pariah

After finishing the fountainhead I am halfway through atlas shrugged, and had a question.

It seems that Rand beleives that humans are born with certain features and that they are unchangable. We observe this in atlas shrugged as dagney taggart and james taggart have similiar upbringings, yet dagney becomes the heroin elitist capitalist, and james becomes the eeevil socialist. In the fountainhead, howard roark and wynand have similiar early lives, and whereas roark becomes the hero egotist/elitist, wyndand succumbs to the masses and becomes a collectivist (even though he had the potential to become an egotist).

And in the fountainhead, roark tells keating that he failed because he was born into mediocrity. howard roark would never lie to someone...its just the way he is.

now of course, i disagree with the economics (75%) of objectivism...and most of the other stuff...

or am I wrong? does rand think that events can influence human lives? because the way she writes it seems that we do not have free will, we are masters to our nature. but if this is the case, why is it that she condemns so many?

contracycle

Because her work is essentially an apology for Elitism.

Cain

Ayn Rand is a novelist (and not a very good one) with philosophic pretensions. I read _Fountainhead_ back in high school and would have never guessed that she in fact holds a tabula rasa view of humans.

Her views on "human nature" are confusing, nothing more than armchair psychology (Rand shows no signs of intellectual curiosity in the stance of the scientific community or other philosophers -- and the feeling was mutual).

If I remember correctly, and I might be reaching here, she placed this bizarre importance on an idiosyncratic type of "self-esteem," no doubt informed by one-time "intellectual heir" and pop-psychologist Nathaniel Branden.

Specifically though, philosophically, she finds guidance from the only philosopher in the Western Tradition that she's willing to give credit to. I'm speaking of Aristotle, of course. She inherits his teleology and espouses living "man qua man", or however the esoteric Latin is supposed to read. That essentially means nothing more than this: man ought to (and does) behave in accordance with man's nature. Man's nature is a predisposition toward rationality.

For a takedown of this argument, and perhaps further explanation, see David D. Friedman's page on deriving an "ought" from an "Is". Friedman, the son of Chicago economist Milton, is an emphatic, and highly intelligent, apologist for capitalism.

He will kindly reply to any questions on the subject, I'm sure.

You may also want to check newsgroups (searchable on google). Humanities.philosophy.objectivism is the right one, if I remember correctly.

exnihilo

Pehaps a good place to start in trying to unravel Rand's baloney is Jeff Walker's book the Ayn Rand Cult, which is quite good in that it shows the motivations behind much of Ayn Rand's parasitic pseudo-philosophy.
Essentially Rand's philosophy is little more than a sustained attack on all forms of social arrangement other than Laissez Faire capitalism in the form of radical individualism, although she integrated some aspects of anarchism and was an admitted atheist. Her philosophy appeals mainly to well-to-do college students because it is little more than a shameless apologetic for egoism and the idea that people are poor because they are inferior and rich because they are superior, which is why many call her ideas a very crude form of fascist thought.
In the discipline of philosophy proper her work is not even considered worthy of serious consideration and is ignored, despite what delusions run rampant in her devoted followers minds.
--exnihilo

matthias j.

Could you give the precise titel of the paper/article/book? It sounds rather interesting and it's relevant to a paper I'm writing (on Hume). I'd really appreciate it.

Cain

First, it's not a scholarly paper. His argument was originally submitted to the USENET for discussion and debate. Here's the link:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libert...t_From_Is.html

For more critiques of Ayn Rand see Mike Huben's excellent "Critiques of Libertarianism" website: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/critobj.html

What, specifically, are you doing on Hume as it relates to Rand?

To the first poster:

Just to get an understanding of Rand's disdain for mainstream philosophy and respected figures in the Western tradition, I think she said that the Soviet Union was a "tribute to Hume." Jeff Walker's book, mentioned previously, is compulsively readable. Michael Shermer had an article in an old issue of _Skeptic_ (reproduced in _Why do people believe weird things_) called "The Unlikeliest Cult in History".

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I've called myself an Objectivist since 1988. About a month ago, I decided that (given the many areas in which I now disagree with Objectivism) I probably ought not to call myself an Objectivist any longer.

Still, I think there many of Ayn Rand's ideas are valid. I agree that there are Objectivists who appear to 'worship' Rand, and those who can be nauseatingly dogmatic about Objectivism.

Such attitudes are wrong.

But I think it's just as wrong to dismiss all of Rand's ideas outright, as well.

There are better arguments against Objectivism's flaws than calling it 'baloney' and 'pretentious'.

K

JGL53

I would also recommend "Is Objectivism a Religion" by Dr. Albert Ellis and "Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies" by George H. Smith.

Kantian

Keith Russell


Well, well, color me impressed. :notworthy

What do you call yourself now, if you are going to switch allegiance to a new "..ism" and start this process of detoxing allover again?

~Transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

Primal

Well Kantian again you preemptively strike down any accusations of modesty and validity that could be brought against your person. Nice job. Tactical genius. :notworthy

Nice too see the local "transcedentalist" descending to our level though.

As for Keith, good work. I had done the same thing myself a long time ago, and still believe many of Rand's arguments and points are quite valid. More then most in any event, though I disagree a lot with her method. (Though I'd dare say it was less pompous then some poster's on this board).

As for nature nurture, current scientific evidence suggest our behavior is about 50 percent determined by our genes and 50 percent enviroment. (Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond, Frank Sulloway, Richard Dawkins).