Customer Reviews

Ayn Rand

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"Rand's Objectivism, of all the schools of contemporary philosophy, may well be the one that holds out the best, most ..........." Tibor R. Machan

Unlike most independent Ayn Rand scholars, who tend to consider themselves as superior professionals correcting the childish blunders of an incompetent amateur, Tibor Machan, as the above quote suggests, is a respectful commentator who correctly recognizes that Ayn Rand was a major philosopher and that most of what Randian scholars today can hope to accomplish is to polish up some aspects of her philosophical system, develop new applications of it and confront the latest batch of criticisms from academia. As far as his personal philosophy is concerned, he seems to have accepted most of the fundamentals of Objectivism, and in most contemporary philosophical battles, he is generally on the right side, defending free-will against determinism, ethical cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, the free society vs. welfare statism and marxism, and the morality of business against leftist and conservative smears. I would therefore consider him an estranged friend of Objectivism, to be distinguished from the self-styled "sympathetic observers" of the philosophy who in the next breath call Rand a pseudo-philosopher.

Unfortunately, Machan tends to suffer from a lack of system and hierarchy in his writings, and nowhere is this clearer than in the present book. Compared to Peikoff's *Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand* or even Gotthelf's *On Ayn Rand*, which are beautifully structured and clearly distinguish fundamentals from derivatives, Machan's *Ayn Rand* is much less integrated and systematic.

This lack of system of course need not be a reflection of Machan's own mental functioning, even though he does have a penchant for pluralism and eclecticism, but is probably due to the way the book was put together: *Ayn Rand* is essentially a disjointed collection of articles previously published in various reviews, newsletters and books. Chapter 4, "Rand's Rational Individualism", for instance, is a slightly edited copy of chapter 10 of *The Philosophical Thought of Ayn Rand*.

Machan's lack of enthusiasm for philosophical hierarchy does sometimes affect his conclusions, though. For instance, when he states that "in some parts of his moral philosophy and in politics, Kant was closer to [Rand's] own ideas than are most other philosophers" (p117), he clearly shows his rejection of the Objectivist tenet that one cannot understand a statement out of the whole hierarchy of a man's philosophical ideas. This may also explain why he feels sympathetic to the libertarians and leans to the "moral tolerationist" wing of Objectivism.

Anyway, I do recommend this book as a good overview of Objectivism, and perhaps as a better *introduction* to this philosophy than Gotthelf's very compact volume (though the latter is a more reliable statement of the content of the philosophy). Machan makes interesting comments on the distinction between derivation and deduction and he identifies a few contemporary philosophers whose views are very similar to Objectivism. His more haphazard reflections on "Problems Left for Objectivism" however suffer from a lack of familiarity with the more recent taped material and simple misinterpretations of Objectivist tenets. (For instance, though he has read *We The Living*, he asks: "Cannot a work of art be quite excellent, yet... sad? Tragic?", perpetuating a common caricature of the Objectivist esthetics.) Finally, I must say I found some of the statements in the book cryptic or highly dubious: "Rand's foundationalism can be characterized as post-epistemological" or "Rand's approach is also consistent with... an (almost) anything-goes, (almost) Feyerabendian laissez-faire attitude towards the methods of factual investigation".

I gave it such a low score not because the book is badly written, or one cannot understand it, but rather because it is not very informative and I'm not sure to whom is it addressed.

If you are already have an interest for Objectivism or Ayn Rand, and might want to learn somewhat deeper into the subject, this book won't help you much. It is an introduction, but since it rarely explains where the claims of Objectivism comes from that it is not a very useful introduction. In this case one might do better going directly to another book.

If you are like me, and you only want to read one book on Objectivism because it was brought up in a conversation or something similar, this book will probably not satisfy you, since again, it makes claims that are not even remotely backed up.

The author spends most of the book saying that Rand gives way to an objective moral and ethical system. To me that sounded like the most interesting part of Objectivism, and yet the author never stops to explain how this is so. I wouldnt have expected the full outline of such a system in an introductory text, but it would have helped if even a little of the path was shown, or even delineated. Instead we are asked to believe (with no reason for it) that this is so, and we are kept this way through the whole book.

All in all, I found the book disapointing, and it was unable to answer my passing curiosity on the subject. If you are more interested on the subject, I would also recomend that you go for another book where a more indepth analysis is shown.

This is the best introduction to Ayn Rand available. Because Prof. Machan was never a member of Rand's inner circle, he can write freely on her philosophy and discuss its strengths as well as weaknesses. Nonetheless, Prof. Machan clearly admires Rand and considers her an important philosopher.

There are a number of merits to this book: (1) Prof. Machan provides a clear overview of Rand's position on most philosophical questions, placing prominence on Rand's axiomatic concepts; (2) the book contains a solid discussion of Rand's works; and (3) chapter 7 - on various questions that Rand failed to consider - is excellent.

There are some weaknesses to the work as well. First, Prof. Machan doesn't spend enough time on Rand's theory of concept formation, which her followers consider he greatest contribution to philosophy. Second, he is too kind to Rand when it comes to her often unfair and inaccurate attacks on other philosophers. While he says that Rand caricatures other thinkers, the fact is that Rand had little knowledge of the history of philosophy and her discussion of other philosophers is simply pathetic. Anyone who doubts this should read her essay, "For the New Intellectual." Third, like many of Rand's admirers, Prof. Machan overestimates Rand's originality. The fact is that most of Rand's ideas can be found in other writers.

In spite of its flaws, this is generally an outstanding book. I recommend it highly.