Posted on 04/22/2003 5:25:25 PM PDT by RJCogburn
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. — Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
In her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and in nonfiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand forged a systematic philosophy of reason and freedom.
Rand was a passionate individualist. She wrote in praise of "the men of unborrowed vision," who live by the judgment of their own minds, willing to stand alone against tradition and popular opinion.
Her philosophy of Objectivism rejects the ethics of self-sacrifice and renunciation. She urged men to hold themselves and their lives as their highest values, and to live by the code of the free individual: self-reliance, integrity, rationality, productive effort.
Objectivism celebrates the power of man's mind, defending reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value.
Upholding the use of reason to transform nature and create wealth, Objectivism honors the businessman and the banker, no less than the philosopher and artist, as creators and as benefactors of mankind.
Ayn Rand was a champion of individual rights, which protect the sovereignty of the individual as an end in himself; and of capitalism, which is the only social system that allows people to live together peaceably, by voluntary trade, as independent equals.
Millions of readers have been inspired by the vision of life in Ayn Rand's novels. Scholars are exploring the trails she blazed in philosophy and other fields. Her principled defense of capitalism has drawn new adherents to the cause of economic and political liberty.
You mean like Bill Clinton?
L
But I was asking you. You made the statement, now can you back it up?
or is your post the "unsolicited drivel" to which you were referring?
So, if you happen to believe in a religion that teaches anyone who is not saved, in terms of your religion's teaching, will suffer forever in hell, what could be more self-destructive that that than rejecting your religion. They should be forces to adhere to your religion, because the practice of denying your religion would be the ultimate self-destruction. (I'm not saying this is your religion. It's just an illustration.)
It would be cruel to allow people and society to suffer. We have no problem decrying the harmfulness of tobacco. But not sodomy, and other sexual perversions. If people choose practices and lifestyles that are self-destructive and cause them suffering, it is their business. No one appointed you, or anyone else, the protecter of all mankind.
What is cruel is to force decent people, who use all their resources to improve the lives of themselves and their loved owns, to pay for cleaning up after those who ruin their lives. Why should a decent hard working, productive parent be forced to pay for government programs that will force those too evil or too stupid to live their lives decently, to behave they way the government thinks they ought to.
You want to ease the lives of the perverts and indecent at the expense of the normal and the decent.
In an objectivist society, anyone who wanted to help these perverts straighen out their lives would be allowed to, but no one would be forced to.
Please come back when you have your moral principles straigtened out.
Hank
Thanks for the example.
Hank
Yep! Interesting and predictable, isn't it? Ayn Rand has always been a favorite of mine.
Were Ayn Rand alive today, she would be appalled at the tail spin that this nation is in. While I am somewhat enthusiastic about the goals of the current administration, I sense problems down the road. And, I understand that Rand would be incensed at many of the policies that this administration has instituted and particularly those policies concerning the fourth amendment guarantees against the invasion of citizens' rights to privacy.
And for some reason, you just can't pull yourself away from this thread. Hmm....
Communists feel the same way about Communism.
This from a CHRIST-ian, the ultimate in cult of personality.
Your are right, or would be, if Rand actually said this. In Rand's philsophy, the group has no importance at all. Importance pertains to one only class of existents in this world, beings capable of having purposes and ends, and all importance relates to the significance of things as they relate to each individual's purposes and ends. Groups have no purpose or ends, only individuals do, unless, of course, you are a cow, then the herd (group) matters.
Hank
Miss Rand was a religious zealot. To her and her disciples, there was no god but Self, and Ayn Rand its sole and infallible prophet -- and those who dared disagree were ruthlessly made anathema. Like the Bolsheviki she hated, Rand established an iron-fisted personality cult centered on the Great Leader (herself) and coldly neutralized any comrades who strayed too far from the party line. (Radical individualist Jerome Tuccilli writes hilariously of the antics of Rand's avowedly anti-collectivist "Senior collective" in his picaresque history of post-Cold War American anarchism It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.) Like the Soviets she detested, Rand had no problem purging her ranks of deviationists, roaders, and other enemies of the people: Whim Worshippers and Muscle Mystics were pitilessly banished to philosophical Siberia, with Rand's inner coterie of True Believers acting as a sort of coat-and-tie Cheka to her self-interested Stalin. Read the memoirs of Nathaniel Branden; It's no fun being Trotsky when the Great Leader decides you've got to go.
While I admire Rand's romanticism and her love of progress (and of railroads), her "virtue of selfishness" is in reality no virtue at all. "Devil take the hindmost" may be more practical that "Love thy neighbor", but more virtuous? By what standard? Surely not God's; Rand's hatred of the Deity was coequal with her hatred of Communism. Objectivism's atheistic individualism of the Right merely reverses the mistakes of the aetheistic collectivism of the Left; any individualism that deifies the Self to the exclusion of the common weal is as fundamentally flawed as a collectivism that deifies the state to the exclusion of the individual. In the former case one worships at the altar of the Supreme Self; in the latter, at the shrine of the State Almighty. In both cases, a false god is set up to replace the real thing -- with predictable results. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
Objectivism is like Star Trek fandom: of immense impact in certain rarefied circles, and possessed of an immense literature, but ultimately not to be taken seriously by ordinary, socialized adults. Let the flames crackle!
What was that earlier comment about ideologues talking personalities?
Mmmm - that boot leather tastes mighty good now, don't it?
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