Episode 41

Celebrating Ayn Rand

Published on: 2nd February, 2022

Today we kick off "Rand's Day" with our "resident Philosopher" James Valliant. We discuss Miss Rand's legacy and artistic value as both a novelist and a philosopher.

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Episode 41 (51 minutes) was recorded at 10 PM CET, on January 13, 2022, with Ringr app.. Editing and post-production was done with the podcast maker, Alitu. Transcript is provided by Veed.io.

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Transcript
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Good afternoon and welcome to another

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edition of the Secular Foxhole Podcast.

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Today we have a returning guest, one

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of our favorites, James Valliant, visiting the

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Foxhole to discuss Ayn Rand today.

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James, how are you?

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I'm quite well.

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How are you, sir?

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I'm doing very good.

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Pleasure to be back with you. Thank you.

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It's nice to have you back.

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I battled the cold for two weeks,

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and I finally about 99% better.

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I hope it wasn't Omicron.

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We checked all those things out and made sure of that.

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But it's my annual what I call crud,

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sinus and sore throat kind of thing.

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Winter has come. That's right.

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Winter has come to spring the second of February.

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That's true. Yes.

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Ayn Rand's birthday again, today's topic is Ayn Rand.

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And James, who was Ayn Rand.

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And in my view, why is she

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so important to the human race?

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Well, Ayn Rand was, of course,

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the famous novelist and philosopher.

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She was born in Russia in.

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But she came to America after witnessing and

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enduring the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath.

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She was skilled and fortunate enough to

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escape the Soviet Union and come to

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America, where she became an extremely popular

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novelist, playwright, screenwriter in the United States.

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And she wasn't just an amazingly

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powerful and popular writer of fiction.

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She was, in my view, the most important philosopher of

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our time as well, ranking with the great philosophers.

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And so there's two ways to evaluate her importance.

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And I'm going to start with philosophy

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because I think that is the most

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important philosophy, according to Ayn Rand.

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And I agree with her.

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Here is the most important topic that there is.

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It is an inescapable topic for humanity.

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This is one of the reasons why

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humans, religion persists and why religion is

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so ubiquitous in more primitive cultures is

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because people need a comprehensive worldview.

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It is not something that we can dispense with.

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Our answers to fundamental questions

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will shape our psychology.

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We'll determine whether or not we're happy.

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And since it's so important and formative on the

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individual level, it is the single most important factor

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in human history, in development of human culture.

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In my view, we are still

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overcoming the negative impacts of religion.

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In my view, Western civilization is still, in

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effect, breaking the chains of the Dark Ages.

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We can hope.

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But I'll tell you, Ayn Rand represents the

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most powerful destruction of those chains. True.

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That occurred in the last millennia.

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She gave great credit to Thomas Aquinas back

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in the 1200s and reintroducing Aristotelian logic and

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Greek observational science into the Western thought, which

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did lead to humanism Renaissance, the Age of

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science, the Enlightenment dates, in effect, natural revolution.

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But we are still the Industrial

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Revolution, the Scientific revolution, my gosh.

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But we are still especially in the area of

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ethics and therefore in its related areas, all the

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normative humanities, for example, politics and so forth.

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We're still laboring under ideas and philosophy that

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we haven't caught up as she points out

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to the extraordinary developments that humanity has made

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in the physical Sciences and technology.

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And so I think that her importance on a personal

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level is that she can autobiographical note about myself.

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She was instrumental in making me a happier, more confident

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person, in helping to organize my life in a rational

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way, to make it a more productive one, to make

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my relationships more honest and serious, and to make me

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a happier person in general, to get rid of the

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remnants of the ideas of previous philosophies and religious ideas

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that lingered were lingering in my mind in psychology.

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And I think that she has the

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capacity to change history, to change history.

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If you look at the world that she grew

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up and lived in through the 20th century and

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the great crisis of that time was totalitarianism.

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She lived through the age of Hitler and Stalin

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and Mao and the horrific effects of that on

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humanity, and she could see that those were the

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results of philosophy, the remnants of this ancient primordial

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philosophy of altruism and mysticism and collectivism that she

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was the most articulate critic of, I think, in

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the history of ideas.

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And Ayn Rand wrote several important novels that people

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declared to be life changing for them personally.

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She went on in the 1960s and 1970s to

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write a series of nonfiction essays that were anthologized

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into important books of philosophy, very popular books of

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philosophy, which I think lay the foundation for a

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whole new approach to philosophy, a Copernican revolution, only

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more radical than Copernicus himself. Yeah.

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Again, you touched briefly she grew up in,

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if I remember right, the Czarus to Russia,

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and then the Bolshevik Revolution came.

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So what was her childhood like?

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As she reached her teenage years, I

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think she knew she had to escape.

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So how did that occur?

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But what was her childhood like

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and how did she get out?

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Well, her father was sort of a self

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made, which is an extraordinary thing, if you

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think about Eastern European's bizarre Russia.

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He was sort of a selfmade man altogether.

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He actually got a University degree now.

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There were quotas in European universities at the time.

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There were quotas as to the number

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of Jews who could be admitted.

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And he could only get a position as

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a student at University in the chemistry Department.

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And so he became a pharmacist, and

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he actually became a very successful and

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relatively prominent pharmacist in St.

