Sad to say, the vast majority of people do not take philosophy seriously, even though they are helplessly in its grip. It is understandable that with with all of the competing ideologies and perspectives on the nature and purpose of human life, philosophy is seen by many simply as another religion without the element of deity – a subjective secular belief system.
Enter philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, whose philosophy of Objectivism has a name that specifically refutes the subjective, and who since having arrived on America’s philosophical frontier, established a reputation unlike that of any other philosopher. She self-identified as being on the Right, which she associated with freedom and capitalism.
But there are many others who self-identify as being on the Right, who completely reject Ayn Rand’s philosophy, not because of its principles which they rarely mention, but because of its messenger.
“Ayn Rand is a modernist atheist radical individualist; what about that is conservative?” asked the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles on his April 4 podcast during which he ranked the greatest philosophers.
And then, religiously repeating that Ayn Rand “is not a serious thinker,” while citing his own Christian faith, he dismissed philosophy as some kind of minor intellectual entertainment: “Everyone knows that the purpose of reading philosophy is to make yourself seem smart at parties.”
Humor aside, Knowles is representative of many of those who could be labeled the ‘Religious Righteous’ by dismissing philosophy because they have religion. By repeating over and over again that Ayn Rand was not a serious thinker, he was doing what the Left does when it wants to avoid being recognized: projecting his own evasion of ‘serious thinking’ on the perhaps the most serious thinker in the history of humanity since Aristotle.
In her 1960 televised interview with CBS host Mike Wallace, Ayn Rand emphasized that America’s leaders had become “intellectually bankrupt” because none wished to face the “philosophical approach to moral issues – issues of right and wrong.”
Citing the morality of altruism as the culprit behind the political crisis of her day, she called for a moral code based on rational self-interest, while warning that “to some degree, all religions advocate the morality of self-sacrifice.” And when the religious Right claims to support freedom and capitalism on the grounds of Christian faith, Rand objected because this sent a message that capitalism can only be defended on the grounds of faith, which only weakened its argument.
There are rational objective reasons to advocate and support freedom and capitalism, she insisted, and this is the task of philosophy.
If philosophy seems boring to many, it’s probably because the particular philosophies with which they are familiar actually are boring and irrelevant – and on the Left. But Ayn Rand has demonstrated that when confronted by a philosophy that’s Just Right, millions awaken to the value of philosophy as the key to both preventing tyranny and to establishing a free society.
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