I have been reading Ayn Rand’s essay “Philosophy: Who Needs It” again recently. This is an excellent and accessible essay that almost everyone would enjoy. In it, Rand sets out to explain why everyone needs philosophy.
One of the main points of the essay is that every one of us is already possessed of a philosophy. It is impossible to avoid using abstract ideas to integrate our concrete experiences. We do not have a choice.
“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberations—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self doubt…”
This passage was particularly striking:
“When men abandon reason, they find not only that their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror. The spread of drug addiction among young people brought up on today’s intellectual fashions, demonstrates the unbearable inner state of men who are deprived of their means of cognition and who seek escape from reality—from the terror of their impotence to deal with existence. Observe these young people’s dread of independence and their frantic desire to “belong,” to attach themselves to some group, clique or gang. Most of them have never heard of philosophy, but they sense that they need some fundamental answers to questions they dare not ask—and they hope that the tribe will tell them how to live. They are ready to be taken over by any witch doctor, guru, or dictator. One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to surrender his moral autonomy to others”
I highly recommend this essay.
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I re-read that essay and the next, “Philosophical Detection,” yesterday, as it happens (hmm, perhaps for the same reason as you?) and what struck me as I read them this time was her point that the mind integrates automatically. Consequently, unless a person takes control of his or her mind to consider the ideas being accepted and whether they’re true or not, a person ends up with mental garbage in the subconscious. Hence, the terror.
This point – that the integration is automatic and, in a way, relentless, has interesting implications for education. What I mean is, someone who wishes to be an excellent guide for students will want to provide a learning environment in which the students can make lots of exciting and life-enhancing integrations.
In other words, a “prepared environment” as we say in Montessori, a properly prepared psychological environment.