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With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of Ayn Rand's Philosophy

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In 1971, professor of philosophy William O'Neill published the first book-length critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy, known as Objectivism. (Albert Ellis's 1968, IS OBJECTIVISM A RELIGION?, was a discussion of Rand and psychology, from what I recall.) This book isn't bad, but it has been superseded as a critique of Objectivism by Robbins's work (ANSWER TO AYN RAND, which has been updated as WITHOUT A PRAYER) and Scott Ryan's recently released OBJECTIVISM AND THE CORRUPTION OF RATIONALITY.

O'Neill's discussion of Rand's thought is informative and more or less accurate. On the other hand, he doesn't make enough of an effort to integrate Rand's thought into a coherent whole (granted, this isn't easy to do). So I don't think that someone new to Ayn Rand would understand why Rand has influenced so many people. Yet O'Neill does do a good job at bringing to light of some of the contradictions in Rand's work. For example, Rand preached that compromise was evil; yet she supported candidates for president who were anything but Objectivists. However, some of the alleged contradictions Prof. O'Neill finds would disappear if he had used a bit more "charity" in interpreting Rand.

If you want to read a sympathetic integration of Rand's thought, I recommend Chris Sciabarra's AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL.

I apologize at the outset for the length of this review: the issues raised in William F. O'Neills' WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE are of sufficient complexity that they must be engaged in a modicum of detail if the book is to be evaluated.

The list of O'Neill's publications suggests that his primary field was education. Owing to the influence of John Dewy (1859 - 1952), 20th Century educational theory in America has been seasoned with philosophical Pragmatism. O'Neill's criticism of Objectivist epistemology (pp. 103 - 122) gives evidence that he's in step with this trend. What he offers, then, is a philosophical critique of Objectivism from the perspective of a philosophical pragmatist.

The book is a mixed bag. Part One (pp. 1 - 79) provides a fair-to-middling summary of Rand's main philosophical positions. This section is useful, because it's rich in bibliographic citations and references to key passages from Rand's philosophical oeuvre. Part Two, the critical analysis of Objectivism, is less appreciable, enlightening here, frustrating there. O'Neill points out (pp. 84 & 88) how, despite her fulminations against Plato and Immanuel Kant, Rand's positions and theirs are kissing-cousins at several key points. He also offers interesting pragmatic rebuttals of Rand's and Nathaniel Branden's views about perception, concept formation, the relative importance of reason and emotion in the ontogeny of the intellect, etc. When it comes to purely logical matters, however, O'Neill's lack of training ill equips him to exposit Rand's more extreme blunders. His discussion of the Laws of Identity, Excluded Middle, and Noncontradiction (pp. 122 - 130), in particular, is appallingly muddleheaded. As a consequence, O'Neill sometimes has a hard time hitting the target critically.

Additionally, O'Neill might have done a better job of pointing out how Rand's writings actually offer precious little in the way of genuine argumentation. Typically, she simply announces a position as allegedly following from such-and-such premises. Yet a step-by-step pattern of reasoning by which one may validly pass from premises to conclusion is rarely even intimated. Thus, while Rand's corpus abounds in declarations that this-that-or-the-other is necessitated by the Law of Identity, just how this happens to be so isn't plausibly spelled out in detail. Instead of ratiocination she delivers sermons on the omnipotence of rationality.

Rand would have us believe, in fact, that her entire philosophy follows logically from the Law of Identity (A = A). That her philosophy does so follow is thunderously false. But because O'Neill is no more savvy than Rand herself when it comes to logical technicalities, his critique of Rand's deductive errors (pp. 122 - 142) is excruciatingly inept. Consider, for example, his bumbling objections to Rand's crack-brained notion that the Law of Identity has causal import. He states (p. 138), in back-to-back sentences: "Miss Rand, in holding that causality is entailed by identity fails to see two very significant facts [sic]. Firstly, identity itself is implicitly a statement of causality." Chew that quotation over a bit. Yep, you got it, all right. The guy's telling us that Rand is MISTAKEN in holding that identity entails causality because...IDENTITY ENTAILS CAUSALITY! O'Neill evidently isn't aware that, in this context at least, entailment and implication amount to the same thing.

Neither Rand nor O'Neill commands even the barest rudiments of formal logic. Neither of them understands DEDUCTIVE VALIDITY, LOGICAL TRUTH, LOGICAL NECESSITY, ANALYTICITY, the relationships of LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE and LOGICAL EQUIVALENCE, the difference between TRANSPARENT and OPAQUE SEMANTIC CONTEXTS, etc., etc. Neither of them, for instance, understands why EVERY argument with exclusively necessary premises and a contingent conclusion is deductively invalid.

