Author’s note: The following is adapted from talks given to participants of the Students For Liberty Prometheus Fellowship.
Think about all the years you spent in school, all the books you read, all the facts you learned, all the things you know.
Or should I say, all the things you think you know. Are we actually capable of knowledge? Today, there is broad skepticism about whether knowledge and certainty are possible. Let’s review some of the common arguments and see where they lead.
How do you know you know anything? Isn’t “knowledge” based on perception? And isn’t perception relative to the perceiver? Perhaps there is broad consensus on some things, but for centuries—nay, millennia—the consensus said that Earth was the center of the universe. Consensus is no indicator of truth. We’re left with one person’s word against another; and if that’s all we have, we can’t be certain of or know anything.
And if we can’t tell true from false, then we can’t tell right from wrong either. When it comes to good and bad, it’s to each his own. For others, intifada, jihad, and honor killings might be good; for you or me, bad. For others, socialism or religious dictatorship might be good; for you or me, bad. If we’re incapable of knowledge, if our reasoning minds cannot grasp facts of reality, if everything is a matter of opinion or feelings, then we are essentially hopeless to work through our differences and settle disputes. Perhaps individuals or communities with different belief systems can coexist peacefully for a while. But ultimately, people will disagree, and when they abandon rational argument, many instead try to force their views on others. Hence, history—not to mention our world today—is a bloodbath of sectarian violence, religious wars, ethnic conflict, and so on. So much for “live and let live.”
Thus, the “solution” that many come to: Establish a dictator. Thomas Hobbes was right; we need to give a strong leader absolute authority over all things, so that he can rule over us and, hopefully, keep the peace.
That’s an apt description of what people thought during the 20th century, and what we got were the reigns of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao. But, some may say, our leading minds have woken up since then. They’ve realized that there are “truths,” and they are knowable. However, “truths” are relative to one’s culture, race, class, sex, sexual orientation, waist size, and so forth. There is what’s true for black people, what’s true for white people, what’s true for Asian people, what’s true for Latin American people, and so on. There is what’s true for the rich, the middle-class, the poor. And our cognizance of how these “truths” overlap is a field of vigorous study and burgeoning “knowledge” in itself: intersectionality.
If you’ve spent any time on a college campus lately, then you know I’m not making up any of this. And, today, scores of influential intellectuals are committed to the view that “truths” and corresponding ideas of right and wrong are relative to one’s culture, race, gender, and so on. Witness, for instance, the Smithsonian bulletin that listed “objective, rational linear thinking” as an aspect of “whiteness and white culture.”1
According to this postmodernist line of thought, “knowledge” is simply that which a given group regards as “true,” in line with that group’s cultural norms. Collections of culturally relative truths form “discourses” or “metanarratives” about how the world works. The “discourse” of those with the most sociopolitical power sets the terms of debate in a given place and time, disqualifying alternate “forms of knowing” from impacting how society functions. In the terms of French philosopher Michel Foucault, those with the most “power-knowledge” thereby establish “regimes of truth.” As Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay summarize, “In postmodern thinking, that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and is therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political.”2
Therefore, on this theory, language is a form of “power,” and societies “systemically privilege” certain groups whose “discourses” and “metanarratives” dominate that system and subjugate minorities. Without even necessarily intending it, those of dominant groups organize society hierarchically, serving their own interests at the expense of all others. The moral and political implications of this theory are clear: Down with the oppressors—fight for the oppressed!
Who are the oppressors and the oppressed? . . .
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Endotes
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Carrie-Ann Biondi for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Of course, any errors herein are my own.
1. Marina Watts, “In Smithsonian Race Guidelines, Rational Thinking and Hard Work Are White Values,” Newsweek, July 17, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333.
2. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody (Durham, NC: Pitchstone, 2020), 32–34.
3. Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories, 37.
4. Haruka Senju, “Violence as Self-Defense,” Daily Californian, February 7, 2017, https://www.dailycal.org/2017/02/07/violence-self-defense/. Quoted in Michael Dahlen, “A Woke New World,” The Objective Standard 16, no. 2 (Summer 2021), https://theobjectivestandard.com/2021/05/a-woke-new-world/.
5. Quoted in Dahlen, “Woke New World.”
6. Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2022), 315.
