Posted on 03/11/2005 6:17:42 PM PST by Hank Kerchief
So true!
We search for the words to express our thoughts, then we'll type the shortest lines possible. That's my method .......most of the time.
>>Most, but not all, truly creative writers are egocentric, prone to a dominating disposition and likely to offend many while gaining plaudits from others. <<
Your description of the others is ??????
I think a much better written, shorter, more rousing, and philosophically comparable work that will put you near the pitcher's mound of what Objectivists are trying to say, I would suggest reading Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Well said! You have to go through 100 tons of silt to find a nugget but when you do it's a big one. She was a mediocre writer, an average philosopher, and one hell of an objective pragmatist.
That aside, you elect to begin by citing Nietzsche and declaring him to be "intellectually fearless and brutally straightforward." This is pure foolishness. Even the prolific sinner Russell had the common sense to point out that Nietzsche's views were absolutely incongruous with the conduct of his personal life. I have to paraphrase here but Nietzsche wrote "When going to women, don't forget to bring the whip" and Russell reasonably suggests "Nietzsche knows that, in reality, nine out of ten women would have got the whip out of his hand". Nietzsche's greatest problem was that he was the living, breathing, antithesis to what his philosophy held dear. He was nothing more than a weak step on the ladder to Nihilism which made us all realize that nothing mattered.
Interestingly, things still seem to matter, and I'm amazed that you differentiate between Hank Rearden and John Galt in your post. Galt is more vocal in the novel but their ideals are the same. Simplified; if I make something what gives another person any right to it or say in it's distribution?
BTW. I am a reformed lib too. Try not to let it get in the way.
Don't need any slack cut for me, thanks, and wasn't defending Nietszche's ideas by any means, but I don't mistake the man with the mind. The fact that he was physically weak and sickly has nothing to do with the philosophical stance he took: an atheist who followed the ramifications of such an anti-belief in toto, all the way. Of course nihilism is the result, but he didn't shrink from it. And I stand by the central claim: Rand repackaged the raw material of Nietszche's ideas and shaped them into something slick and smooth and easily swallowed by those whose vanity is tickled by the notion that they, too, are Reardon and Galt material. Whether or not 'Reardon Steel' belonged to Reardon is not the central issue of 'Atlas Shrugged', and in the real world, which we common folk somehow muddle through without Rand's quasi-divine arbitration, copyright and patent laws are in place to assure ownership belongs to the creator. The author's contempt for those not part of her self-styled elite is palpable. She spends several interminable pages, for example, explaining why the death of hundreds of people in a railway disaster really isn't such a bad thing since the train crash victims were idealogical bedfellows to the cardboard cutout bad guys in her novel. Conservative thought, as Hobbes and Locke propounded it, is based upon self-interest harnessed to a common good, the polity as a whole. The self-interest Rand advocates is pathologically extreme: selfishness not as a recognized trait of a less-than-ideal humanity, as Hobbes saw it, but as a virtue to be extolled and celebrated.
'Reformed lib' doesn't get in the way of anything. It does, however, give me some experience with power-hungry, self-styled apostles of truth.
Because UNLIKE (perhaps even opposite) random nihilists and hedonists -- she demonstrates that there IS a SPECIFIC objective morality derived from REALITY, and she spells it out in such a way that many people who were never born into a Judaeo-Christian culture (numbering, oh say, about 5 Billion people) have a common starting point (There's an introduction to the objectivist ethics in the first essay in The Virtue of Selfishness).
This confusion on your part may be THE MOST COMMON source of the straw-man and red-herring objections to Ayn Rand. This, plus your justified objections to her temperament, may prejudice you from even considering that she can be, and has been, the source of conversions of tremendous numbers of people, including myself, to the pro-liberty mindset.
While we all must appreciate what the love of life and productivity, however imperfect, that Aquinas Catholics and Presbyterian and Episcopalian Protestants have meant to Western Civilization, an insistence on non-Christians accepting such teachings on blind faith is, to most of them, a nonsense demand that they substitute one randomly-chosen subjectivist ethics for another. Therefore I think we all must also appreciate how those like Rand have not only tried, but succeeded, in convincing millions of non-Christians and pseudo-Christians to appreciate the values of capitalism and freedom when they would have otherwise remained supporters of various forms of socialism, dictatorship and in the U.S. of the DemocRAT party.
