Talk:Ayn Rand/Archive 3

message: I felt the Controversy section could be significantly deepened with a more thorough presentation of both sides. Part of the Rand phenomenon is that precisely because academic philosophers turn green or mauve when Rand is mentioned, writings about Rand tend, despite the best and most terribly Objective intentions of her publicists, the writings tend to blast out into the ionosphere as pure (*Reinen*) hagiography, hagiography that never encounters resistance and becomes thereby prophesying to the wind.
The result of this lack of resistance is that the aethereal hagiograph is suffused with a POV so global as to be unnoticed by Randroids, and considered moronic by all others, since it APPEARS, from the lack of a consciousness of any resistance (which, previous authors should know, stems not only from "analytic" philosophy but would also stem from most other schools were their mavens to deign to address Rand).
Therefore I have added the following to the Controversy section which in NPOV I trust presents two sides.
Rand's strengths, to Rand's supporters, are her weaknesses, to her detractors. To individuals enmeshed in lives made difficult by an undecidable combination of business and government, Rand, unlike a "professional" philosopher, provides a life-changing new narrative which has been especially empowering for some women. 
For this reason, Rand fulfilled a demand made much later by the academic philosopher Martha Nussbaum who asked why we ask philosophy to improve our existence and flourishing, and why we instinctively find analytic philosophies so deficient on this basis.
Unlike most philosophers, even philosophers of society, Rand presents to her supporters a vivid picture of lives and societies damaged almost beyond repair by a soulless and Philistine socialism which Rand encountered first hand in Russia; her mother, Rand recounted, was attacked for reading a book on a train by some enthusiastic proles who accused Rand's mother of bourgeois tendencies.
To Rand's numerous detractors, including nonreaders of Rand who shrink in horror from her formidable presence in prose and in pictures, who may mentally image Rand as an Art Deco gargoyle suitable only for the Chrysler building, her stories are a massive oversimplification of what Adorno, a Frankfurt School theorist whom Rand would instinctively despise, called an "administered" world in which "government" as a puppet of private economic forces makes the rules on behalf of the sort of alpha males whom Rand thought to be first movers.
It is perhaps fortunate that during Rand's (and Adorno's) life-time, these two characters were never brought together on a talk show, DESPITE the fact that they shared a concern that industrial civilization no longer reflected our subjectivity, using "subjectivity" not to mean opinions but our objective moral seriousness and our will. This is because to Adorno, Rand fails to answer what for him was a central question, sometimes re-presented as avoiding another Holocaust of the Jews, a group that in Randian terms may have "deserved" their fate: the question of the existence and flourishing of people without sufficient grit, and sand, and bounce of the Randian flavor, and whether it is just they not survive.
Only an ironist with a bad attitude could appreciate the evolution between the way in which in Rand's heyday, Darwinian notions of "survival of the fittest" were popular and prepared the way for the reception of Atlas Shrugged, while today her natural constituency seems to have fled through some sort of Sinai to "intelligent design", perhaps on the just-in-time basis as America's Rust Belt fitness-for-survival turns out to be as out of date as the passenger trains Rand celebrated in her work. But her less than amused supporters would riposte that her man, being the measure of all things, would not make a simple reifying mistake, and would have by 1999 pulled out of the railroad business, for their Objectivism isn't confusable with objective things as such. And, the intersection set of intelligent "designers" and what are sometimes called "Randroids" is probably null or at most, unity, consisting, if unity, of a single nut bar with a Web site (one hopes).
By admitting novelistically that bad, weak men could flourish in a bad, weak society able to muddle through in the manner in which the postwar United Kingdom muddled through the 1970s, Rand, her detractors would point out, was essentially making the same mistake as her worst enemies. She was, they'd declare, asking for society to become heartless and Objective so as to better be an isomorph of the ideal mind and ideal man. She was, according to some of her detractors, merely singing from a Soviet songbook (about the New Socialist Man) in another register, and at a higher pitch (perhaps that of Tony Soprano).
However, these objections themselves indicate the depths which Rand explored and she needs to be taken seriously. Not least because Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve who is retiring next year and who is one of the most powerful men in the world, is and apparently remains influenced by Rand (he wrote a passionate defense of Atlas Shrugged as a letter to the New York Times book review on the publication of Rand's novel), it is very important to her detractors and her supporters to take Rand with the utmost seriousness. This formidable person would of course demand nothing less.
Comment: "Only an ironist with a bad attitude..." Textbook example of the Argument from Intimidation. translator 03:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Spinoza1111|Spinoza1111]] 07:03, 26 November 2005 (UTC)(Edward G. Nilges) edits the Controversy section: comments are invited 

