Objectivism advertises itself as a “philosophy for living on earth.” Objectivism rejects the theory/practice dichotomy and holds that a true philosophy, that is, Objectivism, is a necessary instrument to a successful, happy life. The clear implication is that a consistent, integrated practitioner of Objectivism ought to be more successful and happy than people who do not espouse and practice Objectivism. However, one need only leave the house to see thousands of happy, well-adjusted people who know nothing of Objectivism, and one need only attend an Objectivist conference to observe a depressingly high ratio of the awkward, alienated and unhappy to the well-adjusted and happy. The fact that most successful, happy people are not Objectivists, and in fact espouse philosophical opinions opposed to Objectivism, ought to give Objectivists pause. But it doesn’t. Why not?
Because Objectivism rejects the theory/practice dichotomy, it makes a falsifiable empirical prediction. Depending on the correct interpretation of the Objectivist standard of value, Objectivism predicts that Objectivists should either live longer or have happier (more successfully flourishing) lives than non-Objectivists. But there is no reason that I know of to believe that Objectivists live longer than average well-educated, middle class and wealthy white people (Objectivists are almost all middle class and wealthy whites). And, based on my own experience, Objectivists are not happier or in better psychological health than other people. Indeed, none of the happiest, most flourishing people in my experience are Objectivists, and I’ve met a lot of Objectivists.
The Objectivist can respond to this in number of ways. Here are two. First, she can say that few self-professed Objectivists (or “students of Objectivism”) have properly integrated the philosophy. But if this is the case, one wonders why a philosophy that is so hard for actual people to successfully implement is especially good for “living on earth.” Second, the Objectivist can say that insofar as non-Objectivists are doing well in life, they must be acting, perhaps unwittingly, on premises that are consistent with Objectivism. This is arbitrary and ad hoc. There is a great deal of evidence that many successful, happy, long-lived people in fact act according to premises Objectivism rules false and therefore impractical. If your mystical, other-focused, self-sacrificing grandmother dies happy at 95 years old, what are we to think of Objectivism’s empirical conjecture?
This brings me to my main thrust of today’s letter. Objectivism has risibly inadequate picture of human nature. It is therefore unable to provide truly useful practical guidance for non-fictional human beings. Objectivism’s most serious problem in this regard is in seriously addressing the essentially social nature of human beings and accounting for the values and virtues of human sociality. A good text in anthropology, social psychology, or evolutionary psychology can be read as an extended argument for the inadequacy of Objectivism as a practical philosophy for actual human beings.
This objection goes very deep. But some of the problems are right there on the surface. If Objectivism is a practical philosophy for real Earthlings, then what is the Objectivist theory of the family? What is the Objectivist theory of the value of childrearing? This is no small lack for a purportedly practical philosophy. Almost every human being for the entirety of history has lived and raised children in extended family groups. As a good first approximation, that just is human life. And Objectivism has nothing to say about it.
At a deeper level, Rand’s failure to understand and integrate the evidence of biology and anthropology into her picture of human nature leads to a distorted picture of our psychological constitution. Take family and children. Our very existence depends on built-in psychological dispositions to create and raise children. It’s a bizarre over-intellectualized distortion of our nature to understand the human desire for sex and physical intimacy as reflecting personal philosophical premises. Furthermore, the evidence is that human beings are naturally coalitional (tribal, if you will), obsessed (like all primates) with status and dominance, and that huge portions of the mind are devoted to the problem of navigating the social world. Furthermore, we have deep needs for casual physical and emotional intimacy. We need to feel welcome and included in groups. We need to feel liked. Social disapproval makes us very sad and often angry.
But Objectivism has very little to say about these facets of our social nature, other than to provide over-intellectualized rationalist just-so stories about the implicitly philosophical dimensions of phenomena that are in fact largely non-cognitively emotional and biochemical. (The relation of trust and cooperation to oxytocin levels, for example, does not appear to be an especially intellectual or philosophical matter.) There is useful insight in the Objectivist critique of “second handers” and “social metaphysics,” but this insight is mostly useless absent a better understanding and accommodation of the natural human tendencies that lead so many of us to fall into these traps.
