemological project, it helps first to get clear on how she conceived that project. Her aim was fundamentally a practical one and a methodological one. The practical aim was to provide a basic guide for ordering our thought processes in a way that makes us most efficacious in living. The methodological aim is the spelling-out of the practical one: defining the methods by which we best order our cognitive processes.

Rand regarded her theory of concepts as her most significant philosophic achievement. She aimed to provide not just a solution to the traditional "problem of universals," but also to provide a fundamental accounting of how we think about anything and everything, from the most abstract to the most particular, to the most theoretical to the most mundane. Our knowledge is held in the form of concepts, and concepts are integrations of percepts (the perceptually-given). If we can provide a systematic accounting for how thought, properly done, is carried out, then we've done all the epistemological work Rand is concerned about.

Rand spent some 20 years, prior to laying out her theory of concepts in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, testing her ideas about the roots of our concepts. Her theory in essence is that human cognition involves measurement (of particulars) and measurement-omission (in forming concepts, i.e., by integrating percepts into mental units). All abstractions are ultimately tied to the perceptual, either in simpler and direct terms (via lower-order concepts, e.g., concepts of color), or in more complex and indirect terms (involving higher-order concepts, e.g., "love" and "justice"). The higher-order abstractions require definition in terms of the lower-order ones.

Chains of reasoning, if they are to be considered sound, depend ultimately on reducibility to particulars. This requires keeping our concepts well-organized within a hierarchy, which establishes the context for any concepts we employ. We should be able to relate, i.e., to integrate any item of knowledge to all other items of knowledge within the hierarchy. Concepts well-formed and well-organized serve a crucial practical need, namely, mental unit-economy and, in turn, mental and practical efficacy. Concepts and definitions are condensations of vast bodies of observation, with the particular measurements as they apply to concrete data omitted from these condensations. Rand treats of "borderline cases" (as, say, between "chair" and "sofa") by stressing the need for a mind to organize its contents by the most efficacious means available; that may or may not require forming new concepts to handle "borderline" cases. The basic determinant for forming a concept or definition of anything is to identify the fundamental similarities among concretes, i.e., the similarities which (existentially or metaphysically) make the greatest number of similarities possible, and which (epistemologically) explains the greatest number of other similarities (These considerations should be guided by Rand's "Razor", which states that concepts should be neither expanded nor reduced beyond necessity.)

The basic cognitive method Rand endorsed and applied here is one of keeping all one's mental contents very well-organized and at least fairly readily reducible to the perceptual. Doing all this is not just a mental exercise but, rather, serves a crucial life need. Her chief aim was to make consciousness as efficacious as possible in dealing with everyday problems. In that regard, Rand did not particularly concern herself with a number of "background" issues in epistemology that have concerned a great deal of other philosophers. If they approach Rand with an eye to these "background" issues, they might not find much to sink their teeth into. An Objectivist, meanwhile, will maintain that any discussion of any issues, "background" or otherwise, requires the use of well-formed and well-applied concepts, and that the relevance of these background issues must be explained in terms of relevance and use for daily life; otherwise, it is idle speculation.

So, to take, for instance, the "problem of necessity" addressed by Hume and Kant, it needs to be explained how this is an issue that should be of concern to us. There is a "pragmatic" attitude involved here: if we already have a well-ordered system of concepts that aids us in our daily lives, then it becomes some other kind of concern (a "theoretical" one) whether the concepts we have reflects an inherent necessity in nature. Even if we don't have a "satisfactory grounding of necessity," i.e., one satisfying to all but skeptics, we still have to get on with the task of living. At the same time, any discussion of the "problem of necessity" should presuppose that we're employing our concepts in such a discussion in well-grounded (i.e., perceptually-grounded) ways.