By definition, an argument is DEDUCTIVELY VALID if, and, only if, the combination all-true-premises-plus-false-conclusion is impossible. Suppose, then, we have an argument with necessarily true premises P and contingent conclusion Q. Since Q is contingent, it's possible for Q to be false. Hence, there is some possible circumstance, say, C, in which Q is false. Thus, Q is false in C. But the premises P are all necessarily true. Thus, they're all true in EVERY possible circumstance. Hence, they're all true in C. So in possible circumstance C, all the premises P are true but the conclusion Q is false. In that case, there IS a possible circumstance (viz., C) in which the argument has all true premises and a false conclusion. So, the combination all-true-premises-plus-false-conclusion is possible. Therefore, by the definition of deductive validity, the argument is deductively invalid. Q. E. D.

Moral of the story: CONTINGENT CONCLUSIONS CANNOT VALIDLY BE DRAWN FROM NECESSARY PREMISES.

This undercuts Rand's main line of argumentation. She insists that her gospels of rationality, ethical egoism, laissez faire capitalism, & co. are necessarily true inasmuch as they all follow strictly from the Law of Identity alone. But all of these doctrines are actually contingent: every one of them is conceivably false under some logically possible scenario. And since they're all contingent, none of them is validly deducible from exclusively necessary premises. Hence, NONE of them is validly deducible from the Law of Identity alone. Rand's entire philosophical system is therefore rotten at the core.

Another subject about which O'Neill's exposition is less than optimal is the forbearance of Objectivist epistemology to acknowledge that doxastic contexts are semantically opaque, that whether an ascription of belief to someone is factually correct doesn't depend solely on the truth or falsity of the ascribed belief. It's doubtful whether O'Neill himself quite understands the issue. He nevertheless puts his finger on the crux of the matter in pp. 86 - 87: because "[a]ll men know that ultimate truth and value reside in X..., to deny the reality of X is to be (willfully) untruthful and evil." He draws the sting on p. 87: `"X is thus and so" because "X is thus and so." To deny it is to be a willful liar. Not to know it is to be less than a man.' Here we have a crucial Objectivist motif, but here O'Neill lets his readers down. Despite his exhaustive documentation elsewhere, he fails to support his attribution of the above reasoning with specific quotations or citations of key Objectivist texts. Consequently, it's not fully established that Objectivism really is committed to such a stance. One can applaud O'Neill's effort to pin the tail on the donkey while wishing that he weren't blindfolded.

Objectivists, to the best of my knowledge, have never come right out with an explicit assertion that no doxastic context is opaque. It's just that their denial-of-reality schtick has no dialectical traction once the semantic opacity of "belief" contexts is acknowledged.

To appreciate the eccentricity of Objectivist doctrine about belief, savor, if you will, the following passage from Rand's PHILOSOPHY: WHO NEEDS IT? (Signet Books, 1982), p. 14:

`"It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." What is the meaning of the concept "truth"? Truth is the recognition of reality. (This is known as the correspondence theory of truth.) The same thing cannot be true and untrue at the same time and in the same respect. That catch phrase, therefore, means: a. that the Law of Identity is invalid; b. that there is no objectively perceivable reality, only some indeterminate flux which is nothing in particular, i.e., that there is no reality (in which case, there can be no such thing as truth); or c. that the two debaters perceive two different universes (in which case, no debate is possible). (The purpose of the catch phrase is the destruction of objectivity.)'

"It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." Observe how Rand completely misses the catch phrase's natural interpretation: "YOU may think so, but I don't." This is embodied in (#): Where A is any person and P is any proposition, A BELIEVES that P if, and only if, P is TRUE FOR A. Rand's accounts of truth and reality commit her to construing (#) "objectively" ("The purpose of the catch phrase is the destruction of objectivity"). Truth is unique: there is only ONE truth. Truth is therefore the SAME for everyone. Thus, P is true for A if, and only if, P is TRUE--period! Hence, by (#), truth is a NECESSARY CONDITION of belief: A BELIEVES that P only if P is true.

