Posted on 07/20/2012 12:26:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
Ayn Rand in Realville 2012 BUMP!!!!
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides.
I disagree with her on religion but the point is that we labor to earn the things we need and want in life and we deserve to keep what we make. The problem is that government is out to get our chips as well as boss us around. She did not like that as well as most of us here.
Maybe repudiated but not refuted.
"And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men."
Preposterous, yes, but that is precisely the point behind the sort of statism that posits man as a slave of his own creation, the state. Friedrich Nietzsche, from whom Rand drew one wing of her narrative, stated that in the absence of God as moral authority (his "God is dead") the result is either no moral authority - nihilism - or the rise of some other source of moral authority, his ubermenschen. Rand's case was that these had already arisen in the form of the Producers such as Reardon, Mulligan, Galt, and Dagny Taggart. The case of Rand's deadly enemies was that this ubermensch resided in the form of the state or the Party, not only in the form of moral authority but in the role of arbiter of all truth.
It was that last that made those political doctrines anathema to an individualist such as Rand, whose real philosophical roots were in Aristotle. And yet she drew back from Aristotle's conviction (Metaphysics, book V) that his own system of thought led ineluctably to the existence of God, his "Unmoved Mover". Rand made the connection between the two philosophies explicit in so naming the first chapter of Atlas Shrugged. For her that godhead needed to be moved to Man because God did not meet her criteria for proof.
For that reason I have disagreed with a mountain of criticism and her own claim that she was an atheist. Whatever label you choose to use, or misuse, hers can never be any better than an agnostic position if she is consistent to her system.
heh heh heh
Your ignorance bears false witness.
- the invisible hand e-mail to Tenacious1
You, my FRiend, need some help.
I love it when people who've never bothered to read Rand put words in her mouth. You're dead wrong.
There are no "requirements" other than rational thinking to Objectivism. Ayn Rand [and I'm a big fan] has or had no right or ability to insist on blind belief in every word she spoke. Now, she was quite the egotist and probably would have liked that, but, still, she couldn't enforce it.
I disagree sharply with Rand on a couple issues -- issues where I believe her personal feelings overcame her objective reasoning [abortion is one of those.] Nonetheless it's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say.
Philosophy should teach you how to think, not what to think.
refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as if I were an intellectual slave
Get over it.
You made up a quote and have been spreading it here for 7 years, you need to quit claiming it as a “quote”.
When someone googles the source of the fake quote it leads to you at freerepublic, on thread after thread since 2005.
Use the actual quote if you like it but don’t rewrite it to suit you and then strive to convince us it is accurate, I almost posted it somewhere else today, but luckily I was suspicious of the source.
ping
“16) “And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn’t it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men.””
Abraham Lincoln’s rational for the illegality of secession was most preposterous indeed.
And you know for a fact that I haven't read Rand exactly how?
I don’t see the difference in theses quotes.
Secondly, the words I posted were his words. He said:
"...refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as if I were an intellectual slave".
I posted:
I refuse to have my views dictated to me as if I were an intellectual slave."
That you are trying to make a big deal of the slight difference suggests you have other issues; perhaps you drink too much, I don't know. Whatever your problem, I am done wasting my time responding to your moronic protestation. Bye.
How could I possibly know "for a fact" that you haven't read Rand?
I wrote that because Rand famously despised homosexuality. Now, she also thought that government should have no say in the private behavior of individuals, but that could not be considered an endorsement of gay marriage.
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