Objections to Objectivism
Miscellaneous Criticisms
Copyright © 2001 by John Ku

How You Can Eat Your Cake and Have It Too

Once asked to sum up her philosophy while standing on one foot, Ayn Rand did so in addition to translating it into simple language. Among the translations was the assertion that "You can't eat your cake and have it, too." This she claimed was an absolute and the basic law of reason. When she would really tear into a criticism of some ideology, she was fond of claiming that it was an attempt to eat your cake and have it, too. And so, I think it is appropriate for my final criticism to show how she was mistaken about even this most fundamental principle upon which she based so much of her philosophy.

The argument that supposedly proves this seems quite intuitive and easy to understand: to have some object is essentially to be in possession of it; to be in possession of an object is to be entitled to use it according to how one chooses. But by the Primacy of Existence, one can only be entitled to that which exists. Existence exists. No one can have a right to the nonexistent, the null, the zero. But by the very definition of "eat," the original object that one has eaten no longer exists; it is dissolved into nutrients that man must use to further his survival since there is no automatic guarantee of continued existence. To deny the first is to uphold Anti-Reality, to think that by one's irrational whims and desires, by a mere "I want to possess it," one can make it so. To deny the second is equivalent to affirming the primacy of the value of the cake's existence as an end in itself over that of the nutrients it can provide – which means; as divorced from its value as judged by the standard of man's life – which means; it is Anti-Man, Anti-Life and ultimately the root of it is Altruism: the morality of death. It follows that you cannot eat your cake and have it too.

But it seems that once again, Rand, ever so quick to conceive of everything in such black and white terms – either Egoism or Altruism, utter self-sacrifice or complete selfishness, eat your cake or have it – fails to acknowledge that this does not exhaust all possibilities. She has blinded herself to the fact that eating one's cake can be precisely the manner in which one has it. Perhaps had she not harbored such a hatred and disdain for modern philosophers, she could have learned a thing or two from J. L. Austin and the Ordinary Language philosophers. They may have been able to point out such common phenomena as asking, "What are we having for dinner?" Or perhaps even, "What are we having for dessert?" Then, it is quite natural and reasonable to think that someone might very well reply, "We're having cake." Surely, Rand does not think that what is meant by such a statement is that cake will be distributed for each to sit there and possess, or rather, in Rand's ideal society, for all to pass around various flavors of cake constantly trading with one another. Rather, what is meant by having it is that one will eat it. Thus, I conclude that there need not be anything contradictory about eating one's cake and having it, too.

[By the way, in case you couldn't tell, this chapter is just a joke.]

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