Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand... dear god don't get me started on that lady... Let's just say that she goes overboard... a lot. And her books are s**t.

Get started! Get started!!

I actually wonder how objective are her objectivist ethics and politics, considering her experiences in the old Soviet Union, I tend to think that her views about egoism and altruism a part from seeming to be extreme, may be a result from her subjective reaction to her experiences with Communism.

Word.

Factor in her love for laizze-faire capitalism, and you can see yet another subjective result of her communist surroundings. "The grass is always greener" epitomizes this concept.

@Awesome: I don't want to make a 2-page long post that no one will fully read, or simply become flamebait (as many more average people who know Ayn Rand's name approve of her than disapprove of her)

Ayn Rand was a meglomaniacal cult leader. F#@K her!!

I knew nothing about her until a year ago. What I really liked was her refutation of the mystical and new ager types. I was strung along by this new ageish type of woman when I was in high school. I was living with her at the time 'cause I couldn't live with my family for different reasons, and since I'm autistic/aspergian, I was told I was "special" and all that kinda stupid spiritual stuff. I bought it because I was spiritually bankrupt from my experiences with fundamentalist christians whose care I was under a couple years back. So I was all f****d up and felt like Rand's wisdom about thinking for yourself and not letting those "mystics of the mind" think for you really hit home. It was empowering to say the least. It also helped me develop a sense of ethics. I never thought it was okay to do anything I wanted, but I had no concrete moral theory and some of the things she talks about in regards to morality gave me a starting place to develop my own. I also became interested in libertarian politics b/c of Ron Paul, and I still think there's a lot of merit to some of Objectivism's and Libertarianism's economic principles. But as time went on I started to realize they weren't practical. I really began to question O'ism when I started thinking about animal abuse through her moral system. It hit me when I read an Objectivist say on an O'ist forum that it's more evil to take away a dog from a brutally abusive situation than the abuse itself if the abuser owns the dog. That's morally repugnant as far as I'm concerned. And even though most people who identify as Objectivists don't believe in animal abuse, they'd also try to refrain from admitting that that is the logical conclusion of Rand's philosophy.

So far I've only read "For the New Intellectual" and 8/9th of "Atlas Shrugged". I read "Intellectual" and interpreted her philosophy a certain way, which wasn't all that unreasonable. But after reading that I went to Atlas and was confused by the seemingly backwards ethics in her story. I understand why people like Rearden and Dagny are important to society. I totally agree that they're important. They do in fact give other people jobs. But those people are just as dependent on their employees. Without all us "underlings" to do those jobs, the Reardens and Dagnys of the world wouldn't have their mills or railroads. I'm even considering writing a novel which takes that idea and makes sort of an anti-Atlas theme. Instead of those "with ability" going on strike, all their employees go on strike and demand more. It'd be in a world a lot like ours, with a huge gap between the rich and poor becoming wider and wider, a collapsing economy with the richest getting away with billions for failing while everyone else gets shafted. Yet, instead of going from one extreme to another, the end objective would be a society of balance. I graduate in May, and as soon as I graduate I'll start writing. I have a lot of good ideas and am even considering giving a shot the possibility of becoming a professional writer. I'd just need to improve my use of language a lot more, but it's plausible.

Ayn Rand is a pen name. Her birth name of Allicia Rosenbaum, born 1905 in Russia.

ruveyn

Thread necro topic.

I think Objectivists have done some great things for the world. Just ask Alan Greenspan

It also seems that people have no concept that there might be a difference between egoists, libertarians in general, and Randians. They all get categorized into "rich people who don't like poor people and walk out the door of their mansion each morning and twirl their Evil Guy (tm) mustache".

This name has not a high standing with me:

1) Rand's epistemology denies any idea since Descartes. Her idea about measurement is hyper simplistic and does not take modern science into account. I just have the impression that she just did not understood the discussion of the recent 300 years. Her epistemology is in some respect a simplified marxist epistemology, based on the idea of objective world, but leaving out the dialectic method Marx used (in some respect quite homouristic, given her hatred for anything which reminds to socialism even remotely).

2) Her moral ideas: Even when we would agree that that we are all egoistic, we would still have collective systems of economy in some areas. Whilst some services are better organized privately, some are better in state or other form of public ownership. A social network is also in the interest of the majority, because it lowers the chance of social unrest and even can encourage entrepreneur-ship by making the total risk for start-up single entrepreneur leaving employment calculable.

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One of Ayn Rand more entertaining obsession was her hatred to Immanuel Kant: Kant is in a lot of respects outdated, but to blame him for Communism, Fascisms and any other evil in modern world is more than a step to far. One of the most absurd aspects of her hatred against Kant is the fact that the parts she criticized on Kant's moral philosophy are not creations of Kant but his adaptation of stoic ideas, which he uses as a starting point. Given the fact that Kant style of writing is very complex I just have the impression that she never read Kant or understood him (to my knowledge she did not understood German, which is for a deep understanding of Kant very important: You need to read the original texts).

Besides this: Kant plays outside Germany not a dominating role in philosophy. The worship of Kant and his ideas as the cornerstone of thinking are phenomenon of the German speaking countries (post-war Germany even enshrined some political idea of Kant in the constitution). Ayn Rand absolutely overestimates Kant's influence worldwide.

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She showed no deep understanding for the history of philosophy and how ideas developed, but provided her followers with a closed system which pretends to explain almost everything. I am therefore not surprised that the Objectivist developed more into the direction of a sect.

I'm generally opposed to the idea of burning books, but I'd probably be willing to make an exception for anything written by Ayn Rand.

She's antichristian, it's an antichristian philosophy, so being a christian, no, I don't give her much credence. I think she would have a big following with schizoids.

Her main moral point is that one's life belongs to one and that one should live for his/her own sake and not the sake of others. Why does that bother you?

I have a slightly different tack. I concur with R. Hillel who writes:

If I am not for myself, then who is for me?
If I am only for myself, then what am I?
If not now, then when?

I detest altruism and self sacrifice for the sake of self sacrifice. All we have is our lives and the short time in which to live it, so we should live our lives well.

ruveyn

sage


OWAITLOL

If it were only so simple. But we each are not each universal rapacious slayers and devourers but part of a web of life at times at war with itself but never at war with it all since if it all fails we fail as well. A policy of incorporating safely as many others within one's self as is possible makes a fulfilling life for me.

I really don't want to get into this, but.....

Ayn Rand and I disagree fundamentally on her oversimplified view of social society and the meaning and practicality of altruism.

Wow at labels and lack of free thought. Good job there buddy.

A social society has it benefits, even for the rich. Let see any European country with a relative high unemployment rate.

Those employed are, brutally spoken, superfluous workforce, which can't be employed reasonably. If the unemployed would not be supported and at least paid in a way that they can maintain their daily ration of beer and TV they would become unrest. The crime rate would perhaps raise, they must be suppressed anyway. Putting those on social benefits keeps them for a reasonable amount of money under control: Beer drinking viewers of afternoon TV-shows do not start a revolution.

Last edited by Dussel on 23 Feb 2009, 4:32 am, edited 1 time in total.