Ayn Rand

I'm currently reading/writing a paper on Ayn Rand's book The Fountianhead. Has anyone read it or is familiar with her philosophies? Any input would be great

 

Gotta be canadian or American

yeah heres my input. Ayn Rand is nothing more than superflous to the history of philosophy and somewhat less than that in entire history of academic thought.
She is what is known by philosophers as a lightweight with very few thoughts of her own and those that are her own werent really worth having. She is merely a mouthpiece for other thinkers that she read and merely wrote down her thoughts on their work and tried to pass them off as an advancement in that area of philosophy - unfortunately some canadians and americans seem to have taken her seriously and as they arent as educated as Europeans they fail to see why us Europens laugh so much when her name is mentioned

 

I've read it. I will never willingly read it again. I found it deppressing and I didn't agree with her philosophy at all.

 

I read it and contrary to the above notes....I rather enjoyed it. Ayn Rand doesnt truck socialism so some would not appreciate that viewpoint.

 

i read atlas shrugged so sorry----gold is good

 

Ayn Rand claimed to be inspired by Aristotle, but that was only an effort to claim a prestigious mentor. Her philosophy is nothing more than a re-wording of late nineteenth century Social Darwinism.

Unfortunately, she established a cult following who think that if she did not say it it is not true, or it does not matter.

 

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult

by Murray N. Rothbard

Virtually every one of its members entered the cult through reading Rand’s lengthy novel Atlas Shrugged, which appeared in late 1957, a few months before the organized cult came into being. Entering the movement through a novel meant that despite repeated obeisances to Reason, febrile emotion was the driving force behind the acolyte’s conversion...

Since most neophyte Randians were both young and relatively ignorant, a careful channeling of their reading insured that they would remain ignorant of non- or anti-Randian ideas or arguments permanently...

after the titanic Rand-Branden split in late 1968...Rand cultists were required to sign a loyalty oath to Rand...Close relatives of Branden were expected to – and did – break with him completely...

Interestingly enough for a movement which proclaimed its devotion to the individual exertion of reason, to curiosity, and to the question "Why?" cultists were required to swear their unquestioning belief that Rand was right and Branden wrong, even though they were not permitted to learn the facts behind the split...

Another method was to keep the members, as far as possible, in a state of fevered emotion through continual re-readings of Atlas. Shortly after Atlas was published, one high-ranking cult leader chided me for only having read Atlas once. "It’s about time for you to start reading it again," he admonished. "I have already read Atlas thirty-five times."

The rereading of Atlas was also important to the cult because the wooden, posturing, and one-dimensional heroes and heroines were explicitly supposed to serve as role models for every Randian...

The Biblical nature of Atlas for many Randians is illustrated by the wedding of a Randian couple that took place in New York. At the ceremony, the couple pledged their joint devotion and fealty to Ayn Rand, and then supplemented it by opening Atlas – perhaps at random – to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.
Wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement...

Personal enjoyment, indeed, was also frowned upon in the movement...

The psychological hold that the cult held on the members may be illustrated by the case of one girl, a certified top Randian, who experienced the misfortune of falling in love with an unworthy non-Randian. The leadership told the girl that if she persisted in her desire to marry the man, she would be instantly excommunicated. She did so nevertheless, and was promptly expelled. And yet, a year or so later, she told a friend that the Randians had been right, that she had indeed sinned and that they should have expelled her as unworthy of being a rational Randian...

so long as he was in the movement, a new Randian Man emerged, a grim and joyless figure indeed. For a while the Randians would discourse at length on "happiness," and on the alleged fact of their perpetual state of being happy, it became clear on closer examination that they were happy only by definition...

In practice, however, the dominant subjective emotions of the Randian cultist were fear and even terror..

Rand, though considered infallible by her disciples, changed her mind a great deal...

No Randian, even the top leadership, was exempt from the all-pervasive fear and repression...

People were invariably transformed by the moulding process from diverse, often likeable men and women to grim, tense, hostile poseurs – whose personalities could best be summed up by the word "robotic."

Preferring Bach, for example, to Rachmaninoff, subjected one to charges of believing in a "malevolent universe."

