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You're saying I have to thumb through a massive tome containing Kant's writings for the correct source? I'm sure I used to do that, back in the day, before I realized it was a waste of time. I didn't see this process as a resource to use later. For quoting Kant, I got back "This is obscure; Kant was an evil obscurantist," and "What's the deal with the A and B?"

I'm sure they do. It's hard to go through life without thinking independently, to be always dependent on others for one's opinions and for advice. People can be quite independent in most areas of life, but they can be utterly subservient in others at the same time. The mind is very complex, and it's certainly not "all or nothing" as Rand believed. "All or nothing" thinking is a cognitive error well-known to psychologists. My observations of people over the years shows me that they can have all kinds of erroneous opinions on things, yet they get along just fine. They can even be completely dependent on Rand or Peikoff to give them philosophical knowledge, and not be affected at all by this by compartmentalizing areas of their lives. I don't believe Rand did any compartmentalizing of philosophy from daily existence. Everything for her had to be philosophically justified.

This quote is from an economic context, but it serves to illustrate Rand's attitude toward the willing self-blindedness of those who dared to disagree with her. From https://medium.com/illumination/unveiling-the-exasperating-contradictions-in-ayn-rands-philosophy-ff4e0c249a4a -

I am technically not an Objectivist, since some of my points of disagreement with Rand are ones essential to her philosophy. But I have much sympathy and overlap with her philosophy, and I have always represented Rand's or anyone's philosophy as accurately as possible in discussions of it. I am elderly, though not first-generation, or anyway not zero-generation. There are some Objectivists today, of every age, who judge what's true by what Rand said on candidates for truth or at least what they think Rand would say on candidates. Sometimes that is innocent in that it is just a short way of finding out what implications of Rand's fundamental views there are, given that they have come to accept those fundamentals as true of reality, Rand's fundamental views. Other times it is intellectual laziness or modest intelligence. But many, old and young, think for themselves and well. There is a passage in Rand stating that that is what she hoped for in her readers, but right now, I have to go to sleep.

Read the entire composition very carefully. Everything is cited, and hopefully you go to Kant to know Kant. Metaphysical knowledge would have to be synthetic a priori. You know that, right? It is elementary Kant. There is no excuse, with the English translations available today, to make assertions about what Kant thought, without citations. Likewise, for Rand: quote exactly and give the citation. Show they say what you assert they say, and you will also be making a handy resource for you to return to for cites for your future re-readings of these thinkers Keep reading.

I always learn something from these conversations. It just so happens that I am used to addressing first generation Objectivists who were, on the whole, completely obsessed with Rand's philosophy. I'm aware that this attitude may have toned down with the new generation. But my primary experience with Objectivism is with the first generation, and they were quite shrill, I can assure you. And they still are, those that are still around anyway. For example, "But Kant said..." <BLOCKED> If you are a first-generation Objectivist with a more open mind, then I salute you.

That is false and you can easily know it is false.

You wrote: A minor quibble. I don't believe Kant would reject it. He would critique it by employing his transcendental method. He would show that A is A belongs to logic, not metaphysics. The only philosophy that Kant rejected, as far as I know, was ontology in general, the study of the nature of being per se.

If you actually bothered to read what people write here, you would see how flatly false is that generalization "all". But perhaps you presume nobody here has anything to say that you might learn from, you are going to bury your head in the sand about what they write, and you have only come here to enlighten these folks whom you presume to all be philosophical illiterates and have yet to discover thinking for themselves.

-Ayn Rand (For the New Intellectual, 32; Kndl ed.) If the majority of philosophers rejected Kant's "noumenal" realm, they have left out an important aspect of his philosophy - the source of all phenomena. Because even if the noumenal is unknowable, it is, for Kant, the grounds for phenomena beyond the senses. It doesn't matter if the senses modify, what matters is that Kant posited the noumenal's existence. It is THIS that is the problem with modern philosophy - not the acceptance of Kant's philosophy, but its rejection of the ground of appearances (or phenomena). Logically, Rand committed the Fallacy of the Consequent in that quote. Because she focused on the alleged consequences of Kant's philosophy rather than specifically on the (incorrect) rejection of the noumenal realm by post-Kantian philosophers, which is my point. Despite the inherent unknowability of the noumenal, its positing serves as the foundation for understanding the empirical origins of phenomena, a notion often overlooked in contemporary philosophical discourse. The empiricist often confuses Kant's form of Idealism with those that infer the existence of an external world from the matter of appearances (mental states). But Kant did not infer it, he wholeheartedly accepted its existence. He only inferred the existence of the thing-in-itself (or noumenon), not the existence of external things, which he accepted. The noumenal is the ground of experience. Without it, there is no perception, nothing to perceive. Kant never denied the ground of perception, only that it is knowable in itself, that is, by somehow going outside of your consciousness to know it directly without your senses. The noumenal is posited to exist as the ground of perception, of something for the senses to sense. The only way to know it directly would be to somehow go outside of your senses. Simple as that. Kant v. Rand

