Ed,
Thanks very much for the kind words. I have been struggling for some time to answer the question as to why Objectivism has not made more progress in the last half century. Since I wrote this last night, my head has been spinning. I am honestly not sure if applying Freud’s analysis of religion’s positive influence holds the key or not, but that hypothesis definitely has me enthralled at the moment.
In a way, it almost seems as if I am saying what should be obvious: the critics of egoism consider such an ethical outlook as destructive to the delicate social fabric that protects against Hobbes’ classic "war of all against all.” And certainly a number of Rand’s critics have compared her to Hobbes, even though he was a psychological rather than an ethical egoist, contending that authoritarian government was necessary to enforce social justice.
The Objectivist literature certainly includes some writings on the question of what rational selfishness means on the social level. Rand’s essay on the “Conflicts of Men’s Interests” and David Kelley’s monograph on “Unrugged Individualism” are obvious examples. And, of course, Atlas Shrugged. For the most part, however, our polemical attention has been focused on clarifying what selfishness means on an individual level—following certain principles to achieve a successful life—i.e., personal happiness. And we have defended capitalism from the same ethical perspective—as the economic system that promotes such happiness.
What occurs to me now is that this discussion has taken place outside the context of the comtemporary philosophical and cultural understanding of the language we use. Most especially, our discussion of the primary virtue—rationality. “Rationality,” as Rand states, “is man’s basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues…The virtue of rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action.”
But our discussion of that primary virtue has fallen on deaf ears, because our understanding of what rationality means is so foreign to both academic philosophers and the average man. It is as if we have been speaking a foreign language. As an exercise in what can only be described as abusive self-torture, I have been forcing myself to read extensively on the topic of postmodern philosophy, and it is truly astonishing to see serious thinkers calmly “explaining” that the law of noncontradiction has been thoroughly “disproven.” Such thinking is what now passes as “logic” in academic circles.
As for the average man on the street, how common is it to hear such expressions as: “We all have our separate realities,” “you can’t trust your senses,” “that may be logical to you but not to me,” “racial/gender-based logic,” “there is no such thing as objectivity,” et. al.? Those trite cliches are our ethical undoing.
When we defend egoism on the individual level, in terms of something akin to self-fulfillment, we may have some limited success. But what Objectivists may be missing is that the average person is unable to extrapolate that and apply it to the social level, which is where most people understand morality to apply. That’s where all the misconceptions about reason and rationality start to confuse their thinking. The notion of rational self-interest simply does not compute, so to speak, on the macro level, and they fall back onto conventional ideas about altruism and self-sacrifice.
Rationality is not a fundamental guiding principle for most people; it is, at best, what Rand called “a junk heap of undigested slogans.” So the term self-interest, in their minds, translates to subjective whim-worship, self-indulgence and the “war of all against all.”
The perfect example of this is the modern liberal. Here is a quote from Dinesh D’Souza:
Here, at the deepest level, is the divide between conservatives and liberals, between Red America and Blue America. Conservatives believe in traditional morality. Liberals believe in personal autonomy and self-fulfillment. And liberals have been winning the culture war in the sense that they have been able to produce a massive transformation of American society and culture along the lines of their new moral code. [from The Enemy at Home]
What D’Souza does not acknowledge is that these same liberals promote the worst kind of bureaucratic spending and regulation in the name of the traditional values of altruism and self-sacrifice. Liberals may well believe in some form of autonomy or self-fulfillment, but they do not genuinely translate that into moral terms. If D’Souza truly inquired into their deepest moral beliefs, he would find that they held egoism in the same low regard as he does.
To restate the central point of my essay: Objectivism’s promotion of rational self-interest will continue to be cursorily dismissed as irrelevant and potentially destructive to society, unless and until we successfully redeem the true meaning of reason and rationality. That is where our most intense philosophical efforts are most urgently needed. As it presently stands, nobody can hear us because nobody can understand what we are trying to say.
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