message: In The Art of Fiction Rand says that her heroes are not in fact archetypes because they contain more aspects than what is necessitated by their perfection, i.e. if they were simply archetypes all the Randian heroes would be exactly the same. I'm removing it. I don't believe it's necessary to reference the term archetype because dissidents of Rand may believe that that's all they are, along with explanation, but if someone would like to do so I'd support it. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by D prime (talk • contribs) .
:I'm laughing at this. Alienus 14:08, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Some jokes aren't funny when explained.  By the way, you're supposed to indent your responses, not unindent them.  If the indentation gets too deep, you can always reset (if you include a parenthetical to that effect). Alienus 06:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If that's the custom/rule, sure. Uh, then it's best not to share them? D prime 01:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of the word 'archetype.' 

message: Quote : "She also encountered the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche, and loved his exaltation of the heroic and independent individual in Thus Spake Zarathustra. However, her enthusiasm soon waned due to Nietzsche's nihilism and psychological determinism; and she condemned his attack on rationality." 
Sorry im going to have to remove the sentences after "Thus Spake Zaruthustra". It is incorrect because 1) Nietzsche was not a advocator of nihilism but rather despised it and condemned Christianity as being a 'nihilist religion'. However, he was the first to encounter nihilism and explore it, his beliefs on the 'ubermensch' have often been skewed as being called 'the nihilist philosopher' when actually it was the 'life affirming philosopher' who first used a nihilistic deconstruction of values and morals and formed his own free from influence. I don't believe Ayn Rand slated Nietzsche's "Psychological Determinism" as this would be quite contradictory from her own philosophies (which was largely influenced by Nietzschean philosophy and the Crime and punishment book which isn't to far off the mark from Nietzsche). --Raddicks 00:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nihilism 

message: Joshua27: Please be more careful when reverting.  Your edit summary said that you were reverting my deletions (and the rest of your edits had no edit summaries — note that these are required); what you in fact managed to do (apart from replacing material that I hadn't in fact deleted) was to remove the link to Petrograd University, and revert another editor's correction of a category. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 09:33, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Care when reverting, &amp; edit summaries 

message: How far is this article on the road to a featured article? --Mexaguil 2 July 2005 23:17 (UTC)
:My take is that the article is in pretty good shape, but needs a little brushing up before it meets my personal standards for a featured article. The material is largely accurate, nothing major is missing, and it is well wikified. However, a few spots are awkwardly written, the bibliography needs cleanup, and there is a general absence of any specific source citations in the text, even for areas of controversy. Still, barring any major controversies over fixing those defects (or edits to introduce new ones), it could be feature-ready pretty quickly. --RL0919 14:25, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Featured Article

message: Some suggest that much antagonism toward her philosophy in the academy is due to the political stance of her philosophy; specifically, the embrace of capitalism and denunciation of altruist ethics which they annoys what they see as a traditionally leftist academia.
Who are these some, and where did they do their suggesting? Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:56, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, but play fair. The comments attributed to "Rand's defenders" on the subject of peer-reviewed journals are equally mysterious and unscourced, so I've removed this too. In addition, this Darryl Wright fellow hasn't published anything on Rand that I can find, and so if you cite his views, also cite a publication which can be found. --Ben golub 20:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WWords 

message: Howdy, I did a little clean up and expansion of Yaron Brook, the current director of ARI. I'm hoping that some people with more experience than myself might be able ot take a look at this page and expand it a bit. Klonimus 15:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Yaron Brook]] 

