On Ayn Rand and Aristotle

The founder of Objectivism claimed her philosophy was inspired by the sage from Stagira. But she was very selective about such inspiration.

Ayn Rand (left, from medium.com/the-radical-center) and Aristotle (right, huffpost.com).

Generally speaking, I have the utmost respect for books. Even pretty bad books. But over three decades ago I utterly shocked when reading one. It was a collection of essays by Ayn Rand, which a fellow graduate student at the University of Connecticut had loaned me. We used to have a lot of discussions about politics and philosophy, and she finally got so frustrated with my obtuseness, as she saw it, that she handed me the book and said, “Here, read this, and you will understand.”

I did not understand. Or at least, what I understood of Rand’s so-called Objectivist philosophy was off-putting to me. I was truly astounded that my friend, whom I considered a smart and kind person, could buy into that sort of garbage. Nevertheless, I kept reading and attempting to constructively reflect on what I was reading.

Many years later I moved to New York City and became close friend with yet another Objectivist. Well, at least I cannot be accused of close-mindedness! This second friend is also smart and kind, and yet claims to live in accordance with the uncompromisingly selfish worldview articulated by Rand in her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as well as in two collections of essays, The Virtue of Selfishness (Signet 1964) and The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (Signet 1988).

One especially puzzling aspect of Rand’s philosophy, at least for me, is her claim to be influenced, of all people, by Aristotle. As she wrote: “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle” (from the 1957 appendix to Atlas Shrugged).

Indeed, Aristotle is popular among Objectivists in general. Here is how Leonard Peikoff, a close associate of Rand and co-founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, put it: “There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy” (The Ominous Parallels, 1983).

And yet, if one is even superficially acquainted with both Rand and Aristotle one can hardly imagine what possible points of contact the two may have. It turns out that what Rand admired about Aristotle wasn’t his ethics, but rather his logic and epistemology. But it is precisely Aristotle’s use of logic and reason that led him to formulate an ethics so profoundly at odds with Rand’s. Let’s take a look.

In an essay entitled The Objectivist Ethics Rand writes: “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. … The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships.” She continues:

“Love, friendship, respect and admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. … To love is to value. … It is only on the basis of rational selfishness that man can be fit to live together. … If civilization is to survive, it is the altruist morality that men have to reject.”

Let’s pause for a moment and highlight three main points. First, like many modern philosophers, Rand draws a sharp distinction between altruism and selfishness. Unlike most modern philosophers, she thinks selfishness, not altruism, is virtuous.

Second, she also values rationality (hence Aristotle!) but, to be more precise, she is actually talking about rational self-interest. The two are not the same. Rationality refers to the general (if controversial, nowadays) idea that logical reasoning is universal, applying not just to all human beings, but to the cosmos at large, whenever there may be sentient creatures capable of thinking. Rational self-interest, by contrast, is a type of applied rational discourse which assumes (but does not demonstrate) that self-interest ought to be the foundation of all our actions. Aristotle most decidedly promoted rationality, not rational self-interest.

Third, in the above passages Rand also claims that human survival (and flourishing, presumably) depend on what she calls the principle of trade, or qui pro quo, a favor for a favor. I scratch your back only if you scratch mine. I will be nice to you if you are nice to me. I will be your friend because I derive benefits from you and I will pay you back with in-kind benefits of my own. This principle, she says, applies to all major human relationships, including love and friendship. Accordingly, she talks about the oxymoronic-sounding notion of “spiritual payment.”

Similar themes are found in another of Rand’s essays, The Ethics of Emergencies: “It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love. … The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest. … If one’s friend is in trouble, one should act to help them by what ever non-sacrificial means are appropriate.” In other words, if my friend is about to drown, either literally or in debt, and I can rescue him by way of unspecified “non-sacrificial means” then fine, if not, oh well.

John Galt, the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged, personifies Rand’s ethos, so it’s not surprising that he declares: “Do you ask what moral obligation that I owe to my fellow men? None.” (p. 948) And, in the following page: “The symbol of all relationships among men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit—his love, his friendship his esteem—except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure.” (p. 949)

As Jaideep Prabhu (in an in-depth essay that inspired what you are reading now) aptly puts it: “She is an egoist, and she preaches an ethic of rational self-interest. For her, the primary virtue is [instrumental] rationality, the ultimate value is life and the primary beneficiary is oneself.”

