Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand: Objectivist Studies Vol. 1

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Two of the central questions in philosophy are: What are the foundations of knowledge? and What is the nature of human well-being? Ayn Rand regarded herself as a follower of Aristotle. Roderick Long argues, however, that in answering the above two questions she unfortunately deviated from Aristotle in ways that subverted her own philosophical intentions. In particular, the author maintains that Ayn Rand's rejection of Aristotle's coherentist, testimony-based epistemology in favor of her own version of foundationalist empiricism both opens the door to a corrosive skepticism that she rightly wishes to avoid, and forces her into defending an instrumental survival-oriented conception of the relation of morality to self-interest, even though a constitutive, flourishing-oriented relation along Aristotelian lines would more closely match her basic ethical insights. Hence Ayn Rand's admirers may still have something to learn from Aristotle, their "teacher's first teacher."

ABOUT RODERICK T. LONG
Roderick T. Long is professor of philosophy at Auburn University, president of the Molinari Institute and Molinari Society, editor of The Industrial Radical, and co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. A founding member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, senior scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and senior fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, Long blogs at Austro-Athenian Empire and Bleeding Heart Libertarians.