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How does one learn to discriminate the crucial differences?


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Rand was primarily an advocate of reason.

Lifted from Atlas Shrugged, and republished with the italicized statement in her own words, re: Galt's Speech, reprinted in For The New Intellectual, states unequivocally: This is the philosophy of Objectivism.

Under the purview of reasoning, her ideas either stand on their own merit, or they don't. Per Leonard Peikoff, in the introduction to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), he writes:

Ayn Rand's philosophy has changed thousands of lives, including my own, and has the power to change the course of history. Her views, however, are spread across more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles and speeches. The present book is the first comprehensive statement of her philosophy.

I have presented the ideas of Objectivism, their validation, and their interrelationships. I have arranged the ideas hierarchically; each chapter, and within the chapters each section, builds on earlier material.

Add to this the '76 lectures. Consider the disclaimer provided at the beginning of each presentation claiming the his book (OPAR) as the definitive statement of Objectivism and superior in its presentation to the '76 course. While both the course and the book claim to arrange her ideas per a specific hierarchy, is this enough to  suggest that Galt's Speech is to be taken as incomprehensive?


Why would Objectivism need defending? Was she deficient in presenting her ideas? If so, then her ideas don't stand on their own merit. End of story. In a letter to Miss Macken written Dec. 10, 1961 she writes:

My philosophy advocates reason, not faith; it requires men to think—to accept nothing without a full, rational, firsthand understanding and conviction—to claim nothing without factual evidence and logical proof. A blind follower is precisely what my philosophy condemns and what I reject. Objectivism is not a mystic cult.

Defense, in this case, would be a firsthand understanding and conviction. This would entail the ability to differentiate between the combination of factual evidence and logical proof from a process of rationalization. Given the ability of rationalization to camouflage itself as reasoning, how does one go about discriminating the crucial differences?

Edited by dream_weaver
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On 8/7/2016 at 10:38 PM, dream_weaver said:

Given the ability of rationalization to camouflage itself as reasoning, how does one go about discriminating the crucial differences?

Are you asking how to discriminate the differences between Galt's speech and OPAR?  And why Rand might have considered OPAR as better and/or more comprehensive?

Edited by New Buddha
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Miss Rand was present for parts of the 76 lectures. She participated in many of the Q & A's.

As I understand, there are some differences between Peikoff's orated presentation and his written presentation, released after her passing. So, no, it was not Rand, but Peikoff that placed a verbal disclaimer at the beginning of the '76 lectures claiming the superior nature of his book to his lecture.

 

Putting these restatements, one over the other:

Galt's speech is the philosophy of Objectivism, per the comment preceding the excerpt in For The New Intellectual.
In the introduction of OPAR Peikoff writes: The present book is the first comprehensive statement of her philosophy.

Galt's speech was written first. According to Ayn Rand, this is the philosophy of Objectivism. It would be the first statement of her philosophy. Now restate these as:

Galt's Speech: This is the first statement of the philosophy of Objectivism.
OPAR: This  is the first comprehensive statement of her philosophy.

Galt's Speech is 76 pages in For The New Intellectual. OPAR is 450 pages. Obviously he organized and chewed over the material differently (setting aside page and font sizes: they're obviously not crucial.)

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In the introduction of "For the New Intellectual", Ayn Rand stated that Galt's Speech is the shortest summary of Objectivism. She was right, it's a summary in the sense of covering all of the essentials of Objectivism. But she leaves out many technicalities that you don't really need to study unless you're hardcore about learning all of its elements. For example:

a). In the intro of FTNI she states that Galt's speech barely touches on epistemology, and that she intends to write a treatise on it. She did, and the treatise was called "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". While Galt briefly covers how reason and logic work, ITOE explores epistemology through her theory of concept-formation (children-friendly lessons on measurement-ommision, abstraction from abstractions etc.) You don't need this unless you're a philosopher, a philosophy student or really interested in Objectivism.

b). The theory of aeshtetics. You can get a few clues about her aesthetic views from the way she describes the works of art in her novels (e.g. the piece of modern music Dagny hears on the street vs. the music of Richard Halley), but incorporating an explicitly stated aesthetic theory into an actual work of art (novel) would be redundant. In the Romantic Manifesto she covers aesthetics in depth. Again, this is a specialized subject that's not absolutely essential, even though it's important. Obviously, if you're an artist or art lover, it's absolutely crucial.

There are many non-essentials that she covered implicitly (i.e. concretized and dramatized) in her novels, but were only made explicit later in her non-fiction works. In OPAR, Peikoff covers absolutely all the intricacies and technicalities, and he orders them hierarchically. He even includes things from his telephone conversations with Rand that she never got to write or publish. 

In a nutshell:
Galt's speech is all of the essentials of Objectivism.
OPAR is a comprehensive and scholarly study of ALL of its elements - essentials and technicalities alike - from all of her written works and private philosophical conversations. The structure of Galt's Speech was dictated by the context of the novel (which is why it took Rand 2 years to figure out how to structure it so that it's perfectly integrated to the novel), OPAR is a systematic and logically ordered study.

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