If there is one thing that made it so that I could no longer take Objectivism very seriously, it is the failure of Objectivism to come even close to doing justice to the social nature of human beings. For a philosophy devoted to reason, there is a marked tendency to simply dismiss empirical evidence about human nature that is inconsistent with Ayn Rand’s idiosyncratic vision. Now, I think it’s perfectly natural and predictable that coalition human beings will be subject to confirmation bias and will tend to discount argument and evidence that threatens their intellectual and emotional commitments. It’s just what people do. But one can’t help but enjoy the irony in the Objectivist’s case.
Thankfully, there is in fact some slack between theory and practice. People can often get along fine with false beliefs (and can arguably get along better, depending on the belief.) And Objectivists, being humans, know more about living decent lives among other humans than Objectivism allows. So I don’t worry too much about my Objectivist friends. That said, a philosophy for living on Earth really ought to be able to do a better job of helping us think about what we ought to do given what we really are.
[I'll have more to say about the Objectivist view of human nature on my next letter on the Objectivist ethics.]
Great post, Will. It brings to mind a similar question: could Rand have ever written her characters to be or have children? Roark, Wynand, Rearden, and Galt were all either orphans or had non-entities for parents; they were essentially self-sufficient adults all their lives. Can you picture any of them as parents themselves? Or more scarily, Ayn as a mother? The only scene with children I remember from either major novel is a couple of kids scampering around Happy Valley. They might as well have been animatronic museum pieces for all the exploration Rand put into their psychology.
That’s just one more example of where Objectivism doesn’t get the sociality that’s a major part of most people’s lives. And having also attended an Objectivist seminar, I agree with you that it’s definitely not the only one.
Keep the letters coming!
You make some great observations, will. I’ve contributed to the discussion a bit over on my blog, in an entry called “On Objectivism and Living Well.”
Jacob, Thanks. There’s a reason the Simpson’s Ayn Rand School for Tots (or whatever) joke is funny.
Josh, I really like your post. I hope people follow your link and check it out.
How are things, Will? Really enjoyed your post (thanks for the tip, Josh). I remember from years ago that you and I seemed often to think along the same philosophical lines. No exception here. Keep up the good stuff. Hopefully, I’ll have time to read your blog more (I really, really liked a post from awhile back on belief in God and how, as intellectuals, we break the solidarity of the “conspiracies of belief” that we find ourselves implicated in). Let’s renew our connection sometime soon!
Will, excellent post. Objectivism really is a stranger to all accurate theories of human nature. I would add that an unscientific demonstration of the failings of trying to live the Randian good life, and the effect of so doing, can be found in Branden’s biography of Rand ‘Passion of Ayn Rand’. To put it bluntly, the utter strangeness of the Randian good life is astonishing. Now of course people are welcome to live “strange lives” and i welcome a world in which they are allowed to do so – but if their theories pretend to be accurate descriptions of human nature and flourishing, then their failings need to be pointed out.
Reminds me of Sam Johnson kicking his stone… I’ve always thought the first question that should occur to neophyte objectivists encountering the objectivist movement was: “If man’s happiness is the highest moral purpose, why do these guys seem a good deal more bitter and angry than average?”
