Ayn Rand vs. Aristotle – Self Love, Selfishness, and Egoism from Centre Right India by Jaideep Prabhu
Central
to Aristotle’s ethics is his concept of living well (eudaimonia), which
he describes as living in accordance with the virtues. He places friendship as
one of the virtues necessary for living well, an essential ingredient for
attaining the virtuous life. Aristotle says, “A discussion of friendship would
naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most
necessary with a view of living”. “For without friends no one would choose to
live, though he had all other goods” (1155a). In fact, Aristotle
sees friendship as an essential aspect of a life of happiness and morality,
“the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship;
and they are thought to become better by their activities and by improving each
other; for from each other they take the mold of the characteristics they
approve” (1172a). Friendship seems to have an especially close
connection with moral virtue, standing as a crucial link in a chain that the
treatment of the separate virtues has not yet completed. In the lives of
virtuous agents, friendship is far more involved and significant than just good
will, actually aiding their progression towards fulfilling their ultimate end
goal, which for Aristotle is human flourishing. Aristotle is committed to the
unity of virtue and happiness and rejects the commonly held notion that what is
really good for us is not what is most pleasant, and that what is right or
noble is often neither good nor pleasant. Aristotle argues, to the contrary,
that the activity of virtue is the very substance of human happiness and this
unity for Aristotle seems best achieved within the context of serious
friendship.
Aristotle
also bases his political theory on friendship. Amity among people in the
society is requisite for the proper function of the social order, which for
him, of course, was the Athenian polis… Egoism and selfishness in the
Aristotelian sense seems rather to be only discernible when one carefully
dissects man’s activities and relationships, recognizing that his ultimate goal
is his own enlightenment, virtuousness, and eudaimonia. The actual
behaviors and the day-to-day living of such a man would not be observable as
selfishly motivated nor egoistic. For Aristotle, self-love and selfishness
motivate us only in so far as the achievement of virtuousness and nobility
result in our own self-fulfillment and happiness or eudaimonia. Rand ’s egoism is overriding, demanding, and in-your-face.
It is all about self-interest, self-preservation, and self-promotion. That she
is also able to view the ultimate human goal as fulfillment of self does not
justify drawing any significant similarity with Aristotle. These are two very
different views of the self , its motivation, and its relationship to others. I
see little or no justification for Rand ’s
claim to Aristotelianism as the root of her rational egoism or of her
objectivism.
I
wanted to tell her about my political guru, Kishen Pattnayak. For a full-time
politician and former member of Lok Sabha, he was unbelievably self-effacing;
you felt embarrassed talking about him in his presence. He did not draw any
attention to himself; the media paid virtually no attention to him. He was as
close to a fusion of morality and politics as I have seen in my life. He did
not compromise on his principles, but he kept losing colleagues and followers
to mainstream parties. He was the opposite of mediocrity: I think of him as one
of the original minds of our time. His own followers did not quite understand
him and the academia did not glance at someone who did not write in English. He
was not frustrated or dejected. But the kind of alternative politics he spent
his life building never ever took off.
I
know what I do not wish to say to her. I am not saying that politics is not for
the intelligent or the thin-skinned. I am not saying that palitiks mein sab
chalta hai. I guess I wish to draw her attention to a deeper paradox of modern
politics: politics opens at once the possibility of ethics in public life and
also becomes the source of its routine negation. In our times, the pursuit of
goodness draws you to politics, at the same time immersion in politics has a
built-in drag away from goodness. For those who keep their eyes, ears and soul
open, political choices are always very delicate, very complex, very painful. The
writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Politics
of a different place - Indian Express Yogendra Yadav:
Oct 02, 2004
Kishen
Pattnayak's death did not make headlines. Only one news channel ran this story
on September 27, the day he died… Clearly, our media that loves to hate
politics had no space for the one politician who did not fit the stereotypes of
a politician. Yet this is one politician who needs to be remembered and what
better day than Gandhi Jayanti to look again at the politics of someone like
Kishen Pattnayak.
Obituary: Kishen Pattnayak and the Pursuit of Democratic Visions EPW: October
23, 2004 Manoranjan
Mohanty
Kishen
Pattnayak's concept of politics was the comprehensive pursuit of social
transformation. He was a radical who centred his activities on social
movements, while simultaneously participating in electoral politics through the
instrumentality of a political party. In both, the stress was on principles and
ideology, whatever the length of time and sacrifice it might involve. He
pursued peaceful struggles for social change and had debates with the Naxalites
on this issue.
Savitri Era Party @SavitriEraParty Two
outstanding thinkers-cum-workers Odisha has produced: Kishen Pattnayak (1930-2004) and Chittaranjan Das (1923-2011). 2:28 PM
1m - Savitri Era Party @SavitriEraParty Combating
the "built-in drag away from goodness" is the Vedic imperative,
precisely for which Savitri Era roots for FIVE DREAMS Manifesto.
