Ayn Rand Fan Debates ‘Objectivism’ With Sam

Ayn Rand. She will never, ever go away. She lives eternally through the dementedly hostile policy positions she has memorialized in her books. A listener calls in because Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was mentioned on the program on Monday, and similar to the consequences of saying "Beetlejuice" or "Bloody Mary" out loud, if you speak the name of one of Rand's books on air for any reason, you have to discuss it again, preferably in an argument. This time, the argument is about Objectivism, which is the caller's political affiliation. It was created by Ayn Rand.

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Caller: Objectivism is an entire philosophy. That's one thing — it's not just a political philosophy.
Emma Vigeland: Also it's a religion, too.
Caller: No it's not my religion.
Sam Seder: Yeah, tell me what it is, not just what it isn't.
Caller: Okay, so there's five branches of philosophy and I could go through and just actually Ayn Rand was actually asked can you say what Objectivism is while standing on one foot and she did that once. There's an article called "Introducing Objectivism" which you can find on the internet and she does this so I can give you the brief standing-on-one-foot version. So in metaphysics, the view of what is the fundamental nature of reality is... she thinks there's just one world; there's no supernatural world; there's no god; it's just this world, which we perceive with our senses, in which we understand with our reason. And then second branch epistemology, in other words the study of the nature of knowledge. She's pro-reason; so she's anti-faith, which makes her anti-religion. She only believes in what you can prove by logic and reason and evidence of your senses. And then third branch: ethics. How should we live? She thinks... she believes in a morality of rational self-interest. So you should do what's best for yourself right while respecting the rights of others. Neither sacrificing yourself to others, nor others for yourself. The final branch...
SS: Now that would you say that third branch the one about um pursuing your own self-interests... that one's when we start getting into politics a little bit, right?
Caller: Yeah, so she believes in individual rights. In her last branch, political philosophy, she believes in capitalism. And the way she understands that I think it's often smeared today, but how she understands it is that you can't initiate force against other people. If you did that, you would be violating their rights. You can do whatever you want as long as you don't use physical force against other people.
SS: Right? The non-aggression policy, right?
Caller: That's what the libertarians sometimes call it. She didn't use that phrase. Sometimes it's called the non-initiation of force principle.
SS: Fair enough, fair enough. Now, these are things that you subscribe to, too, right? I mean she's just the person who came up with this stuff. You don't perceive her as some type of like demigod or anything?
EV: Or like a deity, right? Since it's not religious in nature.
Caller: I mean I admire her tremendously. I don't think she's like a supernatural being.
SS: Okay but I mean in terms of like just non-supernatural beings she's right up there, right? Like I mean she's almost, almost supernatural. She's like Plato, basically, right? I think she was a heroic person and she lived very...
SS: Did it bum you out when you found out that she she took Social Security?

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