7. NatCon 3, NationalConservatism.org, https://nationalconservatism.org/natcon-3-2022/ (accessed October 22, 2024); Yoram Hazony, Twitter, January 4, 2023, https://x.com/yhazony/status/1610752711867174912.
8. Hazony, Conservatism, 316.
9. Hazony, Conservatism, 319.
10. Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 167.
11. Hazony, Virtue of Nationalism, 30–31.
12. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 68–69, quoted in Andrew Bernstein, “Heroes and Villains in Western Philosophy,” The Objective Standard 17, no. 1 (Spring 2022), https://theobjectivestandard.com/2022/02/heroes-and-villains-in-western-philosophy.
13. Guthrie, Greek Philosophers, quoted in Bernstein, “Heroes and Villains in Western Philosophy.”
14. Bernstein, “Heroes and Villains in Western Philosophy.”
15. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by W. D. Ross, IV.5, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.4.iv.html; Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, translated by G. R. G. Mure, II.19, https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.2.ii.html.
16. Mirages work similarly. Cold air is denser than hot air, and again, light travels more slowly through denser media than less dense. If, as is not usually the case, there is a layer of cooler air above a layer of warmer air, light rays reaching the cooler air can bend back toward the ground, thus reaching the eyes of far-off observers and giving the appearance that a far-off object is much closer than it is. There are similar answers for all questions regarding such disparities. Change the input, get a different output. For instance, why does toothpaste make orange juice so bitter? It includes an acid that blocks the sweetness receptors in our mouths and increases the sensitivity of our receptors for bitterness.
17. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV.8.
18. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV.5.
19. Although Rand did not comment on it (and may not have been aware of it), Aristotle’s concept of appearance or seeming (phantasia)—particularly as it relates to what he called “incidental perception” (kata sumbebēkos)—conflicts with Rand’s views on the nature of the human mind. Aristotle distinguished between sensation (aisthēsis) and appearance or seeming (phantasia), ascribing to the latter a mixture of capacities that Rand held belong to perception, memory, and the subconscious processes of the human mind. In Aristotle’s view, phantasia is the mind’s capacity to combine sensory impressions into mental images (phantasms), retain them, reflect upon them, manipulate them, and recall them in present awareness to compare them to what one is currently perceiving. And in his view, this last facilitates (among other things) what he called “incidental perception” (kata sumbebēkos). By incidental perception, he held that we perceive such things as an object’s identity (e.g., recognizing a far-off person as a friend), location (e.g., “in the park”), and, in the case of people, their emotional states (e.g., that he is happy because he is smiling). In Rand’s view, we don’t directly perceive any of these things. Rather, we identify these facts at the conceptual level. Aristotle likely was trying to grapple with the fact that such identifications apparently occur to us instantaneously, as if we were directly perceiving these sorts of higher-level facts. Rand’s explanation for this is that we automatize these sorts of conceptual identifications, such that when we see a friend, we near instantaneously recall his identity—or when we see a given place, we near instantaneously recall that it is a park. Because Aristotle regarded this higher-level cognition as a type of perception, he also distinguished between levels of perception (perception of proper sensibles, common sensibles, and incidental sensibles), conceding that the latter two are more error prone. He wrote in De Anima, “Perception (1) of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. (2) That of the concomitance of the objects concomitant with the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly we may be deceived; for while the perception that there is white before us cannot be false, the perception that what is white is this or that may be false. (3) Third comes the perception of the universal attributes which accompany the concomitant objects to which the special sensibles attach (I mean e.g. of movement and magnitude); it is in respect of these that the greatest amount of sense-illusion is possible” (emphasis added). See Aristotle, De Anima, III.3 and II.6, translated by J. A. Smith, https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.2.ii.html. For Rand’s views on these topics, see especially Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, centennial ed. (New York: Signet, 1964); and Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded 2nd ed. (New York: Meridian, 1990).
20. Or take another formulation of the same argument:
We can only know reality via the senses if our perceptions mirror reality exactly.
Perceptions are mediated by sense organs via complex causal processes.
So, perceptions don’t mirror reality exactly.
Therefore, we can’t know reality via the senses.
21. Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), xlvi–xlvii.
