Was Aristotle an Objectivist?

Aristotle seems to get frequently brought up in conversation along with a certain twentieth-century Russian-American writer who has acquired something of a cult following among present-day Libertarians. You all of course know who I am talking about: Ayn Rand. The association between Rand and Aristotle is one Rand herself promoted—yet, as I will demonstrate, it is, for the most part, quite spurious. I think that, if Aristotle saw how egregiously Rand misconstrued his philosophy, he would not be pleased.

What Ayn Rand thought of Aristotle

We cannot know for certain what Aristotle would think of Ayn Rand, since he died well over two millennia before she was born, but we do know for certain what Ayn Rand thought of Aristotle. In her essay “For the New Intellectual,” which she wrote in 1960, she wrote:

“If we consider the fact that to this day everything that makes us civilized beings, every rational value that we possess—including the birth of science, the industrial revolution, the creation of the United States, even the structure of our language—is the result of Aristotle’s influence, of the degree to which, explicitly or implicitly, men accepted his epistemological principles, we would have to say: never have so many owed so much to one man.”

This is, of course, pure nonsense. Aristotle did indeed contribute significantly to the development of the field of logic, but it is an absurd hyperbole to say he is responsible for “everything that makes us civilized beings.” There were plenty of “civilized beings” who lived long before Aristotle. In fact, there were even plenty of logicians who lived before Aristotle. For instance, Aristotle’s teacher Plato was also a logician and so was Plato’s teacher Socrates.

Furthermore, it would take an extraordinarily fertile imagination to construe any sense whatsoever in which Aristotle is somehow responsible for the industrial revolution or the creation of the United States, events which took place millennia after his death, half a world away from Greece and were not explicitly tied to Aristotelianism in any way. The notion that Aristotle had any influence at all on the structure of the English language is just bizarre.

I am sure that Aristotle would doubtlessly appreciate this sort of high praise, although I suspect even he would be highly skeptical of Rand’s assertions concerning his alleged influence on things like the structure of the English language.

ABOVE: Roman marble copy of a late fourth-century BC Greek bust of Aristotle by the sculptor Lysippos

Misquoting Aristotle

I do not think Aristotle would have a very high opinion of Ayn Rand, however, for several reasons. First of all, despite the immense praise Rand heaps upon Aristotle, she actually knew almost nothing about him and what little she did know, she seems to have grossly misunderstood.

In fact, we have no evidence that Ayn Rand ever read even a single genuine sentence of Aristotle’s writings. At some point in the 1940s, she apparently bought a copy of the complete works of Aristotle, but I am not aware of any evidence that she ever actually read it. The only time Rand ever quotes Aristotle in any of her writings is in her essay “Basic Principles of Literature,” in which she wrote following:

“The most important principle of the esthetics of literature was formulated by Aristotle, who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because ‘history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.’”

There is a slight problem here, though; this isn’t a real quote from Aristotle. It is actually an almost word-for-word quote from page 191 of Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, a book by the Libertarian philosopher Albert Jay Nock published in 1943. Rand had a copy of this book in her personal book collection with the following quote marked with six vertical lines:

“History, Aristotle says, represents things only as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be; and therefore of the two, he adds, ‘fiction is the more philosophical and the more highly serious.’”

Nock seems to have been loosely paraphrasing a passage from the beginning of chapter nine of Aristotle’s Poetics. Here is the original passage from Aristotle that Nock was probably paraphrasing, as translated by S. H. Butcher:

“It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is—for example—what Alcibiades did or suffered.”

It seems Ayn Rand mistook Nock’s paraphrase for a direct quote from Aristotle. It is quite common for people to misquote classical writers. I even wrote an article in July 2019 discussing how almost all the quotes attributed to people from the ancient world online are misattributed.

Nonetheless, it is highly unbefitting for a person who supposedly regarded Aristotle as the most influential human being ever to live to misquote him like this. This is a bit like if someone went around saying their absolute favorite poet of all time was William Shakespeare, but, then, when someone asked them which of his lines was their favorite, they said a quote from the 2017 TNT drama series Will.

ABOVE: Poster from Wikipedia for the 2017 TNT drama series Will. And, yes, it is exactly what you would expect a drama about the young William Shakespeare created by Craig Pearce and broadcast on TNT to be like.

