Sorry if this has been done before. Just curious as to this board's opinion of Rand- do you take her seriously?

Personally...

I've read all of her fiction works and some of her nonfiction articles. Of her fiction the only thing I really enjoyed was Atlas Shrugged. I agree with a good 90% of her ideas and greatly admire her devotion to individualism.

Now with that being said... I dislike her arrogance- she insulted Libertarians and claimed that they "stole her ideas" even though they were simply carrying on the centuries old classical liberal tradition. I dislike her opposition to altruism. I dislike her views on sex/relationships.


Your turn...

The woman's grasp of philosophy was appalling. She literally side steps most of the most important debates that occured in the 20th century. The incommensurablity of value, Gettier cases, the endowment-insensitivity issue of the lockean provisio.. etc etc and plows ahead with Aristotelian nonsense.

People moan about her being side lined by accademic philosophy, but at the risk of invoking an argument from authority, its with good f***ing reason.

That so many libertarians today identify as objectivitists is one of the great glass ceilings of the movement.

Essentially her great contribution to individualism has to generate the static that drowns out the work of Robert Nozick.

And her anti-kantian work, is enough to give any one who is even vaguely familiar with Kant a migraine (and not in the sense it actually presents a challenge).

She literally came out of nowhere with no background in philosophy and tried to solve most of philosophies biggest long standing issues unaware of the new ones that were forming.

As a result her work is like asking a 10 year old to consult on a difficult case of oncology.

And again it sickens me how much like an appeal to authority that all sounds.

Contempt towards her work is well warranted.

Revenant wrote:

Contempt towards her work is well warranted.

As it is towards her storytelling.

From my personal experience The Fountainhead has turned many incredibly mediocre architecture students into the next Le Corbusier. For this she earns my contempt.

Ayn Rand is philosophy for people who don't have time to do philosophy.

not a philosopher. her continuing popular presence is a mystery

I'm now quite embarrassed of the time when I was a Randroid. I was totally into objectivism, thought it was the s**t. Turns out it was just s**t. Her philosophy seemed good because I didn't know what philosophy was actually about, a quick reading of various other authors showed me that what Rand was doing wasn't philosophy, but rather trying and failing to provide justification for her beliefs. It truly does suck from a philosophical standpoint.

Atlas Shrugged is the Everyone Poops of modern philosophy.

Is it that time of the month again?

+1 to pretty much every response above. What more could I say?

There are elements of her work that suggest familarity with some of the great figures of Western philosophy, principally Aristotle and Nietzsche. So it might just be possible to read Rand in that content and get something from it - perhaps Nietzsche's politics might have been similar to Rand's had he lived another half century, who knows?

As for saying she was not a philosopher, that is obviously false; she was just a poor philosopher, who used the form of the novel to expound her ideas. This incidently explains why her novels are so awful, since the characters that populate them are anthromorphizsed political ideals rather than actual human beings

*spoilers*

The climax of Atlas Shrugged was pretty funny... a 60 page speech by John Galt that is basically Rand summarizing objectivism. About halfway through that I'm pretty sure she forgot she was writing a novel.

I could care less about Ayn Rand, but she inspired Neal Peart to write a few great songs so i do appreciate that. lol

ClassicalLiberal wrote:

*spoilers* The climax of Atlas Shrugged was pretty funny... a 60 page speech by John Galt that is basically Rand summarizing objectivism. About halfway through that I'm pretty sure she forgot she was writing a novel.

Yeah, pretty much exactly what I was talking about

I applaud her focus on Individualism but I disagree with her in that it must be thought of in objective terms.

I like and dislike her...Quite mundane and her attitude in her books comes across as angry woman who never got her way. But overall decent...

P.S. I do love to argue the idea objectivity though...

LetsGetReal wrote:

P.S. I do love to argue the idea objectivity though...

I really wouldn't bother her notion of meta-physics in objectivity is complete bloody nonsense. Its all a question begging manipulation of Aristotelian and modern (but only when it suits her) logic to try and show that distinct individuals exist. Its also completely insensitive to the new problem of superposition.

And her views on conciousness are practically back in the dark ages or a messy plagiarism of Descartes with a Materialist emphasis.

And her brute rejection of the sceptical hypothesis, well that's the equivalent of committing epistemological suicide. She seems to have thought it was actually a standpoint as opposed to a basic test of epistemological validity you have to attempt to solve before you can claim anything.


Its annoying really becuase the objectivity of concepts and the external world really is one of the most interesting topics in philosophy. But for gods sake do not consider 'objectivisim' part of that debate. Its come to the party very late and with little idea of what is going on.

saying rand is not a philosopher is not a serious categorical remark anyway. just saying that there is 0 worthwhile content in her stuff

lol @ rape scene