Are you a fan of Ayn Rand works and/or Philosophy?

by Eyebrow2 31 Replies latest jw friends

Eyebrow2

Here are a few collections to start with that I think are really good:

The Virtue of Selfishness
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
The New Intellectualls (takes exceprts from her fiction)

You may be able to find them at your library, or you usually can get them pretty cheap online used.

Also, if you go the the wwww.aynrand.org website, if your register (which is free) you can access some free lectures that are audio. There is a really good one that Gary Hull leads that is an Intro one. You don't need to have read anything by her. It provides a basic outline of what it is about.

Robdar, thanks for your post...my husband and I were reading a similiar paper that I believe Michael Huemer wrote, and my problem with him is that he just doesn't get what Objectivism is actually about.

I too, am a fan of cut and past you can find this at http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro

The following is a short description of Objectivism given by Ayn Rand in 1962. To learn more about her philosophic system, please read Dr. Leonard Peikoff's short essay: The Philosophy of Objectivism: A Brief Summary.

by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" or "Wishing won't make it so." 2. "You can't eat your cake and have it, too." 3. "Man is an end in himself." 4. "Give me liberty or give me death."

If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency — to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them — requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot — nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.

My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

Reality exists as an objective absolute — facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
Man — every man — is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Brief Summary of Objectivism

Essentials of Objectivism

Eyebrow2

Robdar...don't think I responded very well in the last posting to what you put up by huemer.
He doesn't understand the value concept in the Objectivism philosophy. That is the problem I found with the piece that he wrote.
Lathanar

5.3.6. THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION OF EGOISM

G.E. Moore identified the following as the fundamental contradiction of egoism (Principia Ethica, section 59): The egoist says that each person ought rationally to hold, "My own happiness is the sole good": "What egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is the sole good - that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is - an absolute contradiction!" (emphasis Moore's).

This is a criticism that still seems to me, as it did when I first read it, exactly on the mark. Let's look at it more closely, though. The ethical egoist is one who believes that he ought to aim only at promoting his own happiness (it does not matter if we substitute "interests" or anything else for "happiness"). Certainly, then, he thinks that it is good that he should be happy. What does he think everyone else should do?
He might maintain, "Everyone else also ought to serve my interests," but this would be implausible. Then he would have to answer "What's so special about you?" Unless he thinks he himself has some kind of special status, some characteristics that no one else in the world has, he must grant that, if his happiness is good, the happiness of others is also good.
Therefore, to maintain the plausibility of his theory, the egoist has to say that everyone's happiness is good, and that each person ought to aim at that person's own happiness. But if other people's happiness is also good, then the egoist must be hard put to explain why he does not aim at it in the same way he aims at his own. In other words, how can he justify acting as if his own happiness were the only good thing there is, given that he grants that every other person's happiness is good in just the same way that his own happiness is?

These types of arguments usually come from people who do not try to understand the philosophy itself, or try to bend the meaning of what is said into contradictions. These arguments usually contain the phrase 'what they seem to be saying', and when you see that phrase you can throw the entire discussion out the door. They have no real understanding. Reading through most of these postings against Objectivism, I usually can stop the argument in the first paragraph simply because someone has tried to equate two things that are not the same.
This blurb here is easily answered by two things. One, you can not equate self interest with happiness, they are two separate things. Happiness is usually obtained by accomplishing one's interests. Second, what one person's self interests are, will not be the same as everyone's self interests. You can not satisify everyone's self interest, nor should you try, unless that is where your self interests lie. All you can do, all you should do, is make sure that your pursuit of self interest does not infringe upon someone else's rights. If everyone followed this than a large majority would eventually obtain their self interest goals, and then maybe, most would find happiness.
The objectivist dislike of collectivism and altruism is what most people can not get past, that church indoctrination of having an obligation or duty to help everyone and to protect the weak and less fortunate, etc, and it promotes personal responsibility which most people do not like.
Eyebrow2

Yes...exactly.
Robdar

These types of arguments usually come from people who do not try to understand the philosophy itself, or try to bend the meaning of what is said into contradictions. These arguments usually contain the phrase 'what they seem to be saying', and when you see that phrase you can throw the entire discussion out the door. They have no real understanding. Reading through most of these postings against Objectivism, I usually can stop the argument in the first paragraph simply because someone has tried to equate two things that are not the same.