Another facet Rand got wrong (in relation to human nature and in this case, aesthetic needs) is her espousal of Modernist architecture. I watched the movie version of the Fountainhead a couple years ago and laughed out loud at Cooper’s (Roark’s) building plans–they looked like Cabrini-Green (public housing instaslums). Roark makes Mike Brady look like Daniel Burnham, er, Le Corbusier! Anyway, I’m now reading a sadly obscure treatise on architecture by Roger Scruton entitled “The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism” that discusses the semantic and aesthetic poverty in modernist buildings. It seems to me that all systems of thought that see fit to jettison past knowledge and experience are destined to be shallow and short-lived, justifiably so. So it’s no surprise that Rand advocated the cold, “rational” style of Bauhaus, Mies and Corbu to represent her philosophy. Reducing society to the individual is just as specious as the modernist architects reducing building to the “essence” of form. As Scruton writes, reducing the essence of a building to its form is like reducing the essence of the human body to its skeleton. And to run with the primate slant, we’re also highly visual creatures that enjoy the complex patterns and aesthetic flourishes of architecture that our species produced for millenia before the modernists “discovered” it to be lacking. Thank god such “genius” is rare. And thank god both dogmas have at last begun to fade…
Aaron, Great point. I’ve had the same thought. In fact, I think I remember a drunken conversation this summer with my friend TP while stalking around the Jefferson-designed lawn at UVA looking for a way to climb onto the roof (we failed). . . . Roark’s rejection of traditional modes of architecture is evidence of Rand’s tendency to over-intellectualize and to inject philosophical premises into something far more organic and human. The Bauhaus, for example, was in fact a radical socialist movement bent on altering human nature by changing the way we relate to our environment (or so I recall). Rand didn’t want to change human nature, exactly, but she wanted to change the way people think about the way the individual relates to society and so forth. Roark’s modernism is of a piece with Rand’s misunderstanding of human nature, especially our mundane needs for warmth, comfort, security, etc.
And, hey. Are you Marshalltown Aaron Eads? I bet you are. Cool.
Aaron, Wil- I was enjoying the thoughtful thread about theory/practice and family life, but you lost me with the architecture slam. As I took it, the modern architecture was a metaphor for individualism — it’s not that we’re all supposed to live in Bauhaus buildings. The Fountainhead isn’t about homeowners, it’s about an architect, but it’s not about modernism per se. They keep telling Roark to (a) build to suit lowest-common-denominator tastes and (b)in essence, copy the designs of others. His response is, I’ll build according to my own vision, thanks. I took Rand to be using this as a device to dramatize something about being an individual, more than as a brief for why should all be in modernist housing. It’s true that the buildings in the film of the Foutainhead aren’t that attractive, but the allegorical point is their originality.
Aaron, Will, Aeon,
Wait a minute…
You can’t take the drawings in the movie as indicative of the kinds of buildings Howard Roark was designing. Supposedly Rand had nothing to do with those drawings and was disappointed when she saw them.
An obvious model for Roark was Frank Lloyd Wright. (Consider the description of Monadnock Valley in the book.) Fire away at Wright if you want… But there’s not much reason to think that Rand had Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in mind.
Robert Campbell
Aeon,
You’re right, but I still think there is in fact something very perverse about Howard Roark and the idea of the individualist architect hero. The point of a building is not to embody the architect’s fantasies about how people should live, but actually to accomodate and facilitate living given the way people in fact live. If people like non-functional ornamentation that references the past (I know I do) then they should have it. Roark is in effect arguing, like a good leftist, that people on the market have the wrong preferences and must be corrected by his superior vision.
Robert,
I’m sure you’re right. That said, how come we hear so little about Howard Roark interiors?
Will,
I think what would make Roark a good leftist is if he wanted to have the government force his taste on others.
I think it’s perfectly okay to be disgusted by the tastes of others. Just don’t force them to change their tastes!
“Roark is in effect arguing, like a good leftist, that people on the market have the wrong preferences and must be corrected by his superior vision.”
Not at all. He just doesn’t want to be forced to build according to the dictates of a style other than his own. He likes to build a certain way, and if people want those buildings, great, if not, he’ll find other work. “I don’t build in order to have clients, I have clients in order to build.” That line, and the line about a building having integrity “just like a man, and just as seldom” point towards an allegorical reading, not as a mindless endorsement of modernism for its own sake.
