Explain why she's so terrible

explain why she's so terrible
"fedora" is not a valid answer

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plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/
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Reality isn't objective

her books aren't very well written
i can live with having a philosophy crammed down my throat if it's an entertaining read, but her books are bit boring

Well, that's one opinion....

The fundamental mistake is that she thinks the individual is the smallest unit of society.

She's wrong. The smallest, indivisible unit of society is the relationship between two individuals. This ugly mistake goes on to distort her every thought.

I thought atlas shrugged was all right as far as writing, but the fountainhead is very poor.

Simplified, to the point of distortion and misunderstanding, Nietzsche and Aristotle, whom she claims are her primary influences. Same with Kant, whom she claims is her primary antagonist. Prose is unpleasant. Ideas are banal. Not a literary objection, but her personal life was a mess and she positioned herself as a cult leader. Arguably responsible for the banking crisis of 2008 (Greenspan was one of her devoted acolytes.)

And:
Even if reality were objective, calling your philosophy "objectivism" makes you sound like an idiot. Even the logical positivists called their movement "logical positivism" and not "Truth-Correctness."

A philosophy that seems to contradict itself fundamentally on many levels and falls apart under scrutiny

No sense of prose or flow

I always took "objectivism" to mean to have objective in your life

She's like every other analytic philosopher in that she made a mistake with her premises in order to arrive at the conclusion she already believed in.

It isn't. plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/

she's the socioeconomic equivalent of a creationist: a shill for the US establishment who's doctrine is believed before being read, despite being a massive step backwards in subject matter.

She doesn't understand economics or philosophy, and her views on it are based on mostly aesthetic considerations, but with the pretense of objectivity.

wtf i can kill people now

Libertarians are the only ideology that meme'd their way to prominence. Mises and his followers meme'd their own economic school into existence and Ayn Rand meme'd them their own ethical philosophy. Nobody would take them seriously if it wasn't for their cultish secret societies.

wtf I hate reality now

...

This. Libertarianism is a fraudulent school of thought whose persistent claims are propagated to dupe white working people into doing the bidding of a small group of parasitical speculators. Rands philosophy makes sense to this small group, as it typifies their sense of morality and ensures their demands are given a popular appeal, but for us who do not reside on Mt. Olympus it should be recognized as the ruse that it is.

Really? I've only read Fountainhead, but usually what I hear is Fountainhead is good (I thought it was like a 6 or 7) and AS is mostly an excuse for her to rant about her philosophy.

>"fedora" is not a valid answer
We see here how ideology robs us of the language that is needed to rebel against it and forces us to criticize it on it's own terms.

>sensible_chuckle.jpg

Instead of realizing that all moral philosophies are based in empty concepts & that they ultimately harm the individual by confining them to a tiny mental framework, she decided that the best course of action for the individual was to follow a moral philosophy based on the individual. She effectively turns the individual into an abstraction- some goal that all people must strive for, some greater cause, a higher power that we all must base our virtues in. But the individual already works toward the individual's own goals, even when they may behave irrationally. So why must the individual follow themselves as an abstraction in order to follow their own goals? Essentially, politics; rather than providing an interesting examination of the individual and society, Ayn Rand shapes a philosophy of individualism and twists it for her own political ends, which are unsurprising: anti-altruistic liberal capitalism firmly rooted in false convictions of objectivity.

But why objectivity? Surely, objective facts are all tainted by individual perception. Objectivity has ultimately nothing to do with the individual, and yet it holds such a prominent place in her philosophy. Same thing with altruism. Supposedly altruism is against an individual's goals. How so? Can an individual not act in love of all other individuals and feel happy themselves for doing this? Can an individual not find pleasure in charity, in mutual aid, the bettering of his fellow men? From Rand's perspective, love must follow certain laws and regulations. An individual must only love another individual if they know that individual on a personal level. To her, love, a subjective feeling, no different from happiness, confusion, angst, etc. amounts to a business relationship rather than a pathological impulse. Do you happen to feel love in a way that she personally deems "incorrect"? No bother, she'll just redefine "love", and say that your genuine feeling of love is not love. Her philosophy amounts to a childish stereotype of itself, and as such is laughable in its earnestness of its own faults. There is no paragraph large enough that can explain all of the reasons why she is so terrible- as a human being, as a philosopher, as a writer- and as such the only adequate response I can muster is this: check the digits

I meant as far as prose. It seems her prose improved by the time she wrote atlas shrugged, but I would say that I enjoyed what fountainhead had to say more than Atlas Shrugged.