This flouts a fundamental difference between knowledge and belief. Truth is a necessary condition of the former but NOT of the latter: one can't KNOW to be true what's actually false, but one can BELIEVE to be true what's actually false. Taking truth to be a necessary condition of belief effectively conflates belief with knowledge. Result: one can't believe what's actually false. So if one believes something, it's true. Hence, ALL beliefs are true. Thus, there are only APPARENT--but no REAL--instances of false belief. Every apparent instance of false belief must be a case in which someone intentionally DENIES what he KNOWS to be true.

Thus, Objectivism: there are no honest mistakes, only willful "denials of reality". To be mistaken is to be a liar. You'd better BELIEVE it!

Epistemologically, Objectivism is the mirror image of Postmodernism. Both positions conflate truth and belief. They argue in opposite directions, however. Whereas Postmodernism maintains that truth is SUBjective because belief is, Objectivism maintains that belief is Objective because truth is.

O'Neill's last two chapters (pp. 148 - 233) tackle Rand's theory of value. Here he undertakes to expose problems of detail by subjecting her combined ethical/political/economic position to a scalpel-and-forceps dissection. What results are numerous bullet-point objections which are supposed to be cumulatively fatal to the overall system: death by a thousand cuts. What O'Neill never quite places at center stage are two fundamental problems that vitiate Rand's entire enterprise. Firstly, her discourse is riddled with fallacies of ambiguity as she equivocates between value QUA principle or standard of assessment and value QUA something OF value, i. e., something valuABLE. Secondly, there is a monumental inconcinnity between the system's fundamental ingredients.

Rand's theory of value can be generated from the postulate that three quiddities are essentially valuable: life, personal freedom, and the right to own property. Everything else supposedly derives its value from the basic three. First we arrive at the value of rationality, which, Rand declares, is entailed by the value of life itself. Secondly, personal freedom and the property right combine to generate a right of free trade. Likewise, she claims, the value of life necessitates Ethical Egoism (EE) as a moral platform. Life is essentially valuable. Hence, it must be the TELOS of any correct morality. Moreover, the individual's self-interest, as pertinent to his survival, inherits essential value from that of life itself. Hence, self-interest must be the First Principle of ethics: what is morally right [wrong] is precisely what militates to [against] one's rational self-interest. Ergo, EE. EE, personal freedom, and the right of free trade, in turn, justify laissez faire capitalism. We're home free.

Or are we? A potential difficulty immediately arises. It isn't difficult to foresee how unrestrained pursuit of self-interest will result in a regimen of cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself competition between uncompromising smash-and-grab opportunists whose avarice and intolerance is contained only by their anxiety to limit personal loss. EE, in short, looks like a recipe for generating the sort of mayhem spawned in South America by the rivalry of various drug cartels. Thus, the problem: how to establish fail-safe points beyond which pursuit of self-interest is morally impermissible.

Rand thinks she can finesse the matter by laying down what we may call "the No-Force Principle (NFP)": it's morally wrong to INITIATE the use of force. The NFP is supposed to prevent rational agents from trampling on each others' rights. But where does the NFP's authority come from? Its theoretical justification requires demonstration that initiating the use of force must always militate against one's OWN interest. But it's difficult to see why this should be so. After all, isn't it the NEXT guy who benefits when one pulls one's punches? Why give competitors ANY kind of break? Rand sees that one maneuver must be avoided at all costs, viz., advocating a supply-side moral economy whereby the individual receives trickle-down benefits from living in a world where each denizen's selfishness is inhibited by respect for the rights of others. Such a position affords an apology for Altruism: it advises us that, ultimately, self-interested parties will optimize their returns by contributing to the maintenance of an ALTRUISTIC world. Uh, uh. No way. This is altruistic double-think. Ya ain't gonna get THAT outta Ayn Rand.

Rand is in a dialectical jam here. Her value system isn't saleable without some equivalent of the NFP. But the NFP has no place in the system unless every rational agent is under a MORAL obligation to respect competitors' rights. Any justification for such a provision, however, must ascribe value to the welfare of others, which is an open invitation to Altruism. Uncountered, this sure looks like a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of Objectivism's value theory, eh, what? So, how DOES Rand get herself out of this fix? She simply dissembles, enunciating the NFP axiomatically and proclaiming its consistency with the rest of her system indubitable. In short, she cheats.

O'Neill strives heroically early in his book to avoid accusations of cheap-shot ad hominem argumentation by limiting snide remarks about Rand herself. He refers to her deferentially as "Miss Rand". Be that as it may, he plainly wrestles with a temptation to blurt out that when all is said and done, Rand is merely a crank philosophical dilettante and Objectivism hasn't a scintilla of philosophical value. As the exposition of Rand's dialectical enormities unfolds, however, his patience for the infelicities in her thinking approaches a breaking point.