OK, you’re all right.
Yeah Will, it’s me. Great blog. (We used to call him Bill!)
Hell yeah. Bill! Billy Boy. Bill-meister! I like it!
Very shrewd and civilly-argued piece, Will. I think one of the problems with Objectivism (of the capital O variety, anyway), is that it is that it misses a lot of important stuff out. There is a lot about Rand’s writings I admire and have learned about, but there are holes too. To give credit where it is due, though, some of the smarter folk out there in the Randian camp, like David Kelley or Sciabarra are doing something about it.
You are quite right to locate some of the non-intellectual sources of happiness. Our understanding of what makes humans what they are in some ways is still in its infancy. Lots of good stuff out there to study.
One quibble — I don’t think objectivists have dismissed family life per se or the enjoyment of being in a group. The key of course is being in a group where one has the choice to leave if necessary. For a child that obviously is pretty difficult. Sure, we value the love of a good family — but not at any price. Freedom to choose is what counts. And Rand championed that.
Jacob, you wrote: “The only scene with children I remember from either major novel is a couple of kids scampering around Happy Valley. They might as well have been animatronic museum pieces for all the exploration Rand put into their psychology.”
Is every novel required to explore child psychology? I don’t recall anyone criticizing Shakespeare for failing to do so.
Robert Campbell wrote: “You can’t take the drawings in the movie as indicative of the kinds of buildings Howard Roark was designing. Supposedly Rand had nothing to do with those drawings and was disappointed when she saw them.”
You’re quite right. Rand hated the drawings, but was not asked for her approval. People too often blame the writer of a book for the failings of its adaptors.
Barbara
Happiness
by Randy Ayn
Dominique rifled through the medicine chest.
“Where is my goddamn Zoloft?” she mumbled.
As Dominique pushed the cabinet door to, she glimpsed Roark’s face behind her in the mirror. He had come from the quarry. He was dirty from toiling and using the PortaJohns. Dominique could see a hint of disappointment in his Apollonian face.
“Fuck off,” she said and gulped down a pill.
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Great post, Will. It brings to mind a similar question: could Rand have ever written her characters to be or have children? Roark, Wynand, Rearden, and Galt were all either orphans or had non-entities for parents; they were essentially self-sufficient adults all their lives. Can you picture any of them as parents themselves? Or more scarily, Ayn as a mother? The only scene with children I remember from either major novel is a couple of kids scampering around Happy Valley. They might as well have been animatronic museum pieces for all the exploration Rand put into their psychology.
That’s just one more example of where Objectivism doesn’t get the sociality that’s a major part of most people’s lives. And having also attended an Objectivist seminar, I agree with you that it’s definitely not the only one.
Keep the letters coming!
You make some great observations, will. I’ve contributed to the discussion a bit over on my blog, in an entry called “On Objectivism and Living Well.”
Jacob, Thanks. There’s a reason the Simpson’s Ayn Rand School for Tots (or whatever) joke is funny.
Josh, I really like your post. I hope people follow your link and check it out.
How are things, Will? Really enjoyed your post (thanks for the tip, Josh). I remember from years ago that you and I seemed often to think along the same philosophical lines. No exception here. Keep up the good stuff. Hopefully, I’ll have time to read your blog more (I really, really liked a post from awhile back on belief in God and how, as intellectuals, we break the solidarity of the “conspiracies of belief” that we find ourselves implicated in). Let’s renew our connection sometime soon!
Will, excellent post. Objectivism really is a stranger to all accurate theories of human nature. I would add that an unscientific demonstration of the failings of trying to live the Randian good life, and the effect of so doing, can be found in Branden’s biography of Rand ‘Passion of Ayn Rand’. To put it bluntly, the utter strangeness of the Randian good life is astonishing. Now of course people are welcome to live “strange lives” and i welcome a world in which they are allowed to do so – but if their theories pretend to be accurate descriptions of human nature and flourishing, then their failings need to be pointed out.
