Surprisingly, this isn’t a bad short explanation of her ethics.
I’ve been reading a lot of Aristotle lately (I highly recommend Aristotle by Randall, for anyone who is in to that kind of thing), and Rand mostly just brought Aristotle’s philosophy into the 20th century—of course note now that it’s the 21st century, so she is a little dated at this point. Take for example, Rand was offered by various people to get fully paid-for cryonics when she was close to death, but for unknown reasons she declined, very sadly (if you’re looking for someone to take her philosophy into the 21st century, you will need to talk to, well… ahem… me).
It’s important to mention that politics is only one dimension of her philosophy and of her writing (although, naturally, it’s the subject that all the pundits and mind-killed partisans obsess over) - and really it is the least important, since it is the most derivative of all of her other more fundamental philosophical ideas on metaphysics, epistemology, man’s nature, and ethics.
I’ll willingly confess to not being interested in Aristotle in the least. Philosophy coursework cured me of interest in Greek philosophy. Give me another twenty years and I might recover from that.
Have you read TVTropes’ assessment of Objectivism? It’s actually the best summary I’ve ever read, as far as the core of the philosophy goes.
By the way, I fully share yours (and Eliezer’s) sentiment in regard to academic philosophy. I took a “philosophy of mind” course in college, thinking that would be extremely interesting, and I ended up dropping the class in short order. It was only after a long study of Rand that I ever became interested in philosophy again, once I realized I had a sane basis on which to proceed.
Surprisingly, this isn’t a bad short explanation of her ethics.
I’ve been reading a lot of Aristotle lately (I highly recommend Aristotle by Randall, for anyone who is in to that kind of thing), and Rand mostly just brought Aristotle’s philosophy into the 20th century—of course note now that it’s the 21st century, so she is a little dated at this point. Take for example, Rand was offered by various people to get fully paid-for cryonics when she was close to death, but for unknown reasons she declined, very sadly (if you’re looking for someone to take her philosophy into the 21st century, you will need to talk to, well… ahem… me).
It’s important to mention that politics is only one dimension of her philosophy and of her writing (although, naturally, it’s the subject that all the pundits and mind-killed partisans obsess over) - and really it is the least important, since it is the most derivative of all of her other more fundamental philosophical ideas on metaphysics, epistemology, man’s nature, and ethics.
I’ll willingly confess to not being interested in Aristotle in the least. Philosophy coursework cured me of interest in Greek philosophy. Give me another twenty years and I might recover from that.
Have you read TVTropes’ assessment of Objectivism? It’s actually the best summary I’ve ever read, as far as the core of the philosophy goes.
No I haven’t! That was quite good, thanks.
By the way, I fully share yours (and Eliezer’s) sentiment in regard to academic philosophy. I took a “philosophy of mind” course in college, thinking that would be extremely interesting, and I ended up dropping the class in short order. It was only after a long study of Rand that I ever became interested in philosophy again, once I realized I had a sane basis on which to proceed.