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Enlightenment thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke were hugely important historically in making the case for liberty. However, they were still products of th

Enlightenment thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke were hugely important historically in making the case for liberty. However, they were still products of their time and retain the influences of Christian ethics and Humean skepticism. Adam Smith, for instance, argued that competition was good because it maximised social well-being - which leads directly to the modern viewpoint that free markets are OK but that the government should step in to prevent monopolies and ensure businesses only make a "fair" profit (as defined by the government). This is what I mean by the pragmatic defence of property. The most influential enlightenment philosopher was Kant, who was ostensibly pro-liberty but whose work paved the way for Hegel and Marx. I might sound like a fanatic but if you actually read Rand it becomes clear how revolutionary her philosophy actually was. She's a system-builder, something unknown in modern philosophy (since Kant). Modern-day libertarianism is mostly a creation of Rothbard's, a one-time student of Rand's who later put all his energy into discrediting her while plagiarising her philosophy. (Just one example: the initiation of force as the basic social evil is an original concept of Rand's).

dragonwriter 10y ago
Locke, who you dismiss with a vague handwave, made, in the Second Treatise on Government, an explicitly moral case for property rights founded upon the principal of individual autonomy. This was not a pragmatic argument. Locke, of course, greatly predates Rand; making a moral rather than pragmatic case for property rights is not an innovation of Rand's. (Locke goes on to make a pragmatic and moral case for popular government founded on the moral primacy of property.) > I might sound like a fanatic Quite. > but if you actually read Rand it becomes clear how revolutionary her philosophy actually was. I've read little of Rand and regret devoting time to doing even that; reading more isn't really something that seems worthwhile. But, certainly, nothing you've pointed to about her philosophy is revolutionary, or even novel (I'm sure there are some things in it that are at least the latter, though you haven't identified any.) > She's a system-builder, something unknown in modern philosophy (since Kant). Really? You can't swing a stick in a gathering of modern philosophers (and particularly those concerned with political/economic philosophy) without hitting a half-dozen system-builders. Rawls would be one notable example (from a radically different orientation than Rand.) > Modern-day libertarianism is mostly a creation of Rothbard's, a one-time student of Rand's who later put all his energy into discrediting her while plagiarising her philosophy. Rothbard (and Rand directly) are clearly influential in modern libertarianism, and particularly American right-libertarianism, but you have to take a pretty narrow view of what "modern libertarianism" is to see it all grounded in Rand (whether via "plagiarism" by Rothbard or not.) > Just one example: the initiation of force as the basic social evil is an original concept of Rand's No, actually, that's also found in (among other places) Locke's Second Treatise.
- objectivistbrit 10y ago
  You're doing what's typical for people trained in modern philosophy when debating online, i.e. complaining that I didn't write a full philosophical treatise in one comment. E.g., I didn't go into details of my view on Locke because they weren't central to my point. After I became an Objectivist, I did some research on Enlightenment thinkers precisely because people dismiss Objectivists for being ignorant of past philosophy, and what I found tallied with what I'd heard from well-informed Objectivists. Locke is an empiricist and holds that certain knowledge is generally impossible outside of areas like geometry. This skepticism subtly undermines any philosophy built on top of it; Rand's epistemology, in contrast, shows how certain knowledge can be possible (within a particular context), which gives her the framework to build an entire system of integrated principles, basing politics and aesthetics on ethics, and ethics on metaphysics and epistemology. Likewise, I didn't list what I think is novel in Rand's philosophy as I assumed honest readers could research it for themselves. Here's some: her solution to the is-ought problem, her solution to the problem of universals, her theory of the nature of romantic art, and, obviously, a complete moral code justified via rational self-interest. Locke and other writers did talk about the evils of force (and I often enjoy telling people that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was originally Locke's "life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness"). However, it was Rand who first coined the phrase "initiation of force", and Rand who first argued that reason and force were essentially the only two means of dealing with men, making non-initiation of force the fundamental social principle. (For said honest readers, the books which persuaded me were The Romantic Manifesto and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, though Virtue of Selfishness is probably the easiest starting point. Once I studied Nozick's famous criticism of Rand, I concluded that he was someone very smart making a deliberate attempt to misunderstand her argument, and I was pretty much soured permanently on 20th century analytic philosophy, "libertarian" or otherwise).

dragonwriter 10y ago

Locke, who you dismiss with a vague handwave, made, in the Second Treatise on Government, an explicitly moral case for property rights founded upon the principal of individual autonomy. This was not a pragmatic argument. Locke, of course, greatly predates Rand; making a moral rather than pragmatic case for property rights is not an innovation of Rand's. (Locke goes on to make a pragmatic and moral case for popular government founded on the moral primacy of property.) > I might sound like a fanatic Quite. > but if you actually read Rand it becomes clear how revolutionary her philosophy actually was. I've read little of Rand and regret devoting time to doing even that; reading more isn't really something that seems worthwhile. But, certainly, nothing you've pointed to about her philosophy is revolutionary, or even novel (I'm sure there are some things in it that are at least the latter, though you haven't identified any.) > She's a system-builder, something unknown in modern philosophy (since Kant). Really? You can't swing a stick in a gathering of modern philosophers (and particularly those concerned with political/economic philosophy) without hitting a half-dozen system-builders. Rawls would be one notable example (from a radically different orientation than Rand.) > Modern-day libertarianism is mostly a creation of Rothbard's, a one-time student of Rand's who later put all his energy into discrediting her while plagiarising her philosophy. Rothbard (and Rand directly) are clearly influential in modern libertarianism, and particularly American right-libertarianism, but you have to take a pretty narrow view of what "modern libertarianism" is to see it all grounded in Rand (whether via "plagiarism" by Rothbard or not.) > Just one example: the initiation of force as the basic social evil is an original concept of Rand's No, actually, that's also found in (among other places) Locke's Second Treatise.

objectivistbrit 10y ago
You're doing what's typical for people trained in modern philosophy when debating online, i.e. complaining that I didn't write a full philosophical treatise in one comment. E.g., I didn't go into details of my view on Locke because they weren't central to my point. After I became an Objectivist, I did some research on Enlightenment thinkers precisely because people dismiss Objectivists for being ignorant of past philosophy, and what I found tallied with what I'd heard from well-informed Objectivists. Locke is an empiricist and holds that certain knowledge is generally impossible outside of areas like geometry. This skepticism subtly undermines any philosophy built on top of it; Rand's epistemology, in contrast, shows how certain knowledge can be possible (within a particular context), which gives her the framework to build an entire system of integrated principles, basing politics and aesthetics on ethics, and ethics on metaphysics and epistemology. Likewise, I didn't list what I think is novel in Rand's philosophy as I assumed honest readers could research it for themselves. Here's some: her solution to the is-ought problem, her solution to the problem of universals, her theory of the nature of romantic art, and, obviously, a complete moral code justified via rational self-interest. Locke and other writers did talk about the evils of force (and I often enjoy telling people that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was originally Locke's "life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness"). However, it was Rand who first coined the phrase "initiation of force", and Rand who first argued that reason and force were essentially the only two means of dealing with men, making non-initiation of force the fundamental social principle. (For said honest readers, the books which persuaded me were The Romantic Manifesto and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, though Virtue of Selfishness is probably the easiest starting point. Once I studied Nozick's famous criticism of Rand, I concluded that he was someone very smart making a deliberate attempt to misunderstand her argument, and I was pretty much soured permanently on 20th century analytic philosophy, "libertarian" or otherwise).