Objectivism – a very short primer
Jul. 26th, 2011 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseIn an effort to write a Bioshock crossover and generally, understand objectivism better, I’ve started reading The Fountainhead. I will of course have something to say about it when I’ve finished the novel, but for the moment, based on the short primer on objectivism at the back of the book I’m starting to see where it all unravels.
If objectivism can be broken down into six separate areas, those are grouped as follows:
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Human Nature
Ethics
Politics
Aesthetics
In the case of metaphysics the argument is simply that reality exists independent of anyone’s beliefs about it. A door is a door is a door, regardless of what you believe about its purpose, significance, origin or contribution to the world. This is something I can believe quite readily. Reality, as it stands is open to many interpretations, but at the end of the day, regardless of what you believe about said reality, you still have to interact with it successfully to achieve your aims. You are free to believe what you like, and your beliefs will shape your behaviours, but the concrete facts will always remain the same. The objective reality can be something as simple as a phonecall you make going ignored across the other side of the Atlantic. Why that phonecall is ignored is open to suggestion but the simple fact is that nobody picked up on the other side. So, this is simply a matter of dealing with the raw data as is, and I can’t think of any reason to argue that.
Epistemology, dealing with the limitation and means of acquiring knowledge, in this case being the argument that the only means of acquiring knowledge is through the use of one’s own reason. Thereby rejecting mysticism or any similar means. Similarly, this also covers the rejection of scepticism in the sense of claiming that certainty or knowledge is impossible. As I understand this, the argument being made is that knowledge is acquired through individual reason and that there is simply no point in pondering over the existential notion of further knowledge that is not yet acquired, that leaves the reasoner lacking. Again, this isn’t anything I can find a reason to refute. One can only process the given data and thereby interpret it, rendering it into a format that you understand.
On the topic of human nature, the argument is, predictably, about the exercising of human reason. Again this is another point that I can easily agree with. Situations and conditioning may well limit the choices that you have or perceive but in the end the choices you make are your own, the result of the exercising of your own reason. You may express flawed reason due to any number of things but you still make that choice. This is of course a topic that can very easily sound like victim-blaming but it’s more a case of cause and effect. Human action can be explained by the circumstances and conditioning that have forged that critical path after all, so regardless of the limited natures of choices available, one still has to choose. Thus the exercise of human reason impacts on all decisions.
When it comes to the ethics part of the argument, it’s almost Kantian in essence, in so far as the argument is made that man is an end in of himself. Though Rand doesn’t qualify, like Kant, that you’re free to make use of your fellow men as long as you do still recognise that they’re also ends in of themselves. This part of the argument is where the first issues arise. Rand’s argument is that all that is required of human beings is that they see to their own survival as rational beings, rejecting altruism entirely. Which completely contravenes Leviathan and falls into the undergraduate argument that society would just, somehow, hang together without submission to governing laws, designed to promote the good and cohesion of any given group as a whole. Of course the argument could probably be made that the notion of rational self-interest allows for this, since it would serve reason to fortify social cohesion for the various reasons already given for submitting to Leviathan’s laws in the first place. So perhaps I’m splitting hairs over this one.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the political argument that laissez-faire capitalism, with no safety nets of any sort or redistribution of wealth, would be the ideal solution, that’s where I absolutely have to disagree. An absolute laissez-faire capitalist system would work just about as well as an absolute communist one. Both models are possessed of so many flaws, most of which culminate in starving out your workforce sooner rather than later, that they aren’t workable in the real world. Absolute capitalism in particular is designed to create a lobster pit effect that will destroy the less fortunate, without even communism’s rhetoric that their deaths will serve the greater good. Either extreme leaves the workforce sinking into poverty, being priced out of the market for basic essentials and, eventually, dead. And both systems collapse spectacularly without said workforce to power them. Where the line between a command economy and a capitalist system should be drawn, isn’t something I could put my finger on, but a combination of the two, providing the required safety nets and the conditions for free enterprise to thrive would be a much more workable solution.
Lastly, the notion that the purpose of art is to illustrate the creator’s fundamental view of existence, is also something I’d quibble, if only because it then reads more into anything I’ve ever produced that is necessarily present. Certainly, in the case of anything I’ve ever written I can’t promise that it reflects anything more than a possibili6ty of a scenario rather than anything else. Perhaps the argument might be more readily applied to my piano playing, not that I’ve played the piano in years now, but even then, I’m not at all certain of what to say to the often repeated remark by my piano teacher that I played like a Russian.
