Critique of Pure Nonsense

Let's admit it. Last semester, you were tempted by the posters for the series of Ayn Rand lectures sponsored by the Objectivist Club.

Well, a few of my friends and I succumbed to the temptation and made it to the Sackler Museum for the last lecture of the series on Dec. 10 featuring Professor of Law Randall L. Kennedy debating Professor Harry Binswanger of the Objectivist Graduate Center.

The objectivist speaker barraged the ear with one generality after another to the great cheer and awe of the crowd. Some classic examples of his profound wisdom: "A is A," "Existence exists," "Freedom is the right for man to think" and--my favorite--"The good man lives, thinks, produces and respects others." He highlighted his otherwise vacuous talk with some select quotes from Rand's fiction and tossed in a few textbook points from Kant and Aquinas to make it all seem more legitimate, i.e. academic. Of course, the audience members, waving their well-thumbed copies of The Fountainhead, furiously shook their heads in hearty agreement.

For these objectivists, there is not a moment's doubt. It reminds me of a few lines from Al Franken's hilarious book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot: "Limbaugh presented...disinformation that was devoured whole by a studio audience of rabid--but extraordinarily straight-laced--right-wing yahoos. These are the fans who voluntarily--hell, gleefully--call themselves 'dittoheads' in honor of their ability to blindly and uncritically agree with everything that comes out of Limbaugh's mouth."

Take the kind of audience Franken is referring to and move it to the Sackler; now you have a fairly good picture of an objectivist audience. On taxation, the objectivist says, "Taxation is coercion," the listeners nod. On environmentalism: "Man is master over the environment," the people clap. On women's and Afro-American studies: "Pseudo-disciplines," the crowd does the wave.

What are these "novel" ideas that objectivists defend at all costs? Reason, egoism and laissez-faire capitalism. Objectivists seem to think these concepts are new finds. And what's more, that their demi-goddess, Ayn Rand, stumbled upon them first. Of course, the concept of laissez-faire capitalism has been around for more than a few decades--at least that's what professors in the economics department keep telling me. But, hell, what do they know? And reason and egoism? Well, let's see. Can you say "Plato, Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre"?

As late as 1991, Library of Congress surveys found that Atlas Shrugged was the second most influential book for Americans, second only to the Bible. So if objectivism is silly, why is it so appealing?

First, objectivism has as many adherents as it does because Rand's fiction (We the Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) continues to influence high-school and college students, most of whom I suspect have had only a superficial exposure to philosophy. This privileges them to conclude rather wrongly that Ayn Rand is an original and deep thinker. Second, her books are accessible to the lay-reader while Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger are not. Third, objectivism is sexy because it has appropriated the term "selfishness" to mean everything heroic.

It is very telling of the objectivist cult-following that it should regard the poor and the unsuccessful (who are the brunt of their joke) as failures. In objectivists' eyes, the poor fail willingly because all people have and have enjoyed equal opportunity, have entered this world with equal freedoms to flex equal minds. They believe that every wealthy and successful individual is so because of his or her "productivity," that the uncreative and less intelligent and less talented should suffer for their fruitlessness, and ultimately, that our civil society should feel no obligation to them.

At a key point in the debate, Binswanger declared that the need of another "is not a claim on you." Kennedy responded, "So, if you're on your way to a movie and should chance upon a deserted baby, that baby's need is not a claim on you?" Binswanger later responded, "But babies are adorable; of course I'd help." (You have to love this guy.) Binswanger further rebutted Professor Kennedy by insisting we should help babies in need because they aren't fully rational, and therefore not like the beggars in Harvard Square.

In his response, Binswanger hit on something obvious which seemed to elude most everyone in the auditorium--that we all have degrees of freedom (baby, Square Deal-guy, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68). In some measure, we occupy the stations we do for reasons outside of our control. Contrary to what objectivists might think, no one chooses to be born rich, Pequot, female or handicapped. Each individual in a real society exercises varying degrees of agency. Undeniably, we are all bearers of moral luck. And at this point, the core of the old debate is revealed. Again, I paraphrase Professor Kennedy:

The question is, what kind of society do we want to live in--one that turns its back on everyone or one that recognizes the degrees of freedoms and the shades of luck inherent in life and makes some kind of effort to help the less free and the less lucky? That isn't to say there aren't parasites, just that not every unsuccessful person is actively parasitic, and to a degree, as human beings who coexist in a civil society, we have a stake in the welfare of others.

I want to be clear: it wasn't so much the political debate between liberalism and conservatism that bothered me. It was more the seeming mindlessness of the objectivist audience that alarmed me. I went to the debate hoping that Professor Kennedy would expose objectivism for what it really is--an angry and disingenuous pseudo-philosophy that indoctrinates the philosophically challenged, that has tried to appropriate reason and egoism as its own (gosh, that sounds absurd) by plagiarizing philosophical ideas that have been around for centuries, that parades as the savior of angry middle-class voters in search of a justification to be penny-pinching and concerned about no one in the world but themselves.

I went hoping that Professor Kennedy would expose their lack of originality, but the debate turned out to be a political slap-fest centered on poverty, the welfare-state and government regulation. Not surprisingly, the objectivist was extremely well prepared and composed. He was ready to answer the "questions" of the audience, which formulated one straw-man after another for Binswanger to knock down. By evening's end, the debate had reached an unspectacular draw:

Essentially, Kennedy conceded that he is a liberal. Binswanger's position revealed the egotism of the objectivist (a.k.a. God), in his declarations that the poor are stupid, uncreative, and should be left to die.

Kennedy failed to change many minds that night because a large majority of those in the room (many still in high school, I'm sure) had already been indoctrinated by the objectivist ethic, and it's certainly true that whatever Kennedy offered, however reasonable, was rejected by the pre-dominantly objectivist audience.

But the evening did leave an impression on me: objectivists and other ultra-conservative cults that wave flags in the name of justice, rights and freedom (as though non-objectivists find justice, rights and freedom distasteful) should no longer be ignored.

If you've already labeled yourself an objectivist, acid might be the next thing you'd like to trip on. You're beyond help. But if you're one of the many who's read a work or two by Ayn Rand and is intrigued by her "philosophy," should you spot a poster for an objectivist lecture and choose to attend, please go with a critical mind and a modicum of skepticism because the "lecture" part of their advertisements is a misnomer. Objectivist speakers do not teach; they indoctrinate and propagandize. If you're not careful, you just may be tricked into handing over your money--a real possibility, since selfishness is their credo. (Objectivist Club lectures are the only ones I've attended at Harvard where I've been asked to donate money.)

According to objectivism, there is no room for discourse. Professor Kennedy remarked that because the answers to profound questions are always elusive, we should maintain an open dialogue. But Binswanger and his mob-squad would have none of it. By evening's end, it was made clear that objectivism had a monopoly on truth.

In "Cult of Moral Grayness," Rand deconstructs the logic of those who assert life is more gray than black and white: "If there is no black and white, there can be no gray--since gray is merely a mixture of the two." How perfectly poetic! How superbly simplistic! (Rand must have been exempt from Lit. & Arts A.) Try mixing yellow, blue and red, my dear.

Chris H. Kwak is a senior in Leverett House.