Butchering Aristotle’s ethics

Ayn Rand did not just spend all her time lavishing over-the-top praise on Aristotle and then spectacularly misquoting him, though; she also criticized him—mainly for supposedly not doing things that he actually did or supposedly saying things that he didn’t really say. For instance, in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” which she wrote in 1964, Ayn Rand proclaimed:

“No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise.”

In other words, Ayn Rand seems to have the impression that Aristotle did not base his ethics on any kind of logic or reasoning, but instead just wrote down what he observed men who were considered wise to be doing. While it is true that Aristotle talks quite a bit about “the common view” in his Nikomacheian Ethics, it is certainly not true that he did not rely on logic or reasoning. On the contrary, Aristotle himself explains in his Nikomacheian Ethics 1.8, as translated by J. A. K. Thomson:

“We must examine our principle not only as reached logically, from a conclusion and premises, but also in light of what is commonly said about it; because if a statement is true all the data are in harmony with it, while if it is false they soon reveal a discrepency.”

In other words, according to Aristotle, the common opinions concerning ethics are only a supplement to logic and reasoning when it comes to determining what is right or wrong; according to Aristotle, popular views do not determine what is right on their own, but people tend to think rationally and, if a view does not agree with the popular consensus, then it may require closer reexamination. As early as chapter eleven of the Nikomacheian Ethics, Aristotle already starts disputing popular opinions concerning whether the events that happen to the living have any effect on the dead.

ABOVE: Photograph of the first page of a 1566 printed edition of Aristotle’s Nikomacheian Ethics with the Greek text alongside a Latin translation. (I hear this is the sixteenth-century equivalent of the Loeb Classical Library.)

Furthermore, Rand’s bald assertion that Aristotle had no explanation for why morals are important is also blatantly false. Aristotle already offers an explanation for why we need ethics in his Nikomacheian Ethics 1.1 on the very first page. Aristotle begins by arguing that some actions are inherently desirable in and of themselves. He then writes, as translated by J. A. K. Thomson:

“If, then, our activities have some end which we want for its own sake, and for the sake of which we want all the other end—if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for this will involve an infinite progression, so that our aim will be pointless and ineffectual)—it is clear that this must be the Good, that is the supreme good. Does it not follow then that a knowledge of the Good is of great importance to us for the conduct of our lives? Are we not more likely to achieve our aim if we have a target? If this is so, we must try to describe at least in outline what the Good really is, and by which of the sciences or faculties it is studied.”

In other words, according to Aristotle, some actions are desirable in and of themselves, the aim of actions that are desirable is the Good, and it is important to acquire knowledge of the Good so that we will be more likely to succeed in doing it.

Aristotle expands on this argument in subsequent chapters. For instance, he argues in chapter two that the ultimate aim of all things is εὐδαιμονία (eudaimoníā), which means “happiness” or prosperity.” He later expands on his argument that ethical behavior is desirable in and of itself in chapter twelve. The basic premise, though, is laid out on the very first page.

Now, Rand could have argued that Aristotle’s explanation for why we need ethics was unsatisfactory or incomplete, but baldly insisting that he did not have an explanation at all seems to show she had not really read even the first page of his Nikomacheian Ethics.

Ironically, even though Rand claimed that Aristotle was her only philosophical influence, Aristotle’s ethics are markedly at odds with hers. In Book Ten of the Nikomacheian Ethics, Aristotle argues that the ideal life is a life of leisure and intellectual contemplation. He totally dismisses the view that a life of industry and profit is best. On the other hand, as we all know, Rand was pretty much obsessed with the ideas of industry, hard work, determination, and profit.

ABOVE: Photograph of Ayn Rand, taken in 1943 during one of her spare moments when she could have been reading the first page of Aristotle’s Nikomacheian Ethics

Butchering Aristotle’s politics

In addition to butchering Aristotle’s ethics, Ayn Rand also butchers Aristotle’s politics. In her essay “A Review of J. H. Randall’s Aristotle,” written in 1963, she declares:

“Throughout history the influence of Aristotle’s philosophy (particularly of his epistemology) has led in the direction of individual freedom, of man’s liberation from the power of the state . . . Aristotle (via John Locke) was the philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States and thus of capitalism . . . it is Plato and Hegel, not Aristotle, who have been the philosophical ancestors of all totalitarian and welfare states, whether Bismarck’s, Lenin’s or Hitler’s.”