The Randian replied that smoking, according to the cult, was a moral obligation...the actual reason, as in so many other parts of Randian theory, from Rachmaninoff to Victor Hugo to tap dancing, was that Rand simply liked smoking...

But we have not yet precisely focused upon the central axiom of the esoteric creed of the Randian movement, the implicit premise, the hidden agenda that insured and enforced the unquestioning loyalty of the disciples. That central axiom was the assertion the "Ayn Rand is the greatest person that has ever lived or ever shall live."

in the name of individuality, reason, and liberty, the Rand cult in effect preached something totally different. The Rand cult was concerned not with every man’s individuality, but only with Rand’s individuality...

the guiding spirit of the Randian movement was not individual liberty – as it seemed to many young members – but rather personal power for Ayn Rand and her leading disciples...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

 

Strange, I have read and enjoyed her books over the years.....and I have known many others that have read her books for many years.

I am not like what is described above nor is anyone that I have ever met like what is described in the above posts.

 

She comes off as rather insufferable in everything she writes and she doesn't make any points that I agree with that others haven't made better, however I like her forwardness and readability. Some philosophic authors tend to meander and it gets aggravating when I'm looking for philosophy and get more poetry.

 

I really enjoyed her works. They are a totally new way to look at the world. I was secretly in love with Roark. However, her theories do not work with modern problems, such as environmentalism. And what with the elderly, special needs folks and having children? There are many lose ends, and like, communism, her ideas would work only in a perfect society.

 

There is some value in her work, I'll admit. I would agree with 'sentient' that most of her ideas are recycled, but would disagree with the American/European dichotomy. That part's just retarded.

Rand's philosophy is based on good principles, but its moral premises are too absolute, almost authoritarian. Anyone who attempted to actually follow her morality would have a lot of problems. Her way of thinking tends to mechanize human activity, and she is obviously a big proponent of 'progress.' Rationally, I cannot help but agree with much of what she says. But on a human level, some of it seems a bit disturbing.

I remember, for example, close to the end of Atlas Shrugged, when Dagny shoots a guard in the heart because he's unsure whether to obey her or his superiors. While I can see her philosophical objection to the guard's mental state, this obviously doesn't justify murder. She did take her beliefs to the point of creating a cult, which is obviously kind of an issue.

 

When I was in grad school for philosophy we used to have an argument ad Ayn Rand. All you had to do was connect what somebody else was saying to Ayn Rand and their argument was therefore proven false.

 

I don't doubt that. I can't even argue that the quality of an individual's life should be their moral standard without hearing that one.

 

You know, Ayn Rand spoke English... QED.



(Pretty well too, I might add, for someone who grew up in Russia.)

 

Since we have just shown that all arguments composed in English are false, and since we can also assume that all arguments composed in German are false due to the argument ad Hitler (very similar to the argument ad Ayn Rand except the connection is to Hitler), all we are left with is french post structuralism, which is one hell of a position to be in.

 

And yet your argument is composed in English

 

If I had the energy I would put in a meta language and then I could solve both this problem and the liars paradox.

 

I read ayn rand back in the day, the red marks i put all over her stuff made her books look like victims of a slasher film.

 

I've read The Fountainhead but in my opinion Ayn Rand is a joke.

Her philosophy is based on a false dichotomy between Altruism and Selfishness and then comes to the "rational" conclusion that selfishness is the obvious victor. Her philosophy overlooks SO MANY realities of society and completely over-simplifies the world. Her theories dissolve the second one mentions the Fundamental Attribution Error!

If Howard Roark was born in North Philadelphia or East St. Louis can we really say that he would be the same person with the same opportunities to develop his skills?

It doesn't make sense from the start.

"One's own life is the ultimate value because it makes all other values
possible." Fair enough, but Objectivism is also atheistic and supposedly very rational. Rationally speaking, why not prefer to die and have no values?

Objectivism is silly. Not to mention that strict belief in it may actually produce negative psychological effects!

 

I read Atlas Shrugged years ago.
As a nove it wasn't that great, but it incorporated ideas that I appreciated later on.