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Petersburg, Russia, the cultural heart of Russia.

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And he owned a pharmacy, and the

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family lived in apartments above his pharmacy.

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It was on one of the main squares in St. Petersburg.

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So Ayn Rand grew up in the heart of

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the most culturally rich city in Russia, St.

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Petersburg.

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Nonetheless, she grew up.

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They were a family of non observant Jews.

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Her mother gave an official nod to Judaism,

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but the parents didn't really push religious parents

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were mostly Liberal minded people of the time.

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And so she grew up getting a really good education.

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Her parents made sure that their daughters she was

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the eldest of three girls, got really fine education.

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By the time that Ayn Rand was 19, she had gone to

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one of the finest girls schools in Russia at the time.

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And she had a degree from what was

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then because it was after the revolution, the

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University of Petrograd changed from St.

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Petersburg to Petrograd.

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It became Lenning Grad University.

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Now, of course, it's changed back to St. Petersburg.

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But when she graduated from University at 19

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with a degree in history and the pedagogy

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of history, she really had an amazing education.

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Now, during that period, of course, in 1917, when she

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was just twelve years old, she was about to turn

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13 when the Bolshevik October Revolution happened and her father

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lost her business was stolen from him.

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The family initially fled to the Crimea.

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When things settled out, they returned, in effect,

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to Petrograd, where they nearly starved to death

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and expected to officially starve to death.

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They could live for a while on accumulated assets, but

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his business and their home was stolen from them.

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And her mother taught foreign languages,

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but they barely scraped by.

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And there were times where they nearly starved to death

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in Rand knew she had to get out of Russia.

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And in 1926, at the age of

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21, that's exactly what she did.

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She kind of had to lie to the Soviet

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officials telling them that, oh, she was just going

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there to investigate the American movie industry and bring

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back ideas from the latest thing, the latest movies

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from Hollywood, and I'll come back and help the

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develop Russian cinema business.

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So she lied, saying she would come back,

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but she got out with that lie.

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There were cousins of hers, were living in Chicago, and

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she lived with them for a little time in the

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summer of 1926, before she came to Hollywood, where she

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actually met she came to Hollywood and by September of

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1926, actually met Cecilby DeMille himself.

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And she became extra on the movie he was

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making at the time, King of Kings, the story

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of Jesus, the silent version of King of Kings,

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where she met her husband, Frank O'Connor.

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She tripped him on the bus.

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He was an actor on the set, tripped him on the bus,

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met him, and he became her husband for the next 50 years.

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Right now, her first novel, We the Living, is quote,

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as close to an autobiography as I'll ever write.

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What did she want to show with that

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novel to the people and Blair and James

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that you said before about the movies?

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It turned into a movie also, so

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please add a comment on that also.

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And the power of ideas. We the living.

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Yeah, We the Living.

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There was a party, a going away party that was thrown

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for Ayn Rand as she was heading off to America, and

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one old gentleman stopped her at the party and this left

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obviously a very deep impression on Ayn Rand.

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He said, tell them in America, tell them

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in America that Russia is a giant Cemetery

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and that we're all slowly dying.

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And that's exactly what Ayn Rand thought of Russia.

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She knew that she wouldn't have the intellectual

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or artistic freedom to do the work that

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she knew she needed to do.

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And she witnessed the misery and starvation,

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the typhus and the cholera and the

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economic misery, the bread lines. Exactly.

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Her family nearly starved to death, as I say.

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And so she brought a vivid

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personal experience to about totalitarianism.

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She became one of the very first

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Russians who developed an audience outside of

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Russia, being critical of the Communist revolution.

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Written in published in the mid 1930s by McMillan,

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it had only a modest success in mixed reviews.

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And if you look back on that period,

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of course, most intellectuals in America were Communists.

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Editor of the New York Times Book Review, Granville Heck

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said in The New York Times, one cannot be a

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proper author without first being a proper Communist.

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So the intellectual world was not even

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ready to hear anti Communist material in

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what Eugene Lions called the Red Decade.

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So a lot of the critics would say things like,

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too often the Communists wear the black hat and Ms.

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Rand account.

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But it was a devastating critique of

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not just Communism, but of all dictatorship,

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philosophically speaking, and enriched by Ayn Rand's

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personal experience, deeply influenced.

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And you can still see the impact of

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Victor Hugo on the style of her writing.

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She was still learning English, by the

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way, in Russia, she had become fluent

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in Russian, of course, and French.

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She could read and write German, but English

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was sort of a whole new language.

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And to become a novelist and to

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be able to write a novel.

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Now, mind you, the great US American

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literary critic HL Menken, admired we the

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Living and believed it should be published.

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And I think with some help in getting her

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having that published, as Martin pointed out, even though

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face to some hostile critics and some mixed success,

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it was turned into a film. Now get this.

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It was turned into a film

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in Mussolini's Fascist Italy, right.

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They stole it from Ayn Rand.

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They didn't tell Rand or the

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publisher that they were stealing it.

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And so with a huge, big fat Copyright violation.

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But the people who made the film were anti fascists.

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Alessandrini and the actors and the others who

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were working on the film were well known

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for being antifascist and anti Mussolini.