I don't think this is as important an issue as Objectivists make it out to be. They may consult several expert sources with a financial question. But for philosophy, they are all "I BELIEVE RAND!" people, and refuse to look any further.

Kant's Wrestle with Happiness and Life

It's a "problem" that very few philosophers agree exist. Perhaps none of them believe it, except for Peikoff the chemist-philosopher. Rand's interpretation of Kant's ideas was pretty far out in left field. Rather than taking one person's word for it, and Peikoff's if you include his mimicry, it's always best to consult several sources - If the issue is important to you.

Here's a good article from John Eastman, who represented Trump before the Supreme Court concerning the 2020 election, about some of the information he was given in the course of doing his job: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/most-secure-election-american-history-john-eastman Interesting read!

Did Ayn Rand try to teach people how to think? Or did she try to tell them what to think? One of the benefits of independence is having the right to think for yourself. This benefit, believe it or not, is a result of Cartesianism. Before DesCartes in European culture, people were almost entirely engaged in groupthink. They had little or no sense of individualism. HIs doubting encouraged, in principle, independent thinking. "I think, therefore, I am" places the emphasis on the self instead of the tribe. His mind-body dualism focused on mind. And while that may seem solipsistic, it encouraged further investigation into the mental attributes of humans. This was not brand new to Western civilization, but it hadn't existed to even a small extent since the ancient Greek philosophers. This started with Socrates who focused on individual reasoning powers and questioned authority. John Locke was a hero of Enlightenment individualism. He emphasized many if not all of the rights and freedoms we enjoy today, even as they are being slowly eroded: the rights to personal life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness through productive living. Locke wrote about natural morality, with happiness as the natural good central to his moral philosophy. While Locke didn't line out a list of values and virtues the way Ayn Rand did, he encouraged such virtues as tolerance toward others as long as their beliefs didn't intrude on the lives of others. Ayn Rand, however, provided a list of values and virtues for people to obey. They are the things you should do, according to Rand, in order to be happy - and obedient to her powers of reasoning.

Then she would be wrong. No thing-in-itself, no profit. No noumenon, no free-will. No free-will, no morality.

From the standpoint of Rand's introduction to epistemology, a percept is a mental integration and retention of sensory input. The mind for Rand contributes an integrating process. She didn't explore this process at length. But it should be possible to throw Space, Time and the Categories into the integrating process, as well as the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception. Lacking any exploration of this integrating process leaves the door wide open for whatever someone wants to fill the empty space with.

What Kantian and Randian ethics have in common: Focus on reason. Universality: ethics applies to everybody. Duty/obligation: Kant called it duty. Rand would call it obligation. Respect for individual autonomy. Respect for rights. Independence: The CI is a formula for individuals to use to make up their own minds about rational ethical principles. Specific ethical principles that Kant mentioned were examples. Strength of Will. Moral integrity.

I judged an argument that doesn't exist there, but I inferred it to exist this way, based on her other writings: But it really does look like she's just asserting "facts" that wouldn't pass an official peer review process conducted by her contemporaries in the field of philosophy. Unofficially, though, they rejected her assertions en masse, from what I've read. Rousseau seems more of a predecessor to modern philosophy than Kant, in my estimation. But that's a different topic. And I wouldn't expect people to accept it based on my authority. You wrote: Not Christianity. Christians of his time rejected his reducing of God to a mere Idea, and rightly so. It's unChristian. The noumenal can be used as a conceptual "space," and in fact I identified that usage myself over 20 years ago in a Yahoo Groups Kant forum. But that's only because we can't know what's "out there" without going outside of our senses. This creates a conceptual "space" for further possibilities than just empirical ones. The noumenal, or thing-in-itself, consists of furniture, planets, pets, humans - and potentially, supernatural entities. Free-will is also posited to exist in the noumenal conceptual realm. If, however, we limit our concepts to what can be known through the five senses, as Rand did, then this leaves no room for free-will. And that's a real problem for Objectivism.

