Quote:
Posted by Guest
(Post 539047)
Tal, can you tell me in your own words, not a link, but your own beliefs and thoughts, what you think Ayn Rand's fictional book Atlas Shrugred is all about and why you see it as negative?
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Atlas Shrugged. I probably read this book 30 years ago. It sort of rings a bell. Ayn Rand's philosophy is set out more in two nonfiction books--
The Virtue of Selfishness and
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology . Her philosophy is called Objectivism and sounds like she just does away with about 3000 years of very sophisticated philosophical debates by getting rid of God, the soul, free will, etc. by taking a very commonsensical approach. What's in the world are objects. People interact with objects during their existence. What is most important to the single person is his or her economic survival. The state is supposed to leave people alone while they pursue their economic interests. Not even sure why Ayn Rand needs a state in her philosophy.
What man is supposed to enjoy is art. She seems to see art as the only thing that human's should worship. There's no afterlife, no God, etc. in the work of Ayn Rand that I can see. No real morals, no real ethics. Rand's ethics are just that we should leave one another alone so that each can pursue his or her own economic interests. If another person uses violence to prevent someone else from pursuing his or her economic interest, then you can use violence in turn.
Abortions are fine in Rand's philosophy because a fetus is not a person striving for an economic interest. There is no God in Rand's work, no soul of a person so there is no argument coming from there that a fetus might have a soul.
I may be missing something though in Ayn Rand's work. I have two B.A.s and one of these was in Philosophy. We never studied Ayn Rand as I cannot remember anyone seeing her as a serious philosopher. I studied Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Burke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Pierce, James, Freud, Popper, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, etc.