message: There appears to be a content dispute on the coercive monopoly article. If this subject is of interest to you, please reply to the straw poll at Talk:Coercive_monopoly. -- BBlackmoor (talk) 16:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In this dispute note Ayn Rand's, Nathaniel Branden's, and Alan Greenpsan's explicit definition of coercive monopoly. Be aware of nature of their argumentation that proposes that a coercive monopoly can only be the result of government intervention. Please note the distinction between the definition of coercive monopoly, and the alleged causes of it. These essays are responses to the mainstream position that laissez-faire is the cause of coercive monopoly, coercive monopoly being explicitly defined as a monopoly that is immune from competition. RJII 16:32, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: content dispute on [[coercive monopoly]]

message: The major works section strays into a book report on The Fountainhead.  It's not even very NPOV: "Peter Keating may be one of the most brilliantly portrayed conflicted characters of literature."
Most of the stuff about the Fountainhead's characters should just be outright cut. --Starwed 06:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right.  I cut all the character descriptions to make that section more in line with the details of Rand's other novels. --zenohockey 17:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too many digressions 

message: "Rand has sometimes been viewed with suspicion for her practice of presenting her philosophy in fiction and non-fiction books aimed at a general audience rather than publishing in peer-reviewed journals."
Has any notable person pressed this as an objection? I view with suspicion suspiciously vague phrases like "viewed with suspicion." I think this graf superfluos. Anyone disagree? --Christofurio 00:14, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe replace the "viewed with suspicion" words with "criticized." --Anagnorisis 05:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw Man argument? 

message: With so many things that went around her, wouldn't it add flavor to the article having a trivia section? We could add comments about miscellaneous anecdotes surrounding her life. --Anagnorisis 05:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Seriousness" does not exclude fun, Anonymous (if you're referring to Spinoza1111's blurb above, of course, you're probably right).  Personally, I'm all for a trivia section (not because of any concerns about flavor, but because I think it could add details about her and her life that don't fit into other sections).  --zenohockey 00:43, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia

message: It was interesting that the page cites Immanuel Kant as the philosopher whom Ayn singled out as "evil."  Interesting, because both her epistemological and ethical projects were so similar to his, in principle.
He wanted rational basis for the inductive principle, to avoid Hume's radical separation between observation and reason.
She declared "Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival", which appears remarkably similar to Kant's account of the senses. (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro)
He wanted to find a rational basis for ethics, a Categorical Imperative that justified itself.  He concluded that each man must "Always act in such a way that you treat others not merely as a means, but always also at the same time an end."
She declared "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others."
And yet ... Kant headed into an altruistic direction with the Categorical Imperative, while Rand ended up at Rational Self-Interest.
Anyone done any research on this?  Are the similarities worth mentioning in either this article or the Objectivism article?
--jrcagle 01:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rand v. Kant -- more than meets the eye 

message: Ayn Rand was eccentric in the Keynesian era, someone who ignored the lessons of the Great Depression and the success of the New Deal.  Bizarre in her definition of big business as America’s persecuted minority (page 44)—this was back in 1961, when racial segregation was widespread and women lacked many rights that are now taken for granted.  Yet Ayn Rand was gripped by a self-consistent madness: she has defined market forces as always fair.  
Since markets are always free, provided there is no state role, then anything that happens through market forces is not coercion, even if ignorant people suppose that financial pressures are forcing them to do something they didn’t want.
To have your way of life destroyed and an alien social pattern imposed on you through runaway market forces is to be free.
To be the most privileged stratum, yet subject to some social rules, is to be persecuted.  (Or it is if you are a big businessman—very few businesswomen in those days, and Ayn Rand saw nothing odd in that.)
Ayn Rand’s policy–big business not nearly privileged enough–became government policy in the 1980s, under the supervision of her one-time disciple Alan Greenspan.  The economic benefits of the Keynesian semi-capitalist system were fairly shared between rich, poor and middle-income groups, the entire benefit of economic growth in the USA since the 1970s has gone to the richest 10%, especially to a dominant elite of some one million dollar-millionaires.
Those parts of the Keynesian system that benefit the rich have not been touched.  The government underpins the financial markets and subsidises farmers, who then mostly vote against subsidies or protection for anyone else.
--GwydionM 19:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So what you're saying is that she was a Libertarian.  This is not news. Alienus 23:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

