Objectivism

Takshshila- Welcome to A2K!

What do you want to know? I have read all of those, plus many other of her works. Years ago, took the course, "Principles of Objectivism", when Rand was still collaborating with Nathaniel Branden.

Hi Phoenix!!!

Now i have hit a jaclpot it seems by getting reply from someone who is die hard Ayn Rand fan as ur signature shows.....

Well r u student of philosophy? Then may be u can understand what i cannot. Can u give me some idea in ur own way. We can talk of Atlas Shrugged which she says is the answer to many questions in Fountainhead.....

Thx For the Welcome!!

Welcome to A2K, Takshshila

I've read those mentioned too, and was going to offer to go find Phoenix. :wink:

Hey, what happened to this thread? I certainly cannot spout an entire body of philosophy off the top of my head. So how about it, Takshshila?
What do you want to discuss?

Hi Phoenix

Sorry had my Mid Terms!!

Well I want to know What Utopian Civilization and Objectivism have to do with each other while the whole thing is mere Selfish Prospect.

The portrayal of larger than life qualities and expectations if fact complicate the whole scenario? What do u say?

If you've read Atlas, you should appreciate my name and avatar. Welcome to A2K. If you're more interested in the philosophy behind the books than the actual plots (which are admittedly a little thin at times) you should read For the New Intellectual, which contains the philosophical dialogues between characters in all of her books, including Atlas, We the Living, Fountainhead, and others. It's great for getting the concepts without the sore arms from lugging around the 12 pound books, but everyone should read the original works too!

You might want to read Anthem, but I found that that read almost exactly like a number of other books that have the same anti-collectivist message, such as the Cure, the Mask, and the Giver. It still might be worthwhile, especially if you haven't read any of those others.

Rand's also got another book that I did not know existed until recently: Philosophy, Who Needs It? I haven't read that one yet. Get a hold of it, it seems to contain her objectivist theories in full. If you get there before me, tell me how it is, but I might beat you to it!

Moreover, check out some of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's works. Rand was his personal mentor, and he's got the Objectivism concept down perfectly. His literature is a good summation of the theories and more.

You should also pay a visit to the Ayn Rand institute (aynrand.org), where they've got lots of information of Objectivism and the Rand ideals.

Glad to see Rand followers still thrive.

Francisco- I see from your bio that you are a young person. Being a "bit" older than you, :wink: I had the immense pleasure of attending seminars with Ayn Rand, when she was collaborating with Nathaniel Branden.

I think that you might find this interesting:

http://www.nathanielbranden.net/ayn/ayn03.html

Thank you, Phoenix. I'm honored that you were even interested enough to check out my bio. Speaking of which, it's a little outdated (1 and a half years outdated, I'm 16 now) which makes me a little older but, as you can imagine, still far too young to have attended a Rand seminar. The link was fascinating, thanks a lot!

From what I've read of Rand, the contradictions seem appalling. I agree with her statements on confidence, although she doesn't seem to say anything that Emerson didn't say in Self-Reliance. As to her viewpoints on morality and helping others, I don't quite understand how she's really saying anything. If I really desire to help others, then she would say that it's moral for me to do that; it's coming from myself. At the same time, she says that we should base our actions on the good it consequentially accomplishes and the productivity of it. I was reading an article by Peikoff and these two statements really made me comfused when placed in the same argument:

"Just as every "is" implies an "ought," so every identification of an idea's truth or falsehood implies a moral evaluation of the idea and of its advocates . The evaluation, to repeat, comes from the answer to two related questions: what kind of volitional cause led people to this idea? and, to what kind of consequences will this idea lead in practice?"

He argues from a Kantian deontological standpoint based on "duty", while at the same time employing a consequentialist ideology. If certain actions are of the inherent Ideal of Man, then the consequences do not matter. This would mean that lieing, being inherently bad, should never be done. At the same time, he tells us to look at the consequences. If someone comes into my house with a weapon and asks where my brother is, do I tell him where he is? You do not arrive at the same answer. Kant says that it would be contrary to life if we never knew if someone was lieing, so we ought to always tell the truth. Consequentialism says that we can lie based upon our decision at the time, which is an in-absolute whim. So he tells us to be consequentialists, while at the same time saying that truth is objective. But wait, he just told us that moral truths aren't absolute.

"The murderer (assuming there are no extenuating circumstances) acted on ideas and value-judgments that defy reality; so he must have evaded and practiced whim-worship; so one condemns him morally and despises him."

So the preservation of life is our highest goal, but we're going to despire him and put him to death, the direct antithesis of life?

Ayn Rand's philosophy is nothing more than an illogical attempt to synthesize Consequentialism with Idealism, so she can justify the self-absorbed consequentialist ideas that she believes as being Idealistic. I am not quite sure how anyone can hear her statement about Kant and still believe that she is enlightened or brilliant:

"She held that Kant was morally much worse than any killer, including Lenin and Stalin (under whom her own family died), because it was Kant who unleashed not only Lenin and Stalin, but also Hitler and Mao and all the other disasters of our disastrous age. Without the philosophic climate Kant and his intellectual followers created, none of these disasters could have occurred; given that climate, none could have been averted."

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao obviously had absolutely no understanding or belief in Kantian ethics. They were acting for Kant's "moral ought"? What? Kant said, "Let me do right, through the heavens may fall." I seriously doubt that these named people were moral Idealists who were constantly looking within themselves for truth so that they might always do the right.

Furthermore, to completely contradict herself, she speaks of man as striving to be the embodiment of objective reason. We judge others by how reasonable they are and the product of their thought. We judge others by the extent of the Ideal of reason that we see embodied in them. Thus, anyone we identify as human we identify as such because they contain some aspect of that reasonability, otherwise they would not be human. Accordingly, all humans have an innate degree of reasonibility, although partitioned in varying quanities. If our Ideal is reason, then all humans are to be respected for their inherent human integrity. All flaws in humans are only a deprivation of the Ideal. Evil in of itself does not exist. She tries to use Reason as an Ideal while completely ignoring Augustine's demonstration that Idealism indicates that evil is only a deprivation of that Ideal.

Thalion, although I might disagree with some of the things you have said, I do agree that Rand's philosophy is flawed, and she's a bit big-headed calling Kant's philosophy 'evil.' I don't understand how Stalin and Mao really followed Kantian's philosophy because they really did not treat people as an end.