I got a lot from her that she thinks people give out "love" too easily and it cheapens it to almost meaning nothing. If you "love everyone," then that is the standard at which you see all people while also love being the highest gratitude one can aspire from someone. Where do you go from there? Nowhere really. All people at that point owe anyone anything and everyone is expected of something you need them to aspire to. Love shouldn't be free, and that is what she means.

you need to read the bible

>on it's own terms.
>it's own
>it's
FUCKING MISOGYNIST SEXIST SCUM, DIE IN PRIVILEGEFIRE YOU PROBLEMATIC SHITLORD

How come?

This is one of the most retarded arguments against the idea of universal love, simply because it tries to "disprove" an emotional and subjective truth with logic, which is simply not sound enough to do anything but make a sensible thinker laugh his ass off.

I can destroy this argument simply by telling you that there are multiple ways to love a person, and infinite levels of love. The love for you mother is different from the love for you father, because even if you love them the same, you do it for different causes and it yields different responses in your own self.

So loving everyone is not going to somehow decrease the value of such love simply because in the end it's an emotional response with almost infinite nuances and possibilities that would have to be explored before claiming that.

But in what way could you prove that there are infinite levels of love?

Libertarianism, from an economic standpoint, is based on radical subjectivism. It's not surprising, therefore, that she moves goalposts to suit her immediate interests, whatever they may be.

She is attacking agapic love, a Christian concept of love for humanity, like a lot of egoist thinkers. This love is not arbitrarily dispersed, nor is it strictly limited to an altruistic sense, but it's goal is to leave posterity with a better world than that which you inherited, to think with diminishing imperfectability, progress (although that has become a bad word). If man adheres to a moral code that stresses the common good, how will he then act out of self interest? You can supplement any rational to justify egoism you like, but keep in mind her purpose is to efface Christian morality, like Nietzsche and others. She has much in common with Adam Smiths thought in this way. I read somewhere Margret Thatcher carried Atlas Shrugged and The Wealth of Nations around in her purse wherever she went. It must have been a big bag.

>this is one of the most retarded arguments against the idea of universal love, simply because it tries to "disprove" an emotional and subjective truth with logic

I commend your logic and agree with your conclusion, but this is why context in argument matters

repetitive awful prose and not enough rape scenes to make up for it. she just hated trees not communism.

What about Heinlein? His books get a lot of shit here, but I always thought that his take on conservativism/libertarianism is less stupid than Rand's because his novels were at least more entertaining.

Her writing was bad, read it and it becomes all too clear she only ever came into relevance as a propaganda poster child of the cold war.

The best part is she died while clinging to life via the social safety nets she so condemned.

Because Ayn Rand's argument for objectivism lacks the necessary components to be considered to be a valid argument, and even if one is personally an objectivist there are much better arguments laid out by much less recognized writers.

Where Ayn Rand shines is that while she fails to make a valid, and thus cogent, argument she successfully spins that incomplete argument into a narrative which makes it easily consumable by large masses of people, which is something lost on most thinkers.

>But in what way could you prove that there are infinite levels of love?

Why would I need to "prove" it to anyone else besides myself? The only way to attempt a logical proof would be to appeal to the idea of the near-infinity of possible connections which exist within ourselves (think about Borge's library of babel applied to the connections our brain can make between any two "data" in our consciousness). Infinite possible connections would mean infinite "modes" our love could take in our own souls, thus "proving" the Infinity of Love. I would have to expand this argument a lot to make it legitimate, but that's how I think about and feel Love.

>but this is why context in argument matters

I don't understand, are you saying I missed the context? I wasn't attacking any particular author mind you, just the argument of the "lost value" of universal love.

>explain why she's so terrible
died on welfare

Rand is by Rand's own parameters without merit

We begin with what is near. Loving universally does not mean that you do not love your family or friends. When one applies universal love the prime beneficiaries are those close by to receive it.

Whoever loves others will be loved by others and whoever hates others will be hated.

You might say, "oh but people are mischevious, cunning, conniving, they steal from their neighbor, they murder their enemies." But these problems do not arise from mutual love, rather from the lack of it.

Some further reading:

