Jason Steorts:Yesterday I read for the first time Cathy Young’s thoroughly excellent 2005 Rand essay for Reason, which makes the point well. Young observes that Dagny Taggart, Atlas Shrugged’s heroine, “calmly and quite unnecessarily shoots a guard who can’t decide whether to let her in or not. The man, you see, ‘wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness’ — obviously a capital crime.” I cannot agree, however, that Rand’s system qua system is a totalizing ideology. Rand the person and Rand the artist betrayed the ideas of Rand the thinker, which, if properly adhered to, could not have justified tyranny or exploitation of any sort.
Proper adhesion demonstrated below:
6 comments:
People are free to write about Rand all they want, but why do they always have to torture the poor English language in the process?
People are free to write about Rand all they want, but why do they always have to torture the poor English language in the process?
Well, the fact that they consider "A is A" to be a profundity betrays a woefully undeveloped cognitive faculty.
I am quite happy to believe that Rand did not understand Rand's philosophy better, and that it needs someone like Jason to express its basic tenets more accurately, much in the way that Saul of Tarsus was required to rescue Christianity from Jesus Christ's serious doctrinal mistakes.
Huh.
And here I thought it was called "objectivism" because it's objectively objectionable....
I think it's more that according to Kant's morality, other human beings should be treated as subjects rather than objects; and since Kant is apparently History's Greatest Monster, Rand's logic dictates that the opposite is true -- the highest morality is to treat other people as objects, means to your own ends.
I have no idea if this true.
do they always have to torture the poor English language
Rand's turgid prose ensures that anything written about her is as painful as a zombie head massage.
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