I do not agree fully with either side of the argument. However, I find it amusing that the above is very similar to what Huemer, the author, says about those who buy the Objectivism theory.
One, you can not equate self interest with happiness, they are two separate things. Happiness is usually obtained by accomplishing one's interests. Second, what one person's self interests are, will not be the same as everyone's self interests. You can not satisify everyone's self interest, nor should you try, unless that is where your self interests lie. All you can do, all you should do, is make sure that your pursuit of self interest does not infringe upon someone else's rights. If everyone followed this than a large majority would eventually obtain their self interest goals, and then maybe, most would find happiness.
If that is Ayn's true philosopy, then I have no trouble with it and live it on a daily basis. My suspicions lie in the fact that she is just too preachy and intolerant in her philosophy.
Terry

If it weren't for Mortimer J.Adler and Ayn Rand I'd be waaaaay back there on the road trying to sort out my rational mind!
Ayn Rand starts with clear definitions and proceeds from there.
Too many people I meet (or read) don't define their fundamental concepts. Words are used willy-nilly as floating concepts by those who manipulate the thinking of others. Rand is clearly a huge intellect when it comes to stripping arguments down to the most fundamental premises and exposing the errors.
The "coldness" of Rand herself was a problem many intellectuals ultimately face. Who will be their peers? You can't live day in and day out alone at the top of the mountain and not grow distant. When you meet promising people and find their thinking to be clogged with false premises; how can you share your deepest self with them without entering that awful middle ground of teacher/disciple?
Rand suppressed her deepest emotional needs; no doubt about it. It turned her very sour. Add to that the blow of finding out she had been betrayed by a covert affair in her most trusted soulmate, Nathaniel Brandon.
She was unorthodox, brilliant, incisive and direct in her philosophy. But, many dismiss her because her personal life devolved.
Personally, I think her philosophy is pure and cogent as a science for rationality. But, I'd wouldn't take her without reading Mortimer J. Adler as well. Together they are pussycat and lioness.
She turned my thinking around 180 degrees at a time I desperately needed to be able to think with acumen and clarity.
I reccomend WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? by Rand and TEN PHILISOPHICAL MISTAKES by Mortimer J. Adler
Terry
Robdar

EB2, Thanks for the above links. I will read them later, when I get back home.
BTW, great thread!
Robyn
Eyebrow2

Robdar...thanks for your posts...I thought it was awesome you posted that particular site, because my husband and I were just discussing it the other day.
Terry...you actually were one of the people I was hoping would respond to this. I was gonna pm you in a day or two if you hadn't hahah. I don't think she was actually as cold and emotionally repressed as some reports her to be, or as she allowed herself to appear. (I have had that conversation with a few local Objectivists last month it was an interesting one). I don't think, though that it really matters. Because you don't have to be cold to follow the philosophy.
I haven't read adler will check him out.
Lathanar

Yes unfortunately we do have to communicate ideas in a language that changes, which makes things difficult to an extent. It is hard to keep these kind of debates of philosophy down to the concepts and ideas and what they mean instead of arguing over semantics, but until you get the terminology down, it is hard to get the concepts across.
Most philosophies and religions have at their outcome peace and prosperity for all. What differs is the morality we follow to achieve that. One of the biggest pros about objectivism to me was that it is not about forcing my ideas on others, but rather stopping others from forcing their ideologies on me. I would rather base my morality on reason and rationality. If you want to save the world, feed the poor, whatever, go ahead, but don't try to make me do it. If I do, I'll do it because I want to, not because I have to.
garybuss

There are the parents who suffer deeply and genuinely, because their son (or daughter) does not love them, and who, simultaneously, ignore, oppose or attempt to destroy everything they know of their son's convictions, values and goals, never thinking of the connection between those two facts, never making an attempt to understand their son. The world they never made and dare not challenge, has told them that children love parents automatically.

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness © 1961

Are you a fan of Ayn Rand works and/or Philosophy?

5.3.6. THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION OF EGOISM

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