Month: March 2007

Closing the Book on the Open Letter

This is the third entry in my Antistatism Series. Before I can make my own case for antistatism, I must pause to redress a famously misaddressed letter on a related subject.

In 1969 Roy Childs began an Open Letter to Ayn Rand with these words:

The purpose of this letter is to convert you to free market anarchism. As far as I can determine, no one has ever pointed out to you in detail the errors in your political philosophy. … Why am I making such an attempt to convert you to a point of view which you have, repeatedly, publicly condemned as a floating abstraction? Because you are wrong. I suggest that your political philosophy cannot be maintained without contradiction, that, in fact, you are advocating the maintenance of an institution — the state — which is a moral evil. To a person of self-esteem, these are reasons enough.

In part, Childs’ Letter, “Objectivism and the State,” was a response to Rand’s article “The Nature of Government,” in which she had called anarchy a “naive floating abstraction.” Childs went on in his Letter to complement Rand’s dismissal:

[L]imited government is a floating abstraction which has never been concretized by anyone … a limited government must either initiate force or cease being a government … the very concept of limited government is an unsuccessful attempt to integrate two mutually contradictory elements: statism and voluntarism. [Emphasis in original.]

Even those admirers of Ayn Rand’s who are wholly unfamiliar with Childs will be unsurprised to learn that his Letter failed utterly to persuade the philosopher it addressed. Could Childs have done better, then? What arguments would have been more persuasive? Why did Childs fail, fundamentally?

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On Nonsense and Referents

The Internet hosts many critiques of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, most of which are useless or worse. Michael Huemer’s Why I Am Not an Objectivist (WIANO hereafter) is an exception. It has the great virtue that any Objectivist who engages its arguments can either realize a better understanding of philosophy by overcoming them, or else realize the inadequacy of his understanding by failing to do so.

What follows is a rejoinder to WIANO’s first section, “MEANING.” This is the first revision of a version published earlier here.

Huemer Against Rand on Meaning

Objectivism rejects the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. Michael Huemer accepts it. He correctly recognizes that the basis for Objectivism’s rejection of this dichotomy lies in its identification of the meaning of concepts. Leonard Peikoff writes, in “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” “[A] concept means the existents which it integrates. … [It] subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not yet known.” (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Second Edition, p. 99. Emphasis in original. Hereafter cited as ITOE.) Huemer also notes that Objectivists consider concepts to be open-ended, or as he would have them put it, “[T]he meaning of a concept is all of the concretes it subsumes, past, present, and future, including ones that we will never know about.” (WIANO, §1)

Huemer prepares his attack on the Objectivist rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy by reference to the story of Oedipus, who famously — and unwittingly — married his own mother, Jocaste. Huemer wants to show that the Objectivist theory entails that Oedipus could not have married his own mother unwittingly, since he knew that he was marrying Jocaste, and since “Jocaste” and “Oedipus’ mother” have the same referent. It is absurd to think that Oedipus knew he was marrying “Oedipus’ mother” just because he knew he was marrying “Jocaste,” so if Objectivism does entail this, Objectivism is absurd.

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Anarchism, Capitalism, and Antistatism: An Introduction

Some time ago I promised a series of posts that would outline my argument “against limited government.” The first of these posts was “More Eggs,” which should be considered to be a kind of extended epigraph. The present post shall serve as a general introduction.

When I said I would provide a series of posts arguing against limited government, I meant exactly what I said and said exactly what I meant. I will not be arguing for anarchism, but rather against the state. I will be arguing for precisely this proposition: Limited government is impracticable.

My arguments are directed, primarily, at Objectivists, though I am sure that Objectivists will not be the only thinkers who will benefit from them. My reasons for focusing my arguments on Objectivists are many, but the one essential reason is this: I believe that a free society must rest on intellectual foundations; I believe that Objectivists are the thinkers best equipped to provide these foundations, and I believe that Objectivists are squandering their efforts in this area.

There is no such thing as an anarchist Objectivist. Indeed, no serious Objectivist is sympathetic to anarchism in the least. Since I will be arguing for radical antistatism, which should be understood for now to be the view that limited government is impracticable, a view which seems to have anarchic implications, I expect to find Objectivists to be an unsympathetic audience. Fortunately, some of some Objectivists’ distaste for radical antistatism is based on basic misunderstandings that are easily cleared up.

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