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And it's funny, they did actually two films

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out of the one book, and they used

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the book itself rather than some screenplay.

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And so it turned into just this beautiful, magnificent film,

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by the way, big success until Mussolini realized that it

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was anti dictatorship and he had it pulled.

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People were lining up around the block to

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see the movies, but it was only out

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for a short time until the Italian government

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pulled it and all the copies were destroyed.

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It was only the director, Alessandrini, who

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basically buried it, buried a copy of

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the negative that even saved the film.

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It later came to Ayn Rand's

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attention that it had been made.

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There was an international lawsuit after World War

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II which got Ayn Rand royalties for the

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Copyright theft that they'd engaged in.

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But later on, her lawyer had discovered the negative,

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and I'm Rand actually supervised the editing process and

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the subtitling process of reediting the two films into

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a single film, which was rereleased in the 1980s.

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I was at the premiere at the Screen Actors Guild

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and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when it was premiered.

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Leonard Peikoff gave introduction to it,

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told the history of it.

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What a beautiful film.

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I highly recommend that anyone interested in Iran's life

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or work, check out the film We the Living.

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It's a black and white film made in

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Italian, but an extremely beautiful film and extremely

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faithful to Ayn Rand's original novel.

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Right now with her other novels, Excuse

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Me, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, she later

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called herself a romantic realist.

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What is that genre, and why is it all but unknown?

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Well, there are certain literature.

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American literature, especially in the last century, has been

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characterized by a school that Ayn Rand called naturalism,

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and it attempts to provide an image of life

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as it is, the way things are.

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And, of course, the way things are for most

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naturalist writers is pretty darn miserable and horrific.

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Some really good writer like John Steinbeck, the writer

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of Grapes of Wrath, or a brilliant stylist like

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William Faulkner Sound in The Fury, or the great

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American playwright Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire.

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They're naturalistic, but they all have a very grim

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view of the world and humanity, don't they?

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Naturalism by doing, einrand identified the real difference

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between naturalism and romanticism is a belief in

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human free will, that human beings can make

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choices, can think, can to some extent take

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control of their lives and direct it.

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And it's the logical consequences of

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people's choices that give any literature

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any moral, inspirational point to them.

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And so Iran was much more akin to the romantic

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writers of the 19th century, whom she very much admired.

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Men like Victor Hugo and Fyodor

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Dostoevsky, Edmond Rostand, for example.

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Authors like that, even the lesser Romantics, she thought,

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were much better because they believed in heroes and

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villains, they had moral values because they believed that

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human beings had free will, that they made choices,

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and those choices mattered to their personalities, actions and

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the consequences of those actions.

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And she wanted to create her own goal in writing

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The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as she said, was to

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create characters and stories that would interest her.

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And so to her, the goal of her

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literature was the fictional presentation of the ideal

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man, the ideal human being you see, morally,

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psychologically, and from her personal perspective, a man.

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Right, right.

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The goal of her writing was

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this projection of this moral ideal.

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And so the hero of The Fountainhead, Howard

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Rourke, is unlike any hero you will ever

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run across in any other kind of literature.

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Because Ayn Rand, in having to do this, realized

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that because she was in disagreement with all of

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the previous moral philosophy, pleased before most of the

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great romantics that she liked from the 19th century,

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for example, were Christians, a Christian socialist like you

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Go, or a Christian conservative like Dostoevsky.

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They were Christians.

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So she realized she had to develop a whole

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new philosophy, a whole new approach to ideas, simply

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in order to project this new ideal.

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And so her heroes are unlike any heroes

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you will ever confront in other literature.

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Yes, exactly.

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I'm speaking for myself with a gracious tip of

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the hat to The Fountainhead, I think at The

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Shrug is the greatest novel written in human history.

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I have to agree with you.

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Of all the novels that I've ever

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read, and I've read some great novels.

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It's not just the great French romantics.

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Even some of these American

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naturalists were great novelists.

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And going back, I like Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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I like great epic writers from the past, sure.

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But there's just no question in my mind.

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Atlas Shrugged is the greatest knowledge, the

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greatest epic ever composed by human writer

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so far in human history.

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Yes, it was an inspirational, life changing event for me,

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but so was my earlier reading of The Fountain.

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But I have to tell you, I fell in

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love with Jackie Taggart in a way that I've

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never fallen in love with a character in literature.

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I know I was a young man, and I

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know Ayn Rand's work is sort of flattering to

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the ego of young men in certain ways.

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But I fell in love with Tag. Me, Taggart.

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I identified with her.

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I think I identify with her more than

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any other character in all of world literature.

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I mean, in some ways I identify

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with Serena to Bergerac or something.

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I was about to mention sir.

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No, it was one of my all time favorites. Yeah.

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But I still think that I'm more spiritually akin

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to Dagny Tagger than I am to any other

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character in the whole of Western literature.

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Well, I think you can see herself

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in Dagny in a lot of ways.

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The way she describes the heroines of The

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Fountainhead and Alice Rugby are very interesting.

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Dominique, she said, is me in a bad mood. That's right.

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And Dagney she described in her early notes as

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me with any possible flaws removed, entirely removed.

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She's going to clean up herself and make herself

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idealized as Dagny psychologically, and then convey herself in

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more negative, bad mood when the world was getting

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to her through the character of Dominique.

