I Was A Teenage Objectivist - Part One
Hans Huttel
Franzen wrote :
I'm getting curious about these magisterial pieces of mangled
misinformation. Stubblefield never explains where they come from;
does anybody know? Are these gems official summaries of the history of
philosophy, provided by Ayn Rand? Do objectivists learn them at summer
schools?
Something now tells me the time has come for a repeat of the successful soap
loved by all truly professional philosophers. ]
I Was A Teenage Objectivist
---------------------------
A true story by B. Linkers - Part One.
I was a mere 17-year old when I first came to Fountainhead College,
Mass. Fountainhead at that time had a unique reputation in the whole
of New England as having the best study programs in philosophy and
theoretical baseball in the whole of North America. My parents, both
coming from families with a long tradition in free enterprise, had
decided to send me to Fountainhead so that I could escape the coercion
imposed by the average Sixties college. Here were no altruist
activities such as rock'n'roll, pot smoking or nude bathing, just the
learning and absorbing from our nation's very best exponents of
rational self-interest.
My only previous exposure to philosophy had been via the collected
works of Aristotle that my father so highly recommended. And Aristotle
was indeed a challenge: enlightening, entertaining, controversial for
his time. Rumor now had it that one of the philosophy professors at
Fountainhead, Ms. Rant, was a modern-day equivalent of Aristotle. She
was to teach the philosophy class that I was taking. Nothing had prepared
me for the impact of her first lecture, an event that changed my teenage years.
Ms. Rant, jovially nicknamed `Aunt Rant' by some, turned out to be a
gorgeous, pouting Russian-American. Thanks to her convincing use of
rational, self-interested reasoning she already commanded a large
following of male sophomores. All were they tall, proud men with sharply
chiseled features whose subtle reasoning impressed everyone.
My first class on my first day at Fountainhead was Applied Philosophy
1. Gorgeous, pouting Aunt Rant picked up a piece of chalk and walked
up to the blackboard.
- `Good morning students', she said, casting a quick glance round the
lecture theater. `Today's topic is `Russell's Theory of Material
Implication'. This first lecture will be based on a novel,
``Titan Nodded'', that I am currently writing plus some lecture
notes written by my long-time friend Robert Stubblefield, a
professional philosopher.'
A remarkable woman indeed. Her lecture must have lasted four hours or
more but it felt like _minutes_ to us. Ms. Rant started out by
mentioning Russell's theory of material implication as described in
Stubblefield's excellent lecture notes but soon began talking about
her own results in philosophy. And there she stood, the famous Ms.
`Aunt' Rant, convincingly denouncing Descartes, Kant, Rousseau, Comte,
Nietzche, Marx, Bergson, Carnap, Heidegger, Sartre, the whole lot,
telling us to tear apart their books. Then, as in a sudden fit of
anger, Ms. Rant picked up a copy of `Kritik der Reinen Vernunft'
lying on a desk and tore out the first fifty pages.
- Don't read this; it's boring and wrong, she said. Kant was an
altruist at heart and not a truly professional philosopher.
At first we were shocked. We then realized what she had said. Soon
everyone was busy tearing apart the collected works of Immanuel Kant.
Ms. Rant told us about the immoral views of sensualism and their
appalling slogan `Coitus ergo sum'. We cringed by the mere mention of
these Latin words. Yes, Ms. Rant truly had us in the palm of her hand
from the first moment on.
The climax occurred when she held up her piece of chalk and exclaimed:
- And thus we come to the most important conclusion of all:
A is A. The world has seen many alphabets; none of course is
better than ours. It holds many different letters, but _none_ is
like its first letter. Verily, A _IS_ A. This is the Law of
Identity, discovered by Aristotle but forgotten or distorted for over
two millenia.
The entire class spontaneously burst into applause. But there was yet
more to come.
- And know that existence exists. It truly exists ! Know that
when you accept this, and only then, will you be able to fight off
coercion ! This is the _Law of Existence_.
Some were now close to tears because of these reasuring words from one
of the world's greatest philosophers, but also because the fear of
coercion had been mentioned and ruled out. At long last, we were safe from harm.
Here was something that everyone could understand, something so unlike the
mumbo-jumbo that the academic philosophers would wallow in with perverse pleasure.
Ms. Rant continued for another hour or so. We were so taken in by the
magic of her words that it was hard to believe when the lecture was
finally over:
- This week your home assignment will be to answer Stubblefield's
questions from his lecture notes. Next week we shall show the
power of the Laws of Identity and Existence by using them _and
nothing else_ to prove that acorns do not grow on apple trees
and that the only correct moral is that of rational
self-interest, leading to laissez-faire, parlez-vous
capitalism. And the week after that we shall analyze in detail
John Gall's 200-page speech from `Titan Nodded'.
Ms. Rant's many admirers were already gathered around her, eagerly
discussing the coming fall of altruism.
It was dark outside, and as I vigorously strolled back to my dorm I
could not help feeling grateful that my parents had chosen to send me
to Fountainhead.
TO BE CONTINUED
--
Hans Huttel email: ha...@dcs.ed.ac.uk
LFCS, Dept. of Computer Science
University of Edinburgh phone: (+44) (0)31-650-5997
Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK. Monads ate my Buick.
Rob Brady
>I Was A Teenage Objectivist
>---------------------------
>A true story by B. Linkers - Part One.
A very well reasoned and damming discussion of OBjectivism. I will never
read anOther book by someone whose name rhymes with 'mine'.
--
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NObody's gonna go to school today, Rob Brady
she's gonna make them all stay home r...@panix.com