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Thu 19 Jan, 2006 08:35 am
Most people I know who swear by Ayn Rand also happen not to believe in a higher, supernatural creator. There's a fair share of atheistic sloganeering in Atlas Shrugged, and most of it is targeted specifically at the Judeo-Christian God, but Rand has stated elsewhere that Objectivism (as she construes, which is not the same way that others construe it) is not incompatible with a belief in God. She seems willing to allow for a higher being whose existence explains the creation of the universe, but it sounds like she doesn't want her god to do much more than that. (A Deist god, in other words.) She is opposed to the kind of god to whom people attribute their personal strengths and aspirations--she would much rather the credit for personal strength go to individuals themselves, those who, through their own sweat and blood, have earned it.
Shapeless wrote:Most people I know who swear by Ayn Rand also happen not to believe in a higher, supernatural creator. There's a fair share of atheistic sloganeering in Atlas Shrugged, and most of it is targeted specifically at the Judeo-Christian God, but Rand has stated elsewhere that Objectivism (as she construes, which is not the same way that others construe it) is not incompatible with a belief in God. She seems willing to allow for a higher being whose existence explains the creation of the universe, but it sounds like she doesn't want her god to do much more than that. (A Deist god, in other words.) She is opposed to the kind of god to whom people attribute their personal strengths and aspirations--she would much rather the credit for personal strength go to individuals themselves, those who, through their own sweat and blood, have earned it.
Rand seems to speak of mind as being radically different from body. Does this mean that the mind is not material and is thus some sort of spirit reality?
I think Rand would be happy to associate mind and body; that's not the problem for her. The problem is the mind/heart duality (if one perceives it as a duality). Rand deplores those who let the heart take precedence over the mind. As the passage you quoted from her shows, she believes in reason as our most valuable and powerful tool, and anything that gets in the way of it (like emotions) is, for her, subhuman. (In the world of Atlas Shrugged she has no hesitation killing off characters who fit that mold since, as she sees it, they aren't really human anyway.)
Quote:(In the world of Atlas Shrugged she has no hesitation killing off characters who fit that mold since, as she sees it, they aren't really human anyway.)
Does she believe in a teleological universe?
Quote:Does she believe in a teleological universe?
I doubt she did. I can't see her endorsing a view of history that wasn't in the hands of strong-willed individuals or a view of the universe that wasn't determined solely by the actions of strong-willed individuals.
She was an emigrée of the Soviet Union, and much of her philosophy is an explicit rejection of everything it stood for... and to the extent that it stood for the realization of Marx's social teleology, I imagine she would have rejected any notion of a world whose course was following an inevitable trajectory.
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