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But one thing that she always could do

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with her female characters is to convince you

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of their love their passionate love for the

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hero or their passionate love for their values.

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Dominique loves architecture, and that explains why she regards

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Howard works work as sacred, which explains why she

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acts the way she does or getting tagged Taggart

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the way she loves her railroad, or the way

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she loves John Golf or Francisco or Hang.

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The way they value is a reflection

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of Iran's passionate love of this Earth. Really?

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Now, again, we touched on it a moment

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ago, but she had to create her own

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philosophic system, and that system is again, in

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my personal view, an epoch creating philosophy.

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Talking about, let's have a second Renaissance.

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What is the significance of this for her ideas?

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If they ever gain a foothold in America

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or in the world, what do you see?

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The world looking like?

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Yeah, me too.

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The liberation of the human mind, the veneration of

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reason and its capacity to improve human life on

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Earth, the freedom to liberate the human mind, to

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let it do so, were it not for government

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interventions, were it not for government attempts very often

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to help people, at least that's their excuse.

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What they end up doing is shackling the

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mind and inhibiting creativity, which is all that

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coercive government regulation can really end up doing.

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Ayn Rand demonstrates that it is

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the creative, independent mind that is

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the Fountainhead for all human progress.

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And she demonstrates further that the

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primary social condition for the operation

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of the creative mind is freedom. Freedom.

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The freedom to disagree, the freedom to buck

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the trend, to go against the current all

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real creative thinkers, philosophers, scientists, artists, think of

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Galileo, think of Beethoven or Victor Hugo.

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They all have these same struggles.

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If they weren't being burnt at the stake

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for their innovative ideas, they were being denounced.

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Man was meant to fly denounced and imprisoned.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And look at the fate of artists in the

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Soviet Union, for example, which surely would have been

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on Ram States in some gulag or psychiatric hospital.

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So, coming to America and looking at the

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spectacular success of comparative freedom in the west,

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she drew the inductive conclusion that freedom, the

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liberation of the human mind, was the key

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to human prosperity and progress.

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And when that's understood in a principled fashion,

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the future would be a future of unlimited

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possibilities, endless discoveries of the mind both in

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science and in the humanities, and understanding of

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humans themselves, and a consequent revolution in both

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culture and technology.

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More than that, guilt free love of life on Earth,

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the end of all of this Christian misery, of being

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slaves to one another and the lowest among us.

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No, no, no.

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Iran was opposed to the idea of unearned guilt,

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opposed to the idea of people having to sacrifice

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their happiness for the Socalled greater good.

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Just a religious concept of mystical concept in our

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view, because the common good is no different than

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the good of each and every individual.

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And so what would the world look like?

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The world would be a world in which we

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would respect one another's rational selfinterest, a world in

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which we would share our values enthusiastically, a world

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in which people in an uninhibited, guilt free way,

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would be enjoying and pursuing their long term happiness.

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So barely scratched.

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All I can do is the most vague ways

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tell you that comparative paradise to anything that humans

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have known is waiting for the world.

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Should it embrace the basic ideas of owning

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Rand now, actually, I'll throw this in even

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though it's not related to Ms. Rand.

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One of the positive effects of this covet

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debacle led by government interference is the collapse

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of the government education and the burgeoning home

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school movement or private school movement.

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Lots of parents have pulled their kids out of

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public schools over the last two years, haven't they?

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Yes. Amazing.

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And to me, that's getting very critical out there

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and getting very critical of the whole system.

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The seed for the second Renaissance right there. Yeah.

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Well, I absolutely think that's true.

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I think people are growing skeptical of the

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value of a University education and the humanities.

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I think they can see it in

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the technical areas, science and engineering.

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I think it's still Aristotelian based somewhat.

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There is some rationality there.

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But when it comes to philosophy and history and

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economics and psychology, just garbage, people come out with

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degrees that they may not be able to use

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at all or that have absolutely corrupted any correct

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understanding and prevented them from seeing the truth.

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So I got an undergraduate degree in philosophy

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only because I knew I was going to

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go on to be an attorney, for example.

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But if that characterized my education, but that is to

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say a University education in the 20th century in philosophy,

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I would be one messed up individual with probably no

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marketable job skills except at Harvard or Yale.

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Even if you go to Harvard, Yale,

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some of those people are complaining.

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Some of those people who want the government

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to cancel because the government gives these guaranteed

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loans, these low interest loans to students, even

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if they don't qualify for scholarships, their politicians

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want to cancel all those College debt.

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But the fact is they undertook all that College debt.

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Now they have what is even from the

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prestigious private universities become a useless degree.

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We're recording this for release on her birthday

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February 2 next month, and I generally celebrate

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her birthday with some quiet reflection.

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Maybe I'll pick up actually, what I like to

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do is I'll grab her nonfiction work for The

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New Intellectual, and I'll peek that I'll peek into

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the excerpts from the novels and just get reinspired.

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Yeah.

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Can I ask what you normally do?

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If anything, that's a good one, because the book

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for the New Intellectual was her first book.

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Collecting sort of excerpts included a big

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nonfiction essay Intellectual, which had a powerful

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effect on me, helped shape the course

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of my life and my career decisions.

