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Ayn Rand: The Last Enlightenment Philosopher—or the First of Their Return?

By Walter Donway

March 9, 2023

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If intellectuals today—college faculty, scholars, and “public intellectuals” at newspapers, magazines, television news/talk shows, and online periodicals—oppose, scorn, or simply dismiss and ignore the philosophy of Ayn Rand (usually getting her ideas wrong) that is because they have turned against the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment (1650-1815).

Even the occasional advocate of Enlightenment ideas such as Stephen Pinker in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress may dismiss Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism with a throwaway comment such as that she is channeling Friedrich Nietzsche (She is not and has made that abundantly clear, but you do have to have read her works to know that).

As an advocate for Objectivism, I was aware that Ayn Rand was a modern-day Enlightenment philosopher.

As an advocate for Objectivism, I was aware that Ayn Rand was a modern-day Enlightenment philosopher. (Also a modern-day Aristotelian, which must be clarified because the Age of Enlightenment is almost defined as overturning Medieval Aristotelian scholasticism, an attempted synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology that dominated Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century.)

Then, I began a series of blogs on Enlightenment intellectuals for The Liberty Fund’s “Reading Room,” a forum edited by Director of Communications and Senior Scholar Sarah Skwire. Her understanding and support enabled me to write and publish blogs on Age of Enlightenment intellectuals from Francis Bacon to Denis Diderot. And likewise on the first famous philosophical opponent of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau—darling of hippies, 1960s artists and writers, core philosophical environmentalists, anti-“consumerists,” and back-to-nature types. In a word, the “counter-Enlightenment.”

An advocate for Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a contemporary Enlightenment intellectual in all essentials.

In researching and writing, I learned in depth and detail that as an advocate for Ayn Rand’s philosophy, one is a contemporary Enlightenment intellectual in all essentials.

The epistemology of reason based on logic and empiricism, the ethics of self-interest based on man’s nature, the politics of limited state power to liberate the individual to pursue happiness, and the social order of capitalism and free trade to promote human welfare: All are a legacy of the Age of Enlightenment, all are essential to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and all are rejected and opposed by today’s intellectuals.

Enlightenment themes are embraced at least in America by the so-called “common man.”

But essential to any realistic assessment of our time is realizing that Enlightenment themes are embraced at least in America by the so-called “common man.” A case in point is widespread enthusiasm for technology, which Rousseau-inspired intellectuals see as threatening the future of the planet. Another is widespread enthusiasm for economic growth, more goods, and more luxuries, which Rousseau-inspired intellectuals see as “consumerism” that wastes natural resources, pollutes, and distracts attention from “natural” man.

These debates originated in the Age of Enlightenment and continue today. Except, I would say, in the Age of Enlightenment the debates were open, explicit, and frank. The Catholic Church, in particular, opposed the new emphasis on natural philosophy (science) and empiricism to the exclusion of explanations by reference to the supernatural. Christian evangelicals opposed the new “natural philosophy” (science) and its insistence on reason, observation, and experiment as the only source of knowledge. The Jansenist offshoot of Catholicism upheld the supremacy of faith over reason.

Today, in the tradition of the first great opponents of Enlightenment ideas—David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant—all attacks on reason are in the name of reason.

Today, in the tradition of the first great opponents of Enlightenment ideas—David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant—all attacks on reason are in the name of reason. The Enlightenment saw the beginning of that ploy. No intellectual today admits to questioning the conclusions of reason in the name of faith, the supernatural. All attacks on reason are in the name of reason and, above all, in the name of science. That is because we ubiquitously still hold the Enlightenment view that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy.

And no attack on political liberty is in the name of authoritarianism. Any attack on freedom must be in the name of freedom. The political freedom of the Enlightenment—defined as government that leaves people free to think, act, acquire property and keep it—is repackaged today as “freedom” from any unmet human need, a freedom purchased at the price of forcing others to pay, while the ambit of “needs” is expanded well beyond basic physiological requirements for survival.

Ayn Rand’s essential metaphysical position—an objective, independently existing reality to be discovered by man’s senses and reason—was at the core of the Enlightenment in the philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, and many others. The “book of nature,” whether seen (by deists) as the creation of God or as simply existing, was the proper object of human study. It was what it was; the goal of reason was to discover its nature. And in that process lay the potential for human progress and improvement. Ayn Rand’s associate, Leonard Peikoff, said in a lecture on the Philosophy of Objectivism: “What is nature? Nature is existence—the sum of that which is. It is usually called “nature” when we think of it as a system of interconnected, interacting entities governed by law. So “nature” really means the universe of entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.” This was the credo of both the Age of Science and the Age of Enlightenment.