O'Neill's self-control crumbles progressively over the book's second half, and in the last quarter his real sentiments erupt with increasing asperity. He states on p. 175, for instance: "Her [Miss Rand's] epistemology and her metaphysical assumptions--indeed, the vast bulk of her philosophy--are essentially an A POSTERIORI rationalization for a fervent A PRIORI commitment to the ethics of laissez-faire capitalism." Touché. He refers on p. 185 to "the glib and offhand way that Miss Rand indulges in the fine old art of self-contradiction." He observes on p. 186: "In the final analysis, of course, one of the most fascinating things about Miss Rand's moral absolutism is not only that it is utterly unworkable but that she appears to be genuinely oblivious to the fact that it is. She is remarkably immune to all facts, inconsistencies and contradictions which pose any threat to her own sacrosanct premises. ...Objectivist reason will ultimately come to her rescue." Do tell!

Had O'Neill really gotten down and dirty, he could have provided an even more piquant critique. He might have deconstructed, for example, Rand's labyrinthine discourses about rationality. Appeals to rationality are all-important for Rand. They inform her philosophical posturing at every turn. Yet her concept of rationality is ferociously multidimensional, at once metaphysical, epistemological, and normative. It's thus maximally ambiguous, so plastic and malleable that it can be adapted at will to any dialectical purpose--an argumentative magic wand that can be manipulated to spawn arbitrary consequences. And, most importantly, its ambiguity facilitates its use as a forensic get-out-of-jail-free card: whenever something doesn't jibe with her canonical pronouncements, Rand can simply dismiss it, IPSO FACTO, as irrational.

Ayn Rand's efforts at systematic philosophy are excruciatingly sophomoric. OBJECTIVE REALITY, she bellows, is Objectivism's metaphysic, RATIONALITY, its epistemology (cf. Ayn Rand, "Introducing Objectivism", THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER, I, 8 [August, 1962], p. 35). This is an excursion into pure nonsense. Metaphysics and epistemology are branches of philosophy; a METAPHYSIC or AN epistemology is a philosophical THEORY or SYSTEM. Taking objective reality as a metaphysic and rationality as an epistemology commits major category blunders. One might as well cite biology as a breed of dog and democracy as a kind of salad.

The objective-reality-is-my-metaphysic and rationality-is-my-epistemology routines are executed chiefly as attempts at coöpting truth by fiat. Thus, Rand would have her public think that the truth of any pronouncements she cares to make is automatically guaranteed by her adoption of objective reality as a metaphysic. Moreover, she would have people think that SHE discerns the truth unerringly because rationality is her epistemology. These are flat-out sucker-plays, intended to contour the forensic terrain in advance so that Rand always occupies the dialectical high ground in relation to critics. Such "philosophical" postures put audiences on the spot: "Whatever I say is true, because I stand for the Truth Itself! Anybody who disagrees with me therefore stands for the False! I also stand for Rationality! So my detractors stand for IRrationality! That means they're all INTELLECTUALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL! Ok, now,...I say that laissez faire capitalism is the ONLY moral economic system! If you say otherwise, you're not just mistaken but plumb STUPID...and downright EVIL to boot! So,...ARE you stupid...and evil? Well? ARE you?"

Rand shrieks that because Objectivism is an exposition of the TRUTH, the whole TRUTH, and nothing but the TRUTH, its endorsement is rationally obligatory. And she advertises this as though it were revolutionary in its novelty. But it isn't. EVERY philosopher says the exact same things about his own philosophy. They all promise revelations of necessary truth. And they all declare their competitors false prophets. Even alethic relativists bassackwardly do as much when they insist that the very notion of objective reality is myth and that what passes for truth can NEVER be anything but fiction. Most philosophers, however, expend more energy than Rand in trying to PROVE their positions. Rand mainly huffs and puffs in an effort to blow down competing viewpoints by the sheer stridency of oft-repeated allegations that they're reprehensibly false.

So...what motivated William F. O'Neill, circa 1971, to take on Ayn Rand? One suspects that the prime mover was a morbid fascination with Rand's militant craziness. Her writings contain not a speck of humor. Nor is the chill they impart that of cold logic, since they offer scarcely a granule of it. Their tone is unfailingly waspish, crackling with scorn for everyone who doesn't aspire to be one of the author's imaginary Objectivist UEBERMENSCHEN. It's a reasonable bet that O'Neill came to resent being sprayed, page after page, with the diarrhea of Rand's mind; that he reached a point where he was tired of gnashing the cusps off his teeth in exasperation and simply had to ventilate.

