coirecfox Posted June 24, 2004 Report Share Posted June 24, 2004 I have never read, seen, or heard about any instance where Rand address Aristotle's Prime Mover? Did she ever? If she didn't, why not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterSwig Posted June 24, 2004 Report Share Posted June 24, 2004 I have never read, seen, or heard about any instance where Rand address Aristotle's Prime Mover? Did she ever? If she didn't, why not? "Aristotle established the right metaphysics by establishing the law of identity--which was all that was necessary (plus the identification of the fact that only concretes exist). But he destroyed his metaphysics by his cosmology--by the whole nonsense of the 'moving spheres,' 'the immovable mover,' teleology, etc." --Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand, p. 699 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coirecfox Posted June 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 But did she ever analyze it or did she just say he was wrong and ignore it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterSwig Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 But did she ever analyze it or did she just say he was wrong and ignore it? I think she analyzed it, said it was wrong, and ignored it. I don't know if she analyzed the idea of the Prime Mover in writing. She probably had better things to do. After all, it's not as if America is consumed with a belief in a Prime Mover. Nowadays, they call it God. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshRyan Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 I think she analyzed it, said it was wrong, and ignored it. I don't think that's quite true. There are a number of references to the Prime Mover in Rand's writings (mainly Atlas Shrugged), which are not as negative or dismissive as one might expect. Perhaps Aristotle's Prime Mover had some symbolic significance for Rand? Anyway, I hear that we may be able to expect to read something about this in one of the forthcoming books in Robert Mayhew's collections of essays on Rand's fiction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y_feldblum Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 I can only assume Ayn Rand got that term from Aristotle: man as capable of causing and creating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twhite35 Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 As a type of moral symbol, she like the word. In fact, she originally wanted to title The Fountainhead novel "The Prime Mover". She didn't use that title because this aspect of Aristotle's philosophy is not sufficiently well known, and, in effect, too many people might on the face of it initially suspect that the novel was about a really good furniture mover. (No kidding, this is in the Introduction to Non-Fiction book.) In the quote you give, the "immovable mover" is Aristotles "thinking about his own thinking only" quasi-God, whose self-contemplation causes the rest of the motion in the universe via "moving spheres" which circle the prime mover eternally. This is all discussed in Peikoff's lectures, but as Ayn Rand notes, this is not a great part of Aristotle's philosophy. Although she did think the immovable mover was a beautiful metaphor or emotional groping towards the idea of the great souled man having reverence for himself and existing for his own sake; this is included in the Mayhew's Marginalia book, in the section on John Herman Randal's book on Aristotle. We might try to strip away all the mystical elements, and then try to ask, in cold reason, is there a valid question regarding the unmoved mover, eg, doesn't there have to be something which does not move that itself causes motion? Did Ayn Rand have a viewpoint on this type of a question? To my knowledge, she didn't. If asked, I would guess she would say that she didn't know or need to know and/or that the question was a matter of science, not philosophy. Can you think of anything in the Objectivist ethics or politics, or any problem of human life, with the exception of advanced theoretical science, that really depends on an answer to this question? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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