eris-suggesting Ayn may have had some sort of psychological disorder is not insulting the woman. I know you hold her in high esteem-but that doesn’t mean she was a goddess.
Merely recognizing someone’s faults does not invalidate them as a person.
For example-I hold the memories of the last Tsar and his family very dear-yet I recognize that they were not good rulers, and had their many faults.
And yes, I’m sure she did love her husband-but from what I can see her little affair with Branden really did hurt the guy.
Ah, Guin, suggesting someone has a mental disorder means that what she said was crazy, or at least strongly implies it to me even if it isn’t what you meant. I don’t think what she said was crazy. I disagree with some of it, but I don’t think she was crazy. You see what I’m saying?
It is no secret that many people on this board dislike Ayn Rand. And as my introduction to this principle on my early board days pointed out, there were plenty of reasons to disagree with her without calling her a nut.
And I’d prefer people did that instead, is all. Like I said, I’m a softie for her
Please, guin, there is no goddess but Goddess! Hail Eris and all of that.
Yeah, but I’m not saying ol’ Nick had brain lesions or anything-- do you see the difference?
Possibly, yes. I can’t see how it wouldn’t. From what I gather from Barbara’s “biography” it did. But they were both adults and worked through it how they felt they should; can’t say anythig better than that in this age of quick divorce (or is it just the quick marriages?)
It isn’t an argument against Ayn Rand’s philosophy to say that she was a sexually frustrated wife. “A is A,” “selfishness is virtuous,” or “there are no conflicts of interest between rational people” may be disprovable statements, but you can’t disprove them by showing that Rand suffered from psychological imperfections; that’s just a high-class ad hominem fallacy.
But we should be wary of saying a thing is logical or rational just because Ayn Rand said it or did it.
eris-mental illness does not in and of itself imply that one is “crazy” or “nuts”. I myself have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-which is a mental illness of sorts. That doesn’t make me crazy.
I didn’t say she had a brain lesions-I said it was possible she suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I’m not saying that what she SAID was flawed because of it-I’m saying that she was not perfect. Nothing wrong with that.
No, I think what she said was wrong for other reasons.
However, there is no doubt she was indeed a very selfish, unreasonable person. For someone who always stressed reason and ration-she didn’t seem to use them, or common sense.
Damn, I can’t remember which one, but she did specifically mention Mother Theresa in one of those essay collections. It was just a passing refference though. Somthing on the order of “This is the sort of person our culture idealizes???”
Its a little known fact that Mother Theresa was the most prominent proponent of Catholic Objectivism.
Jesus exists, and has set the Rules. If I live according to the Rules, I get Eternal Whoppee when I buy it. As any lifetime is finite, the rational choice is to live a life of selflessness and altruism, regardless of how one really feels about tending to a bunch of tuburcular lepers (N < N+infinity). It just depends on that ground assumption, the basement of any philosophy, that one assumption the can niether be proven nor disproven. In M. Theresa’s case, it is the presumption of the existence of God, in Randy Aynnies case, the exact opposite. Neither assumption can be wholly rational since no utterly rational proof is possible.
The rational reasoning mind is the single most marvelous tool we chimpanzees ever discovered. Objectivism seeks to take it out of the toolbox and put it above the altar. This is an absurdity, but it is not an irrational absurdity, it is immune to dialtectical examination, because it accepts its fundamental assumption as provable fact. Which, of course, it isn’t.
I speak as a Objectivism survivor, I personally succumbed to this balderdash, and can only thank my lucky stars I stumbled on to exotic alkoloids before it was too late. Of course, I fell face first into Hermann Hesse, but, live and learn, love and learn.
Yet, her undead spirit still haunts the halls of the Student Union, ready to pounce on the naive and sink the fangs of Enlightened Self-interest into their quivering flesh. Warn your children!
What I don’t get is why there are scenes of what we consider rape today in several of her novels. Is she saying that sex is done best when it is done by total surprise? Or what?
Is that she is always telling everyone else what to think and why they are full of poop for not agreeing with her, to put it gently. Making loud pronouncements about the quality of others’ thoughts with great conviction neither makes you correct, nor good company. It is in fact boorish, even if you do have the better of the argument.
Yeah, I hate people who present an opinion and then put forth their reasons for thinking so. It can be irritating.
Oh, did you mean she didn’t listen to other’s arguments? I would tend to agree that later in her life she did practice a certain style of evasion. She felt she had looked at all the facts and formed her opinion. She isn’t the first to do so, heh I mentioned in that pit thread that many peopl exhibit Randian traits but don’t realize it. I still think this is very, very true.
I’m pretty sure someone who sold character references to the rich, denied painkillers to the poor and got it on with the powerful and nasty could well have been Ayn Rand’s number one girlfriend.
Having Christopher Hitchens heap scorn upon a person is grounds to sit up and take notice: perhaps that person isn’t so bad anyhow. (But even Hitchens has to be right sometimes).
Rand didn’t make arguments, she wrote fiction. These were massive straw man arguments on a scale that no philospher would take seriously. Plato did them same thing, but usually at the end all the wise old men would come to the conclusion that they didn’t really know everything, or in fact much of anything.
Why don’t we examine a small Randian argument and see how she created a falsehood, strawman, or fallacy.
This is in regards, generally, to her beef with economists treating individuals as a commodity. It is taken from Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal in an essay titled “What is Capitalism?”
I believe that the building up of a dependence by dispensing charity to the poor would have been objectionable to Rand.
I also believe that Rand provides profound insights regarding the importance of self-actualization and independent thought. Much of what she wrote is not relevant to my beliefs or experience, but she still offers many valuable insights regarding how I can pursue a more fulfilling life.
Well, here I am defending Ayn Rand, something I haven’t done for a long time…
Look, the whole point to Ayn Rand’s attack on altruism really has nothing to do with *personal choices. What she hated was that altruism was elevated to the ultimate level of human achievement, while our other great qualities (reason, invention, industry, hard work) are either ignored or even decried. And yet, without them we would have nothing to be charitable WITH.
And there is something screwed up with a culture who can take a man who has a vision, builds a company, works like crazy to make it successful, and creates a new product that makes thousands or millions of lives better, and treat him like some evil bloodsucking scum. And at the same time, taking another person who has never created a dollar of real wealth but instead has spent his life forcing some people to give their wealth to others, and treating him like a great hero.
So I don’t think it’s so much an attack on the people who are altruistic (after all, several characters in Rand’s book, such as Hank Reardon, had this ‘flaw’, even though they were the heroic protagonists). Instead, I see her philosophy as an attack on Altruism as an expression of the best goal man can rise to. And she’s right. Altruism is at best a secondary quality that can only even exist after we have already created the things we need to live. Let’s save our greatest applause for the people creating them.