> It is asked, "It may be a good thing, but can it be of any use?" Mozi replied: If it were not useful then even I would disapprove of it. But how can there be anything that is good but not useful? Let us consider the matter from both sides. Suppose there are two men. Let one of them hold to partiality and the other to universality. Then the advocate of partiality would say to himself, how can I take care of my friend as I do of myself, how can I take care of his parents as my own? Therefore when he finds his friend hungry he would not feed him, and when he finds him cold he would not clothe him. In his illness he would not minister to him, and when he is dead he would not bury him. Such is the word and such is the deed of the advocate of partiality. The advocate of universality is quite unlike this both in word and in deed. He would say to himself, I have heard that to be a superior man one should take care of his friend as he does of himself, and take care of his friend's parents as his own. Therefore when he finds his friend hungry he would feed him, and when he finds him cold he would clothe him. In his sickness he would serve him, and when he is dead he would bury him. Such is the word and such is the deed of the advocate of universality. These two persons then are opposed to each other in word and also in deed. Suppose they are sincere in word and decisive in deed so that their word and deed are made to agree like the two parts of a tally, and that there is no word but what is realized in deed, then let us consider further: Suppose a war is on, and one is in armour and helmet ready to join the force, life and death are not predictable. Or suppose one is commissioned a deputy by the ruler to such far countries like Ba, Yue, Qi, and Jing, and the arrival and return are quite uncertain. Now (under such circumstances) let us inquire upon whom would one lay the trust of one's family and parents. Would it be upon the universal friend or upon the partial friend? It seems to me, on occasions like these, there are no fools in the world. Even if he is a person who objects to universal love, he will lay the trust upon the universal friend all the same. This is verbal objection to the principle but actual selection by it - this is self-contradiction between one's word and deed. It is incomprehensible, then, why people should object to universal love when they hear it.

>why would I need to prove it to anyone but myself?

Because you told me you could prove what I said wrong by just saying that sentence.

>Times 100 best books of the 20th century
>She's on there fucking twice
You can't JUST this enough

oooh its like warm treacle down my urethra, i love it

*mic drop*

I told you that argument was wrong because by definition it cannot be taken seriously. The "meaning" of love is decided by whomsoever loves, so saying it would necessarily "lose meaning" just by existing in a greater quantity is preposterous. It's trying to put the value of subjective things like "love" in the same level as that of objective things like "money". Applying that logic is trying to apply economics 101 to the matters of the soul, which is just plain misguided.

The infinite levels of love are observable in oneself. Since "love" is a complex structured emotion, it has multiple variables influencing it. One of the main "variables" is the meaning we ourselves give to that emotion, and since I think it can be agreed that subjective meaning can be as limitless as the existing possibilities for both experience and the interconnection (relationship) between different experiences, the possible "meanings" or "interpretations" of one's Love for another is thus at least humongous. It follows that different interpretations of Love lead to different ways of experiencing it, thus concluding there are almost infinite ways of loving someone.

I don't know I explained it well, but that's what I tried to say in my last post. There are other arguments I can think of, but this is the one that makes the most sense to me.

>Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to her friend

>famous woman professional dissing other famous women professionals
like clockwork

>my secret desire to have boned her back in the 30's

>famous woman professional dissing other famous women professionals
that explains Nabokov

>IT WAS ALL VERA
fuck this meme

His work is pro-fascist (in the non-hyberbolic send)

>agapic love
You just read Gaddis didn't you?

>His work is pro-fascist (in the non-hyberbolic send)
Yeah, although while Starship Troopers is full on fascist, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress flerts more with anarcho-libertarianism. It's actually interesting how he makes fun of conservative values such the nuclear family, and manages to be very anti-racist and even anti-mysogeny to a point, while remaining very trye to his right-wing beliefs.

>implying CS Lewis is being drowned out by Gaddis posters
>implying Plato is being drowned out by them
no, fuck you, i'm drawing a line here. first you fucks don't learn greek to read Plato, and then you skip over basic children's Christianity to read Rand, adn i was fucking fine with that, but you're not memeing Gaddis into agape, you soulless fucks. i'll allow you Gaddis is life Gaddis is love post but i goddamn expect you to mean eros by it.

There's literature on agapic love that predates Gaddis by millennia

Yeah you never see men dissing other men.

More like serious artist trashing soap opera writing + the world's worst reading of Adam Smtih

>Supposedly altruism is against an individual's goals. How so?
Ayy opposed working against your own interest aka self-sacrifice. Whether something good would follow to some other person was irrelevant.
Helping someone or giving to a charity which is in your own self interest is completely moral according to her.
Above all she despised the concept that the sacrifice itself was something moral and that if you didn't sacrifice you were immoral person.

>I read somewhere Margret Thatcher carried Atlas Shrugged and The Wealth of Nations around in her purse wherever she went. It must have been a big bag.
I also heard she carried road to serfdom around, or maybe people just like to put books they dislike in her bag.

I'm surprised none of the rumours are Churchill but then nobody reads Churchill because it might remind them of things he said and Thatcher liked.

>mfw bait actually worked
lmao I love Veeky Forums. People here still get upset with things that in most other edgy board's jaded anons would ignore. You can almost take discussions here seriously

She's a woman

That's because men operate by meeting, punching each other, and then having a drink;
while women talk behind the back, scheme, and organize lifelong inquisitions.