Anybody here ever read Ayn Rand's works?
Posted by deleted 6 years, 11 months ago to Philosophy
Not intending to be objectionable or insensitive, I have to ask, especially considering some of the responses I have received lately:
Has Anybody Here Ever Read Ayn Rand's Works?
Yes, yes, I've been told a million times not to exaggerate so I know perhaps even most people here have some familiarity with her works and words.
But there are too many others who seem to have not the least concept.
Rand advocated, as her political philosophy, individual freedom. From her premise that each individual has sole ownership and control of his own life, she reasoned -- and I honestly see no other conclusion -- that therefore it is wrong to initiate force.
She quite explicitly opposed, to name one, the income tax, as well as other forms of theft.
Therefore, despite her own neurotic opposition to the word, Ayn Rand was a libertarian.
Now, please, you who are determined to react rather than think, note I said "libertarian," NOT "Libertarian."
Even though I have several times explained the differences between the two words, some leap-to-wrong-conclusion addicts keep trying to argue with me, without checking their premises.
For you folks who have not read her works and her words, Ayn Rand was probably the world's foremost advocate of reason ... maybe ever.
She was also, though actually allied with many thousands of others, a leading advocate of human freedom.
Only a cultist, only very misinformed cultist, can continue to deny that "libertarian" is the correct term.
She was not an "anarchist," not an agorist, not a voluntaryist, but I think she was a free marketeer and thus she was, yes, a libertarian -- though a minarchist.
So, I ask again: You people who keep calling yourselves "conservative" and/or "Republican," how do you rationalize or justify also calling yourself "Randian" or, especially, "Objectivist"?
I remember Rand explicitly forbidding people calling themselves "Objectivist." She said to call your self "student of Objectivism."
Finally, and I'm sure there will be hurt feelings from this, why on Earth don't you check your spelling as well as your premise?
I see comments here that are downright embarrassing because of miserable grammar and sloppy spelling.
If we truly care about truth, about reason, about Ayn Rand's legacy, shouldn't we be much more careful about how we represent her?
Has Anybody Here Ever Read Ayn Rand's Works?
Yes, yes, I've been told a million times not to exaggerate so I know perhaps even most people here have some familiarity with her works and words.
But there are too many others who seem to have not the least concept.
Rand advocated, as her political philosophy, individual freedom. From her premise that each individual has sole ownership and control of his own life, she reasoned -- and I honestly see no other conclusion -- that therefore it is wrong to initiate force.
She quite explicitly opposed, to name one, the income tax, as well as other forms of theft.
Therefore, despite her own neurotic opposition to the word, Ayn Rand was a libertarian.
Now, please, you who are determined to react rather than think, note I said "libertarian," NOT "Libertarian."
Even though I have several times explained the differences between the two words, some leap-to-wrong-conclusion addicts keep trying to argue with me, without checking their premises.
For you folks who have not read her works and her words, Ayn Rand was probably the world's foremost advocate of reason ... maybe ever.
She was also, though actually allied with many thousands of others, a leading advocate of human freedom.
Only a cultist, only very misinformed cultist, can continue to deny that "libertarian" is the correct term.
She was not an "anarchist," not an agorist, not a voluntaryist, but I think she was a free marketeer and thus she was, yes, a libertarian -- though a minarchist.
So, I ask again: You people who keep calling yourselves "conservative" and/or "Republican," how do you rationalize or justify also calling yourself "Randian" or, especially, "Objectivist"?
I remember Rand explicitly forbidding people calling themselves "Objectivist." She said to call your self "student of Objectivism."
Finally, and I'm sure there will be hurt feelings from this, why on Earth don't you check your spelling as well as your premise?
I see comments here that are downright embarrassing because of miserable grammar and sloppy spelling.
If we truly care about truth, about reason, about Ayn Rand's legacy, shouldn't we be much more careful about how we represent her?
Previous comments... You are currently on page 2.
The "collected works of Ayn Rand" is not limited to the four novels and does not mean the novels as interpreted by contemporary philosophy in the name of 'science'. Ayn Rand developed her philosophy to make Atlas Shrugged possible, then explained and developed it as non-fiction for over 20 years, and it isn't Kantianism, Logical Positivism, and Pragmatism.