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It's that big an influence on me.

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Just that essay for the New Intellectual I

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think we discussed before the faith and force

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between faith and force, and for the New

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Intellectual to avoid Rand's early nonfiction essays after

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publishing Atlas Shrugged, those two had formative impact

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on my thinking about everything and even my

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interests, intellectually and my career direction.

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So, yeah, and that book is I highly recommend

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the book because it's got Ein Rand, the most

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philosophical excerpts from her novels, with a living Anthem

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Fountainhead atmosphere and really an excellent place for people

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who want to know Einran's ideas, a good place

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for them to start.

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It's in that book that she named her philosophy

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in a Public way Objectivism for the first time.

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But her other books, The Virtue of Selfishness,

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which came shortly thereafter, a revolution in ethics.

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Yes, I'm Rand was controversial because, of course,

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she advocated selfishness, and by that she didn't

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mean what most people mean when you concretize

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what selfishness means in specific concrete actions.

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For most people, they mean criminals and

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drug addicts and thieves and people who

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are on a course of self destruction.

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I was a prosecutor for many years, and people,

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some of my more conservative colleagues would say, oh,

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yeah, look at all those selfish people in jail.

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And I would always make the point, well, even if we

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didn't manage to put them in jail, we're looking at some

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of the most self destructive people in our society.

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These people are not developing productive skills.

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These people, whether or not we catch them

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or not, these people are, in effect, ruining

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themselves, their characters and their own psychologists.

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Some of them are destroying

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themselves with drugs and alcohol.

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The folks in that jail, whether they were

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in jail or not, would be among the

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most self destructive human beings in our country.

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They were always taken aback by that.

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But what I ran meant by selfishness was your long

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term actual self interest, something that very few people even

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take the time to identify, much less consider in a

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principled way as Ian Randy and putting it on that

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ground, making human life the objective needs of human life

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is the standard of moral values.

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As she did, she was able to provide us

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with an objective grounding for ethics for the first

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time, giving us a real motive to be good,

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that is to say, our long term self interest.

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When I contemplate being dishonest.

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No, not all lies are dishonest.

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If you were hiding Jews from the Nazis, of

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course I ran to say, go ahead and lie,

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but the reason why I'm honest with people is

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the same reason why I'm honest with myself.

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And if I try to gain a value by

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lying to somebody, it feels like I would be

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standing on concrete into railroad tracks with a locomotive

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headed at me at 100 miles an hour.

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I regard being ethical as the

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most selfish thing I can do.

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And Ayn Rand, therefore had a

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radically different perspective on selfishness.

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But because she was an egoist figures from

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both the left and the right and everywhere

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in between as selfish, because in their minds,

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selfishness is associated with the ideas of philosophers

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like Thomas Hobbes or Friedrich Nietzsche, and very

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much disagreed with their approaches and their assumptions

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about what selfishness implied and entailed.

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And that's another reason why her

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philosophy is such a revolution.

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And in this respect, she could give a moral defense

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to capitalism, to the free market that no one had

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ever done before, until, unless we can defend a person's

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right to live for his or her own sake, defend

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the profit motive on an ethical basis, capitalism will always

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be struggling uphill against the Socialists and collectivists who claim

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to be working for the common good.

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But as I say, I'm Rand saw

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no conflict of interest between rational individuals.

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So long as I respect your rights and we get

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on peacefully, so long as reason is what we put

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first among our values, Einran saw no reason for there

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to be any conflict or any real conflict of interest

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between rational people in a free society.

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So in other words, being an egoist doesn't mean walking

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past drowning children with your nose stuck up in it.

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Oh, quite the opposite.

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You know something?

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My love for humanity in general is simply an

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emanation from my love of my own life.

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I assume that the value I place on

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my life, it's not true of everyone.

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Some people are monsters and suicidal whether they

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know it or not, but I assume I

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give the benefit of the doubt to humanity.

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I assume that they love their life like I do.

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I assume that they too appreciate this.

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So therefore I'm going to respect their selfishness.

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I can only gain from their selfishness, and it is

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in my self interest to help other people when appropriate.

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It's not an atomistic individualism that Iran

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advocated, but one which acknowledges the huge

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potential value that other people can be.

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I mean, I'm much better off in society than on a

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desert island in some ways, but I'd rather be as Iran

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points out, I'd rather be on a desert island alone than

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be a slave or in some Nazi concentration camp.

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Yeah, go ahead, Mark.

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Yeah, it will do as an ending, maybe to get you

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back again, James, because this could be a follow up.

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We could go on and on for hours.

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I think we'll wrap up, but I will give you

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some things that you could ponder on and give you,

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like the cliffhanger version and we'll come back.

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Is your book High Range Critics? Yeah.

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And also that you talk about this egotist

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and the development of Rans view about Nietzsche

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and others that have written about that, and

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also the anecdote about the businessman that approached

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Random wanted to change her philosophy.

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These are like hard things.

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But if you could give it like a teaser to

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the listeners, and then you will come back soon again.

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Okay.

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Well, Frederick Nietzsche was a big influence on

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Ayn Rand early on in her life.

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As a teenager, she was

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already developing ideas about egoism.