If all knowledge is grounded in the perceptual, according to Rand, then the label "empiricist" might seem to fit. To be sure, Rand, despite her advocacy of reason, did not identify with the "rationalist" tradition; in fact, she saw in rationalism a tendency to treat ideas or concepts in a way that detaches them from their proper grounding in the perceptual - and thereby to sever philosophy from the needs of life. However, to lump her in with Hume using the "empiricist" label is to ignore the basic difference between them: the task of the cognitive faculty (which Rand called "reason") in Rand's philosophy is to integrate sense data into a non-contradictory whole, even if "only" for practical purposes; Hume, as abstract theorist, was more interested in the "problem of necessity," while he's often seen (fairly or not) as a leading advocate against the idea that we can rationally or objectively integrate percepts. In any event, Rand's perception-based theory of knowledge is more in the spirit of Aristotle than of Hume.

Ethics

Rand is perhaps most famous for her advocacy of ethical egoism, or as she referred to it, a rational selfishness or morality of self-interest. Evident from a careful reading of her arguments, though, is that she is not an advocate of these things as typically or widely understood.

Her basic point about ethics - "a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions - the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life" - is that it is a guide to living well, or living happily. In her understanding of things, that makes any good code of ethics egoistic by definition: living well or happily just means to be living self-interestedly. Insofar as Rand's "ethical egoism" is damned or rejected by moral theorists, they also damn or reject the ancient conception of ethics as, likewise, being concerned with the task of living well or happily. Objectivist ethics is hardly anything more or other than an updating of Aristotelian eudaemonist ethics.

Rand offers a neo-Aristotelian argument on the foundations of the concept of "value" or "goodness"; she locates value-significance in living phenomena, and a narrower sub-division - the moral - is concerned with the achievement of what is of value through the exercise of choice. She shares with Aristotle the basic conviction that living well as humans means living rationally and intelligently - that rational and intelligent living is our best (perhaps only) guarantee to achieving a stable and enduring happy livelihood. The basic form of right living for both Aristotle and Rand is virtue, the integral commitment to living as reason requires. For Rand, the basic virtue, which explains all the other virtues, is the virtue of rationality. Rationality is the locus of the interaction between her epistemology and her ethics, or between thought and practice. Humans are distinguished by their mode of functioning - most fundamentally, the exercise of reason. If we perfect the use of our cognitive faculties, that is our best and only means to perfecting our lives as a whole.

In the contemporary professional literature, eudaemonism generally is discussed in David L. Norton's Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton, 1976), while Rand's eudaemonism more specifically is discussed in Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge, 2006). Rand's ethics - again, best understood as a version of neo-Aristotelian eudaemonism - is the part of her philosophy which has seen the most coverage and ground gained in the philosophy profession. (Her epistemology, by contrast, has received hardly any treatment, negative or positive.) The egoism she espoused is best understood in connection with the basic summary statement near the beginning of this posting: the idea that achievement of happiness is the moral purpose of one's life, and that we should strive to be "heroic" or great in our lives. Arguably this fits right in with an Aristotelian version of eudaemonism.

The strength of Rand's ethics depends on the strength of eudaemonist ethics as such; eudaemonism has become a force to be reckoned with in contemporary moral theories, and as such moral theorists ignore it and Rand at their peril.

Rand's meta-ethics - her grounding of the concept of "value" in the concept of "life" - has been much the subject of analysis and criticism, and much of that discussion centers on whether Rand (or any other thinker) successfully derives an "ought" from an "is." Rand contours her claims about living things so as not to commit herself to defunct teleological doctrines, but her claims can still be challenged on grounds of whether the functions of living systems are ordered for "the preservation of the organism's own life" (as distinct from or perhaps inclusive of reproduction), or on whether we can get a clear picture of functional organization that gives us the kind of ethical views we usually find plausible. Again, her views here are closely related to Aristotle's, and are also echoed in such neo-Aristotelians as Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness, Oxford, 2001). Her views in these areas seem to be well-reflected in the mainstream literature and the tradition, and as such are more or less right in the thick of things as contemporary meta-ethics is concerned.

Political Philosophy

Rand's politics in essence is an extension of her ethics: she is an individualist, and in an individualist ethos the basic function of government is to secure the conditions - rights - under which people can pursue their happiness through the exercise of their own minds. Her views have predecessors in Locke, Jefferson and Spencer, but her explanation of the relation between ethics and politics is rather original if not right on target. Her basic identification here is that force and mind are opposites. If eudaemonia is necessarily rationally-directed activity, then we require the freedom to exercise our own minds and judgments to achieve it. Further, the propriety of pursuing happiness grounds the right to pursue happiness. Rights - the basic concept in social and political philosophy - are principles "defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." Rights define freedoms rather than specific objects to which we might lay claim. (Property rights, as an extension of moral personhood, specify freedoms as to the disposition of goods, not rights to goods themselves.)

