The Philosophy of Objectivism

[pieter]

Objectivism, philosophical system identified with the thought of the 20th-century Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand and popularized mainly through her commercially successful novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Its principal doctrines consist of versions of metaphysical realism (the existence and nature of things in the world are independent of their being perceived or thought about), epistemological (or direct) realism (things in the world are perceived immediately or directly rather than inferred on the basis of perceptual evidence), ethical egoism (an action is morally right if it promotes the self-interest of the agent), individualism (a political system is just if it properly respects the rights and interests of the individual), and laissez-faire capitalism. Objectivism also addresses issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of love and sex. Perhaps the best-known and most-controversial aspect of objectivism is its account of the moral virtues, in particular its unconventional claim that selfishness is a virtue and altruism a vice.

Rand held that all people, whether they realize it or not, are guided in their thoughts and actions by philosophical principles and assumptions. Philosophy thus has great practical import, and indeed possessing the correct philosophy is essential to leading a successful and happy life. The branches of philosophy that most directly affect everyday life are ethics and political philosophy.

www.britannica.com/topic/objectivism-philosophy

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

[pieter]

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Causes of Economic Depressions from Ayn Rand's 'Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal'

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'Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal', is a collection of essays, mostly by Ayn Rand, with additional essays by her associates Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan and Robert Hessen. The book focuses on the moral nature of laissez-faire capitalism and private property. The book has a very specific definition of capitalism, a system it regards as broader than simply property rights or free enterprise. It was originally published in 1966.


Ayn Rand born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 1905 -- March 6, 1982), was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand migrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935--1936. She first achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. Over a decade later, she published her magnum opus, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged, in 1957.

Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and nonfiction work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state, and promoted ethical egoism while rejecting the ethic of altruism. She considered reason to be the only means of acquiring knowledge and its advocacy the most important aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

[karl]

Pieter

Interesting presentation of both the works of Ayan Rand and of her self. I would have enjoyed to meet her if it had been possible, for we would have had much to discuss.

That what I have noticed of Ms. Rand, is she is a complex of her Russian back ground, with a contradiction between her Russian process of thinking to the American manner of Capitalism. For this is most evident in the manner of her selling her thoughts and ideas in writing books to satisfy both her ego and her pocket book as a stated philosopher.

Some of her philosophic terms I am not sure to agree with, for there lays some contradictions I would bring to her attention.

One being: Morality based by means of logic reason as the only means of survival.

The above is not entirely true. For morality is actually the result of the knowledge of right and wrong. Or more correctly:a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.

Second: Ms. Rand or should we say more correctly {Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum} States: Reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge. She has stated this as a fact, but not as a variable that is one of mans {man as species, not gender} attributes for survival.. For this would leave out some of the basic attributes of discovery instituted by man. For his manner of discovery ranges any where around concepts of: Need/professional curiosity/ a need to know for understanding and so on. For one instance of a need to know, was the biblical story of the failed building of the tower of babel as an example.

Other wise, as a person I was to enjoy her philosophical logic.

Thank you for presenting, a wonderful exploration of anothers thinking.

Karl

[pieter]

Dear Karl,

I do understand your reasoning as a West-European and especially a North-West-European in the region of North-Germany and Denmark. When I think of your than I think of the Lutheran Scandinavian Danish thinking and the Democratic and structured German mindset. Like me you are rooted in the tradition of European philosphers, political thinkers, enlightenment (French and German), the logic thinking of Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, European classical liberalism of the 19th century, but also reasonable ideas of moderate conservative, Social-democratic (democratic socialist, Labour) thinkers, Jürgen Habermas (Frankfurter Schule), but also British "Empiricists" like John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. Ofcourse European rationalists René Descartes (1596 – 1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) and Christian Wolff (1679 – 1754) also belong to that North-West-European herigage of yours. And Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Arthur Schopenhauer, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and the Danish philospher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard also belong to your heritage. Ofcourse I can't exactly know what your private ideas, education and training in life and study excactly were.


Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

I will moderate Ayn Rand's background slightly in the fact that I differ slightly with you. You create an antithesis between Rand's Russian Eastern-slavic background and her new American Anglo-Saxon and Pan-European homeland the United States of America. I think that her Ashkenazi Jewish Eastern-European backround plays a larger role in that than one might think. In my 'philosemitic reasoning' she comes from a great jewish Rabbinical tradition, philosophical tradition, literary and poetic tradition, theological deeper layers, a people of debate, discussion and a people that therefor is trained in conversation, rhetoric, disputes. Due to the Torah, Talmud, Midrash (biblical exegesis by ancient Judaic authorities), Oral Torah (those laws, statutes, and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the "Written Torah"), Aggadah (non-legalistic exegetical texts in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, , particularly as recorded in the Talmud and Midrash), Rabbinic literature of her ancesters she has specific genes and dna which incorporates that intellectual, cultural and empirical tradition, inner knowledge, brightness/smartness and clarity in thinking. Like Poles have inherited their Roman-Catholic theology, Catechism, ethics, morality, thinking, way of reasoning with some deeper Western slav elements and maybe some deeper pagan slavic elements, and the Russians their Bysanthian (old Greek) Orthodox christian reasoning, merged with some Czarist monarchistic Feudal elements and Sovjet thinking (atheism, secularism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism and Post-Stalinist Khrushchev and Brezhnev Sovjetism) and the fact in my opinion that within Jewish family debate and discussion is an essential thing. But before I fell into statements of generalisations, not all jews are intellectuals, academics, philosophers and thinkers, like not all Poles and Russians are Roman-Catholic or Orthodox christians or atheist Marixist Leninists.

It could be that Ayan Rand had some negative experiences in Czarist Russia and communist Sovjet Russia during and after the Frebruari and October revolutions of 1917 and the Russian Civil War (November 7, 1917 – October 25, 1922/June 16, 1923). The latter during which a lot of pogroms took place. The anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ayan Rand (Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) liberated herself in the USA of her Russian background, limitations and the fact that if she had stayed she wouldn't have had an easy life in the SovjetUnion as a Jewish woman and Jewish intellectual.

Her idealistic thinking about the ideal human beings, sound to me sligthly 'anti-semitic' (in the sense of self hating, self rejection), Nietschian, Wagnerian, and some sort of 'Nordic thinking', in the sense that her ideal of the human shape of men and women is: "Her ideal physical types were tall, blond, muscular men and delicate, graceful blonde women—she herself was small, dark, and never at ease with her body." This was not uncommon in her time, and before and after her. I have also a jewish girlfriend who is fond of gentile (non-jewish) tall, blond, Nordic, blue eyed men. Opposities attract. I am to dark, slavic, non-blond and non-Germanic for her.


An ideal Ayn Rand blond couple


Another ideal blond couple, according to Ayn Rand's esthetic criteria.


Ayn Rand was small, dark, and never at ease with her body


Ayn Rand

Back to the anti-thesis of Ayan Rand's Russian heritage, reasoning and Russian process of thinking and the American Anglo-Saxon manner of Capitalism (with English, Scottish, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Irish, Italian, French, Austrian, Swiss roots, the pan-European mix). In her radical way of thinking she distiantiated herself of Jewish orthodoxy as a libertarian atheist, who had certain darwinist ideas. She also takes distance of Orthodox christian Russia and Sovjet Russia.

In her radical nearly anarcho-capitalist ideology, small state, minimum state intervention, radical laissez faire marktet economy and the great good of pure Capitalism, she rejects social christian thought and the altruistic elements in the jewish faith, and the fact that religious communities often are based on solidarity, empathy, togetherness, altruism, the ethics of social attitude, charity in staid of rational selfishness.

Ayan Rand was and is popular amongst present day American libertarians, Capitalists, free market thinkers and avdocates, anti-etatists, and her book Atlas Shrugged has attracted an energetic and committed fan base. Each year, the Ayn Rand Institute donates 400,000 copies of works by Rand, including Atlas Shrugged, to high school students. According to a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was mentioned among the books that made the most difference in the lives of 17 out of 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members surveyed, which placed the novel between the Bible and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled.
In the late 2000s, conservative commentators suggested the book as a warning against a socialistic reaction to the finance crisis. Conservative commentators Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh offered praise of the book on their respective radio and television programs. In 2006, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence Thomas cited Atlas Shrugged as among his favorite novels.


Ayn Rand

Encyclopedia Britannica describes Atlas Shrugged as follows: "Atlas Shrugged, novel by Ayn Rand, published in 1957. The book’s female protagonist, Dagny Taggart, struggles to manage a transcontinental railroad amid the pressures and restrictions of massive bureaucracy. Her antagonistic reaction to a libertarian group seeking an end to government regulation is later echoed and modified in her encounter with a utopian community, Galt’s Gulch, whose members regard self-determination rather than collective responsibility as the highest ideal. The novel contains the most complete presentation of Rand’s personal philosophy, known as objectivism, in fictional form.

For me Karl, Ayan Rand is an extreme rational thinker, a radical anarcho-capitalist ideologue, someone who came from one completely different world (the SovjetUnion, being born in Czarist Russia) and entered another comnpletely different world. Linguistically, culturally, ethnically, religiously, in mentality, in nature, in being an entity, state and society, Russia is something completely different than the America (the USA). In my opinion in the USA Protestant, Germanic thought was and is dominant, because the people who descended from the English, Scottish, German, Dutch and Scandinavian peoples dominated in the USA for centuries. The Slavic and latin people came later to America, like also the African slaves, and people from other continents like Asians and new African immigrants.

For me Ayan Rand is to extreme, ethically I have problems with her thinking, because she rejects empathy and solidarity as weak, because it is altruistic and not rational selfish. In the free world of thought her ideas are interesting and I hope to find time one day to read her Atlas Shrugged.

Cheers,
Pieter

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia and Jewish Women Archive encyclopedia.

[pieter]

AYNRAND
1905 – 1982
by Catherine Daligga

The life and work of Ayn Rand, the novelist and philosopher who promoted an ethics called “Objectivism,” provide ample evidence for those who believe that human beings are inherently self-contradictory and illogical. In her novels, Rand glorified the self-made man who aggressively demonstrated his superiority over the masses through his business acumen. As a writer, Rand had little to do with entrepreneurial activities. While she did eventually make money from her writing, she always lived frugally. Her husband of fifty years was a quiet and reserved man, never financially successful, who was happiest in his garden or painting at his easel. Her ideal physical types were tall, blond, muscular men and delicate, graceful blonde women—she herself was small, dark, and never at ease with her body. She believed passionately in the importance of the individual, yet her books developed a cultlike following among the millions of people who read them. The chief irony is that Rand became best known for her insistence on the primacy of human reason.

The eldest of three sisters, Ayn Rand was born Alyssa Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, to Fronz and Anna Rosenbaum. Her father, a pharmacist, had his own shop, a rare position for Jews in Russia. A precocious child, Alyssa declared herself an atheist in her early teens, and while she never denied her Jewish heritage, she also never softened her opposition to religion or any other form of “mysticism.” The privations she and her family endured as a result of the Russian Revolution, including the Bolsheviks taking possession of her father’s business, affected her deeply. Somehow she managed to survive the purges of bourgeois students long enough to obtain a degree in history from the University of Leningrad in 1924. At the university, she took a few classes in American political history and found the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence fascinating.

Despite the progressively isolationist policy of the Soviets, some Western exports still found their way to Russia in the 1920s. For Alyssa, the most important were American movies. Conditions in the United States—at least as depicted on the screen—impressed her as strongly as conditions at home repelled her, so when distant cousins provided the miraculous opportunity to travel to the United States, she did not hesitate. She turned twenty-one in Berlin, on her way to America. At immigration, she announced that her first name was Ayn (pronounced to rhyme with “pine”). Shortly after, she chose the second part of her beloved typewriter’s brand name for her surname.

Deciding that Chicago, her cousins’ home, was too provincial, she moved to California to write for the movies. A fluke encounter with Cecil B. DeMille on her second day in Hollywood led to a job as an extra in the film The King of Kings. This gave her a glimpse of a bit player named Frank O’Connor, the man she would marry in April 1929. But her ambition to write for the movies was not so easily fulfilled, and she scraped by for years on the salary she earned working in RKO’s wardrobe department, writing in her spare time. Her first break came with a stage play Night of January 16th, which was produced on Broadway during the 1935 season. Royalties from the modestly successful play gave her the freedom to concentrate on her writing.

Rand’s first novel, We the Living, appeared in 1936. A melodrama dismissed by most reviewers as overbearingly anti-Soviet, it quickly went out of print. Since her husband rarely worked, Rand had little but her own passion to support her during her next major project, the novel that was to become The Fountainhead. While writing The Fountainhead, Rand wrote a futuristic novella entitled Anthem about the struggle of two lovers in a collective society to reclaim the concept of a self. At the time, only a British publisher would touch it. A stage version of We the Living called The Unconquered also failed. Eventually Rand found studio work again, reading screenplays for Paramount. This job provided the contact with an editor at Bobbs-Merrill who, on the strength of the first several chapters, promised to publish The Fountainhead.