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I think a cousin of hers came up to

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her and said, AHA, I've discovered a German philosopher

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who beat you to all your ideas. She said, oh, really?

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And so she read Thus Begsarathustra, and she was

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favorably impressed by his poetry and some of his

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expressions of the heroic sense of life.

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But as she studied his ideas further, read

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The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil,

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stuff like that, she realized that he was

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a defender of subjectivism, irrationalism determinism.

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He had a view of emotions that was

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instinctive, the blue, the blood, not cognition.

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I'm granted, our emotions were the result

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of our evaluations and so forth.

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She was also thought that he was

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equivocal on the issue of force.

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She thought that an egoist would neither want

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to rule nor permit himself to be ruled.

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He would neither sacrifice others to

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himself nor sacrifice himself to others.

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And so she made this very

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important clarification, in my view, explicitly

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indicating where Nietzsche had gone wrong.

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He discovered this rather early on, still writing, Mind

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you, in her first philosophical notes in 1934.

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She's still in her 20s.

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She is coming out against Nietzsche's view of emotions,

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his view of determinism, his view of subjectivism.

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She thinks, we don't need a

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genealogy or history of ethics.

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We need only a logical system of ethics.

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She was clearly coming down on Aristotle side.

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She was clearly coming down on the side of

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voluntary interaction between people, as opposed to some Ubermens,

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like you say, stepping over dead bodies.

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Let me jump in here really quick.

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In her published journals, at least speaking for

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myself, I could see her growth from Nietzsche

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to Objectivist, if you will, right?

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As I say, even in her 20s, she

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rejected the basic, the most fundamental philosophical ideas.

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In his system, jar subjectivism, radical subjectivism

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determinism, radical determinism, and a certain approach

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to emotions, an attack on principled ethics,

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logical ethics beyond good and evil.

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We need the transvaluation of values.

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But he didn't provide a positive system of values.

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So in my book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, the

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way I put it is Nietzsche was a philosophical bulldozer.

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Heinrand was an architect.

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She built a system of principled ethics based.

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I mean, one of the big problems with the new atheists,

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in my view, is that they don't have a good answer

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to the religious people to say where the ethics come from.

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Ayn Rand has the answer, another

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important revolution that Iron provides.

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But she still admired Nietzsche to the point that she

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was going to include a quote from Frederick Nietzsche.

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The Noble Soul has referenced for itself.

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The introduction is the dedication to the Fountainhead.

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But even by that point, she had

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grown so disenchanted with Nietzsche, she excluded

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even putting that quote there.

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She just mentioned it in the introduction she

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wrote to the 25th anniversary edition in 1968.

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Now, my book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's critics,

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former associates of Iron Rand, who had, in my

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view, terribly exploited her financially, lied to her.

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They came out with biographies shortly after Iran's

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death when Iran could not respond to them.

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And that struck me as somewhat unfair.

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And so around the turn of the 21st century, around

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2000 2001, I published a series of critiques of Barbara

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Brandon's biography, Anne Leonard Picoff and the Estate of Iron

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Ran contacted me, and I wasn't the one who contacted

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them even to let them know I'd done this. But Dr.

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Pecoff liked what I had written and offered me

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Iran's personal notes on the break she had with

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the Brandon and asked if I could use them.

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I went and looked at those notes and found that they

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very much in fact, they provided a lot more information than

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I ever thought was there to critique the brand and what

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they'd left out and what they'd lied about.

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And so in 2005, I published

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The Passion of Iran's Critics.

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It's very distressing to me that so many of

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Iran's critics are focused on ad hominem personal issues.

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And every single time I cannot think of

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a major personal attack on her that is

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even accurate, actually accurate, as if attacking her

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personally could refute her philosophy, which it cannot.

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Of course, that's just ad hominem.

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But more than that, as if we should simply

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dismiss her because, you see, she's this rotten, selfish

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psychopath and all of that is lies.

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But that whole personal attack has its roots in

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the Brandons and their biographies, and I had hoped

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to give Ain Rand side of that dispute.

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The fact is that the brand, and as I say, lied not

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only to Iran for many years, but lied to the public about

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their break with Iron Rand in I had to bring all that

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to the attention, I think, of people so that they could understand

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the credibility and bias issues of the brand.

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And apart from several factual issues,

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they get wrong about Iron Random.

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James, this has been great, but I want to do

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a couple of things for our audience who may not

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be as philosophically knowledgeable as the three of us.

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Can you just give a quick

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definition of subjectivism and determinism? Okay.

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The idea of subjectivism is

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that we cannot know reality.

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Some subjectivist say, oh, yeah,

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sure, there's a reality.

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We can never transcend our own perspective on it.

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All we have is our angle, our perspective,

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and our biases, and our attempt to escape

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that is always going to be impossible.

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And that's what Frederick Nietzsche believed.

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Friedrich Nietzsche was not a solipsist, someone who believes

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that only his consciousness exists and that everyone else

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is just really an image of his consciousness.

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But he was a Subjectivist.

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He believed that each of us had our

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own wholly unique little worlds of perspective.

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Therefore, that objective truth is illusory as

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such, particularly in philosophical and moral matters.

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But subjectivism is the belief that your consciousness,

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in effect, is all that you can know.

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You can't know reality.