Reminds me of Sam Johnson kicking his stone… I’ve always thought the first question that should occur to neophyte objectivists encountering the objectivist movement was: “If man’s happiness is the highest moral purpose, why do these guys seem a good deal more bitter and angry than average?”
Another facet Rand got wrong (in relation to human nature and in this case, aesthetic needs) is her espousal of Modernist architecture. I watched the movie version of the Fountainhead a couple years ago and laughed out loud at Cooper’s (Roark’s) building plans–they looked like Cabrini-Green (public housing instaslums). Roark makes Mike Brady look like Daniel Burnham, er, Le Corbusier! Anyway, I’m now reading a sadly obscure treatise on architecture by Roger Scruton entitled “The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism” that discusses the semantic and aesthetic poverty in modernist buildings. It seems to me that all systems of thought that see fit to jettison past knowledge and experience are destined to be shallow and short-lived, justifiably so. So it’s no surprise that Rand advocated the cold, “rational” style of Bauhaus, Mies and Corbu to represent her philosophy. Reducing society to the individual is just as specious as the modernist architects reducing building to the “essence” of form. As Scruton writes, reducing the essence of a building to its form is like reducing the essence of the human body to its skeleton. And to run with the primate slant, we’re also highly visual creatures that enjoy the complex patterns and aesthetic flourishes of architecture that our species produced for millenia before the modernists “discovered” it to be lacking. Thank god such “genius” is rare. And thank god both dogmas have at last begun to fade…
Aaron, Great point. I’ve had the same thought. In fact, I think I remember a drunken conversation this summer with my friend TP while stalking around the Jefferson-designed lawn at UVA looking for a way to climb onto the roof (we failed). . . . Roark’s rejection of traditional modes of architecture is evidence of Rand’s tendency to over-intellectualize and to inject philosophical premises into something far more organic and human. The Bauhaus, for example, was in fact a radical socialist movement bent on altering human nature by changing the way we relate to our environment (or so I recall). Rand didn’t want to change human nature, exactly, but she wanted to change the way people think about the way the individual relates to society and so forth. Roark’s modernism is of a piece with Rand’s misunderstanding of human nature, especially our mundane needs for warmth, comfort, security, etc.
And, hey. Are you Marshalltown Aaron Eads? I bet you are. Cool.
Aaron, Wil- I was enjoying the thoughtful thread about theory/practice and family life, but you lost me with the architecture slam. As I took it, the modern architecture was a metaphor for individualism — it’s not that we’re all supposed to live in Bauhaus buildings. The Fountainhead isn’t about homeowners, it’s about an architect, but it’s not about modernism per se. They keep telling Roark to (a) build to suit lowest-common-denominator tastes and (b)in essence, copy the designs of others. His response is, I’ll build according to my own vision, thanks. I took Rand to be using this as a device to dramatize something about being an individual, more than as a brief for why should all be in modernist housing. It’s true that the buildings in the film of the Foutainhead aren’t that attractive, but the allegorical point is their originality.
Aaron, Will, Aeon,
Wait a minute…
You can’t take the drawings in the movie as indicative of the kinds of buildings Howard Roark was designing. Supposedly Rand had nothing to do with those drawings and was disappointed when she saw them.
An obvious model for Roark was Frank Lloyd Wright. (Consider the description of Monadnock Valley in the book.) Fire away at Wright if you want… But there’s not much reason to think that Rand had Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in mind.
Robert Campbell
Aeon,
You’re right, but I still think there is in fact something very perverse about Howard Roark and the idea of the individualist architect hero. The point of a building is not to embody the architect’s fantasies about how people should live, but actually to accomodate and facilitate living given the way people in fact live. If people like non-functional ornamentation that references the past (I know I do) then they should have it. Roark is in effect arguing, like a good leftist, that people on the market have the wrong preferences and must be corrected by his superior vision.