In her "Brief Summary" in 1971 she began be quoting her position as stated in 1962:
"Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles - specifically, those of laissez-faire capitalism - as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context.
"Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics - on a theory of man's nature and of man's relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarrassing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as 'conservatism.' Objectivists are not 'conservatives.' We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish."
Her "Brief Summary" continued:
"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.
"This - the supremacy of reason - was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism. (For a definition of reason, see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) Reason in epistemology leads to egoism in ethics, which leads to capitalism in politics. The hierarchical structure cannot be reversed, nor can any of its levels hold without the fundamental one—as those who have tried are beginning to discover."
"... Politics is the last link in the chain—the last, not the first, result of a country's intellectual trends.
"In this connection and for the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement..."
She rejected both the libertarian movement (including anarchists claiming to be following her philosophy), and the conservative movement, many times on fundamental grounds, both in their content and in their emphasis on a-philosophical politics. Her political philosophy was not based on leaping in with a "premise that each individual has sole ownership and control of his own life", and her emphasis on reason did not mean political "reasons" for freedom. "Objectivism" is not "based on the non-aggression principle of honoring our neighbors’ choice (not initiating physical force, fraud or theft) and making things right with our victims if we don’t." The "premise" and the essence was her metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, not politics at all.
It is true that a-philosophical conservatives (together with some a-philosophical 'libertarians') dominate this forum with endless repetition in largely superficial political fads or would-be fads as if they had not read Ayn Rand. But the answer is not to characterize Ayn Rand as the "libertarian" false alternative to conservatives.
Ayn Rand made it very clear why "libertarian" does not characterize her position. The claim that "only [a] very misinformed cultist can continue to deny that 'libertarian' is the correct term" is flatly false -- and ironic coming from someone who claims to "be much more careful about how we represent her".
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/57170/...
What type of device are you using? What language is it set at? What language is the keyboard setting at?
(On too many articles at Wikipedia I've tried to correct, the errors are put back almost before I can log off. And NOT because of "good intentions." Though I do "assume good intentions" most of the time.)
(Do your apostrophes show up? Mine seem always to.)
The current situation is not a random lottery, it is a consequence of the basic ideas that are accepted across the culture. That is what determines the kind of people who are on the ballot who continue to dominate as most electable. Vote when it may make a difference, but change in the long run depends on the spread of the rights ideas.
And sort of like why I would not give away a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" though I might sell it for a quarter: The person getting it for free might well just set it down and never bother.
But the person paying, even a quarter, then has something invested in actually learning.
Voting is NOT accepting the result, no matter what, no matter if a tyrannical statism wins.
But NOT voting is accepting the statist quo.
Or at best it is foolish simply because tyrants will never remove themselves from office; a tyranny will never abolish itself.
Voting might be seen as shooting people: It is not necessarily a nice thing to do, but when one is acting in self-defense, it is acceptable, and in some people's views, a duty.
I have read and re-read and re-re-read "Atlas Shrugged" -- in fact, I have lost count of how many times -- and keep a copy here at my desk for reference.
It's a great story, filled with powerful and important ideas.
And there are lyrical passages that are downright poetic, and that can, after all the re-readings, bring me to tears.
That said, it would be POSSIBLE for a person to be irrational and ignore reality. So you are right.
From Galt's speech:
"You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments."
From her notes before Atlas Shrugged:
"[Regarding social relations:] Before you come to 'any principle as a guide in his relations to other men,' cover the point of how the morality of reason applies to man alone even to a man on a desert island. The first commandment is to exercise his reason. Morality is not social (and don't forget the evils that come from thinking that it is). Only after you have established this, can you come to morality in relation to other men. " -- from Notes on the written part of
The "Moral Basis of Individualism" Introduction, June 1945
"... man's moral code has to apply primarily to his own private conduct in relation to himself and his life—and that only on the basis of the right code toward himself will he or can he observe any sort of moral code toward others. Conventionally, it is thought that a man on a desert island needs no moral code. That is where he would need it the most. The proper code, of course, is: rational control of himself and his actions, a rational view of reality (identifying facts for what they are, to the best of his knowledge and capacity, being true to truth), the rational choice of his purpose and the action to achieve it." -- October 1949
Ron Paul was probably the best.
Load more comments...