For my sins, I have a long-standing obsession with Ayn Rand.
Two of my first peer-reviewed articles—which I published toward the end of high school—were in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.
I was never an Objectivist, nowhere close, but I have a cult-like fascination for fruity American subcultures, and Objectivism fits that profile.
Though not an Objectivist, I’ve always been unsatisfied by the quality of discourse between Objectivists and normie philosophers, especially on the normie philosopher side. In a 2015 speech—addressing broad free-speech trends in the academy—Lawrence Summers noted:
Biology departments boycott creationists. Astronomy departments boycott astrologers. Philosophy departments almost without exception boycott Ayn Rand disciples.
In an informal poll put out by Brian Leiter, which around 1,500 philosophers responded to, 75% voted Ayn Rand the person they most wished the media would stop referring to as a “philosopher”.
Ayn Rand was, indeed, not a good philosopher, as I hope to show in essays to come. But an attitude of sneering dismissal—without any arguments to supplement it—has had two unfortunate consequences:
Objectivists are liable to assume—not not understandably—that if normie philosophers aren’t responding to Ayn Rand, they must be scared of her, or something, and know they can’t answer her extremely good, very forceful arguments.
As a result, an extremely large number of quite smart, quite talented people stay echo-chambered in Objectivist philosophical circles, and philosophy loses out on some prime human capital.
The only way out is through.
Over the coming months—and I don’t know how much longer—I plan to write a mini library of essays diagnosing (what I take to be) Ayn Rand’s top philosophical mistakes.
They won’t arrive in any systematic order. Ayn Rand Was Wrong About:
concepts
atonement
the axiology of theism
selfishness
charity
normative ethics
meta-ethics
miscellaneous religious matters
rights
Whatever I feel like writing about at the time.
Many essays will be screened behind a paywall, since I need to pay off various ransoms, but a solid number will be free for everyone!
Unlike most of Ayn Rand’s critics, I will not engage in name-calling (and won’t bring up her sex life, which is creepy and none of our business). My focus will be on the arguments, or lack thereof as the case may be.
Until then, your trusty servant,
Amos Wollen Esq.
Hi Amos,
Looking forward to following your series! I recently wrote an article on the weakness of "normie philosophers'" critiques of Rand (https://new-ideal.aynrand.org/p/why-cant-professional-philosophers). My thesis is that most of those critiques are parochial in that they're reading into her conventional premises that she's in fact calling into question, or pigeonholing her into argument forms they're comfortable evaluating but aren't in her text.
I admire her willingness to be unfashionable, but have never quite been able to see what her devotees found so brilliant in her work. On one hand, she never seriously engaged with other philosophers that I know of, other than to dismiss or disparage everyone except Aristotle, so perhaps her isolation is somewhat self-imposed. On the other, it seems like an accessible refutation or correction might be very valuable.
I can’t quite decide whether we would be better off without her, whether the ideas that I share with her would be taken more seriously if she had not warped them, or if they would be largely forgotten.
I look forward to a critical examination here.