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Or as Kant, an arch subjectivist, said,

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we can never know things in themselves.

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Or earlier subjectivist would say, reality is inaccessible to

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our consciousness, and all we have are the effects

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of reality at best on our consciousness.

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Now, determinism is a belief that everything is,

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in effect, predetermined, that everything has already been

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set by atoms of the physical world, which

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are, in effect, playing out with each other

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in a billiard ball fashion, that's the scientific

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version, Spinoza, was a logical determinist.

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He thought that logic itself implied that human beings had

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no choice, you see, and that whatever choice we think

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is, we all know that thinking takes effort.

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We all experience from the inside making choices,

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and those choices seem to make a difference. Right.

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So determinism is the denial that human beings have any

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kind of free will and that it's all predetermined.

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Ian Rand had a very specific view of free will.

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She didn't think it was magic.

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She didn't think it was limitless in its power.

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It was very specific, and it had a specific role.

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And we could bring control to our lives to

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a certain degree through the use of thinking.

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And look at how humans can do that.

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Look at the range of human creativity.

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We can play golf on the moon.

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We can compose, we split atoms, right.

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We genetically alter molecules to

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create new life species.

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Our power over the world is astonishing, but because of

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our creative ability to think, and that's what Iran identified

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as our free will, our ability to think or not.

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And to that extent, we can change the

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world and bring control to our lives.

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So she actively argued against determinism, whether

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of the religious or scientific variety. One more thing.

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I want to give you a quote of hers, and

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then you can expand on that for a little bit.

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Quote, the alleged shortcut to knowledge, which is

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faith, is only a shortcut, destroying the mind. Unquote.

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That's a gem, isn't it?

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It's a gem.

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Ainrand believed.

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So this is a technical point in philosophy,

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but Iran was really the first philosopher to

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come to grips with the fact that consciousness

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possesses a specific identity and nature.

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Previous philosophers had thought, and

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I include Aristotle in this.

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Who is the philosopher that had the

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biggest influence of all on iron?

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She regarded herself, in effect,

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as in the Aristotelian tradition.

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And even Aristotle said that if

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consciousness were anything in particular, that

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that would be a distorting element.

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And that really did get modern

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philosophy off to a bad start.

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Based on Lock, I believed in this causal

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theory of knowledge, this veil of perception.

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All we know is the effects of reality on

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our senses in mind, not reality in itself.

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Iran rejected all of that.

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It climaxed with cons.

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Of course, we said we can't

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ever know things in themselves.

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All we know are the

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categories of our own consciousness.

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Space and time are just the way

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we have of looking at the world.

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It's not nothing about the world itself.

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Logic, logic itself is only a feature.

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It wouldn't be nice if it was an

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automatic feature of you and my oh, boy.

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God said that it was built in.

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We have to be logical only, right?

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Iran rejected all of that.

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She said, all of that is, in effect, arguing that

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we are blind because we have eyes, deaf, because we

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have ears, diluted because we have a mind.

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But it's not only a reputation of any of

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the serious arguments of the skeptics, it's also a

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reputation, the identity of consciousness, of the mystic.

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The mystic is person who rejects reason for on

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behalf of some other non rational means of knowing.

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But of course, the senses connect me with reality.

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Logic keeps me connected to reality.

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I know how those work.

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Those have a causal mechanism to keep me in

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contact with reality and to connect me with reality.

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Whereas mysticism, what do they have?

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They have Crystal balls, tea leaves, horoscopes,

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mystic, revelation, ancient texts, you name it.

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There are these pseudo abracadabra, pseudo

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methods of knowing Ouija boards.

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It goes on and on and on, right.

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And these are all pseudo means,

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non causal means of knowledge.

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And mysticism, religion always amounts to that.

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It's not a shortcut to knowledge.

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It actually shortcircuits knowledge by

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evading the method required.

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If an idea pops into my head

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like ghost or God or unicorn.

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It doesn't oblige reality to

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contain those things, does it?

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I've got to connect the idea in my

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head to reality by a process of logical

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demonstration that reduces it to the evidence of

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observation, HAPS into respect for the nature of

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consciousness and the causal identity that consciousness is

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the process that consciousness has to go through.

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You're not even having a proper how. So?

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Iran rejected both radical skepticism and

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radical mysticism on this same basis.

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It violates the primary requirement of consciousness, which

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must have an identity in order to operate.

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It's not the disqualifying feature of

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consciousness, it's the means of consciousness.

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But it is the indispensable means of consciousness that

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can have no shortcut and no short circuit.

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How did she answer the critics, then, that said,

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well, if you're just logical, you mean deny emotions?

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Oh, quite the opposite.

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Ayn Rand was a passionate person.

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She didn't think that there had to be

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a conflict at all between reason and emotion,

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insofar as people do run it.

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And there's a reasonably common phenomenon where

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people believe one thing, but their emotions

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are leading them in another direction.

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Well, Ian Rand says that's ultimately a

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conflict between your ideas, a subconscious idea.

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You may not have recognized that you came

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to maybe in childhood, maybe subconsciously, but in

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effect, it's an evaluation you reached at some

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point that informed your emotions.

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Now, heinrand was way ahead of the curve on this.