First of all, I will note that, although John Locke and Aristotle have been traditionally seen in stark opposition to each other, it is actually true that Aristotle did influence John Locke’s ideas on government and politics to a certain extent, as this paper discusses. Nonetheless, I suspect that Ayn Rand probably did not know that Aristotle and John Locke are traditionally seen in opposition to each other at all.

In any case, Rand’s assertion that Aristotle was “the philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States” is an egregious exaggeration. I am sure Aristotle probably had some influence on the Constitution (most of it probably indirect), but he was just one of at least several dozen major philosophical figures who influenced the Constitution and it is wrong to single him alone out as “the philosophical father” of it, especially when other philosophers (including Locke) had a great deal more influence on the Constitution than Aristotle did.

Furthermore, it is even more wrong to call Aristotle the “philosophical father of capitalism,” since there is no sense at all in which he can accurately be called this. Actually, Aristotle says a great deal in his Politics that is starkly at odds with Ayn Rand’s particular brand of capitalism. For instance, Aristotle writes in his Politics Book Seven, section 1328b-29a, as translated by H. Rackham:

“But at present we are studying the best constitution, and this is the constitution under which the state would be most happy, and it has been stated before that happiness cannot be forthcoming without virtue; it is therefore clear from these considerations that in the most nobly constituted state, and the one that possesses men that are absolutely just, not merely just relatively to the principle that is the basis of the constitution, the citizens must not live a mechanic or a mercantile life (for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue, nor yet must those who are to be citizens in the best state be tillers of the soil (for leisure is needed both for the development of virtue and for active participation in politics).”

Aristotle is outright saying that it is “ignoble and inimical to virtue” for citizens to work as merchants of any sort. This means, according to Aristotle, being a business leader would be a bad thing. This is about as far removed from Ayn Rand’s philosophy as you can possibly get. Rand believed in the glory of acquiring wealth through business and in the superiority of the so-called “Captains of Industry”; whereas Aristotle believed business and commerce were ignoble professions that should be reserved only for slaves and resident foreigners. I am pretty sure that, if Ayn Rand had actually read this passage in Aristotle’s Politics, she would not have praised Aristotle as “the greatest of all philosophers.”

ABOVE: Attic black-figure neck amphora by the Antimenes Painter dating to between c. 530 and c. 510 BC depicting people (probably slaves) gathering olives

Why all the praise for Aristotle?

This brings us to our final question, which is the question of why on Earth Ayn Rand praised Aristotle so heavily if she had at the very best only skimmed a few of his writings and read a little bit about him from secondhand sources. I think the answer is that Rand wanted an authoritative name that she could appeal to, someone she could use to make her own philosophy look respectable. For whatever reason, she thought Aristotle was exactly the philosopher she needed.

Rand’s reasons for praising Aristotle, then, seem to have been—rather fittingly considering the extraordinarily self-centered nature of her philosophy—entirely selfish ones. It seems that she probably believed that, by building up Aristotle’s reputation and then claiming him as a famous philosopher who had said many similar things to her, she could thereby improve her own reputation through association with Aristotle.

The problem, of course, is that Ayn Rand and Aristotle do not really have very much in common.

Conclusion

Ayn Rand claimed to have been influenced by Aristotle and praised Aristotle as the greatest of all philosophers, but the only time she ever claims to quote Aristotle, the passage she quotes turns out to be a misquotation from a Libertarian philosopher paraphrasing Aristotle.

She criticizes Aristotle’s ethics, saying he didn’t have an explanation for why people need morality, when, in fact, he has one on the very first page of his Nikomacheian Ethics. She credits Aristotle with all sorts of things he does not deserve credit for, like capitalism, the industrial revolution, the creation of the United States, and—most bizarrely in my opinion—the structure of the English language.

All this leads me to conclude that Ayn Rand probably never actually read anything by Aristotle. If she did read anything by him, she clearly did not read it very carefully. I think Aristotle would strongly disapprove of Ayn Rand’s selfish exploitation of his philosophy’s reputation to add a veneer of classical respectability to her own ideology.