Objectivism is often misrepresented as a rigid set of ideas issued by Ayn Rand that you must accept and uphold to be a “good Objectivist.” In other words, the assertion goes, the absolutism of Objectivism is like the dogmatism of religion: doctrinaire, restrictive, confining.
But it is not. And understanding the difference is essential to understanding Objectivism.
Objectivism is indeed a philosophy of absolutes. It is a system of black-and-white principles. It is also reality-based, non-dogmatic, and profoundly liberating. Its life-serving nature lies in the integration of these facts.
Objectivism identifies absolutes about the nature of reality, man’s means of knowledge, the requirements of human life, the source and nature of rights, and the moral purpose of government. Its principles are black and white because reality is black and white: Things are what they are; they’re not what they’re not. An idea is either supported by evidence and logic or it isn’t. An action either serves your life or it doesn’t. A law or policy either prohibits coercion and thus protects individual rights or it doesn’t. And so on.
Objectivism recognizes and upholds such absolutes, but it does not call for you to accept them on faith or because some authority said so. Rather, Objectivism calls for you to look at reality for yourself, to use your own mind, and to draw firsthand conclusions. If an idea doesn’t make sense to you, if you don’t see how it is supported by facts and logic, then, according to Objectivism, you should not accept it as true. This is an aspect of the Objectivist principle of independence: the recognition of the fact that to understand reality and succeed in life, you must use your own mind and live by your own judgment.
This principle, too, is an absolute: If you want to understand the world and your needs, you must perceive reality with your own senses and integrate your observations using your own reasoning mind. Of course, you can learn from other people. You can read or listen to what they say, consider their arguments, observe their actions, and relate what they say or do to what you know to be true. But the fact remains that to understand an idea, theory, or subject, you must rely ultimately on your own observations and logic. You must establish and maintain a primary orientation toward the facts as you see them, not toward the views or opinions of other people.
Because of this particular absolutism, Objectivism is profoundly liberating. It does not issue commandments or “categorical imperatives” from on high for you to obey. Rather, it identifies observation-based principles of the if-then variety, such as: If you want to understand reality, then you must observe reality and think. If you want to live and flourish, then you must think and act accordingly. If you want to live in a social system that enables human flourishing, then you must learn the nature of such a system and work to establish and maintain it. Such principles are not dogmas. They are recognitions of the law of cause and effect. And they do not restrict or confine you. They free you.
Specifically, they free you from the subjectivist nonsense that reality is whatever you want it to be (personal subjectivism) or whatever some collective says it is (social subjectivism)—and from the religious nonsense that reality is whatever some “divine consciousness” wills it to be (supernatural subjectivism). Objectivism acknowledges that reality exists and is what it is independently of any consciousness or consensus, that the function of the mind is not to create reality but to comprehend it, and that the mind is an attribute of the individual, not a collective or an alleged God.
When you use your mind to understand, uphold, and act in accordance with black-and-white, reality-based principles, you do not restrict yourself from acting in ways that could support or improve your life. Rather, you identify the range of actions that can do so. You exclude from practical consideration the kinds of actions that lie outside that range. Thus, you enable yourself to act in a fully life-supporting, fully self-interested manner as a matter of principle.
What could be more liberating than that?