Rand's substantive conclusions about rights are closely echoed in Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), and both Rand and Nozick stand opposed to the contemporary "liberal" mainstream, well-represented by John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971). For Rawlsians and other liberals, much hinges on whether a Randian or Nozickian conception of justice reliably serves, in practice, the legitimate interests of "the less well-off." In fact, Rand's theory, especially, would merit universal assent only if it could be addressed to the rational self-interest of all members of society; this is a natural consequence of Rand's universalization of egoistic norms (as opposed to the caricature of pretty much all versions of egoism as exception-making on behalf of a talented few). This might "force" Rand and/or Nozick to resort to "empirical" or social-scientific claims on behalf of their laissez-faire capitalist conception of rights and justice.

There are, however, at least two considerations a Randian can raise in addition to acknowledging whatever is the case social-scientifically: (1) Even if there are good arguments showing that people should adopt certain measures aimed at improving the condition or life-prospects of the "less well-off," it doesn't follow that this should be done via the State, an apparatus of coercion; and (2) There is more to the story than simply justice in a political sense: Rand would share with a number of critics of Rawls (or of contemporary mainstream liberalism) the view that a flourishing society would require a conception of virtue for people to adopt; for Rand, especially, a society the members of which are educated in the ways of virtue would be one where politics is hardly needed at all (except for the most minimal rights-protecting functions), for such a society would likely be very full of people who are already flourishing. (A big question, then, is how we could educate a large segment of society in the ways of virtue, i.e., what sort of program of education we ought and are able to adopt and apply effectively. In any event, this process of education would require time.)

Aesthetics

Rand's aesthetics have been little-explored, including by the current author. Here some basics will have to do: Rand saw art as a means of depicting life "as it might be and ought to be." Art serves a fundamental spiritual need in man, and its products affect the audience on a sense-of-life level, sense of life being "a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence." Aesthetics, then, would be concerned with the relation between consciously and rationally-adopted values on the one hand, and the immediate, emotional, and subconscious reaction to works of art or beauty on the other. Further, the spiritual needs of man are as integral to Rand's worldview as they are to any religious one; they are located here in the natural world rather than in relation to a supernatural one.

Other

In connection with both epistemology and "sense of life," Rand and other Objectivists have spoken of the subject of psycho-epistemology, or "the study of man’s cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious." This is an intriguing line of study, for it informs us on how people habitually approach their mental content. Psycho-epistemology is chiefly concerned with method, from the standpoint of how our rationally and consciously-directed processes interact with the immediately and automatically given, such as emotions, subconsciously-given intuition, or even habituated (and therefore automatized) thought processes themselves. Automatization is a big concept here and arguably requires some development; among other things, it ties into how we understand the subconscious as being a repository of automatized content and method. A study of psychology also comes to bear on understanding what is automatized in our thought processes, and how. Rand's aim as epistemologist was to make our consciously-directed thought processes so well-formed and habituated that they work in harmony with the subconscious; ideally, sound thought processes would come more or less automatically after habituation - though always, of course, subject to volitional assessment.

Rand's "style" of doing philosophy as it pertains to polemics directed against other thinkers, leaves something to be desired. Many of her claims reduce other thinkers such as Kant to caricatures, and her approach is one of "good guys vs. villains" instead of one of acknowledging other philosophers as providing incomplete, perhaps confused, perhaps even bad, but nonetheless thoughtful and honestly-reasoned perspectives on the Big Issues. This is one aspect of Rand's approach that can be fairly called a blind spot - indeed, one that is often incomplete, confused, bad, etc., even if thoughtful or reasoned in some way or other. She should not be looked to for information on the history of philosophy, just as few commentators should be looked to for information on Rand's ideas herself; the best thing to do in both cases is to study the relevant literature. (It is fair to say, though, that she had a correct basic grasp of the importance of philosophy as it affects the course of history.) It is fair enough to say that Rand's basic sympathies were with Aristotle, while legitimate differences with Plato, Kant and others would arise from that basic sympathy.

