Posted on 05/11/2013 12:12:17 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-metaphysical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)
These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew. Excerpts appear below, with Lewis’ writing (complete with Rand’s highlighting and underlining) on the left and Rand’s notes on the right.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Ayn Rand was right about the world...up to a point. But CS Lewis found the ultimate truth. Ayn Rand died in denial.
I’ve read most of their books, and Rand makes a good case for refuting Progressivism but her dream world is a harsh place of misery for most. That’s why her books refute progressives so easily. Because they envision the same world of misery, only with different masters and slaves.
God exists outside our understanding of time...so the question as to why God “waited so long” is improper defacto.
The best example I can think of.
I only know of her and Atlas Shrugged or Shrugs from posts here on FR, not getting an inkling about her philosophy. Even pagans know what man can do to man and predict what we will do because there is nothing new under the sun. What pagans can’t predict, is what God is going to do especially since they refuse to believe that He has already accomplished. Their Godless writings are hopeless and depressing.
In some ways, Atlas Shrugged confirmed what I'd already believed about Capitalism, Government and Fascism (the marriage of Government and Business where only the well connected thrive economically.)
In other ways, Atlas Shrugged really opened my eyes towards the different types of people they are (the characters in the book) and the insidiousness of Communism and Socialism as political systems. I credit Atlas Shrugged for making me a much better critical thinker in that regard.
That does not mean I have to live my life for those people. But I am a better person for helping give other people the opportunity to improve their lives.
I think you may miss one of Rand's key points which is more about being forced to help others. Rand doesn't rail against charity or doing good for others, she rails against being forced either by Government or those who subscribe to a political system that abhores the nature of a Capitalistic society.
I think if you look at who pays the taxes in this country today vs. those who are living on the government dole with a sense of entitlement (they're "entitled" to our tax dollars by force of government taxation and wealth distribution away from those of us who work) I think Rand nailed exactly what this country turned into, and she did it more than 50 years ago.
“For my 2 cents Rand can’t hold a candle to Lewis.”
And that’s still a wonderful understatement! :)
They banded together to create it and maintain it. Why would you expect they wouldn't band together to defend it?
Misery how? If you don't work you don't eat? That's misery?
That’s why her books refute progressives so easily. Because they envision the same world of misery, only with different masters and slaves.
Well, the way I see it today you and I are the (tax)slaves of the miserable non-working class who believes they're ENTITLED to that which we work for and produce, simply because they exist. I refute that point.
I would much rather live in Rand's economic world where those who choose to sit on their ass and do nothing to provide for themselves suffer the consequences for it - rather than you and I being forced by the Government's wealth redistribution schemes to continue paying "benefits" for them.
And read my words very carefully: those who choose to sit on their ass and do nothing.
Ayn Rand despised everyone who did not share ALL of her views.
And in the end her little cult of personality was down to, what, Leonard Peikoff?
She wrote this 50-60 years ago, and I was quoting someone else. Get off your high horse.
It was a novel.
Rand wrote several novels attempting to illustrate her philosophy, but she wrote dozens of non-fiction books as well as hundreds of essays in which she explained her thoughts in more specific terms.
Now, of course, she remained an atheist and I understand the resistance to her here for that. But even a thorough reading of "Atlas Shrugged" is not enough to understand what the woman was saying.
Her writings were deeply influential in my thinking. She was brilliant. She also allowed her personal beliefs to cloud her thinking [her beliefs on abortion, for example, can't be supported by her own philosophy in my opinion] and her life was chaotic. In short, she was quite human.
But you don't have to be a convert to Objectivism to gain some wisdom from her writing.
Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-metaphysical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)
Bookmarked.
I have read (I think, J. Neil Schulman about his novel Rainbow Cadenza, which had plot elements relating to both Lewis and Rand) that Rand had a much marked up copy of Mere Christianity. I doubt she liked that any better.
Ah, then you do derive some benefit from helping others. In that case, Rand would have approved quite heartily. It was only hair-shirt denial that she criticized.
The credo that I must help others even though it hurts me -- indeed, because it hurts me. That's the definition of "altruism". She hated that.
So do I. Because it's always false and usually imposed from above.
I’ve read just about all of Ayn Rand, including her first novella, “We,” which was published in a pulp science fiction magazine I bought as a kid. (It was about an Orwellian society, based on the Soviet Union, from whose language the word “I” had been eliminated completely.)
Yevgeni Zamyatin wrote We. Rand wrote something called "We the Living".
I suppose I should have emphasized the If when I posited my hypothetical, "If a Randian utopia, a Galt's Gulch were established..."
Point being, no great civilization, society or nation comes into being without people recognizng a cause or bond greater than self. So the notion that such a place would come into being in the first place is purely hypothetical. Why would I expect they wouldn't band together to defend it? Because I've read Rand. If the Randian Army were to have any chance of effectively defending itself, they would have to establish a hierarchy of soldiers, NCOs and officers (as you say, "organize"). The officers and NCOs would have to order subordinates into harm's way, which would be against that individual soldier's "self-interest" (unless perhaps it was a Frederick the Great type system in whch the soldiers were taught to fear their own leaders more than the enemy). In either case, being ordered into a duty against one's self interest is entirely antithetical to Rand's highest moral purpose which is the achievment of one's own happiness.
Some interesting aspects of Rand on display here.
They always miss this.
I’m sure she would have hated those of us who learned from the both of them.
Suggest you take a chill pill and try re-engaging this thread later. Clearly someone hit a nerve on you.
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