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In recent decades, the cognitive behavioral school

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of psychology has largely taken over the

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therapeutic world and to a large extent,

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even made inroads in the academic world.

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And so Ayn Rand was decades ahead of her time.

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She was one of the pioneers

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of the cognitive view of psychology.

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And so to Ayn ran thinking, sure, there may be

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issues that you can never overcome, even with dedicated psychotherapy

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and that you just have to live with.

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But she said, man is a being, a self made soul.

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We can shape our own characters, personality, our

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own emotions through the values that we inculcate

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in ourselves, that we really integrate into our

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thinking and that we act on.

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And that pretty soon that becomes who

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we are, that becomes our emotional reaction.

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And boy, I can confirm this

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from my own personal experience.

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My own values, as I've learned them, as they

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have sophisticated over the years, have had a direct

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impact on my native automatic emotional reactions to things,

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so that there's less and less conflict in my

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consciousness between my emotions and my logic.

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No, a properly functioning consciousness

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has them in harmony.

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Has them in harmony.

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One objective is writer.

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Put it this way, think clearly so you

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can feel deeply and feel deeply so you

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can think clearly to the Objectivist.

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There is no built in

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conflict between reason and emotion.

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Reason is our tool of knowing.

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Emotions are our tool for both enjoying

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life and helping me understand my values.

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Who was that author, if I may ask?

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Nevada.

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Okay to give credit where credit is due, I guess.

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All right.

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Well, I was going to say his first three books,

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I think were probably written when he was with Ms. Rand.

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That's why I called him an objective, is because

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that's back when he was still an Objectivist psychology

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of self esteem and who is iron.

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And even most of the material you'll find in

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the psychology of romantic love was material he had

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developed when he was with Iron Rant.

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He went off the deep end.

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He went off the deep end, in my view.

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His later work becomes less and

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less important, in my view.

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And some of it is actually darn right, as

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I say, his memoir about Aang Ran, his life

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with Iran Rand, and some of his psychology implications

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about what Ayn Rand was saying.

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We're just outright misleading.

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It was Aaron Rand telling him

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not to be a rationalist repressor.

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And then he writes, break free.

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I had to stop being a rationalist oppressor,

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which is what Iran was making me do.

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No, if you read her notes, she was telling him

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she was diagnosing in him the need to be himself

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and stop trying to martyr yourself to try and be

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in a quote, your view of an Objectivist hero.

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That's what she was telling him.

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But I did have to.

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That's such a beautiful quote, though.

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Even though it's raining, I

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don't dismiss everything from Brandon.

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Again, I stand by.

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I think his first three books

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are well worth trying to find.

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But after those, it's garbage. Yeah.

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Anyway, James Martin, do you have anything to add?

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Oh, I didn't get to the Texas oil man store.

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Martin mentioned that earlier, and that

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popped back in my head.

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Iran was a woman of enormous integrity,

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and she was like Howard work.

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She wouldn't give an inch on her ideas.

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She would state them plainly forthrightly,

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even if it offended the audience.

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They were scandalized sometimes by her

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defenses of aviation or selfishness or

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radical complete free market capitalism.

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She didn't care.

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She was going to defend the truth as she saw it.

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And there was one after Atlas Shrugged came out,

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I guess there was a multimillionaire Texas oilman, a

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conservative, apparently a Republican, who said, Ms.

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Ryan, I'll give you up to a

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million dollars to help spread your ideas.

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If only you add a religious element

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or make them friendly to religion.

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Or don't be so hostile to Mystics and religion.

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She, of course, threw the offer

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into the waste paper basket.

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As the way Leonard Peacock describes it, what good would that

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money do me if I had to compromise my ideas?

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It would undermine everything that I stand

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for all of my life's work.

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I may as well just rip up every copy of Atlas Shrugged.

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I wouldn't do that.

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And so for Ayn Rand, there was no

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any more than there was a reason.

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Emotion, dichotomy.

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There was no theory, practice dichotomy.

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It would have been the height of impracticality for her

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to have compromised on a significant point, even if someone

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was going to give her a million dollars to help

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spread the rest of her ideas and work.

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Martin, anything else for you? No. All right.

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Looking forward to commemorate

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and celebrate Rand's Day.

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Yes, Gran's Day, RAN's birthday.

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It's a wonderful holiday because it's the holiday

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where we should do something for ourselves.

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It's the holiday where we should.

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Iran was asked whether indulgence and pleasure, but

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I think Playboy Magazine 64 interviewing her.

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Should we indulge her?

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She doesn't regard pleasure as an indulgence. No.

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If you are being rational and principled,

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then it is a human need.

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Do something nice for yourself.

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Do something important for yourself.

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On RAN's Day, Rand would have really

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liked that way of celebrating her birthday.

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And on that note, we've been talking

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to James Valiant, author of The Passion

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of Iron Ranch Critics and Creating Christ.

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All the Romans invented Christianity.

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I think that is correct. Yes.

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And we wanted to talk about Ayn Rand today

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to publish this on her birthday next month.

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James, once again, thanks for

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Manning the foxhole with us.

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Oh, always my pleasure.

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You guys always happy to come

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back you guys are great, James. And you will be back.

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About the Podcast

The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
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About your hosts

Blair Schofield

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I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

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Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: Pluck the Day. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum