Is it wrong to like Ayn Rand?

Capitalism and self-interest above all? Not everyone agrees with her philosophy.

Not at all.

She was a writer with a particular point of view – largely based on her background and growing up in Communist Russia.

Her positions are appealing to the right wing in the US because they tend to be dismissive of social welfare except for the rich. So she gets a lot of criticism from the left because of her contempt for the working class.

On the other hand, she makes some good points about individual autonomy – particularly in The Fountainhead.

Bottom line: she is a writer with a point of view. Some folks buy it, some folks don’t.

She was a fierce atheist and hated Reagan, which is why it’s funny that she is held up on high by many modern Republicans.

It is my understanding that Objectivism doesn’t hold up to rigorous philosophical scrutiny and modern academics tend to agree that it’s a philosophy without merit. So to answer your question, it’s not morally wrong to like Rand, but it’s foolish. Acting like a selfish prick can be morally wrong though, so be careful (if living a moral life is important to you that is).

Here’s a reasonable article explaining the philosophical problems with Objectivism.

I didn’t like her book Atlas Shrugged.

Like everyone in this world she had the freedom to write her thoughts and views and put it out there, and thus the general public had their right to read it,agree or not and discuss it.

Maybe in her time (born in 1925 ) she had first impressions of growing up in Russia a very impressionable time that obviously stayed with her and thus her writing is affected by that.

We have grown up in freedom and therefore would not agree with that lifestyle if we were subjected to it after experiencing freedom here.

So looking through the lens of our lives one determines what is right for one self and find it hard to view it otherwise unless one places themselves in the mindset that she grew up in.

Also note that when her book was published in 1957 communism was a viable theory for many people so then she would write this to get other countries to follow suit as well.

Basically she jumped on a band wagon at the time and published her ideas on it.

To answer your question to whether its wrong to like Ann Rand , No its not wrong to like a thinker but you don’t have to agree on all of her ideas while on others its food for thought.

^^^^ Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in Tsarist Russia. Her family was well-off and suffered from confiscation when the Bolsheviks took power. Being Jewish, she was alos suject to discriination and pogroms.

But much of her philosophy is lacking. There is little consideration for children as children. And, she considered women as distinctly inferior to her Superior Man.

@zenvelo sorry correct it was in 1925 that she defected to America, I stand corrected.
She passed away in 1982 in her NYC apartment.
Surely she had witnessed the views on her ideas and realized that perhaps she was wrong in proposing Communism? Would like to had seen an interview with her in the 1980’s.

I personally liked Atlas Shrugged. What I find a bit disconcerting, though, is that her description of how the government continually pushed rules to take from the rich is playing out in today’s world. In the book, the “looters” held control by using people’s feelings against them. They tried shaming anyone that didn’t agree with them blindly. How often do we see that playing out in today’s world? Even on these pages? If you say you support Trump, for example, you are branded a racist, a xenophobe, a loser…all without any explanation of where any of those description may apply to you. It is done in an effort to silence you and get you to capitulate to the desired viewpoint. In the book, the government was self-serving and dysfunctional. Gee, that looks amazingly like today’s US federal government and most of the state governments. The government wants to control production and profit and tell the businesses how much money they have to pay their employees and how much they can charge for their goods/services. Sounds amazingly like the New Green Deal to me.
All in all, I see many similarities with the real world, but none of those similarities ended well in the book.

@seawulf575 “All in all, I see many similarities with the real world, but none of those similarities ended well in the book.”

You do realize that book is fiction, right?

For example, I wouldn’t use the “Harry Potter” novels to guide my political thinking.

Yes, @gorillapaws I do know the book is fiction. Which makes it even more disturbing. She captured the progressive mindset to a T. And you make a gross assumption that I am using the book to guide my political thinking. Where did I say that? But reading a book of fiction and seeing similarities with the real world are not the same thing as guiding political thinking.
Interestingly, though, I notice your citation earlier. It starts with assumptions. It assumes Rand is wrong and Kant is right, for example, and they use Kant’s work to prove it. ??? Funny, I found an equally bogus page that did the exact same thing, except starting with the idea that Rand is right and Kant is wrong and using Rand’s works to prove it. In other words, you let someone that wrote an opinion piece that is heavily biased guide your political thinking, right?

@seawulf575 ” It assumes Rand is wrong and Kant is right, for example, and they use Kant’s work to prove it.”

