Ayn Rand destroys Socialist philosophy

Lol, dismisses opinion, offers only opinion. Got it.

 

My reading of Rand is admittedly remote in time, and haven't read her comments on Nietzsche, but IMO her notion of altruism parallels Nietzche's thought in several of his works. If one had asked Sartre about the influence of Heidegger and Husserl in his work, he would likely bristle too (maybe did, I don't read much Sartre), and Heidegger certainly bristled the other way... but the similarities remain nonetheless, and IMO this is analogous to Rand/Nietzsche.

Admittedly, I just want more people to read the Genealogy, which I believe informs many aspects of our current culture and politics

 

Fact: I did not cite to the Birth of Tragedy.
Fact: The Birth of Tragedy is an aesthetic, not an ethics, so your statement about it is incorrect.
Fact: The Genealogy is also not an ethical work per se, but far closer than the Birth of Tragedy.

 

1. Non sequitur. 2. Sure, just like the contraptions built while playing this game are "working as intended."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_(game)

 

Fact: I stated that the similarities between the two philosophers are greatly over-exaggerated.
Fact: As much as you call this an opinion, it is an opinion shared by Rand and her students.
Fact: Rand regarded all of the disciplines of philosophy to be intertwined. She did not see aesthetics and ethics as separate and independent magistrates.
Fact: Nietzche saw no rational basis for ethics. Rand viewed ethics as purely rational.

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2017-spring/ayn-rand-contra-nietzsche/
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/nietzsche,_friedrich.html

 

None of that is relevant, in the least, not the will to power, the ubermensch, general metaphysics, nor any other of Nietzsche's thought (among the literal FIELD FULL of straw men in the video) NOT the subject of the Genealogy, which is what I claimed as the underpinnings of Rand's thought, admittedly a poor choice of words, I should have simply said a BETTER iteration of what Rand was positing, but didn't want to stir up what has now been stirred up:

"And when the lambs say among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and he who least resembles a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—should he not be good?' then there is nothing to carp with in this ideal's establishment, though the birds of prey may regard it a little mockingly, and maybe say to themselves, 'We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.'"
—Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment

"Now there is one word—a single word—which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand—the word: “Why?” Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it—and, ladies and gentlemen, in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given."

Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_New_Intellectual

Did I EVER post that Nietzsche "influenced" Rand? that she was a student of Nietzsche or that she was a Nietzschean? No.

The parallel between Nietzsche's thought in the Genealogy and Rand's thinking on altruism, a fundamental pillar of her thinking (and there are NUMEROUS other better examples of the parallel I'm not going to waste time digging up) is unmistakable.

IMO Nietzsche does a far better job, agree with his thought or not, which is one reason he is part of the academic philosophical canon to this day and Rand is -not-.

 

500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged were sold in 2009, fifty years after it was published. 7 million copies have now been sold since it was first released. It ranks #3,040 on Amazon's all-time list, 150th on Amazon's "classic literature" list. Perhaps in the liberal circles you travel in, no one has ever read it, but in the real world, lots of people have. Get out of your bubble and go visit the real world.

https://ari.aynrand.org/media-center/press-releases/2010/01/21/atlas-shrugged-sets-a-new-record

 

Those sales and rankings are thanks in no small part to her cult, which is well-known for buying these products in mass in order to inflate the numbers . . . a tactic they've borrowed from L. Ron Hubbard's fans. Can you link to the lists you've mentioned?

I see the value in her non-fiction work, and Anthem is okay. Most of her fiction, however (especially Atlas Shrugged) is complete garbage. All of the characters are completely flat, cartoonish cardboard figures, and the antagonists are somehow even flatter and more cartoonish than the protagonists. There's no accounting for tastes -- look at the sales of Fifty Shades of Grey -- but there is one rule in good fiction that stands out among the rest: show, don't tell. Don't tell me a character is bad; show me through his actions. Don't tell me another character or his philosophy is good. Show it. I can't think of any other novelist in history that has subverted this basic concept as badly as Rand -- and, once again, primarily in Atlas Shrugged. The John Galt monologue is one of the worst pieces of novel writing to ever reach publication. A multi-hour, 50+ page completely uninterrupted monologue that even film makers have had to truncate out of fear of boring their audiences to death. Oh, you want to know the main thesis of the novel? Here, let me beat you over the head with it until your eyes bleed -- I'm sure I can write badly enough to do so with all the subtlety of a silverback gorilla with Parkinson's performing a prostate exam. She should have stuck to essays if she wanted to lecture.

And I'm saying this as a libertarian. It seems like most of my fellow libertarians have Atlas Shrugged on their top ten list. I can't see the appeal.

 

From the BBC Magazine: "Rand's popularity is not confined to the US, however, with healthy book sales in the UK, India, Australia, Italy and South Africa."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19280545

Apparently the people you know are woefully ignorant and parochial.