Robert,
I’m sure you’re right. That said, how come we hear so little about Howard Roark interiors?
Will,
I think what would make Roark a good leftist is if he wanted to have the government force his taste on others.
I think it’s perfectly okay to be disgusted by the tastes of others. Just don’t force them to change their tastes!
“Roark is in effect arguing, like a good leftist, that people on the market have the wrong preferences and must be corrected by his superior vision.”
Not at all. He just doesn’t want to be forced to build according to the dictates of a style other than his own. He likes to build a certain way, and if people want those buildings, great, if not, he’ll find other work. “I don’t build in order to have clients, I have clients in order to build.” That line, and the line about a building having integrity “just like a man, and just as seldom” point towards an allegorical reading, not as a mindless endorsement of modernism for its own sake.
OK, you’re all right.
Yeah Will, it’s me. Great blog. (We used to call him Bill!)
Hell yeah. Bill! Billy Boy. Bill-meister! I like it!
Very shrewd and civilly-argued piece, Will. I think one of the problems with Objectivism (of the capital O variety, anyway), is that it is that it misses a lot of important stuff out. There is a lot about Rand’s writings I admire and have learned about, but there are holes too. To give credit where it is due, though, some of the smarter folk out there in the Randian camp, like David Kelley or Sciabarra are doing something about it.
You are quite right to locate some of the non-intellectual sources of happiness. Our understanding of what makes humans what they are in some ways is still in its infancy. Lots of good stuff out there to study.
One quibble — I don’t think objectivists have dismissed family life per se or the enjoyment of being in a group. The key of course is being in a group where one has the choice to leave if necessary. For a child that obviously is pretty difficult. Sure, we value the love of a good family — but not at any price. Freedom to choose is what counts. And Rand championed that.
Jacob, you wrote: “The only scene with children I remember from either major novel is a couple of kids scampering around Happy Valley. They might as well have been animatronic museum pieces for all the exploration Rand put into their psychology.”
Is every novel required to explore child psychology? I don’t recall anyone criticizing Shakespeare for failing to do so.
Robert Campbell wrote: “You can’t take the drawings in the movie as indicative of the kinds of buildings Howard Roark was designing. Supposedly Rand had nothing to do with those drawings and was disappointed when she saw them.”
You’re quite right. Rand hated the drawings, but was not asked for her approval. People too often blame the writer of a book for the failings of its adaptors.
Barbara
Happiness
by Randy Ayn
Dominique rifled through the medicine chest.
“Where is my goddamn Zoloft?” she mumbled.
As Dominique pushed the cabinet door to, she glimpsed Roark’s face behind her in the mirror. He had come from the quarry. He was dirty from toiling and using the PortaJohns. Dominique could see a hint of disappointment in his Apollonian face.
“Fuck off,” she said and gulped down a pill.
Why are you blaming Objectivism for something it never intended to do? Rand’s concerns were Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics, not Anthropology, Psychology, or Biology. Since Objectivist Ethics is rational egoism, it dealt with individual primarily, while the Politics expressed on one’s dealings with others. A simple answer to how humans should deal with one another is the “trader principle”, but even this does not exclude being charitable.
I think you’ve gotten “human nature” mixed up with human preferences, or something like it. Our human nature is a being of “volitional consciousness”, meaning primarily choosing our ideas and actions; being social and friendly are consequences of that.
Why are you blaming Objectivism for something it never intended to do? Rand’s concerns were Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics, not Anthropology, Psychology, or Biology. Since Objectivist Ethics is rational egoism, it dealt with individual primarily, while the Politics expressed on one’s dealings with others. A simple answer to how humans should deal with one another is the “trader principle”, but even this does not exclude being charitable.
I think you’ve gotten “human nature” mixed up with human preferences, or something like it. Our human nature is a being of “volitional consciousness”, meaning primarily choosing our ideas and actions; being social and friendly are consequences of that.
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