After a slow start and generally unsympathetic reviews upon its publication in May 1943, the book became a best-seller, and by the end of 1949, it had sold half a million copies. The protagonist, an architect named Howard Roark, embodied Rand’s ideal man, an individualist who would assert his own convictions in the face of complete social opposition. In the novel’s climactic scene, Roark blows up a public housing project (before occupation) rather than see his vision and plans grossly distorted. Yet Roark is not the thorough outcast he might seem. At his subsequent trial, he speaks so eloquently about his beliefs that the jury refuses to convict him. Rand wrote the screenplay for the movie version, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, which was released in 1949. The popular success of The Fountainhead established Rand’s career as a novelist and put her on secure financial ground for the first time in her life.

Her increasing fame brought her hundreds of fan letters and enlarged her social circle. By the early 1950s, she had cultivated a devoted coterie consisting mostly of college students and recent graduates eager to emulate her fictional heroes. Two of them, Nathan Blumenthal and his eventual wife, Barbara Weidman, apparently became so important to Rand that, in 1951, she and her husband followed them to New York City, where Rand and her husband spent the rest of their lives. In New York, Rand continued to work on what would be her last novel, Atlas Shrugged. In regular Saturday night salons, she would share portions of her work-in-progress with her group.

Rand and her husband served as witnesses at Blumenthal and Weidman’s wedding in 1953, testifying to their close relationship. In her 1986 biography of Rand, Weidman claims the dubious distinction of naming the sexual attraction between her own husband and Rand in late 1954. Once that element was acknowledged, both Rand and Blumenthal (now named Nathaniel Branden) evidently felt justified by Rand’s own tenets in embarking on an intense secret affair. According to Rand, sexual desire should go hand-in-hand with intellectual respect and shared ideals. Given their mutual interests and commitments, it was inevitable for a physical passion to develop between them—and unthinkable for it not to be fulfilled, despite their marriages and the twenty-five-year age difference. When Atlas Shrugged appeared—through Random House, after a search for a publishing house that would not cut her work— a joint dedication to her husband and to Branden.



Like The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged eventually became a best-seller. Like the earlier novel, it attracted negative reviews. Most critics found the premise of the novel—that the most gifted, creative, and successful members of a society are exploited by the untalented and unappreciative masses—only slightly less implausible than the major action of the novel, a strike of geniuses to force an end to their abuse.

Devastated by the poor critical response, exhausted from twelve years of effort, and discouraged by the thought that she might have written all she had to say, Rand withdrew. It was Branden who succeeded in restoring her confidence and supporting her second crest of fame by inaugurating regular lectures on Rand’s philosophy. Under the auspices of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, he and several other faithful students offered talks on “The Basic Principles of Objectivism,” covering subjects such as “The Nature of Emotions,” “Social Metaphysics,” “The Ethics of Altruism,” and “What is Reason?” The lectures soon drew hundreds of people in New York and expanded to several sites around the country. Sales of Atlas Shrugged continued to build—its opening sentence, “Who is John Galt?” became a popular password for those in the know—and Rand flourished in the attention. Although she herself delivered few lectures at Nathaniel Branden Institute, she did tour the country to speak on numerous college campuses. With Branden, she began a monthly called The Objectivist Newsletter, later expanded and renamed simply The Objectivist. Both versions contained essays by Rand, Branden, and other associates (including perhaps her most celebrated admirer, the economist Alan Greenspan, now chair of the Federal Reserve Board) that analyzed current political events and applied the principles of Objectivism to everyday life. The last books Rand published were collections of essays taken from the Objectivist periodicals.

The cohesion of the Objectivist movement shattered irrevocably, however, in 1968 when Branden finally admitted to Rand that he would not resume their long-suspended affair. In response, Rand denounced Branden, accusing him of betraying essential Objectivist principles, and forced him to sever all connections with Objectivist activities, including the institute bearing his name. Most devotees accepted her judgment and condemned Branden, even without particulars, but the upheaval occurred at a particularly inopportune moment. Rand had begun to lose her primary audience, usually young, idealistic adults, to other causes, and her customary argumentativeness in public appearances became less refreshing, more defensive and alienating. Criticism of Rand’s sexual politics began to figure as prominently as attacks on her doctrine of “rational selfishness.” The first sexual encounter in The Fountainhead between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon became emblematic of a peculiarly American romanticization of rape, at least according to feminists like Susan Brownmiller. Circulation losses pushed her to reduce The Objectivist to a smaller form again, called The Ayn Rand Letter, which appeared more and more irregularly until she ended publication in 1975.

Other personal losses took a toll as well: Her husband began to show signs of dementia years before his death in 1979, and the joyous news that her youngest and favorite sister Nora still lived led only to a brief and painfully disappointing reunion in 1973. She made a strong recovery from surgery for lung cancer in 1974, but she no longer had the stamina or the focus to devote herself to any large writing project.