The attack on that principle came from George Berkeley, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, supposed “Enlightenment” philosophers who attacked and undercut the Enlightenment—in the case of Berkeley and Kant to restore religious faith.

Ayn Rand’s epistemology—the supremacy of reason, the conceptual level of functioning as man’s means of knowing reality (“nature”), surviving, and flourishing—is a tribute to the Age of Enlightenment (also called, of course, the Age of Reason). She wrote: “Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge. . . .In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature.” (“What Is Capitalism?” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 16.”)

From Bacon through the great seventeenth-century scientists, culminating in Newton, reason as the method of obtaining knowledge dominated. The evidence of the senses, observation, experimentation, logic—integrating simple ideas into more complex ideas and ultimately an entire system—dominated the thinking of John Locke, the French philosophes like Diderot, and the Scottish Enlightenment. A fundamental premise of the Enlightenment was separation of science and theology, reason and faith, the natural and supernatural.

Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest, follows from Enlightenment logic: If our means of knowledge is understanding nature, including human nature and its requirements, then we see that man is equipped for survival by reason and first finds in nature and then creates from nature what he requires for his survival and happiness. Although it was still a deeply religious age, and the Catholic Church was the foe of the Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers were not altruists.

Ayn Rand wrote: “The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival…The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash…” (“The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 31)

The goals of survival (“utility”) and happiness derive directly from Enlightenment science. Nature is for the benefit of all creatures, including man, and we see that nature of living beings is to be motivated by pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain. Whether or not it is God’s creation, nature can be made to suit the industrial-age man’s life and his striving for happiness and avoidance of pain. That is the Objectivist ethics as put forward by Ayn Rand with many insights that are significant articulations, clarifications, and extensions of Enlightenment ideas. An example is her formulation: the purpose of a code of ethics is the individual’s survival and happiness, the standard of a code of ethics is what is required for man’s survival qua man and the concomitant emotion of happiness.

The political ideal advanced by Ayn Rand, laissez faire capitalism, is a product of the Enlightenment’s leading intellects, most notably Adam Smith. His writings are rooted in the argument for self-interest in his Moral Sentiments and the free market advocated in his Wealth of Nations. Smith was motivated to turn to economics (from earlier work on ethics in Moral Sentiments) by the Enlightenment view that the ultimate end of knowledge is serve human happiness. In the same way, Diderot, as editor of the great Encyclopedia of the French philosophes, included hundreds of articles on technology, production, and practical arts—a “first” for a philosophical work.

Smith’s arguments, and the ideas of his adherents ever since, support laissez faire capitalism as both the most productive and the most moral social system that we know. Ayn Rand wrote: “The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice [the giving of the earned].” (“What is Capitalism?” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 20).

Thomas Jefferson was a leading trans-Atlantic transmission belt for Enlightenment ideas between Europe and America: as were Baron Montesquieu (separation of powers, checks and balances in government), Thomas Hobbes (purpose of government), John Locke (goal of earthly happiness, nature of government, toleration), Voltaire (religious toleration, separation of church and state), Bishop Joseph Butler (pursuit of happiness), and Cesare Beccaria (rights of the accused, humane punishment)—to name a few.

And so, in all core branches of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics—we see that Ayn Rand is today’s foremost Enlightenment philosopher. Her enemies and detractors are opponents of the Age of Enlightenment—chiefly influenced by philosophical ideas launched by Immanuel Kant.

In the wake of Kant’s undercutting of the Enlightenment (reason can know only appearances, reality can be known only by faith, and human morality must be guided by duty); this German philosophy spawned both Marxism and Nazism—the full flowering of the German counter-Enlightenment.

In our time, anti-Enlightenment philosophy has mutated into “postmodernism.”

In our time, anti-Enlightenment philosophy has mutated into “postmodernism.” (“Modernism” is a term for the Age of Enlightenment and “postmodernism” a term for rejecting the Enlightenment ideals.) Unfortunately, the outcome in practice is pre-Enlightenment or worse: rejection of reason, rejection of individualism, rejection of secularism, rejection of self-interest, and rejection of capitalism for socialism and fascism.

The enemies of Objectivism are the enemies of the Age of Enlightenment. For them, Ayn Rand is the embodiment, today, of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. And those they view as long ago discredited by Hume, Rousseau, and Kant and his successors down to today’s postmodernists.

 

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