From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 16:31:54 MDT
Olga Bourlin wrote:
>
> Max, why do you presume I know nothing of Ayn's background? I not only know
> it, I can give you examples of 100s of my relatives who went through the
> whole leaving-Russia-after-the-Revolution routine. I am a Russian immigrant
> myself (although, admittedly, I went along for the ride on the tail end and
> did not suffer the hardships faced by my older relatives).
I think the point is studiously being missed. Rand is admired
by many of us because she devoted her life to making sense of
the world from a rational, individualist perspective and
succeeded to a quite exraordinary degree. She did this from
scratch in an age where the rational was judged to have nothing
to do with ethics or morality and politics were largely
collectivist. She did it when the height of morality was worn
sloagans about altruism vs. selfishness and most people had
repeated it too many times to even think at all about what it
meant. She projected in her novels, writings and other
activities an entirely different worldview than was predominant
and showed how the pieces worked together to an extraordinary
degree. Despite her failings (far less of them than alluded to
here) and where I find her philosophy, and more specifically -
many of her current followers, lacking, I owe here an incredible
debt of graditude for striving for and accomplishing as much as
she did.
When I first read her work I was 23 years old and totally
"idealistic" but in an early-post hippie, post Vietname sort of
way. I found and read the Fountainhead. It was a revelation to
me that there was a quite different way to see the world around
me and especially the value of reason, acheivement, integrity,
independence, rational selfishness and so on. It started a lot
of changes in me and much exploration of the range of human
philosophy and ethics.
She was a great rarity, an integrator of human philosphy who
attempted to create a unified metaphysics, epistemology, ethics
(and thus politics) and aesthetics. And she did this in order
to capture, project and hopefully enable the type of human
beings and human interactions she envisioned. Whatever you may
think of her efforts and results, this is greatness of a type
rarely seen. She certainly belongs on the list of recommended
authors in my view.
- samantha
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