Apart from intermittent appearances in television interviews, Ayn Rand’s last regular speaking engagement was her annual lecture at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum. Nevertheless, she had completed about one-fourth of a screenplay for a TV miniseries of Atlas Shrugged and was in the midst of preparing her next Ford Hall lecture at the time of her death, on March 6, 1982. Several hundred mourners waited in the cold to enter the Manhattan funeral home where her body was laid out, alongside a six-foot floral dollar sign, the following day. The graveside service in Valhalla, New York, consisted only of a reading of Kipling’s poem “If” before Rand was buried beside her husband.

An assessment of Rand’s reputation a decade and a half after her death must account for several contradictory factors. Few professional philosophers take her work at all seriously, yet many groups of readers and fans still debate and write about her theories. Her work continues to appeal to those who search for nonreligious answers about human progress and agency. Certainly her declaration that selfishness is a virtue and altruism a vice is contrary to traditional Jewish values—yet her exaltation of personal ambition is not so different from that of many Russian Jewish immigrants of her generation who savored the relative freedom of America. Despite their dismissal by the critical establishment, her books continue to sell. Together, her novels have sold approximately twenty-five million copies, a figure that still grows by about 250,000 every year. Rand might not have succeeded in achieving the immediate influence of a crusading novelist like Harriet Beecher Stowe, as she had hoped, but her popularity today testifies to an enduring appeal.

SELECTED WORKS BY AYN RAND
Anthem (1938); Atlas Shrugged (1957); The Fountainhead (1943); Night of January 16th (1936); The Virtue of Selfishness (1965); We the Living (1936).

Bibliography
Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand (1986); Branden, Nathaniel. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand (1989); Den Uyl, Douglas J., and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984); Gladstein, Mimi Reiser. The Ayn Rand Companion (1984); McDowell, Edwin. “Ayn Rand: Novelist with a Message.” NYTimes, March 9, 1982, sec. 2, 6; Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “Twilight of the Goddess.” New Yorker (July 24, 1995): 70–81; Saxon, Wolfgang. “Ayn Rand, ‘Fountainhead’ Author, Dies.” NYTimes, March 7, 1982, 36; Sciabarra, Chris M. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (1995); Britting, Jeff. Ayn Rand (2005).

Reaction of a visitor of the Jewish Women Archive encyclopedia page about Ayn Rand:

Carl Jacobson 4 years ago
Why celebrate Ayn Rand's jewishness? She repudiated religion as ignorant mysticism and was attracted to tall blond,aryan types. Can we say "self-hating:? Not to mention her decades long usage of amphetamine based weight-loss pills and her refusal to believe smoking was harmful - even after her lung was removed die to cancer. Being jewish means being part of a community - something that Ayn Rand hated.

[pieter]

Karl,

Like you I would have enjoyed to meet her if it had been possible, for we would have had much to discuss too. I don't think she would have given you or me an easy time, because she was very strong in her conviction, her determination to defend her thought and she was a dedicated speaker and debater.

Where do you see a contradiction between her Russian process of thinking on one side and the American manner of Capitalism? Isn't the American White Anglo Saxon Protestant Capitalism close to her ideas? You say, this is most evident in the manner of her selling her thoughts and ideas in writing books to satisfy both her ego and her pocket book as a stated philosopher. Do you come to this conclusion after seeing her speak in the video's or reading about her? Did you read Atlas Shrugged, her novel which has been so incredibly influential in certain libertarian and conservative Capitalist circles in the USA?

You have philosophic terms of her you do not agree with, because you see some contradictions in them. And you would like to bring them to her. Do you have more examples than just one example?

Reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge is a very Western, rational-analytical, empirical notion. She has stated this as a fact, but not as a variable that is one of mans attributes for survival. Why would this leave out some of the basic attributes of discovery instituted by man?

As a person we can enjoy her philosophical logic as a tool, knowledge, information and just a bunch of thoughts that are different than ours..

Thank you for reaction, expressing your thought and opinion Karl and your crical remarks about things of her theory which sound not logical to you. It indeed is a wonderful exploration of anothers thinking.

Thank you Karl!

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

I read one of the stories of Ayn Rand. It was interesting, simple language, good message. I understand her point coming from rigorous system of collectivization. Still, I had some objections to her world as solely individualistic. She was collecting social security and other benefits of the system, she fought against.