Yes as to the level of indigenous adherents, but Shankarya widely associated with Advaita is a cultural touchstone because of his purported( various historical disputes with crediting) realignment of Vedic traditions in the sense of establishing Indian nationhood. Vikekananda called on that history in his advocacy of ending the British mandate. Kind of like in the US everybody 'knows' George Washington, but they aren't all or even many freemasons, lol. But also I think you are right in the that the philosophy is more known among seekers, just my fanboy buttons getting pushed, lol

Apparently, this was one of Ayn Rand's favorite paintings. Salvador Dali, Corpus Hypercubus, oil on canvas, 29" by 23", 1954. Rand's favorite painting - she spent hours contemplating it at the Metropolitan Musuem of art. She even felt a kinship between her personal view of John Galt's defiance over his torture in Atlas Shrugged and Dali's depiction of the suffering of Jesus. (Jeff Britting- Ayn Rand) Remember that part where John Galt explains to his tormentors how to fix the torture device that had broken? I guess Rand really liked men who don't back down. While I was reading The Fountainhead, I distinctly remember starting to feel physically sick on more than one occasion. I felt as if the author wanted to subject Roark to every possible misfortune. Needless to say, reading until the end took some willpower. Consider here a moral man who has not yet reached professional or romantic fulfillment—an Ayn Rand hero, say, like Roark or Galt, at the point when he is alone against the world, barred from his work, destitute. In existential terms, such a man has not “achieved his values”; he is beset by problems and difficulties. Nevertheless, if he is an Ayn Rand hero, he is confident, at peace with himself, serene; he is a happy person even when living through an unhappy period. (...) A man of this kind has “achieved his values”—not his existential values, but the philosophical values that are their precondition. He has achieved not success, but the ability to succeed, the right relationship to reality. The emotional leitmotif of such a person is a unique and enduring form of pleasure: the pleasure that derives from the sheer fact of a man’s being alive—if he is a man who feels able to live. We may describe this emotion as “metaphysical pleasure,” in contrast to the more specific pleasures of work, friendship, and the rest. Metaphysical pleasure does not erase the pains incident to daily life, but, by providing a positively toned context for them, it does blunt them; in the same manner, it intensifies one’s daily pleasures. (OPAR, Happiness as the Normal Condition of Man) I can't say I'm too inspired by this "metaphysical pleasure," but I can say what I personally see in Dali's painting. Christ is liberated from suffering, without being liberated from the cross (which represents hardship). This is why he appears fixed to the cross, but not fixed at the same time; the four nails float in front of him, not making contact with their targets. In a certain sense, we are all on that cross, and we too can discover that we don't need to remove the cross in order to be happy.

No doubt. But Monart's question was specifically about Advaita. The majority of Indians belong to the superstitious Shaivite and Vaishnavite denominations of Hindu religion. By contrast, Advaita is less religion and more philosophy. Popular with seekers but not with the masses.

I've just recently become familiar with Advaita and Indian philosophies/religions in general , and obviously a little infatuated lol. But I think I'd say that India is more aware of, and the myriad adjacent traditions and religious schools and their impact culturally on Indian society as a whole is probably bigger than O'ism is in the west. The 'guy' that introduced the US to all things Hindu, Swami Vivekananda, made a big splash at the world expo in Chicago in 1893 and set up Vedanta societies in America. He was also culturally and politically effective in the Indian nationalist movement. A quasi mythical personality credited with establishing Advaita Vedanta , Adi Shankaryra, just had a 108 foot tall statue installed at the historic site where it is said he taught . And apparently there is some kind of political strife involved with additional funding for more commemoration at the site, grumblings that can effect even Modi , if I'm seeing it right.