text: This thread is a wonderful place to remind everyone that Wikipedia is not a battleground, nor is it a soapbox.  Especially in light of recent events, we don't need to project the image of a bunch of Usenet rejects.  --zenohockey 02:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good news in article sited above - anonymous users will no longer be able to create new articles. The question is: why allow anonymous users at all? In my experience, a large majority of anon users are vandals. Libertarianism is all well and good, but... Camillustalk|contribs 09:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just FYI to those reading this section, especially late at night: the stuff in [ brackets ] above is *either* a bizarre parody *or* a badly misremembered version of Luke 16:19-31.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by jrcagle (talk • contribs) .
Spinoza1111 08:18, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Feed The Rich' policies 

message: The article lists Ayn Rand's birthdate as Feb. 2, 1905. Is this the Julian or Gregorian calendar? (Russia was on the Julian calendar at the time, but most of the world had already switched to the Gregorian.) Whatever it is, the article should clarify this point. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Different calendars.  --דוד ♣ D Monack 20:43, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Feb 2 is the Gregorian calendar date. The date on her birth certificate is Jan 20 (Old Style), but other than the picture of her birth certificate in one of her biographies, I've never seen the date presented using anything other than the Gregorian date. --RL0919 00:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birthdate 

message: I'm new here, so please forgive my ignorance of any niceties of form.
I added the picture of Rand's grave marker, and I am gratified that no one has seen fit to change it (yet).  Now, I'd like to suggest a change to the text -- the phrase "positively evil" seems awkward to me -- how about "downright evil" instead? 69.243.232.38 00:38, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Done.  --zenohockey 01:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  positively evil? 

message: In the section "Major works", two Italian film adaptations of We the Living are said to have been "nearly censored", which I found confusing. When a film is said to be censored, this usually implies that parts were changed or removed by the authorities -- although it can also be said that the authorities merely looked at it but made no changes (which is the case with most letters soldiers send home). From the context, it seems to me that someone was trying to say that the films were almost kept from distribution by the Italian government, but in the end were released because Mussolini thought they were "anti-Soviet". Could someone who knows the details of this incident confirm my reading from the context is correct & make the necessary changes? -- llywrch 18:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "nearly censored"? 

message: These were cut down without comment and with bias, so I mostly reverted the changes.  I did trim down duplicate entries, though, such as the multiple links to different parts of the same NobelSoul page.  I also noticed that, as usual, the ARI Watch link was removed, so I'm wondering if the vandal is an orthodox ARI loyalist. Alienus 16:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not likely.  ARI enthusiasts don't like NobleSoul, as it links to TOC.  --zenohockey 22:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, then maybe it's general vandalism. Alienus 22:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  external links 

message: Please see Wikipedia_talk:Portal#Use_of_portal_links_on_websites for a discussion on whether to include a link to the Philosophy Portal. --Slashme 11:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Philosophy Portal

message: I removed the Category:LGBT-rights opposition, since Ayn Rand (or Objectivist philosophy) was not in opposition of LGBT-rights. Since she advocated that the government should do nothing but protect its citizens from force, obviously it wouldn't deal with LGBT's at all, so they would be free to have relations with anyone they wish. (unsigned)
:For an explanation of why this in an error, see the "Ayn Rand Did NOT oppose gay rights" section above. Alienus 07:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: LGBT opposition

