Feb. 10, 2005

Among the Randroids

At the American Philosophical Association some years ago, the Ayn Rand Society devoted a session to exploring what Objectivism had to say about laughter. The key reference (apart, of course, from the writings of Ayn Rand, the source and gold standard of all Objectivist thought) was Aristotle. It seems that the Stagarite, despite being an ancient Greek, was the original philosophical voice of capitalism, rationality, selfishness, and all other noble things rhapsodized by the heroes in Ayn Rand’s fiction.

The first is that we have only a very rough idea of what Aristotle thought about humor. We have only fragments of the second book of the Poetics, which analyzed comedy, just as the first book did tragedy. But the gaps in the historical record constituted a minor problem, all in all — at least by contrast with the real challenge for any Objectivist seeking to philosophize about the human tendency to laugh. Of much greater difficulty was the fact that Ayn Rand did not possess a sense of humor.

To be sure, that was not the judgment of the scholar at the podium. He gave a few examples of characters in her fiction laughing at what someone else had said. But they were funny in roughly the way the comic strip Nancy is. The closest Rand ever got to wit was heavy-handed sarcasm, in those passages of her novels where one of the capitalist supermen would express Olympian scorn for the opinions and behavior of some altruistic, parasitic, and otherwise utterly pathetic figure — for example Ellsworth Toohey, the villain of The Fountainhead,

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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Comments

You say “Indeed, one may loathe Ayn Rand and all that she stood for...without actually opening one of her books or acquiring more than a vague notion of what she said."But surely this is false. If one never opened her books, one wouldn’t have any justification for loathing (or loving) her, and wouldn’t know what “all she stood for” means. How does the saying go — you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Aeon J. Skoble, at 11:30 am EST on February 10, 2005

Ellsworth Toohey

But a collectivist architectural critic did become a celebrity; the character of Ellsworth Toohey is based largely on Lewis Mumford.

Roderick T. Long, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy at Auburn University, at 3:47 pm EST on February 10, 2005

Michelle Kamhi, Co-Editor, Aristos, an online review of the arts at Co-Author, What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand, at 6:46 pm EST on February 10, 2005

Mumford’s the word

Yes, I came very close to mentioning the fact that Mumford was the original for Toohey (just as Frank Lloyd Wright was for Roark). But the resemblance between Toohey and Mumford is roughly that between a caricature and its real-life model. One or two features, made grotesque, obliterate the rest.

Mumford certainly had some success in his day — writing for the New Yorker and so forth — but his renown and his power were far more limited than those of Ellsworth Toohey, super-villain.

Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed, at 9:32 am EST on February 11, 2005

Zizek in JARS

As a founding co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, I just thought I’d mention for the benefit of readers that Zizek must have liked JARS quite a bit, considering that he published in our journal on ” The Actuality of Ayn Rand.”

Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Politics at New York University, at 1:07 pm EST on February 11, 2005

The phenomenon of people holding forth vehemently about books they haven’t read and films they haven’t seen might make an interesting column. The Bible and Fahrenheit 911 come to mind as examples from my own experience this week. I was thinking of starting a list when I ran across your observation regarding Rand’s books.

E. DeRieux, at 4:32 am EST on February 14, 2005

Whether one loves of ‘loathes’ Ayn Rand’s work (and all its ensuing theories and schools of thought) is less the point than the fact that her work is still being discussed, debated and detailed in forums such as this one. It is my experience (both academically and personally) that it is those who you hate (or rather dislike or disagree with) that occupy more of your time. I can remember every author/philosopher/academic whose ideas and theses I have disagreed with or that have downright annoyed me. But I sometimes fail to recall all those whose work rang true with my own ideals.

Darren Sandras, at 9:47 am EST on February 14, 2005

Re: Scott McLemme’s article: like mostof Rand’s detractors, he did not mention a single philosophical idea that she held.Instead he just made snide and ad hominem comments.Does Mr. McLemee realize how much he is confessing—that he cannot refute her philosophy so is reduced to child-like insults? If this is the best the left can come up with, Rand’s victory is assured.

Edwin Locke, Professor (retired) at U, of Md., at 9:21 pm EST on February 14, 2005

Ayn Rand has written seminal works. It is quite disheartening as a BA graduate of English with a MA in Philosophy that I was not introduced to Rand academically. It seems as though Kiekegaard, Kant, Heidegger, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Chaucer, Hobbes, Locke, Bacon, and such are much ’safer’ to study. When we come to philosophers such as Nietzsche and Rand, people shy away. I believe it is due to fear; fear of perhaps touching the truth about our existence.

Cristina Utti, Mum’s the word at West Chester University, at 4:35 am EST on February 15, 2005

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 19, and a student of analytic philosophy (who, like many analytic philosophers had, and still 22 years later has, a great fondness for Nietzsche) The funny thing is, I can remember being overwhelmed by the sense that the person writing it was an ill-willed pompous twit, but have absolutely no memory of the content. So I’m in the odd situation of someone who has read Rand, has a very strong impression of her, but cannot defend it textually.

Harry Brighouse, U.W. Madison, at 8:35 pm EST on February 15, 2005

Let Reardon step aside, and a thousand will step into his place!

I am reminded of Andrew Odlyzko’s _The Decline of Unfettered Research_ where he observes that 91) the original Solovay conferences in Physics were peopled by the giants of the field, where today, they are peopled by hundreds and hundreds of nobodies, (2) we really don’t need that many Einsteins, and (3) whereas before, a company like Xerox could patent everything around xerography, these days, there are so many wanna-be-Einsteins one-step-behind anybody blazing a trail, that by the time he gets around to patenting one discovery, dozens of ancillary discoveries have been patented by others.

In short, “let Reardon step aside, and a thousand will rise in his place".

So much for “Atlas Shrugged".

Chet Murthy, Skeptic, at 10:28 pm EST on February 15, 2005

re: Harry Brighouse

If you still have a great fondness for Nietzsche, you really ought to re-read Rand’s novels. Nietzsche has crept into Objectivism, as you can see from the following quote from “Thus Spake Zarathustra":

“The self saith unto the ego:’Feel pain!’ And thereupon it suffereth and thinketh how it may put an end thereto-and for that very purpose it is ‘meant’ to think.The self saith unto the ego: ‘Feel pleasure!’ thereupon it rejoiceth, and thinketh how it may oftentimes rejoice—and for that very purpose it is ‘meant’to think.”

Objectivism teaches us to rejoice in our capability to think, to use it to our best potential, and to feel pleasure through our ability to reason. Nietzsche had an effect on Rand.

Give her another try!

Cristina Utti, at 10:27 pm EST on February 15, 2005

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Among the Randroids

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Comments

Ellsworth Toohey

Mumford’s the word

Zizek in JARS

Let Reardon step aside, and a thousand will step into his place!

re: Harry Brighouse

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