[The trailer for Atlas Shrugged part III, Who is John Galt?]

So, that’s Rand. Let us now turn to Aristotle. Superficially, he seems to say something that is actually compatible with Rand’s philosophy. I’m talking about the ethics, not just the logic. For instance, for Aristotle all friendship (philia) is rooted in self-love (philautia). Moreover, the right kind of self-love is an achievement, because it is love for what is best in and for us.

But it doesn’t take much digging to realize that, in a sense, Aristotle is talking about the opposite of Rand’s position. Why, for example, would friendship be rooted in self-love? Because we are our own best friends, so to speak, which means we naturally want what is good for ourselves:

“All friendly feelings toward others are an extension of the friendly feelings a person has for himself. … A man is his own best friend, and therefore should have the greatest affection for himself.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1168b)

And what, exactly, is good for ourselves? Virtue, of course! So “what is best” does not mean, as commonly understood, external things such as wealth, fame, pleasure, and so forth. It means a good character and the resulting tendency to act justly, courageously, wisely, and with temperance—in accordance with the four cardinal virtues. It follows that virtuous self-love is beneficial to our neighbors, our country, and the world at large. You can begin to see that the merging picture of Aristotle’s ethics is profoundly at odds with Objectivism, regardless of Rand’s alleged admiration for Aristotle’s logic.

In Aristotelian terms a eudaimonic life—a life worth living—is one of virtue, and a key ingredient of it is friendship. Friendship is necessary, among other things, because it aids the process of self-knowledge and minimizes the possibility of self-delusion:

“The friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship; and they are thought to become better by their activities and by improving each other.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1172)

Because of the way human psychology is built (and, we would say, because evolutionarily we are a social species) individuals are simply not self-sufficient. We need others in order to flourish. Aristotle argues that those who truly care about making themselves better would readily relinquish their wealth to their friends, or even to strangers. What they get in return is to become better, more virtuous, human beings, so they are the ones who get the best part of the deal. He explicitly says that when a relationship between friends is unequal, in terms of wealth or anything else, benefaction mostly flows from the one who has more to the one who has less. And it is the first one who gains the most from the exchange by acting virtuously:

“He will freely give his money, honors, in short, all the things that men compete for, while he gains the nobility for himself. … It is in this sense, then, as we said, that he ought to be an egoist or self lover, but he must not be an egoist in the sense in which most people are.” (1168b20- 33)

This does not at all sound like the sort of “trading” that John Galt is talking about. In fact, Aristotle goes so far as to claim that friendship is the basis of the social relationships among people within a polis, which means that friendship has a political dimension. According to Neo-Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (in his After Virtue) friendship is not the kind of emotional state that people usually mean nowadays, but a type of social and, again, political relationship. Justice, for instance, is a matter of rewarding desert and repairing failures within an existing community, but it is friendship among people that allows for a community to exist in the first place. Friendship, then, is in a sense even more fundamental than justice, because the latter wouldn’t exist without the former.

Overall, it seems to me that Aristotelian virtue ethics is entirely at odds with Objectivist ethics. For Aristotle a good life is the result of realizing the human telos (purpose, goal), which means first and foremost to think rationally, and second to be social. While Rand preaches (instrumental) reason, prosociality is not exactly at the core of Objectivism.

Our modern sharp dichotomy between altruism and selfishness—on which Rand’s entire philosophy is built—would not have been recognized by the Greco-Romans. Aristotle especially completely erases the dichotomy by arguing that our interests are in fact aligned with those of our family, friends, and community. There simply is no distinction between altruism and selfishness.

Aristotle does describe a Rand-type friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, and appropriately labels it as a friendship of utility, the lowest level of friendship and the furthest from one of virtue. And why would human beings value virtue? Because human nature itself predisposes us to it, or to what we would call prosocial or cooperative behavior. However, our prosocial instincts need to be cultivated—both according to Aristotle and to modern cognitive psychology—through reflection and habit. This is achieved in part by spending time in conversation with fellow human beings, especially our friends:

“For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a)

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Many thanks to one of my readers, Aaron Smith, for pointing out mistakes in a previous version of this essay. I hope the current one is more accurate and will lead to more productive discourse.