It doesn’t assume that Rand is wrong. It starts from a common baseline of established metaphysics and then shows why Rand contradicts herself. If every mathematical dissertation had to begin by proving all prior postulates, it would all be unworkable. There is a certain baseline understanding of metaphysics that is required to understand the arguments put forward in the article I referenced. The author is assuming the reader has that knowledge.

I wouldn’t have the audacity to walk into an intermediate particle physics discussion (as someone with only a rudimentary understanding of the subject) where all of the participants have a common, baseline level of understanding of the science and then exclaim “Ah ha! you’re assuming all of this other stuff is true, therefore this other theory that contradicts all of this established knowledge without argument or proof could be just as right as you!”

@gorillapaws When you read the opening couple paragraphs of the article, it spends those words ridiculing Rand. The author starts assuming Rand is wrong and then uses someone else’s philosophy to act as proof she is. They each have philosophies which are really nothing more than an outlook on life and what the philosopher believes. To try taking one opinion and say that is what makes another wrong is effete snobbery. Which was, by the way, another of the tools the “looters” used in Atlas Shrugged.

@seawulf575 If you went into a room with 100 engineers and they all laughed at the structural integrity of a bridge you proposed, would you build it? drive your family across it?

Philosophy is every bit as rigorous as engineering—actually moreso, because Philosophers steel man the arguments they’re disagreeing with. I can assure you that there is a good reason Objectivism is considered something to laugh at by experts, just as a perpetual motion machine is to a physicist. You could call a Physicist a snob for laughing at someone’s perpetual motion machine, but that doesn’t make the machine any less of a failure.

“They each have philosophies which are really nothing more than an outlook on life and what the philosopher believes.”

That’s not what Philosophy is.

Here’s an example of Godel’s Ontological proof.

Philosophy isn’t just people sharing their “outlook on life.” That’s like describing engineering as people playing with Legos.

You can like Ayn Rand all you want, but if you admire her, people will assume you are as big of a jerk as she was.

https://committingsociology.com/2017/12/11/ayn-rand-really-does-suck/

I tend to think people who like the writings of Ayn Rand tend to have something severely off in their thinking and/or political alignments.

The article @Kardamom linked above seems like a good overview. If someone needs more discussion to understand, I’m back to my first impression.

What’s wrong with greed & selfishness if I know how to make it work for ME? I can always defend the process through conflating it with rugged individualism. Meanwhile, what is the one logical defense against my greed and selfishness regarding those not so astute at making it work for themselves. Which entity should it fall upon to defend the vulnerable from the selfish & greedy? Perhaps the chamber of commerce? Whose interests are served when the notion of government as inept and stifling is pushed by those walking away with all the money? And finally, what should one think of those dupes so dim that they buy the line of the “winners” picking their very pockets.

Rand as a person was not the greatest if you read into her personal life. Some of her writing strikes a chord with a lot of people and for good reasons. Atlas as a story was pretty crappy IMO. I agreed with some of the politics but not all of it. What the left hate her for is apparently spreading a philosophy of “selfishness” but I did not get that out of her writing at all.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I didn’t get that either. What I got was personal drive and responsibility against those who want stuff they don’t have to earn. Because if you look at who some of the biggest “looters” were, they were wealthy industrialists that were extremely selfish, yet she painted them as the villains.

@seawulf575 “those who want stuff they don’t have to earn.”

You mean like children born to wealthy parents that give them a hundreds of millions of dollars? Or companies that extract natural resources for themselves, privatizing the gains and socializing the costs of the pollution they create?

@gorillapaws Rand actually railed against people who inherited wealth and did not earn it.

@gorillapaws have you ever really read Ayn Rand?

@seawulf575 I made it through the Fountainhead in Highschool.

Atlas was her magnum opus. Even if you disagree with most of it, even if the story kinda makes you want to sleep it’s worth a read.

Fountainhead was more about the individuals in the story, Atlas Shrugged was more about society as a whole. I agree with @ARE_you_kidding_me about her writing style…she really isn’t the most engaging writer. And it can be a bit difficult to work through. Reminds me a bit of Clavell or Michener that way. Good stories, just hard to really get traction with them.

@gorillapaws your link to Godel’s… doesn’t work.

@joeschmo It’s working for me in my browser: Here’s a link to the full wikipedia article.

Cool, that worked thanks.

Only work of hers that I’ve read is Atlas Shrugged. It was OK.