Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Objectivist Roundup October

A whole lot of not a lot happening in Objectivism right now. Neil Parille rounds it up:

1.         Objectivist philosopher Tara Smith recently published Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System.  Here is an interview with Smith
2.         The Ayn Rand Institute has an extensive You Tube channel.  For those of you who have trouble sleeping, here are some videos from previous Objectivism Conferences.

3.         Dustin Byrd recently published A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Religion: The Gospel According to John Galt.  The book is expensive ($85) but there is a generous preview available on Amazon.
- Neil Parille

6 comments:

Gordon Burkowski said...

I'm not about to spend $85 on Dustin Byrd's book, but the lengthy excerpts at Amazon certainly suggest that it is well worth reading. As one example, he deals with the great influence that Friedrich Nietzsche had upon Rand's thinking and (above all) on her emotional responses.

Objectivists tend to play down the Nietzschean elements in Rand's books; and it's certainly true that her formal philosophy abandons his appeals to domination and non-rational exercise of will. At the emotional level, however, her novels are suffused with his contempt for "the herd": the notion that most people are beneath notice, and, in fact, only minimally qualified to be regarded as human at all. Rand's novels convey a disgust for the sordid and the ordinary that reminds one of Jonathan Swift at his worst.

It's also useful to have a book which tracks Rand's comments on religion in general and her references to the Bible in particular. There are a surprising number of such references in Atlas Shrugged, all of them contemptuous and many of them utterly distorted. Note Galt's snide reference to people who dream of rivers filled with milk and coffee, and wine that springs from rocks at their command.
I guess that people like Paul Ryan didn't notice that one.

Anonymous said...

I've never quite understood the pricing of books.

Who would pay $85 for the book? And the price is the same for the kindle version. I'd buy the kindle version if it were $10 and I assume others would as well.

-Neil Parille

Gordon Burkowski said...

"I've never quite understood the pricing of books."

This looks like library pricing to me. Learned journals charge libraries far higher than the individual rate for a subscription. So maybe libraries are where Lexington Books expects to sell most copies of this book.

Anonymous said...

Let's not be too hard on AR.

She asked the right questions even if she didn't always come up the right answers.

Could we have Ayn Rand Contra without Ayn Rand?

Hang in there Mr. Nyquist!


Anonymous said...

"She asked the right questions even if she didn't always come up the right answers."

In the immortal words of Rowdy Roddy Piper, "Just when you think you know the answers, I come along and change the questions."

-Neil Parille

Eric said...

Ayn Rand was a jerk. There, just saved you all 85 bucks.