I know the feeling.

William O'Neill's _With Charity Toward None_ was published in 1971; John Robbins's _Answer To Ayn Rand_ was published in 1974. This fine volume by O'Neill was indeed the first full-blown critique of Objectivism from an academic-philosophical point of view, but it wasn't alone for all _that_ "many" years. Nor was it the first "critical and broad review of Rand's work by someone who disagreed with her ideas to a great extent." That honor goes to Albert Ellis's _Is Objectivism A Religion?_, published in 1968 -- admittedly not a _philosophical_ critique, but a critical review all the same.

O'Neill delivered a concise academic and philosophical critique of Objectivism and Ayn Rand's work.

His work was informed by an exhaustive survey of objectivist literature. He left no stone unturned either in giving Rand the benefit of the doubt or in pinning down the definitions Rand herself or other Objectivists gave to the terms they used.

He makes no extreme claims about objectivism. The book is an analysis, not a polemic.

Albert Ellis' book, _Is Objectivism a Religion?_ is a good companion to this book. Both books have ramifications for libertarianism and even for the somewhat reified and theological capitalism that dominates America politically. This is because the same inconsistencies and factual errors that the objectivists are guilty of permeate libertarianism and the debunked but still influential economic theories like supply-side or Austrian economics that have political power long after working economists despaired of finding any practical use for them.

This was the first and for many years only critical and broad review of Rand's work by someone who disagreed with her ideas to a great extent. It further sought to be comprehensive, informed and fair.

O'Neill has a grasp of what Rand is trying to do and ingeniously categorizes her as filling a vacuum in secular philosophy. He recognizes that she is a powerful artist-philosopher invisible to the technicalism of Anglo-american academic philosophy. He raises very typical objections to her approach of someone from this bent. The book is very well-written and readable, and very worthwhile to someone trying to critically absorb Rand's thought.

Professor O'Neill's book was the first philosophical critique of Rand's doctrines ever published (Ellis' "Is Objectivism a Religion" is not really a philosophical critique). As such, it can be regarded as a sort of pioneering effort. When it was originally published in 1970, the very idea of taking Rand seriously enough to criticize her was something of a novelty. In those days, almost all respectable people regarded Rand as a crazy person. Some even thought she was dangerous. Today, we know better. Rand was not a crazy person; she was simply ignorant and confused. Nor was she dangerous. The utopia her books offered will never appeal to a wide audience. Most human beings need either belief in God or belief in society to get by. By rejecting both these beliefs, Rand divided herself forever from the hearts and minds of the overwhelming majority of the human race.

O'Neill's critique suffers from the usual flaws of a pioneering effort. He is unable to grasp precisely what Rand is all about, and consequently ends up critiquing distortions of her philosophy rather than the actual doctrines Rand propagated. This defect is not helped by Mr. O'Neill's dryasdust style, which makes "Charity Toward None" a very difficult read. Dullness is the number one defect of academic philosophy. If philosophy is to make any difference in the world, it cannot be written as if it were meant to be a soporific.

During Rand's life, her admirers could boast that no one had yet been able to refute the philosophy of their idol. The publication of Professor O'Neill's book did little to change this state of affairs. While he makes a few good points along the way, O'Neill's inability to understand the terms Rand uses to express her ideas renders his critique largely verbal and semantic. Unable, for instance, to fathom what Rand means by the term "objective," our intrepid Professor ends up going off on all kinds of irrelevant tangents, demolishing in systematic effusion a number of arguments which Rand herself would never have been caught dead advocating. Those who wish to refute Rand should avoid trying to get at her through verbal analysis. No one cares whether Rand's use of philosophical terms corresponds to the way academic philosophers use those same terms. What is important is whether Rand's views correspond to empirical reality. It is on the empirical side that Rand is most vulnerable. If you want to demolish Rand's system, simply compare her philosophy to the facts. It will not compare favorably.

I am beginning to wonder of ANY of these people have read a single Objectivist book. I cannot vouch for Rand as the most sane person (I would think she was most likely a mild schizophreniac), but her philosophy is far from mad. Another thing, there is no such thing as selfishness harming others--harming people is not good for anyone, even you people know what, and is most certainly not selfish.