Authored by Peter Saint-Andre.
Intellectual followers of Ayn Rand are rather attached to the idea that Objectivism is a philosophy of the Enlightenment. For example, a communication from The Objectivist Center made the following claim:
We identified ... a single idea that conveys, simply and clearly, Objectivism's distinctive outlook to people not already familiar with the philosophy. That theme is the concept of an "Enlightenment culture" opposed to both the cultural Right and the cultural Left. [emphasis in original]
The idea that Objectivism is an Enlightenment philosophy is not limited to one branch or another of the Objectivist "movement", since Leonard Peikoff and other orthodox Randians focus heavily on the Enlightenment and on Objectivism as an heir to the Enlightenment tradition (e.g., in Peikoff's book The Ominous Parallels). From the standpoint of communication it's doubtful that the idea of Enlightenment culture communicates the essence of Objectivism in a clear and simple fashion (since few people have a firm grasp on the nature of the Enlightenment). More fundamentally, I hold it's inaccurate to describe Rand's distinctive outlook as the defense of an Enlightenment culture (usually considered mainly the culture of the 1700s).
Even superficially, it seems that Rand's philosophy is not exactly the Enlightenment revisited. For one, Rand's Romantic literary heroes, especially Victor Hugo, were virulent enemies of the culture of the Enlightenment. They held strongly that Enlightenment culture was characterized by a desiccated vision of reason, an elevation of etiquette over emotion, and a focus on rules and duties in life and in art. It appears that Rand accepts much of this critique, for in her essay "What is Romanticism?" she derides the "classicists" of Enlightenment times, who set concrete-bound rules for literary production and thereby descended from artistic creation to artistic imitation. The resulting culture does not seem to be the kind that Objectivism would uphold.
Second, praising Enlightenment culture could give one (especially one not familiar with Rand) the idea that Objectivism is to be seen in opposition to the cultural movements that came before and after the Enlightenment: namely, the Renaissance and Romanticism (I pass in silence over the Reformation). Now, one thing the Renaissance and the Romantic period have in common is a kind of humanism, a focus on real human problems and concerns and values, as opposed to the perceived rationalism of the Enlightenment. So saying that Objectivism is distinctive among current philosophies in its advocacy of Enlightenment culture could be taken to mean that it is rationalistic, unconcerned with human problems, divorced from human living; yet this, I hold, is decidedly not the case.
However, this is perhaps merely a superficial glance at the issue; to understand more deeply the relationship between Objectivism and the Enlightenment, we need to delve into the cultural and intellectual history of the period and see how it relates to developments before and since.
Probably the most famous characterization of the Enlightenment can be found in Immanuel Kant's essay "What Is Enlightenment?". There, he claims that "The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!" Kant's catchphrase "Dare to know!" captures one significant theme of the Enlightenment: the pursuit of knowledge. However, the Enlightenment focus on knowledge tended toward a certain kind of intellectualism unconcerned with plebian matters such as material production. Partly this was no fault of Enlightenment thinkers, since even by 1790 the industrial revolution did not have enough strength even in the most advanced countries to appear as a new age proving the value of applying knowledge to the creation of wealth. Yet even outside the economic realm, the Enlightenment was not focused strongly on action. For example, while Enlightenment intellectuals showed a certain irreverence towards established authorities and a humanitarian opposition to arbitrary power, by no means were they revolutionaries; in fact for the most part they believed in social stability, "being reasonable", and the legitimate power of benevolent despots and aristocrats as opposed to revolutionary transformation or the messy processes of popular democracy.
The Enlightement belief in order extended beyond society to its vision of nature. That vision can be summed up in one word: Newton. Newton's discovery of a fixed order of laws behind the apparent chaos of natural phenomena held endless fascination during the Enlightenment, and was championed by Voltaire and the other major figures of the time. These thinkers had great faith in the power of Providence and they believed that a higher power — no longer quite the god of Christian tradition, but an organizing force in the universe — was necessary for the existence of natural order. Without a god of the deistic variety, it was believed that the forces of blind mechanism would lead to chaos. The choice was stark: fixed order or total flux, and the Enlightenment came down on the side of order — not just in the sciences, but also in morals, manners, art, and life in general. As Isaiah Berlin noted in The Roots of Romanticism (p.105):
The Enlightenment supposed that there was a closed, perfect pattern of life....[t]here was some particular form of life and of art, and of feeling and of thought, which was correct, which was right, which was true and objective and could be taught to people if only we knew enough.
The problem is, the order of the universe is not fixed or static. Throughout the 1700s, evidence began to accumulate pointing ever more strongly to the existence of geological, biological, and social evolution. Unfortunately, that evidence conflicted with the deistic vision of a higher power who ensured the order of the universe. If there was no higher power, then either there was no order (a la the skepticism of David Hume) or the only source of order was material (a la the determinism of modern Epicureans such as Gassendi).
Toward the end of the Enlightenment, the utilitarians tried to overcome this problem by substituting a "natural religion" of social utility based on a common human nature for the old-time deism, but the attempt failed. It was then that the budding "pre-romantic" movement (which started as early as the 1760s) gained force, stressing human feeling both as a supplement to the seemingly limited powers of pure reason and as a way out of the dilemma of skepticism vs. determinism that reason could not solve on its own. If the cosmopolitan universalism of Enlightenment reason did not have all the answers, then perhaps one needed to turn for insight to feeling, sentiment, intuition, imagination, genius, art, raw nature, subjective individuality, psychology, the inner life — in a word, to romanticism.
Such was the attitude of the artist towards the end of the Enlightenment. Meanwhile the engineers and entrepreneurs were busy creating their own form of evolution: the creative destruction of technological and economic progress, which in its inexorable fashion began to break down the vestiges of semi-feudal aristocracy still existing in the 18th century in favor of the meritocracy of talent and achievement.
It seems to me that Ayn Rand is a curious combination of romantic self-assertion and technological capitalism with a significant residue of the Enlightenment respect for reason and science. Rand's most heroic characters are all highly imaginative and creative technologist-entrepreneurs who defy societal conventions and remain true to their personal visions (often at great cost) by applying both logic and passion to the active creation of value in the world — and not just in their work (although that is the main focus of a Randian hero) but in their personal lives as well.
Thus while it is true that Rand's vision borrows much from Kant's characterization of the Enlightenment as daring to know, she goes far beyond the Enlightenment world-view and powerfully overcomes the rationalism inherent therein to forge a humanism that focuses on the creation of value and the affirmation of life. In contrast to Kant, we might say more truly of Objectivism: Vivere aude — dare to live!