Aristotle and Ayn Rand redux

My main article on the subject, from January of this year, is here; I've also provided some notes as to Aristotle-Rand similarities in my "Perfectivism: An Introduction" from December of last year.  As anyone who has done the relevant research knows by now, Ayn Rand's ethics (both the meta-ethics and the normative ethics) is a leading modern contender to the neo-Aristotelian throne.  Scholarly interpretation of Rand's ethics over the last few decades has converged upon a neo-Aristotelian interpretation of her ethical egoism; a very prominent recent case in point of said scholarship is Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge, 2006).

(I'll note as a glaring example of left-"liberal" cognitive bias that many on today's left aren't even aware of literature such as this, else they wouldn't put their ignorance of such way out on display for all to see; I conjecture that the cognitive bias involved here has to do with an unexamined prejudice - perverting their perception of what's fact and what isn't - namely, that "Rand isn't taken seriously by academic philosophers."  This cognitive prejudice is actively encouraged in intellectually-incestuous leftist venues such as reddit and its joke of a "philosophy" forum, via the intellectually and morally corrupt mob rule generated by its upvote/downvote model.  Things were better in the days of widespread Usenet usage.)

So I bring this subject up because of a current internet poll on the subject of the most important moral philosophers in the history of Western thought, supervised by the Leading Brand(TM) among philosophy blogs.  The poll results for the top 10 appear thuswise:

1. Aristotle  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Immanuel Kant  loses to Aristotle by 307–170

3. Plato  loses to Aristotle by 341–134, loses to Immanuel Kant by 292–191

4. David Hume  loses to Aristotle by 402–76, loses to Plato by 302–167

5. John Stuart Mill  loses to Aristotle by 407–78, loses to David Hume by 241–223

6. Socrates  loses to Aristotle by 385–77, loses to John Stuart Mill by 249–196

7. Thomas Hobbes  loses to Aristotle by 455–22, loses to Socrates by 266–163

8. John Rawls  loses to Aristotle by 452–31, loses to Thomas Hobbes by 220–212

9. Jeremy Bentham  loses to Aristotle by 439–36, loses to John Rawls by 224–207

10. Aquinas  loses to Aristotle by 445–18, loses to Jeremy Bentham by 241–176

So we have philosophy's "Big Three" at the top, although second place is a distant second and third place a distant third behind second (and fourth place a distant fourth behind third).

Now, the poll's supervisor is a big-time intellectual bigot when it comes to Ayn Rand, and - unsurprisingly - Rand is not included among the 50 philosophers to choose from in the poll.  (In the Irony Dept., this very same blogger has a posting today about injustice within the profession, namely not giving credit where it's due.  Also, in top form for him, he had this to say just yesterday: "What a sick, pathetic country [the United States] is."  Perhaps part of what makes it so "sick and pathetic" is an anti-dialectical estrangement between the professional intellectual class and the unwashed - an estrangement perpetrated and perpetuated to no small extent by the intellectuals themselves?  Physician, heal thyself?)  Anyway, what interests me is: if Aristotle is indeed the most important moral philosopher in the Western tradition, where does Rand (objectively) belong in the results of such a poll?  Who, after all, has been more emphatic than Rand about rationality being the primary virtue, which is the core idea in the most plausible version(s) of Aristotelian-perfectionist ethical theory?

Without proposing a specific answer here, I think the question itself is worth taking seriously.

No, Rand did not write a stand-alone nonfiction treatise in ethical theory.  Her essay "The Objectivist Ethics" runs to all of about 25 pages (and she unfairly denigrates Aristotle in that essay no less).  However, let's not forget about the "authorized" status of Leonard Peikoff's 1976 lecture course, The Philosophy of Objectivism, which devotes one of its 12 two-and-a-half-hour lectures to the subject of moral virtue (which appears as chapter 8 in Peikoff's print-adaptation of that course, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and which more or less forms the basis of Tara Smith's Virtuous Egoist, which is more or less "vetted" by Peikoff via discussions with the author).  That chapter runs to 75 pages (on top of 45 pages in Chapter 7 on the subject of "The Good," which has a section on Rationality as the Primary Virtue).  Not that any of this is new to seasoned students of Rand, but I'm covering bases for any newbies.  So we have about 120 pages worth of nonfiction ethical writing in the "official Objectivist canon" - not exactly lightweight stuff as such measures go.

And how about Rand's fiction, anyway?  Large books illustrating the principles involved.  There's one thing that I've (inductively) noticed lately about large books: they tend to be written by intellectual heavy-hitters.  (This is not to say that the observation runs in reverse, i.e., that heavy-hitters tend to write large books.)  Large volumes (around 600 pages or more) in my collection of books, in addition to Rand's two big novels, include: Plato: Collected Dialogues; Basic Works of Aristotle; The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson; multiple volumes by Marquis de Sade; The Marx-Engels Reader; The Portable Nietzsche and Basic Writings of Nietzsche; Copleston's History of Philosophy; Mises's Human Action; Letters of Ayn Rand (a page-turner and one of the four most essential Rand books to have, IMHO, in addition to the two big novels and the Lexicon) and Journals of Ayn Rand; Rawls's A Theory of Justice; Charles Taylor's Hegel; Nozick's Philosophical Explanations; Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near; Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Zinn's A People's History of the United States; The Freud Reader, the Holy Bible; and last but not least, Shakespeare's complete works.  (Now, if only someone, somewhere could integrate all that's good in these many large volumes into a single unit priced at, oh, say, $4.20 apiece, and not go "on strike" before making said unit available for public sale....)