22. Ayn Rand, “For the New Intellectual,” For the New Intellectual, centennial edition (New York: Signet, 1961), 28.
23. Gregory Salmieri, “Aristotle’s Conception of Universality,” ResearchGate.net, September 2012, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379597351_Aristotle%27s_Conception_of_Universality?channel=doi&linkId=661019372034097c54f621f0&showFulltext=true, 1; Salmieri’s paper shows why this interpretation of Aristotle’s view of universals conflicts with many statements in Aristotle’s corpus, and that those statements point us toward a view of universals that is strikingly similar to Rand’s. On this interpretation, Aristotle held that the basis of universals stems from the shared causal nature of certain things; certain things respond to the same sorts of causes with the same sorts of effects. Chill water enough and it will freeze; heat it enough and it will boil. Work a muscle, and it will grow; don’t, and it will atrophy. It is by virtue of these shared causal relations that we recognize that certain things have a common nature, and we assign a universal that thereby groups them. All acorns, for instance, have a particular nature, which if appropriately actualized, leads them to become oaks. The same can be said of nonphysical things, such as courageous acts or valid definitions. According to Aristotle, courageous acts are those wherein a person stands up to danger in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons, given his context; he is neither cowardly nor reckless. Meeting these conditions causes the action to be courageous. Similarly, valid definitions have a genus and differentia and identify a thing by its most fundamental characteristic. Meeting these conditions causes the definition to be valid. Note, however, that, as far as we know, Rand read only poor translations of Aristotle. She accepted the standard (mis)interpretation of Aristotle’s view of concepts and reached her own views on concept formation independently.
24. Salmieri, “Aristotle’s Conception of Universality,” 1.
25. Salmieri makes a strong case that, in this respect as well, (unknown to Rand) Aristotle held a similar view. Quoting Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.3, he writes: “items that are different (as opposed to being other), differ in ‘the more and the less’ (with contrariety being the limiting case of difference). To differ in the more and the less is to be ‘commensurable.’” See, Salmieri, “Aristotle’s Conception of Universality,” 40–54.
26. Marx, in turn, had molded the ideas of G. W. F. Hegel to support his ideal of instituting communism in various European countries. In short, Hegel held that there is a spiritual force called “the absolute” that is always embodied within a particular state and is ever evolving toward perfection. Because the chosen state supposedly is God’s will manifest on Earth, whatever it does is good.
Marx, by contrast, held that material conditions cause states to progress through a certain course. They begin as monarchies, but in time, people band together to throw off the arbitrary rule of kings. In the ruins, they build capitalist societies based on property rights, only to eventually overthrow these as oppressive, too.
Lenin applauded Marx’s vision with one exception: Why must the proletariat be suppressed twice, once by a monarch and again by bourgeois capitalists?, he asked. After Russia’s czar stepped down, many orthodox Marxists supported the establishment of a liberal democracy on the grounds that Russia must become capitalist before it could become communist. Not Lenin.
27. Jon Hersey, “Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and the Philosophic Foundation for Freedom,” The Objective Standard 18, no. 2 (Summer 2023), https://theobjectivestandard.com/2023/05/adam-smith-ayn-rand-and-the-philosophic-foundation-for-freedom/.
28. Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Penguin, 1991), 214.
29. Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Virtue of Selfishness, 13–14.
30. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Signet, 1957), 1013.
31. Peikoff, Objectivism, 214.
32. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: New American Library, 2016 [1943]), Kindle ed., loc. 14648.
33. Letter to Thomas Auld, September 3, 1848, in Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999), http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1121.htm.
34. Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1014.
35. Ayn Rand, introduction, Virtue of Selfishness, xi.
36. Ayn Rand, “The Metaphysical versus the Man-Made,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, 1984), 36.
37. Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Virtue of Selfishness, 32.
38. Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1022.
39. Rand, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 51.
40. Rand, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” 53.
41. Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 29.
42. Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1020–21.
43. Jon Hersey, “John Locke: The Father of Liberalism,” The Objective Standard 14, no. 3 (Fall 2019), https://theobjectivestandard.com/2019/08/john-locke-the-father-of-liberalism/.
44. Hersey, “John Locke: The Father of Liberalism.”
45. Hersey, “Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and the Philosophic Foundation for Freedom.”
46. Ayn Rand, introduction, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), viii.
47. Rand, introduction, Capitalism, vii.
48. Rand, “The Cashing In: The Student ‘Rebellion,’” Capitalism, 307.
