I’m a fan!
She’s absolutely right Neither the state nor my neighbor owns me. I own myself.
Ayn Rand was nothing more than an agnostic stoic. There is virtually nothing new or unique about her writings. The best that can be said about her is that with her popular writing she rallied some at critical time against the Left.
Big fan of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
Thanks for the post.
A teleological moral code depends on a system of teleological measurements of the graded relationships of means to a standard of value, which is an end. When existence (life) is chosen as the ultimate standard of value, good is what is beneficial to life.
There are some areas where I strongly disagree with Rand, but there are other areas where I agree with her just as strongly. And as Jerome Tuccille once wrote, “It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.”
She did a lot of good, though many conservatives didn’t like her. Bill Buckley essentially read her out of the movement. I think there is room for both.
Her book _The Virtue of Selfishness_ is the primer interested folks should read first to get a handle on her philosophy of Objectivism and to unlock the proper point-of-view while reading her novels. _The Ayn Rand Lexicon_ is also a great book for learning the why for opinion on a lot of topics. Both books spell out her work pretty plainly and she doesn’t talk down to you nor dive into philosophical wonk-speak to explain herself.
“self sacrifice for the ghosts in heaven” no that does not discribe faith based life at all. Ayns premise is false.
I agree with her on a lot of things. Others don’t. No big deal. It changes nothing.
Thanks for posting it, huck.
Ayn Rand has some good thoughts, but doesn’t understand God.
God is Love and the two great commandments are to love God and love your neighbor.
If we would all live and peace and not sin, then we would a better world and a great future with God in Heaven.
Ayn doesn’t realize that everything we have in from God - the air we breathe, the food we eat and we should put aside our pride and thank God for everything he has given us.
She’s a mixed bag for me. Some great insights along with some insufferable nonsense.
She’s a good read for high school & college kids....helps snap many of them out of the statism they are being taught.
Outside of her hypocrisy of being a feminist, she was dead on.
I do not despise Ayn Rand but I do think the Radians do as most intellectuals— pull the straw man out to much.
Take a look at one of Jesus’ simplest, most direct, and commonly quoted statements to the public in Matthew 5:
“Let your light shine before men that in seeing your good work they glorify your father who is in heaven.”
Jesus does not say “Let God’s light shine . . “ In fact, this brief rather seminal instruction says “your” three times. Moreover, this theme ends up irritating the Pharisees to the point of demanding a crucifixion for Jesus.
Jesus did advocate for the individual in far better terms than even Ayn Rand did. I think the excess devotion to Randian thought is largely a bad deflection to secularism. We get a lot more “legalize weed” nonsense as opposed to an ethical framework for what individual freedom can accomplish when not menaced by the state.
Randians need to reconsider their straw man of Christianity.
She is right in the sense that the world is divided between the City of God and the city of man. Augustine explained each camp quite accurately centuries earlier.
Each person must decide at some point in their life which city they belong to.
Self-love is a basis for the city of man. It is not a third choice.
In America you are free to live life exactly as you see fit as long as your choices do not harm the person or property of others. The more you learn about life the more enjoyable will be the living of it.
Evil is evil even when everybody is doing it, good is good even when no one is doing it.
The atheistic objectivist never understood the love of God
Interesting novelist lousy philosopher
And she's not really a philosopher because she doesn't relish the argumentation that philosophers do. She has a doctrine or a dogma that she defends at all costs, but she doesn't seriously consider that her critics might have a point. She doesn't take objections seriously into account and move her thought forward. She's like a pre-Socratic who says everything is made of fire or water and that's that.
Maybe she's half a philosopher. She provides a doctrine that is right half the time, but she doesn't take into account situations where it may not apply. We go through stages of life. What's right for a child isn't right for a young person and that isn't necessarily right for a parent and householder with responsibilities and that isn't necessarily right for someone approaching the end of life. So while her philosophy is very appealing to the young, it may not reflect what those in the middle or end of life need.
Ironically, she may survive best as something she would have hated - a victim. Rand described very well what Communism did to people, and that reality is present underneath all her writing. But beware: it's said that in her earliest writings, she had some admiration for her tormentors because their energy, idealism, and commitment.
Ridiculous and sophomoric way of describing Christians/Christianity. Did she actually know any Christians well - or was she just given to writing stupid things?
I am a limited fan. I am also a Christian.
I take the good, and leave the rest.
The fault of Objectivism, of ruthless self interest, is, ironical!y, that there can be no objective good: only subjective.
Atheist Evolution would say that a male spreading his genes in the corporate pool more than other males is a biological imperative, a natural-law good.
Genghis Khan was a murderous despot. He apparently succeeded in effectively raping so many conquered females that his genotype is enormously disproportionately well represented in the Asian genome.
By objective standards, his subjective philosophy was not really very good for anyone but himself. Yet he succeeded spectacularly as a tyrant and rapist.
Atheists who strive to argue for some sort of squishy quasi-religious morality based on the suggestion that it is really better for the atheist himself in the long run to cooperate with others in a mutually-beneficial, pseudo-moral way are nothing but sophists.
If they were right, Khan would have failed, and failed decisively. Similarly, Josef Stalin would have failed.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy inevitably leads to amoral ruthlessness, with nothing objectively wrong - that is, if one is intellectually honest.