Word: egoism
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Some may be surprised to hear this, but Objectivists knows full well that Ayn Rand did not originate the concepts of reason, egoism or laissez-faire capitalism. They also know full well that she was the first philosopher to integrate these concepts into a wholly consistent system of thought, one which is increasingly breaking through the decades-old wall of silence desperately maintained by Establishment philosophers. Witness the existence of the Ayn Rand Society of the American Philosophical Association, or the more than 1,000 professional philosophers who requested complimentary copies of Miss Rand's most technical philosophical work...
What are these "novel" ideas that objectivists defend at all costs? Reason, egoism and laissez-faire capitalism. Objectivists seem to think these concepts are new finds. And what's more, that their demi-goddess, Ayn Rand, stumbled upon them first. Of course, the concept of laissez-faire capitalism has been around for more than a few decades--at least that's what professors in the economics department keep telling me. But, hell, what do they know? And reason and egoism? Well, let's see. Can you say "Plato, Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre...
...more the seeming mindlessness of the objectivist audience that alarmed me. I went to the debate hoping that Professor Kennedy would expose objectivism for what it really is--an angry and disingenuous pseudo-philosophy that indoctrinates the philosophically challenged, that has tried to appropriate reason and egoism as its own (gosh, that sounds absurd) by plagiarizing philosophical ideas that have been around for centuries, that parades as the savior of angry middle-class voters in search of a justification to be penny-pinching and concerned about no one in the world but themselves...
...essay "Science and Original Sin," Robert Wright puts forth as scientific fact a genetically based theory of psychological egoism. It is a weird piece of dogma. Although no sane person would deny that we humans harbor some pretty horrible tendencies and that these have some genetic basis, it does not follow that we are biologically driven to commit the seven deadly sins or that when moved by compassion, "we are in some Darwinian sense 'misusing' our equipment of reciprocal altruism ... into (unconsciously) thinking that the victims of famine are right next door and might someday reciprocate." I believe that there...
...innate social repertoire, and in other ways as well we are naturally crude. But the restraint of crude impulses is also part of our nature. Indeed, the "guilt" that Freud never satisfactorily explained is one built-in restrainer. By design, it discourages us from, say, neglecting kin through unbridled egoism, or imperiling friendships in the heat of anger--or, at the very least, it goads us to make amends after such imperiling, once we've cooled down. Certainly modern society may burden us unduly with guilt. After erupting in anger toward an acquaintance...