Rand's foremost student, Leonard Peikoff, received her full endorsement in a general letter of recommendation (reproduced in Letters of Ayn Rand, Dutton, 1995), and his lecture courses on Objectivism (e.g. Understanding Objectivism, 1983-4) provide valuable insights into Objectivism especially in terms of methodology as distinct from content. The basic content of her philosophy is set forth in complete form in his Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1991), which is based on a 1976 course which she endorsed. His later courses presuppose a familiarity with the content, and seek instead to provide a guide to everyday thinking processes (philosophically or non), stressing the central methodological concepts of integration, hierarchy, and context. While the courses are almost prohibitively expensive, and Peikoff adopts at times Rand's tendencies in polemics, a full scholarly study of Objectivism should take these courses into account. The aim with the courses, as with Rand's own writings, is the integration of theory and practice, of philosophy and life.

Conclusion

Rand is certainly worth taking seriously as a thinker, despite misgivings I and others have over certain things. I would not expect scholars to find a whole lot that is both new and compelling about her metaphysics. Her epistemology, if correctly understood in its aims, provides a lot of useful material in terms of thinking methods and practical application to the task of day-to-day living. A very small number of thinkers have even yet approached her epistemological writings in these terms. Her ethics stands or falls with the strength of eudaemonism, which is a very promising mainstream alternative to deontology and consequentialism. Her meta-ethics, dealing with concepts of goodness and value, should at the very least stimulate thoughts in these areas, and may help lead to fully-worked-out treatments by scholars of the concept of goodness in naturalistic or perceptually-based terms. Her politics stresses the fundamental importance of freedom of the individual and the tie between ethics and politics. In sum, her epistemology, ethics and political philosophy are areas of strength in her thinking, and where further scholarly study or detailed working-out is warranted.

If Kubrick directed House

One noticeable stylistic difference would be the lack of shaky camera movements. How did such amateurish shit become part of the mainstream television aesthetic today? Why do viewers put up with it? (Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?)

(I've also noticed, production-values wise, that Fox News's "static" camera is much preferable to the "floating" camera used on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Hell, Fox News is simply better, production-values wise. For the life of me I don't know why MSNBC doesn't take some hints.)

Thinking in Essentials: Huck Finn

So some PC twats have determined that an original work of art by Mark Twain is suitable material for "sanitization." Now, how much of the national discussion has centered around the very premise of this sanitization vis a vis respect for the integrity of an artwork?

All I've seen is debate over a less essential, less fundamental issue: how we should treat the term "nigger" in today's culture. Surely we don't solve that problem by going around and censoring "offending" works of art, do we? (It's not hard to imagine how, if anything, this censorship would only add to the country's racial problems. That's if you take a long-term view of these things, rather than a pragmatistic "quick fix" approach which is all these PC fucks ever know.) And where is the uproar about censoring works of art, which should be the immediate sense-of-life issue involved? WTF? What have we as a country come to, that this is even a subject of reasoned debate and discussion?

The essential here: reject "sanitizing"-censorship outright, as a corruption through and through. If the PC shits can't even get that right, how can we expect them to get the daunting matter of race relations in this country right? Failing to respect an artwork reflects so deep and fundamental a cognitive failing that we have to address that failing before we ever get to the issue of race relations. The nature of the cognitive hierarchy and cognitive integration demands it.

Jeezus Effing C, people.

(Thanks a lot again, modern philosophy.)

[ADDENDUM: Yes, I'm aware of how Rand used the term "censorship," as "pertaining only to government action." Her definition has hardly ever sat well with me, as we still need a term to cover any act of stifling freedom of expression. The term "self-censorship" does make sense. Rand was, however, making the obviously useful distinction between acts of government and acts of private parties - one that the leftist PC-fuck types run roughshod over on the premise that private capitalistic activities can be oppressive. A relevant factor from the standpoint of force and legality, in this instance, is that we're dealing with a public-domain work, so the issue has to do with respecting artistic expression in a more general sense.]