Understanding Objectivism: A Guide to Learning Ayn Rand's Philosophy by Leonard Peikoff

Author:Leonard Peikoff [Peikoff, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101577332
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-03-05T14:00:00+00:00

Lecture Six Q & A

Q: In the history of philosophy, can you name any intrinsicists who try not to be religious?

A: Despite his basic approach Aristotle has definite intrinsicist elements that he inherited from Plato. And the only other one that I can think of offhand is Spinoza, who was an atheist; if you call him religious, he’s an atheistic pantheist. Typically there has been an alliance throughout the history of philosophy—Plato being the archetype—of intrinsicism and religion, or supernaturalism. As supernaturalism faded, then philosophers become unreligious and subjectivists, and that’s the modern period. So it’s only as an anomaly that there is one of those without the other in the history of philosophy.

Q: Could it be argued that intrinsicists are dishonest, because sometime in their life they must remember doing something in a rational manner, such as learning a musical instrument, learning mathematical tables, or a part in a school play? Surely they must see that they had to work at this, it didn’t jump into their head. Why do they disregard this information?

A: I definitely disagree that an intrinsicist has to be dishonest. The ones I’m most familiar with were motivated primarily by a revulsion against subjectivism. And they held to “We have to adhere to reality,” and their intention was to beat down the wave of modern subjectivism. Why didn’t they grasp this? The questioner is overlooking the fact that it’s a tremendous jump between commonsense observations and a philosophic theory that integrates them. It takes a genius to state abstractly what everybody knows in some concretes. “A is A,” for instance, as an abstraction, was self-evident when it was named. But for how many millennia did human beings go through not grasping that contradictions are wrong, even though they knew that this was this and that was that? They hadn’t reached that abstract level. That’s why Aristotle was a genius, to be able to conceptualize the self-evident. How many people know, and have known, that you have to pursue your self-interest or you can’t live? In concretes—you have to go to a job and earn money, and so on.

Q: Why do you say that intrinsicism has been more influential than subjectivism?

A: For a simple reason—a subjectivist says, “Go by your feelings.” Where do the feelings come from? Feelings are not primary. The subjectivists treat them as though they are, but in fact, they are not. So if you take these subjectivists, where did they get their feelings, passions, desires, and so on, which they claim are the criteria? They went to church, they went to school, they heard all the dogmas, they got them from somebody who took it on himself to give out standards (which the intrinsicists do), they absorbed those standards, they programmed themselves, and then they threw up their hands and said, “I’m just going to follow my automatic conditioning.” A subjectivist cannot generate a value judgment, because he’s looking to his own consciousness, which is empty. So he’s got to get it from somewhere, and the only two places are from reality or from an authority.

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