=== an insistence on non-Christians accepting such teachings on blind faith
Please, you're speaking to a Catholic. Not some lobotomized Bibliolator or Enlightened.
I'll address the rest of your post later. You bring up some good points to which I'd like to respond when I have more time.
She did? Where? One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers.
Since I have personally talked with about a thousand people from many different walks of life about Ayn Rand since 1963, and since Rand not only sold millions of books before her death in 1982, and TWELVE MILLION SINCE her death, your insinuation that my conclusions are based upon PRETENDING I can only guess is based upon hasty wishful thinking or something equally unwise on your part. Further, did my seeing the impact of Rand on influential people from Robert Prechter to Tibor Machan to Jonathan Hoenig, etc., etc. have me fooled? For myself, I've never been part of anyone's inner circle, and have found her philosophy vastly more compelling, life-saving, inspiring and ennobling than anything else, and any implication that I didn't would be unwise to keep maintaining.
I happen to know that James Valliant is correct. The Branden's deception of a woman scrupulously honest, the most honest human being I have ever seen, was the depth of depravity, bar none. You would have had to have known Ayn Rand in person to know the definition of total honesty in all human affairs. They deceived her over such a long period of time, during which she gave them hours of her time trying to help them with their contradictions, trying to give them everything she could to help them think it through. And they lied, knowing she was expending all that effort in an attempt to make sense of their lies. Over a period of Years. They are liars, and to have lied to this human being, of all people, marks them for life. You cannot believe anything in their biographies.
That may be the most ignorant post I've ever read here.
"She did? Where? One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers."
Hmmm, that's funny. I suppose since you seem to believe that the numbers convinced gives validity to a philosophy, you probably are willing to give 100% credence to Karl Marx. What the heck, we have half the country believing in socialism so it must be a valid and workable philosophy!
The more I look around, the more I see "Atlas Shrugged" coming to life!
When the books came out, Peikoff & Co were saying that they were lying about the affair (which he later admitted they had), so don't try saying that we can't believe anything that's in their books. Your attempt to dismiss them out of hand shows a Peikovian intrincism.
I know she can sell books, and I know that libertarianism is an attractive philosophy for the modern mind.
The fact remains that the intellectual attraction did not result in a libertarian society. Moreover, the trend is in the opposite direction, toward more and more statism. This is unfortunate, and Rand shares some of the blame for this.
There are pockets of acceptance of libertarianism, mostly in economic thought. Thanks to her and her fellow-thinkers such as Hayek, Friedman and Mises, planned command economy has been discredited.
But I think that her inability to reach beyond that is in the falsehood of the ethical system of Objectivism. Intuitively, all have an understanding of good and evil, and most find her ethical system inattractive. The falsity of her moral philosophy shows through in her sneering attitude toward charity, acceptance of abortion (I know that many libertarians these days are pro-life, for reasons extraneous to libertarianism), indifference toward cultural values, and myopic views on immigration and foreign trade.
What wonderful memories I have of reading Rand the first time and I must admit envy of West coast conservative. Forty yeaes ago I was an architectual student at Pratt and my classmates nicknamed me Dominque. I read Fountianhead to find out why and learned so much more.
I have many more times been quite correctly portrayed by others as being anti-Rand, than I have ever been referred to as pro-Rand. I consider myself to be an anti-Randian. Yet to be honest, I must admit that Rand has had a tremendous influence on me and my opinions. Today, as when she was alive, I have/had many disagreements with her positions. I also agree with many of her opinions. Any statement as quoted above is pure silliness and is not even worthy of this comment.
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Same here, except I couild not bring myself to reading her novels. I was a self-identified libertarian till about two years ago, and I even had a regular Pursuit of Liberty feature running on FR. I was never terribly fond of Rand or objectivism, and I stand by my epithet of "pitiful".
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