From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Sep 04 2001 - 08:15:21 MDT
On Monday, September 03, 2001 11:20 PM Joe Dees joedees@addall.com wrote:
> If you wanna become familiar with Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy and
> cannot fins a copy of ATLAS SHRUGGED or THE FOUNTAINHEAD, read
> Anton Szander levay, who ripped off her version of ethical egoism as a
> framework for his books on satanism (or setianism).
Care to elaborate on that?
It's been a long time since I read some of his stuff and found his version
of egoism to skirt a little too closely with the mainstream view of it as
basically trampling on others. He sort of seems to me to slip into egoism
of the Nietzschean sort -- worship your feelings. Don't you think he more
likely got this from Nietzsche and, perhaps, Crowley?
Rand definitely was influenced by Nietzsche, but she did "Aristoteleanize"
this, especially after _The Fountainhead_.
If anyone's interested in Rand and Objectivism, I recommend starting NOT
with her novels, BUT with _The Virtue of Selfishness_, a collection of
essays by her and Nathaniel Branden on ethics. After that, read perhaps
_Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_ and her other nonfiction.
Starting with her (and her circle's) nonfiction means a lot less reading, if
nothing else.:)
Also, of note is Thomas Gramstad's "POP Culture" web site at
http://www.ifi.uio.no/~thomas/po/articles.html
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
Check out "Dialectical Objectivism" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Dialecti.html
"... the goal for all art... is to explain to the artist himself and to
those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence.
To explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or if
not to explain, at least to pose the question." - Andrey Tarkovsky
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