SparkyMcSparky

Will look it up. Martin Cruz Smith has a character (Arkady Renko) who stars in a handful of books. He is so self-destructive, yet also intelligent and humorous that you cannot help but feel compelled by him.

NightsWatch

I don't want to argue or debate, but since this was personally addressed to me, I just wanted to say that my post wasn't about her ethics or philosophy.

Admittedly, I'm not much of a philosopher so when I think (on a superficial level) about what she stood for, I can see some merits but I also can't accept them 100%. My problem with her started as a reader. I don't like the superior tone or feeling condescended to while I'm trying to enjoy fiction; I approached The Foundtainhead as someone who wanted to read a good story, not to be lectured at. It's just a personal quirk, rightly or wrongly, but I react very badly when someone tries to tell me what to think. Always have. The thing is, I actually like knowing what other people think, but as soon as you insult my intelligence or try to coerce me to your way of thinking, it's over. This quirk of mine is probably a big reason I never got sucked into a religion.

The hypocrisy comment comes from stuff I've read/heard/seen about her personal life.

MythOfSisyphus

No, I haven't. Her fiction was so puerile that I never bothered to read anything else. To be honest I'm a fan of real philosophy, not the sophomoric ravings of Rand. Again, no offense to fans! I really hate to bag on her any more since this isn't a philosophy forum but a recovery forum! If you find something useful, use it! Guess that applies to all of life, not just recovery.

samseb5351

The only thing I have heard about Rand is in one of Michael Shermer's books either "the believing Brain" or "Why people believe weird things". Shermer is fairly high profile person in the skeptical community and he is also a Libertarian, from what I remember He points out how as a young man he almost worshipped Rand and got kind hooked into to dogmatic ideas about the Rand philosophy.

trachemys

Well, I'd hate to be around when you intend offense!

dwtbd

Well as a person she was quite the polarizing character.

Objectivism takes existence, consciouness and identity and runs from there, a lot of what she said is hard to refute(the test of real-ness).

Not sure why 'fans' would/could take offense from someone's opinion(founded?) , unless of course they were cultists.

To those who don't understand no explanation is possible, and to those who do none is necessary , is that what you mean ?

alphaomega

In 1982, Rand died of cancer brought on by her excessive smoking habit. Although not exactly popular in her lifetime, she became a massive figure in the ’80s and ’90s among the very rich and a certain brand of libertarian. One of the things she was most admired for was the way she stuck to her principles throughout her life . . . or so it seemed. In 2011, it was revealed that Rand had spent the last eight years of her life receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits. At the time of her death, her estate was valued at $500,000 (around $1.2 million in today’s money), suggesting her decision was motivated less by rationality than by the sort of parasitic greed she’d always claimed to despise.

What’s most interesting about all this is how Rand and her followers conspired to keep this fact a secret, even as they preached total self-reliance. Other famous libertarians, like Isabel Paterson, stuck by their guns to the bitter end, dying in poverty rather than take Social Security. But not Rand. When the time came, she betrayed everything she stood for and kept this betrayal quiet for nearly a decade.

dwtbd

I'm no accountant but her estate was probably worth more than that, given copyright laws and the number of book sales passed her death.
You didn't mentioned her amphetamine use.

trachemys

If she paid the money in to Social Security and Medicare(as we are all forced to), it was her money. Why wouldn't she welcome it back?

dwtbd

My take on Rand is that she was certainly of a singular mind, her technical philosophy gets , I think, disparaged and or ignored by academia, and probably from her critisism of Kant.

I think she was a genius , but I don't agree with 'everything' the woman ever said. At the same time I try and separate ad hominen argruements from my understanding of her technical philo. By all accounts she was perhaps a little 'kooky'.

She did a few interviews with Phil Donahue that are easily accessible on the interwebs.

I take no offense of what anyone thinks of her, and I don't mean to give any, s'ok?

Besides this all Trach's fault! He started it! All I did was mentioned a 'literary scene' . That cultist knew which one !

dwtbd

was valued at $500,000 (around $1.2 million in today’s money),

Ok One more thought, the value depreciation of the currency in nominal dollars from 82 to today, one of the biggest players in that was Greenspan a Rand devotee in the 60's.

trachemys

Talk about getting thrown under the bus! Thanks, dw.

MythOfSisyphus

Hahaha! Well, I don't care if I offend Rand...she's dead! But I genuinely don't wnat to offend anyone that finds merit in her writings. To me she had a very immature and not very evolved view of philosophy and the purpose of civilization. I probably did agree with some of her ideas when I was in high school but I saw through them when I got older.

At any rate I'm a bit more interested in ontology and epistemology anyways. Where ethics are concerned I'm an existentialist and a secular humanist but that's probably plain from my screen name.