Re: Gary Hull (on Objectivists and Randians on Charity and Benevolence)

Tee-boy–re the Hullster–yeah, the Objectivsts are utterly unbalanced and off their rockers on the issue of libertarianism. As I noted here, their denunciations of libertarianism at first led me to avoid works by Rothbard et al., assuming Rand was right that they were “evil”; finally realizing that the “political” branch of Objectivism was basically (minarchist) libertarianism. (See, e.g., Peter Schwartz’s Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty (naturally, due to Objectivists hyper IP stance, not online that I can find; see this response by Kevin McFarlane; and this one by Walter Block).And as I pointed out in the comments to this post: Objectivists harp on the notion that without the full-fledged Objectivist philosophy, the concept of “liberty” is meaningless. But liberty is just a shorthand for describing the state of non-aggression. That is, it is based on the concept of aggression. And even Rand believed that this was a simple, obvious phenomenon:

Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate–“do you hear me? No man may start–“the use of physical force against others.

This is Ayn Rand, in “Galt’s Speech.” Here it is very clear that Rand quite properly recognized that aggression–the initiation of force–is a fairly simple, elementary concept. Libertarians are those who believe aggression is not justified (as I have pointed out in What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist). Now Objectivists may think their the libertarian justification of this proposition is flawed (I think Rand’s is flawed); but I think they are in trouble if they try to maintain that libertarianism is not coherent–it is as coherent as Objectivism’s politics is, since both reason based on the coherence and fundamentality of the primary concept of aggression.

In fact, as I pointed out in A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights:

[An aggressor] A might claim that our classification of actions as either aggressive or not is invalid. We might be smuggling in a norm or value judgment in describing murder as “aggressive,” rather than merely describing the murder without evaluative overtones. This smuggled norm might be what apparently justifies the legitimacy of punishing A, thus making the justification circular and therefore faulty. However, in order to object to our punishment of him, which is just the use of force against him, A must himself admit the validity of describing some actions as forceful–namely, his imminent punishment. If he denies that any actions can be objectively described as being coercive, he has no grounds to object to his punishment, for he cannot even be certain what constitutes punishment, and we may proceed to punish him. The moment he objects to this use of force, however, he cannot help admitting that at least some actions can be objectively classified as involving force. Thus, he is estopped from objecting on these grounds.

On that thread, a Randian wrote,

Objectivism provides answers to these questions because it is systematic, and politics can only arise out of a proper metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Politics (e.g., libertarianism) is not a primary.

Not buying it. And note this: any philosophy that is by and large composed of decent, benevolent, nice, charitable people–as I think Objectivists are, at heart–and that makes its followers feel so guilty about being benevolent and charitable that they think you need a whole book written just to give them moral permission to be nice to their neighbors… has something screwed up about it. You don’t need a fancy philosopher’s tome to justify being nice to your fellow man. It’s just common sense. No agonized, handwringing guilt over it is needed. But of course, to realize this, they’d have to ditch Rand’s flawed concept of “altruism” and that would lead to further unraveling of the tapestry.

NB: I do not mean here to deprecate the valiant effort by David Kelley–whom I have always liked and respectd–to square Objectivism with the virtue of benevolence. I criticize rather the very idea that one ought to feel guilty for being charitable and benevolent to others unless one has worked out a justification for it. This is implied in Rand’s cavalier dismissal of the eleemosynary impulse, her barely disguised disgust for it implied in her tolerance (!) of it in her views on charity:

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

Get that? There is nothing wrong in helping other people — why thank you Ayn! Now I have permission! My God, this is bad enough, to imply that it even needs to be said that there is nothing wrong with helping others! But she can’t even say this without caveat: she has to add: “if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them.” Now you have to agonize and wonder if your beneficiaries are “worthy” of the help or if you can really “afford” it (does this mean no student or non-retired or non-independently-wealthy person should ever donate to ARI? After all, until you have saved enough to retire on, every dollar should go to your own maintenance/investments, not to charity!).

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Update: See also Butler Shaffer’s critique of Objectivism in chapter LXXXIX – The Libertarians’ Albatross of his e-book The Wizard of Ozymandias: Reflections on the Decline and Fall.

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1:47 pm on September 6, 2006