Witness was a great book. So was Atlas Shrugged. Both were written by flawed authors, but so what? Chambers picked an unnecessary fight that lives to this day, where he distorted Rand’s message and brought his own judgment into question at least to that extent. Just my opinion.
I agree!
I don't think it was unnecessary at all. There are a number of elements in Rand's philosphy that are actually pernicious.
Look at the whole self-interest deal, for example. It was an idea that resonated with the times -- she can't claim credit for it, but she was in part responsible for making it respectable. And that's a problem. See Chambers' review, where he talks about the problem of "pursuit of happiness as an end in itself."
The problem is that self-interest has to be tempered by "other-interest," or you end up with the sort of narcissistic and decadent culture that Chambers (correctly) predicted would result.
There are other, deeper intellectual problems with Rand's philosophy, in which it loses all contact with the real world. This is blindingly obvious, in fact. Rand's philosophy cannot even withstand the moral implications of something so common and natural as parenthood -- which is in direct conflict with her claim that "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others." We are, in fact, very much a means to our children's ends, and morally obligated to be so.
A philosophy that cannot reasonably deal with the propagation of the human species, is not to be taken seriously.
Any philosophy that so stridently claims to be "the One True Philosophy," and so clearly fails to live up even to its own premises, deserves to be rejected in the strongest possible terms -- especially when it has caught the attention of the public.
He freaked! I guess that happens—he’d seen it all.