Ayn Rand At The APA In Boston - A Brief Report
by Fred Seddon
I have just returned from Boston where I attended the 101st meeting of the American Philosophical Association, and thought SOLO readers might be interested in hearing about the ubiquity of Rand at the sessions I attended; so here goes.
That she was center stage at the first meeting is no big deal, since it was a session sponsored by the Ayn Rand Society. The topic was “Concepts and Universals: Ayn Rand and Thomas Aquinas,” and was chaired by Allan Gotthelf. The speaker was Douglas B. Rasmussen, with a commentary by Robert Pasnau, who asked one question of Rasmussen that stunned the audience, to wit: “Do any of you gain concepts by measurement omission?” The silence was rather deafening. Even Allan, who usually has an answer for all the tough questions, remained silent.
The next session I attended was on the topic of “Libertarianism and Feminism.” While not specifically on Rand, I was glad to hear The Fountainhead get several pages of attention. But I was disappointed to hear that the kind of feminists that the libertarians wanted to align themselves with were the far-lefties like MacKinnon and Dworkin. Our colleague Tibor Machan said during the Q & A that it sounded like a bit of “ass-kissing” to him.
The last session I attended that day (all of these meetings took place on Tuesday, Dec. 28.) was sponsored by the Society for the Philosophical Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts (of which I was treasurer in a past life), and the talk I went especially to hear was titled “Radical Individualism in The Fountainhead." The speaker was Dan Shaw, who confessed to being a “bleeding heart liberal” (his words I swear), but who, before he became a hippie in the 60s, had a brief go with Objectivism. After all these years and obvious changes in his philosophical outlook, he still loves the movie.
I have been going to this convention since the late 80s and this is the first time Rand has been given so much attention.
Fred
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