Overall, my main issue is my growing argument against capitalism as anything like a solution. I don’t believe in capitalism any more than I believe in the EU anymore, and perhaps at the end of the day I’m still mourning that.
If objectivism can be broken down into six separate areas, those are grouped as follows:
In the case of metaphysics the argument is simply that reality exists independent of anyone’s beliefs about it. A door is a door is a door, regardless of what you believe about its purpose, significance, origin or contribution to the world. This is something I can believe quite readily. Reality, as it stands is open to many interpretations, but at the end of the day, regardless of what you believe about said reality, you still have to interact with it successfully to achieve your aims. You are free to believe what you like, and your beliefs will shape your behaviours, but the concrete facts will always remain the same. The objective reality can be something as simple as a phonecall you make going ignored across the other side of the Atlantic. Why that phonecall is ignored is open to suggestion but the simple fact is that nobody picked up on the other side. So, this is simply a matter of dealing with the raw data as is, and I can’t think of any reason to argue that.
Epistemology, dealing with the limitation and means of acquiring knowledge, in this case being the argument that the only means of acquiring knowledge is through the use of one’s own reason. Thereby rejecting mysticism or any similar means. Similarly, this also covers the rejection of scepticism in the sense of claiming that certainty or knowledge is impossible. As I understand this, the argument being made is that knowledge is acquired through individual reason and that there is simply no point in pondering over the existential notion of further knowledge that is not yet acquired, that leaves the reasoner lacking. Again, this isn’t anything I can find a reason to refute. One can only process the given data and thereby interpret it, rendering it into a format that you understand.
On the topic of human nature, the argument is, predictably, about the exercising of human reason. Again this is another point that I can easily agree with. Situations and conditioning may well limit the choices that you have or perceive but in the end the choices you make are your own, the result of the exercising of your own reason. You may express flawed reason due to any number of things but you still make that choice. This is of course a topic that can very easily sound like victim-blaming but it’s more a case of cause and effect. Human action can be explained by the circumstances and conditioning that have forged that critical path after all, so regardless of the limited natures of choices available, one still has to choose. Thus the exercise of human reason impacts on all decisions.
When it comes to the ethics part of the argument, it’s almost Kantian in essence, in so far as the argument is made that man is an end in of himself. Though Rand doesn’t qualify, like Kant, that you’re free to make use of your fellow men as long as you do still recognise that they’re also ends in of themselves. This part of the argument is where the first issues arise. Rand’s argument is that all that is required of human beings is that they see to their own survival as rational beings, rejecting altruism entirely. Which completely contravenes Leviathan and falls into the undergraduate argument that society would just, somehow, hang together without submission to governing laws, designed to promote the good and cohesion of any given group as a whole. Of course the argument could probably be made that the notion of rational self-interest allows for this, since it would serve reason to fortify social cohesion for the various reasons already given for submitting to Leviathan’s laws in the first place. So perhaps I’m splitting hairs over this one.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the political argument that laissez-faire capitalism, with no safety nets of any sort or redistribution of wealth, would be the ideal solution, that’s where I absolutely have to disagree. An absolute laissez-faire capitalist system would work just about as well as an absolute communist one. Both models are possessed of so many flaws, most of which culminate in starving out your workforce sooner rather than later, that they aren’t workable in the real world. Absolute capitalism in particular is designed to create a lobster pit effect that will destroy the less fortunate, without even communism’s rhetoric that their deaths will serve the greater good. Either extreme leaves the workforce sinking into poverty, being priced out of the market for basic essentials and, eventually, dead. And both systems collapse spectacularly without said workforce to power them. Where the line between a command economy and a capitalist system should be drawn, isn’t something I could put my finger on, but a combination of the two, providing the required safety nets and the conditions for free enterprise to thrive would be a much more workable solution.
Lastly, the notion that the purpose of art is to illustrate the creator’s fundamental view of existence, is also something I’d quibble, if only because it then reads more into anything I’ve ever produced that is necessarily present. Certainly, in the case of anything I’ve ever written I can’t promise that it reflects anything more than a possibili6ty of a scenario rather than anything else. Perhaps the argument might be more readily applied to my piano playing, not that I’ve played the piano in years now, but even then, I’m not at all certain of what to say to the often repeated remark by my piano teacher that I played like a Russian.
Overall, my main issue is my growing argument against capitalism as anything like a solution. I don’t believe in capitalism any more than I believe in the EU anymore, and perhaps at the end of the day I’m still mourning that.
