Episode 73: Greg Salmieri discusses Ayn Rand's moral philosophy
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Why does Ayn Rand consider the good life to be primarily about benefiting oneself?
Hey, Matt Techman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show, to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. Alright, thanks.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Tykman.
And I'm done and J Chuggin' nothing.
With us today is Greg Salmieri. Visiting scholar in the philosophy department at Boston University. And also co secretary of the Ayn Rand Society, a professional group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association. And he's here to discuss Ayn Rand's moral philosophy. Greg Salmieri, welcome back to Elucidations.
Thank you,
it's
nice to be
back. It's probably surprising to a lot of our listeners that we're doing an episode of Elucidations on Ayn Rand because uh In addition to being a controversial figure among the general public, She's also not really part of the mainstream in professional philosophy either. Did Ayn Rand think of herself as someone who was involved in conversations taking place among professional philosophers, or did she see herself as doing something a bit different?
Uh she definitely thought of herself as a philosopher, and she was in fact engaged with conversation to a certain professional philosophers. She had a a friendship for some time with John Hospers and they spoke quite a bit, and there are some other examples. But she did see herself as outside of and separate from academic philosophy. She wasn't aiming to be a philosophy professor or to write articles in journals. I do think this is uncommon if we think about the people who we recently think about as philosophers. But if you think about, you know, Descartes or Locke or someone, I mean there are a lot of examples, and indeed some of the most important examples in the history of thought, of philosophers who were outside of the academy or the mainstream institutions of their day and were posing challenges to the kind of main ideas, doctrines, and methods that were common in those institutions.
And I think thinking about her in that light as that type of a figure will put off the question of what stature is she at, because comparing her to someone like Locke is, you know, a a big claim. But just for the moment, just thinking of the sociology of it, so to speak, thinking of her as a figure like that is very clarifying because a lot of the things that people notice about her, academic philosophers when they read her and find a bit startling or off putting, are things that you would have thought about Locke, for example, if you were a scholastic reading him. There's a kind of criticizing the tradition from a distance, taking kind of swipes at what these academics are doing that seem very fair to us when we read Locke saying them several hundred years later about the scholastics.
But if you were a scholastic instance at Oxford at the time would seem, how could you say we're all the same? Don't you know the difference between the SCOIS and the you know whatever it is? Um so I think. think keeping in mind that kind of a sociological fact about her and where she's coming from is significant. I think she's a figure like these kind of enlightenment reformers in that way.
Thanks, Greg. That's very helpful. Could you say something more about Rand's thought more generally?
Yes. Uh a way to start is to notice that she was both a philosopher and a novelist, and at least with respect to her ambitions, she was a novelist first. And I think thinking about some of what her interest and aims in literature are are helpful in thinking about her approach to philosophy. So she was what she thought of as a romantic novelist. She admired particularly Hugo, but some other people in this tradition, and What's striking about this kind of novel and what she really took from it is there are grand scale moral conflicts. They're motivated by people who have intense, passionate, personal commitments to their causes, to whatever it is that are the aims that they're seeking in the novel, to their values.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why does Ayn Rand consider the good life to be primarily about benefiting oneself?
0:00–6:14
2
How did Ayn Rand view herself in relation to professional philosophy?
6:14–12:57
3
What role do romantic novels play in shaping Rand’s moral philosophy?
12:57–18:49
4
Why does Rand identify herself as an ethical egoist?
18:49–25:05
5
How does Rand define the ultimate value for a living organism?
25:05–31:37
6
What is Rand’s answer to the ‘self‑interest vs. helping others’ dilemma?
31:37–38:09
7
Why does Rand reject the concept of distributive justice?
38:09–39:30
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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