Acting on ones own best interest firt could very well mean collaborating, cooperating and negotiating. A moral person does this. She is very vague about what constitutes self interests. I would think the long term health of my nation friends and family would be in my best self interest.
I do not object to her using a nom-de-guerre, and there is nothing wrong with the name (I read somewhere that it is supposed to be the Hebrew letter ע), I just prefer not to respect her (or at least not respect the vapid nonsense she spouted) by pronouncing the name correctly. It might be different if there was a need for clarity (that someone might confuse about whom I was speaking) but that situation has not arisen.
It’s clear that Roderick is a pretty big fan of hers and probably tries to emulate her philosophy, so it’s kind of insulting to say it’s vapid nonsense. Let’s not drive away every conservative poster.
Well, c’est la plume.
Well, maybe “vapid nonsense” is a bit extreme. I concede that it is probably well-constructed and relatively articulate, and is probably not entirely valueless. In practice, though, it would be akin to employing agricultural practices using theory based on spherical livestock in zero-g.
Part of her philosophy, the metaphysical, and the epistemological (which I have internalized as respect for facts and attempting to avoid sloppy thinking). I do not respect her political writings, I am somewhat on the fence about her writings on ethics, and her attempts to discuss esthetics were the rankest nonsense. Also, as it happens, I am not at all conservative; I am careful.
Actual reading of my posts here show attempts at clarification about ways in which people misunderstand what she wrote, not championing the philosophy itself. I don’t think it’s my fault if people get the wrong impression, as your post expresses.
This seems like a completely different reason for mispronouncing her (pen) name than the one you first stated:
It’s a small point, but I believe you have said this before in threads about her. It seems kind of a silly place to take a stand. No doubt it’s a silly thing to let bother me.
I prefer nom-de-nym, or pseudoplume.
Given the fact that I have occasion to utter her name maybe three or four times in a given decade, it is passing trivial. It is very difficult to mispronounce her name in a posting.
This is a good point. The OP mentions the philosophy itself, and how well it would work in practice, which are not the same thing.
I acknowledge that the part you quoted is merely my opinion about her as a person.
But I stand by the previous part, which dealt with how it would work in the real world.
First laissez-faire capitalism means that individual rights don’t exist, all power is in the hands of the wealthy and they can do whatever they like to people. Of course, Objectivism/Libertarianism always holds that corporations and the wealthy can do no wrong, and all evil comes from the government. If you are being ruthlessly exploited by someone that doesn’t mean you deserve government protection; it just means you are a subhuman who deserves to suffer. Or die.
And the point of that so-called “limited government” is to reduce government into something whose only function is to serve as an iron boot to crush the general population into submission to the wealthy. And directly contradicts the so-called “sovereignty of the individual”; there are no rights under such a limited government, only power and force.
Despite the noble-sounding language, the whole point is to make sure that people have no legal protections, and that the government has the sole purpose of coming down like a sledgehammer on anyone who tries anything forceful out of desperation because they have no other options.
“That’s libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars
Because she was a grifter, and Libertarianism is a competing grift that had greater popular appeal.
She fancied herself an intellectual, and despite having no suitable academic background, wanted to be respected as the leader of a modern intellectual movement. Capital-L Libertarianism is a political party, which, for all its faults, engages with the realities of political change and the desires of people who are attracted to it. It attracts and motivates real people, without Rand’s philosophical pretenses.
All Rand really wanted was to be worshipped as a philosopher. That was her grift. Libertarians took the heart of it (reverence of selfishness and distrust of the state) and took it in a pragmatic direction that Rand couldn’t influence, control, or claim credit for, so she resented it.
I read her works as a teenager - possibly her target audience. The flaws were noticeable but I agree that this was the fundamental flaw.
Three centuries before Ayn Rand, Thomas Hobbes founded a philosophy every bit as cynical as hers. Unlike Rand, Hobbes had John Locke and later Rousseau to counter the self-serving pessimism.
Rand and her fanboys have no shortage of detractors, plenty of derision, but no emergent new take on human existence besides pop-philosophy twadle stupider than hers.
Of course this contention is directly countered by—
Mainly that in a true situation of no government, oppressive private parties would lack the protection of a state. So painting libertarianism and an-cap as merely cynical neo-feudalism is not taking all factors into account. Now it is legitimate to ask how individuals could effectively check the rise of rich and powerful private parties from becoming proto-warlords, but that’s a separate issue.
Though if you remove the political and economic parts there is nothing original or innovative about Rand’s writings. There have been countless philosophies going back to the ancient Greeks based on objective reality that are much interesting.
Why not go for Epicureanism? Which is based on objective reality (actually a more nuanced, IMO more useful, version than Rand’s where the sensed reality is absolute, but acknowledges it can be interpreted incorrectly) but encourages its followers to enjoy and appreciate life, cultivate friendships, and avoid politics?
Because I’m not here to defend or support her philosophy nor to compare it to others. Why not pay attention to the focus of the thread?
Precisely.
Rand misunderstands the nature of self interest, as do most people. Explain that you shouldn’t kill people because it will increase the chance that you are killed; that’s easily accepted. But do good deeds because it increases the chances that good deeds will be done to you, and people think that’s just wishful thinking and a waste of effort.
Even competition is itself a form of cooperation. Altruism is an inherently selfish act. Rand fails to understand the reasons that people coalesce into societies with a common set of mores and beliefs, and chose an intellectually lazy, but emotionally fulfilling, philosophy to peddle.
You want to live an entirely selfish life, Ayn Rand style? Go live in the woods away from society. Otherwise, you’re just being hypocritical and short sighted.
I still fail to see any aspect of Rand’s philosophy that is being misunderstood. All the criticisms of it on this thread, and the rebuttals of those criticisms are the same ones that have been argued about for as long as it’s existed. Particularly during the Obama era when it seemed every right winger in America was claiming to be Randian.
You may disagree with those criticisms but you have not pointed out any way where they show misunderstanding of her philosophy
It’s true the objective reality part does not normally feature in those arguments. But there are plenty of philosophical debates about that going back a lot further than the Obama administration (Aristotle vs Epicurus , Christian apologists vs Epicurus, etc) that don’t need to involve laissez faire economics.
I’ve seen Rand’s philosophy of aesthetics invoked in support of anti-modernist arguments for classical, traditionalist architecture. In The Fountainhead, she makes exactly the opposite argument, with classicist architect Peter Keating as the foil for her modernist hero Howard Roark. (Granted, her tastes ran to a very specific brand of “individualist” modernism in the Frank Lloyd Wright vein, and she had little use for the Bauhaus movement and its kin.)
This is, of course, entirely a bag of posturing fluff.
The idea that anyone feels the universe of inanimate objects owes them “fairness” is an absurdity, which is why Randians choose to pummel this strawman instead of grapple with the realities of what it means to live in society with other humans.
We owe each other fairness and justice. The world of inanimate objects doesn’t get a say in the matter. Why would it? It has no beliefs or thoughts or opinions. It isn’t “cold or uncaring”. It’s simply a set of objects to be manipulated by human choices.
If we want to say that government policies ought to be judged by the objective evidence of their outcomes, that’s fine as far as it goes, but physical reality has nothing at all to say about our mutual social obligations except that resources are finite. It’s simply a constraint, and to presume it has any sort of bias regarding human society or governance is a category error.