[pieter]

Jaga,

I understand your reasoning and interest in Ayn Rand. Like you she came from a collectivist, socialist, Slavic country. Maybe I share your objections to her individualist mindset, philosophy, Ideology and worldview. Her ideas were influential in the corporate world, Wall Street circles, Libertarian Republican and Independent voter circles and amongst some conservatives with libertarian economical ideas like Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. You got some good points there in inconsistencies in her thinking and behavior. She shouldn't had collected that social security and other benefits of the system, because she was against it.

I have discussed with libertarian objectivists in the Netherlands, like a partner of an ex girlfriend of mine. He was a shallow, superficial and artificial thinker. I battled him with rational, pragmatic, logical arguments. He was 100% against taxes, public chanals and media, social security, and believed in a minimal state, and that people organise their own businesses, security, social security, health care, infrastucture, education and emmployment. But he couldn't tell me how exactly when I continued to ask him questions. He was allergic to everything and anything that had to do with state, taxes, public funded things, everything not corporate.

I believe in Freedom of expression, freedom of ideas, freedom of organisation and the freedom to be against something. But this guy couldn't tell me how his ideal society without taxes, public servants, state (or limited state), without police (because the police is a state funded thing and paid for by taxes) would work, function and how you could run, work and exist in such a society. Like Ayn Rand, whom name and existence he didn't knew of back then (2004/2005), he believed that altruism was a bad thing and in his words he also believed in rational selfishness, because self interest, being only focussed on your own goal and direction without being bothered by the desires, ideas and boundaries of others was his main goal. This rather shallow guy got his knowledge mainly from the Discovery chanal, and Dutch commercial chanals like RTL Z ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTL_Z ), RTL8, SBS 6 and Veronica.

I prefer public chanals like NPS1 and NPS2 with public broacasters like the VPRO, BNNVARA, AVRO, NPO, NOS and sometimes KRO-NCRV ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPRO , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNNVARA , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algemene_Vereniging_Radio_Omroep , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Publieke_Omroep_(organization) and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Omroep_Stichting and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRO-NCRV ), because these share more cultural, contemporary art, historical, political and scientific and research journalistic news than the commercial ones. Ofcourse I also watch RTL niews (RTL news) regulary because it is a commercial news station too. Also as a counterveiling power towards the public chanals to keep my vision broad and not one sided.

Cheers,
Pieter

[karl]

Pieter

You have some questions of my self for replies I had fore mentioned of some of the materials given by Ayan Rand in the manner of her philosophical writings. Of this I do understand and with this, it is of pleasure to respond.

First of all, I do hold agreement with you with your remarks in her behalf, for they correspond as well as to my own thoughts. Perhaps I was overly harsh in criticism, but in retrospect, it was simply the manner of clarification of terms. For it was my impression she was/is using absolutes with description of terms relating to man {again, man as a species and not gender}. Yes, I do understand some conflict between Philosophical terms in manners of behavioral science of man through anthropology/psychology/Sociology as with International Relations and Law at the University in Bonn. And yes, I was to take a course in Philosophy and did poorly, but was to receive a passing grade.

All though I do agree with most all of Ms. Rands reasoning, but conflict with her use of absolutes. For man is not an absolute in both thought and action. For man at different levels of stress,action,situation are at times different people to then once the levels of situation has normalized, returns to his previous self. We can not define man as an absolute.

As an example: Military service. A young fellow is taken in to the military service of his country. The young man has previous religious training, one factor of his training is," though shall not kill". But, through the step training under the strict military schooling, he is taught to be very efficient in killing with the weapons placed at his disposal. Once out of the military, the young man is once again in civilian life and then returns to his previous requirement of," Though shall not kill". Of course there is a multitude of other examples other then this one..

In as much as some terms such as{Reason} she has not defined her use of Reason. But has left it as ambiguous to be defined by the receiver or reader:

For reason could be defined as: Mans tool of understanding. It is a method of identifying entities through ones senses-or as plainly as a means of integrating those perceptions in to concepts there by gaining knowledge. {your respective dictionaries may define it in different terms}

Perhaps the above is the prime reason of such personal difficulties whilst attending the one course in philosophy that my self experienced.

Karl

[pieter]

Dear Karl,

Intellectually, in rational-analytic sense I need time to reply to your answer. Since I have limited time right now due to television work, camera, editing, introducing and accompanying new internship students I will react later when I have time, patience and brainpower left to be able to react propperly.
I have read and scanned your text in mental mindmapping sense. So I will come back later en react properly.

Cheers,
Pieter