Mrs. Logic; Ayn Rand never got into an argument she couldn’t win...

NYTMag ^ | Oct 18, 2009 | Sam Anderson

[Daffynition]

Whenever Ayn Rand met someone new—an acolyte who’d traveled cross-country to study at her feet, an editor hoping to publish her next novel—she would open the conversation with a line that seems destined to go down as one of history’s all-time classic icebreakers: “Tell me your premises.” Once you’d managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is A, and so forth—the whole Objectivist catechism. And once you conceded any part of that basic platform, the game was pretty much over. She’d start piecing together her rationalist Tinkertoys until the mighty Randian edifice towered over you: a rigidly logical Art Deco skyscraper, 30 or 40 feet tall, with little plastic industrialists peeking out the windows—a shining monument to the glories of individualism, the virtues of selfishness, and the deep morality of laissez-faire capitalism. Grant Ayn Rand a premise and you’d leave with a lifestyle.

Stated premises, however, rarely get us all the way down to the bottom of a philosophy. Even when we think we’ve reached bedrock, there’s almost always a secret subbasement blasted out somewhere underneath. William James once argued that every philosophic system sets out to conceal, first of all, the philosopher’s own temperament: that pre-rational bundle of preferences that urges him to hop on whatever logic-train seems to be already heading in his general direction. This creates, as James put it, “a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned..."

[snip]

[Daffynition]

[CaptRon]

Once you’d managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is A, and so forth—the whole Objectivist catechism.

And this is a problem because...?

[Publius]

Another article on Rand.

[Dr. Sivana]

She supported Ford over Reagan because for her abortion trumped less regulation and lower taxes.

Russell Kirk confronted her about her militant atheism, and she fled the room in tears rather than answer him.

[pepsi_junkie]

Note my tagline, I love Rand but I do note that she refused to be in the same room with William F Buckley because she was ticked off at his magazine running a critical review of "Atlas Shrugged". Buckley said he feared he caused the lady much choreographical difficulty, what with her having to arrive and depart before he showed up, or wait until he was gone to arrive. I guess sometimes her argument style was less logical, rational, skewering and more "$%#& you"!

[JoeProBono]

[Marie2]

I’d tell her that my premises is that God exists and reveals Himself in the Bible.

Too late, though.

[parsifal]

What she needed was probably a good Arkansas or southern husband to keep her barefoot, pregnant, and happy for few years and then she would have understood the mysteries of life a little better. It would have put her in touch with the soil of Planet Earth.

parsy, who thinks she was a great person, but responsible for so much destruction

[JoeProBono]

[parsifal]

LOL! Very “heroic” in the Randian sense.

parsy, who thinks Ayn was a filly that needed a firm hand on the reins

[Roscoe Karns]

[grey_whiskers]

I agree, but most Southern Genumum wouldn't even touch her with someone else's ten foot pole.

Cheers!

[Question_Assumptions]

I think this essay points to the problem of trying to find morality through objective reason alone.

[Gondring]

ROTFL! Hadn’t seen that one!

[Clinging Bitterly]

I guess they figured a single dose of ad hominem wasn't going to enough.

[JoeProBono]

[JoeProBono]

[JoeProBono]

[JoeProBono]

Buzzoff Nword

[Diana in Wisconsin]

BUMP!