On a related note, there's moral philosopher Derek Parfit's recent two-volume On What Matters, which, as I've noted, contains next to zero discussion of the philosopher appearing at #1 in the poll above.  Perhaps some prominent academic philosophers have some effed-up ideas about whom and what is important, and thereby lack the wherewithal to unite historical concretes in accordance with fundamentally important similarities?  (I'll just note that when the poll above had only one vote, Nietzsche topped the list.  I wonder who that first voter might have been?  Oh, the irony just keeps on pouring in, dunnit?  What, am I the asshole here?)

Two days left . . . .

Perfecting the Art of Thinking

Nicely done, self. Keep it up! :-)

[ADDENDUM: Focus!]

Ayn Rand on Human Perfection

"Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute."
- John Galt's radio address, from Atlas Shrugged, p. 1059 (Softcover)

A Mind-Nugget Re: Utopia

A standard objection to laissez-faire capitalism or to utopian visions more generally is that "It would work only if people were morally better; as it is, people are too destructive in their behaviors." Unfortunately, that seems to be a discussion-ender for many people; the idea of bringing about a society of morally-better people just doesn't strike them as realistic enough to even entertain, or for it to even occur to them. All we know, historically, is a mixed record of human behavior.

My current project is focused, meanwhile, on how to bring about a society of morally-better people. Not only would objections to laissez-faire fall apart if there is a realistic blueprint for human moral perfection in place, but all other sorts of problems and objections, over and above politics, go away. So at the least I have a one-up on a lot of critics or opponents of laissez-faire: true enough, even if you don't need morally perfect or better people for laissez-faire capitalism to be the most desirable socio-economic system, you just cover a lot more ground when you begin to focus on the issue and the question of human moral perfection or betterment, over and above how well markets and property rights "work." (This is exactly an illustration of the nature of hierarchy: a philosopher, in drawing broader and broader integrations, covers more and more all-encompassing ground.)

Here's the next further-encompassing integration: we are all committed, in some fashion or other, whether we all realize it or not, to achieving just the kind of utopia I aim to provide a blueprint for. How is this? Well, we know it is achievable in principle, because of one thing a great many of us already accept: we have free will.

Free will makes possible Nazi Germany - and it makes possible laissez-faire utopia. There's really nothing hard to figure out here. To deny that we can end up with either of these is to deny the causal efficacy of consciousness and its products. (Even those who "deny free will" can't realistically deny that people can be greatly influenced by ideas swirling around in their cultural environment.) Further, as a certain novelist-philosopher put it, our basic and most fundamental virtue - that which (metaphysically) makes the greatest number of others possible, and which (epistemologically) explains the greatest number of others - is the virtue of rationality, which amounts in practice to nothing more than an integral commitment to thinking. (This also explains the last line in a comprehensive philosophical book by said novelist-philosopher's best student.) Not only that, but intellectual and moral virtue can make our lives - individually and socially - a lot better. So there's great incentive and reward involved with being morally better.

That's all it fundamentally comes down to: the virtue of thinking.

[ADDENDUM: "She was thinking all the time." -Harry Binswanger, in 100 Voices and/or "Centenary Reminiscences" - in reference, concretely, to Rand's manner of arriving at her concept of "value." She just spent all her time thinking about it - with no other thinker she could really refer to, save perhaps for Aristotle - before she found a fundamental explanatory answer. A real philosopher should be at least as fascinated by her process of thinking and arriving at answers, as by the answers themselves. It's really of secondary importance here whether the conclusions and arguments she used are true and sound. Given where she started and what she had to work with, it's really quite amazing what she managed to integrate in the time she had. It's exactly why Peikoff, Binswanger, Gotthelf and other trained philosophers in her midst compared her to Aristotle. It's not some fawning fucking cult-like devotion, but a natural response to the fact that she out-thought everyone she came in contact with, including being able to prove convincingly everything that seemed "weird" to outsiders or the uninitiated. (Up to and including the reasons she broke with that slimy bastard Branden.) It's just mind-boggling how so few people have picked up on this. What failure of thinking brings this about? Having only Aristotle and perhaps Nietzsche as chief formative influences, and philosophizing mid-20th-century, how formidable a system of thought could others come up with? Rand just fuckin' blows the others away, that's all there is to it; the rest is just a matter of explaining that point to anyone with a curious and functioning mind. And that's why her opposition is so often so disgusting. (But it can be corrected.)]

Ground Zero Mosque: A and not-A

First, the bigotry:

Palin (7/18): "Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. ."

Gingrich (7/21): "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."

Pawlenty (8/6): "I think it's inappropriate... From a patriotic standpoint, it's hallowed ground, it's sacred ground, and we should respect that. We shouldn't have images or activities that degrade or disrespect that in any way."

Huckabee (8/4): Even if the Muslims have the right to build it, don’t they do more to serve the public interest by exercising the responsible judgement to not build it, given that it’s really offensive to most New Yorkers and Americans? Or is it just that we can offend Americans and Christians, but not foreigners and Muslims?"

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom (today): "Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero. The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site."

Now that I'm back from vomiting, I'd like to distill the essence of what is going on here.

All of these 2012 hopefuls are looking to secure the nomination of a party that is intellectually hopeless. This playing-to-the-base is religious bigotry and runs counter to all liberal values of the West. But here's the disgusting part: They are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. In other words, they are trying to have their irrational religious bigotry and they are trying their damnedest to reconcile this with some semblance of reasonableness and tolerance.

It cannot be done.

What we have, as a result, is contortions of logic in order to fit the square of unreason into the circle of reason. To anyone who can smell disingenuous bad faith from a mile off, this stuff stinks.

Basically, in order to secure the 2012 nomination, all the likely hopefuls are shitting away any pretense to intellectual integrity. What's more, this is a necessary consequence of what the GOP has become: an intellectual cesspool.

As Andrew Sullivan keeps saying, and the GOP leaders keep dishonestly evading: "It will only get worse before it gets better."