Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. It differs from the special sciences not in subject matter but in scope: where physics or biology study a particular kind of thing, philosophy studies what holds of everything, and supplies the framework the special sciences take for granted before they can begin.
“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt.”
~ Ayn Rand, "Philosophy: Who Needs It", Philosophy: Who Needs It
The five branches
Philosophy divides into five branches, and their order is not arbitrary: each depends on the ones above it, so an answer taken at one level constrains what can be said at the next.
- Metaphysics — what is the nature of reality? Objectivism's answers are the axioms (existence, identity, consciousness), the law of causality, and the primacy of existence.
- Epistemology — how does man know it? This covers the validity of the senses, the nature of concept formation, the standards of proof and certainty, and the status of logic.
- Ethics — what should a man do? Given a nature and a means of knowledge, ethics identifies the code of values a being of that kind requires. See Value, Virtues and Egoism.
- Politics — how should men deal with one another? A social system is an application of ethics to the question of when force may be used. See Rights, Government and Capitalism.
- Esthetics — what is art, and what is it for? Objectivism treats art as the selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's fundamental view of existence. See Sense of life and Art.
Metaphysics and epistemology are the two fundamental branches; ethics, politics and esthetics are the applied ones. A dispute in politics that never touches the ethics beneath it, on the Objectivist view, is a dispute neither side can win.
Why it is not optional
Rand's central claim about the subject is that nobody escapes it. A person acts on premises about what is real, what counts as knowing something, and what is worth doing, whether or not he has ever identified them. The choice is not whether to have a philosophy but whether to select one by a deliberate process or to absorb one from the culture in fragments.
The practical consequence she drew is that an unexamined philosophy is not thereby harmless. Ideas held implicitly still govern conduct, and because they were never stated they cannot be checked against evidence or against each other, so contradictions accumulate unnoticed. This is the argument behind Objectivism's insistence on principles: an abstraction that has been identified can be corrected, and one that has not cannot. See Floating Abstraction and Rand's Razor.
Rand extended the same claim to history. She held that a culture's dominant philosophy determines its political and artistic direction over the long run, and that political outcomes cannot be reversed without changing the premises they rest on. See Objectivism and What is Objectivism.
Philosophy and the sciences
Objectivism denies that philosophy competes with the special sciences or issues verdicts on their findings. The relationship is one of dependence in one direction only.
A scientist assumes before he starts that there is a reality to investigate, that it has a determinate nature, that his observations bear on it, and that valid inference from evidence produces knowledge. Those are philosophical positions, and no experiment could establish them, since designing one already assumes them. Philosophy's role is to identify and validate them; it has no authority to tell a physicist what he will find. See Science and Objectivity.
Common misunderstandings
- That philosophy is a matter of opinion because philosophers disagree. Disagreement among specialists is normal in every field and settles nothing about whether the questions have answers.
- That it is impractical. Objectivism holds the reverse: the more abstract a principle, the wider the range of concretes it governs, and the more expensive a mistake in it becomes. See Theory-Practice Dichotomy.
- That "philosophy" means the history of philosophy. Studying what past thinkers held is a way into the questions, not a substitute for answering them.
- That having no philosophy is an available position. Refusing to identify one's premises leaves them in force. See Skepticism and Pragmatism.
See also
- Metaphysics · Epistemology · Ethics · Politics · Esthetics
- Objectivism · What is Objectivism · Ayn Rand · Leonard Peikoff
- Reason · Logic · Principle · Fundamental
- Common Misconceptions about Objectivism · Book Recommendations
Discussion
- Best colleges for studying philosophy
- Objectivist epistemology and metaphysics
- Rand and Sartre: Objectivism vs existentialism
References
- Rand, Ayn. "Philosophy: Who Needs It", Philosophy: Who Needs It. Bobbs-Merrill, 1982.
- Rand, Ayn. "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
- Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton, 1991.