I discovered Rand’s work just after I left college, which was prior to electricity but after the mass extinctions of the Cretaceous Era. I was quite taken with her philosophical works (particularly her work in aesthetics).
I didn’t discover the real-world situations about her, her first followers, the schism that led to the destruction of the Nathaniel Brandon Institute, and the subsequent schisms that have divided objectivism followers over the years, for quite some time.
And what’s more–I don’t care about them.
I don’t care about what has happened to Nathaniel and Barbara Brandon, Leonard Peikoff, David Kelley, the politics and personalities involved, or who has the “purest” beliefs in objectivism.
I don’t even care about how erroneously Rand sometimes applied her own philosophy to the real world. (How can anyone claim that Beethoven’s compositions reflected a “malevolent world-view”?)
What do I care about?
I care about how easy it is to directly apply objectivism’s tenets to one’s everyday life. I take great delight in the simple, logical, rational way Rand took basic truths and built complex concepts that almost always ring with the silvery peal of truth.
Try applying Kant’s nomenal vs. phenomenal worlds to moral decisions, or Kierkegaard’s religious views into a rational life. You cannot directly apply much that Plato or Augustinian or Hume or Dewey or Nietzsche or Sartre propounded into daily situations. Too many people have nodded dumbly in agreement with philosophical rules and beliefs that make no sense in the real world.
Maybe that makes me the Joe the Plumber of objectivism–I don’t know. What I do know is that my life is much better and richer for having found Rand’s work and (for the most part) having ignored her followers.
[...] Me and Ayn Rand [...]
I value thinkers who respect themselves & the potential of reason. These thinkers differentiate between the following: reality & whim; perception & sensation; introspection & extrospection; thought & emotion; & coercion & defending oneself.
wow.. That is exactly my opinion, objectivism works, while it may not be as obtuse and convoluted as many of the great “thinkers” or should I say “feelers” would like it works.
Ayn Rand however occupies a philosophical niche that is totally out of favor with both extremes of American politics. The mystics of the religious right could never acheive objectivism and neither could the collectivists of the left.
While I’d be the complete opposite to Rand economically, in that I believe the government can do a lot of good, I would be interested in hearing the other side. Is there any of her work you’d recommend? Preferably something shorter than the 1,000 words of Atlas Shrugged
My personal favorite essay collection of hers is The Romantic Manifesto, which deals with aesthetics (the philosophy of art). For more general reading about her philosophy, The Virtue of Selfishness is probably your best bet. The collections of her later columns and essays deal more with the world and how she saw it through the eyes of her philosophy; this is where she falls down rather badly, and gets the reputation of being a heartless greedhead. (How she figured that Beethoven’s music reflected “a malevolent world-view” is ludicrous.)