message: Has anyone noticed similarities with the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade? I haven't been able to find anything about it. Has she read Sade? It would appear that way. Some of his writings seem really similar. For example: 
:"reason is nothing other than the scales we weigh objects in, and, balancing those of these objects that are external to ourselves, the reasoning mechanism tells us what conclusions we are to come to...As you observe, this rational choice..is but the effect of the grossest and most material mechanical operation. But as reason is the only touchstone we posses, it must be the test whereunto we submit the faith knaves imperiously insist that we exhibit for objects which either lack reality or are so prodigiously vile in themselves to aspire our loathing...Well now, Juliette, the very first thing this rational faculty essays is, as you sense, to assign an essential difference that distinguishes the thing which presents its appearance to the perceiver from the thing which the perceiver perceives...If these perceptions propose object to us, but do not advise us of their real abscence, that is what we call imagination, and this imagination is the true cause of all our errors. Now, the most abundant source of errors lies in our ascribing an independent existence to the objects of these inner perceptions and, more, in our supposing they that exist outside of ourselves and separately just as we conceive of them as separate from one another. To make myself clear to you, upon this separate idea, upon this idea born of the object which makes its appearance before the perceiver, I'll bestow the term objective idea in order to distinguish it from the impression the object generates to the perceiver, which I shall call the real idea. It is of utmost importance that these two varieties of existence not to be confused; merely neglect to characterize these distinctions, and the way is open to boundless error...Before going farther, let us here observe that nothing is commoner than to make the grave mistake of indentifying the real existence of bodies that are external to us with the objective existence of the perceptions that are inside our minds..." (Marquis de Sade, Juliette - Madame Delbene speaking to Juliette) 
Also, he speaks a lot about the irrationality of sacrificing self-interest for others. (though of course Rand tones it down and respects the liberty of others), and he's adamant about atheism. I noticed some of the style is similar as well, such as characters in the stories going off on long philosophical diatribes. RJII 18:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And let's not forget that Rand is a BDSM favorite. Alienus 10:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Marquis de Sade

message: I updated the category listings for the article. I alphabetized the list, which I presume is non-controversial. I also removed four categories. Since the categories for the article have been a subject of some controversy recently, I wanted to explain my reasoning for each deletion:
*Women's rights activists - This category is described as "for activists whose primary issue is the extension of or the restriction of women's rights." This was not a primary issue for Rand.
*Russian novelists - The other listings in this category appear to be authors who wrote in the Russian language. Although she grew up in Russia, Rand's novels were all written in English.
*Russian philosophers - Same basic issue as with the novelists.
*Social justice - This category is related to left-wing ideas that Rand did not support, including "redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual, community and societal good." (As stated in the article on social justice, which is described as the "main article for this category.")
I did a quick check to see if there were any obvious categories to add, but nothing jumped out at me. However, I didn't do anything close to a comprehensive search, so there may well be other applicable categories out there. -- RL0919 04:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category Listings 

message: OK, I'm on a tear tonight. While updating the categories, I noticed the external links had gotten a bit messy, so I did a cleanup. As with the category cleanup, some of the changes were non-controversial, such as adding making the punctuation more consistent and alphabetizing some of the lists. But I also made a few changes that deserve a little more explanation:
* I changed the wording of some of the items to remove POV material. The most egregious example was a link described as "Extensive list of critical essays that Objectivists must answer". Now, if that had been the title on the linked page, that would be one thing. But that wasn't the case, so I changed the link text to match what the page itself claimed to be (which was much more neutral, even though the page itself is a list of critical articles).
* There was a duplicate of Chris Wolf's "What's Wrong with Objectivism" site, so I deleted one and reworded the link slightly to match the title on the site itself. I want to be clear that did not delete the link entirely, in case anyone notices one of the two missing and doesn't notice its renamed twin.
* Similarly, the Objectivism Online wiki was linked twice, once in the description of its parent site and once as a separate listing. I kept the former.
* A few items appeared to be in inappropriate categories. For example, a critical article was listed in the regular articles list, even though there is a separate list for criticism. So I moved those items. Again, these were not deleted, just moved.
Finally, a special note: I added a link that goes to a website I operate (the Objectivism Reference Center, specifically the section on criticism of Rand). I don't typically go around adding links to my own site, but the page in question was directly relevant to one of the lists, and a similar page from another site was already listed. There are also some other links to my site, which I did not add. They were already there. -- RL0919 05:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links Update