OK, OK, I know she's been dead for years but there are the miracles of modern science and all that sort of thing, aren't there? Perhaps I had better explain.
For reasons too tedious to repeat here, a few months ago I went into an old 'Stately Home' which had been vacated and found a considerable number of paperback books left behind looking for a new owner. Like an alcoholic in a brewery, with trembling hands I swiftly went through them and departed with enough books to start a new pile of 'waiting-to-be-read' books to go alongside the existing pile which threatens to cut out the sunlight into my study! Amongst them was "For the New Intellectual" by Ayn Rand, er, the new woman in my life but for God's sake don't tell the 'Memsahib'!
Of course, I don't really qualify for this book being neither 'new' or 'intellectual' but I just had to have it. You see, as I have told you before, I left school at 16 having totally wasted my school years but much later in life I came back to some of those subjects which I had missed. In particular, in my late 30s, early 40s, I began to take an interest in philosophy, and pretty soon, amongst others, I gravitated towards the libertarian end of the spectrum, people like Robert Nozick, Karl Popper, and above all, Friedrick Hayek. As my reading spead, I kept coming across references to Ayn Rand but the fact that much of her philosophical writings were expressed via the medium of fiction novels, I never actually read her. Thus, this little paperback dating from 1961 which begins with a long introduction to her philosophy followed by extracts from her novels was a must-have. During my holiday I read the introduction and was hooked - even whilst reserving some doubts!
For a start, she pulverises the Rationalists with their 'clever-clever' arguments which throw doubt on anything and everything that exists in the real world but whose opinions, in my view, amount to little more than language and logic games - and was part of the reason I gave up on philosophy. Asked to assess the 'reality' of a solid oak door, they would provide long, detailed, sophisticated, but ultimately specious, arguments to insist that no trust should be placed in its reality, but they will always be careful to open the door first before passing through it! Prime amongst them is Kant with his ridiculous Platonism and the belief in something he called "the thing in itself". Rand sticks up for the Empiricists who take the world as it is experienced through our senses, not through fanciful mental constructs.
She is, of course, famous for her vitriolic attacks on all forms of socialism, indeed, of most forms of government, irrespective of party, because of its inherent tendency to do wrong. She divides the leadership of the political world into two types, the 'Attilas' and the 'Witch Doctors'. The first acts on brute force without consideration of anything other than the immediate; the 'Witch Doctor' lacks the strength of purpose of an 'Attila' and thus takes no risk,but what he does do is provide the 'Attila' with justification for his deeds by spinning a web of deceit over the populace to keep them in line. In previous centuries these 'Witch Doctors', under the auspices of kings, were the men who ran our organised religions, but today, with the disintergration of spiritual belief, their place has been taken by the 'Intellectuals', about whom Rand is scathing.
Even I, dumb as I am, can see some potential pot-holes in her philosophy, but like my other 'heroes', Hayek and Popper, she espoused her views at a time when it was highly unpopular and unlikely to advance your career. I shall return to her, I think.
Rationalists do however believe that children, left to themselves in rooms full of books, scientific equipment, and craft supplies will acquire an education. With no evidence at all. Can there be some connection between denying their senses and denying our experience?
Posted by: North Northwester | Monday, 05 October 2009 at 19:01