Ethical Egoism and an Alternative, and Honesty

The preceding (X) is my proposal for a biological basis of distinctly moral proprieties. It is not a moral code so far as it is now developed. There are some virtues that may be drawn from this basis, however, and in this it will be helpful to compare with Rand and with Kant. As with Rand’s, in my proposal, biological operations as they resulted in the course of nature on earth resulted in such things as needs and functions coming into the world. It is upon the organization that is life and its character we have the fact upon which oughts can have objective ground. Functions had come into the world before humans emerged. We and our ancestors were each of us functioning, more and less well, at any stage of our existence. Famously, for part of Rand’s ethical base, she characterized life in complete generality as self-generating and self-maintaining. This she took from standard biology along with the findings that all organismic life is cellular the findings of ontogeny and of evolution from Darwin to the present. It is quite true that self-generation and self-maintenance are features (which is character in my general ontology) of any life. Even if we humans become creators of life from inanimate matter, our success will mean that we created means for the appearance of matter organized such that it is self-generating and self-maintaining. We are relying on that character when we plant, water, and fertilize crops, even if we only dimly notice that the crops do the growing themselves and possess various ranges of adaptability themselves under changes in surrounding conditions. That living things have functions in their subsystems to the preservation and replication of the whole organism and that living things have powers of self-generation and self-maintenance might better have some elements such as growth drawn out more, but I’ll stay with Rand’s broad meanings of self-generation and self-maintenance. Notice that these steps are not necessarily only suited for a ladder to ethical egoism. To be a fair characterization of life in general, we must understand “self” in self-generating and self-maintaining in a broad and indeed rather shifty way. Overwhelmingly, life gets started from life. Other life. Self as individual organism and self as its species work back and forth for continuation of those two selves. An individual life can be just a quickly disposable trial tool in the function of preserving the species, although overall, the species requires individual organisms. Of course. I stress that functions are operating in each one of us in all one's ontogeny. Rand noted that the pleasure-pain mechanism of the body is the progenitor of what is joy and suffering in organic elaboration and that all of those are indicators for good or evil for life of and proper functioning in the individual animal, including humans. I stress that it is not only other animals in which all of that is part of its overall individual control system. Our high-level, socially instructed conscious control system in maturity remains tied to the automatic one still running. Rand centered on a choice to live in the case of human life. I think that element is better characterized as a choice to continue living. And that means, as stated in the monograph, continuing to pursue the facts and the coordination with others in that pursuit. Rand has it that rationality is our overarching method for getting the facts and making good uses of them. That is fine, but I contest the picture in which one was just going along alone rationally pursuing the facts and how to use them and then as it were noticed, secondarily, that the existence of other people is enjoyable, knowledge-boosting, and economically advantageous. The higher intelligence of humans does indeed have launchings spontaneously in individuals. Young children will spontaneously seriate a group of rods according to their lengths; none of our closest primate pals do that. But we have been in intelligent human company all along our individual active existence, from precautions and playing to learning common nouns, proper names, verbs, classification, and predication. Rationality is profoundly social in one from the get-go, even as its acquisition by each person consists in individual facility in its operation independently of direction from others and self-direction in seeking information or specialized skills from others Rationality is seen by Rand as the basic moral virtue because it is the necessary general operation needed for the human form of life. She takes the other virtues in her ethical system to be salient strands of rationality aimed at individual survival. I say, rather, that rationality is the given proper being of a human and the proper responsiveness to persons, other and self. Rationality is the grand means of human survival, as Rand held, but that is not the whole of its story. Rand had proposed that the virtue of rationality is not only virtue in a social setting, but virtue—main moral virtue—for a castaway on a deserted island. This is because in the isolated setting rationality is necessary to the individual’s survival. That is so, however, I say that enabling survival is not the only source of the goodness of rationality. There is a person on that island: the castaway. Rationality is proper responsiveness to and continuation of his self. It is call of life in that life form that is his personal self that is the distinctively moral in the virtue of rationality for a castaway. Though the castaway carries along other in foundational frame, he is now the only human present. He is an end-in-himself with much rightness to continue himself. (A pet might go a ways for fulfilling the need to love and interact with another human self.) Returned to society, an individual remains an end-in-himself rightly making his life, a fully human life with interactions and mutual values and interactions with the other ends-in-themselves that are human selves at centers of making lives. Ayn Rand offered an ethical egoism in which rationality took its place as central overall virtue for a person due to the need for rationality in making one’s reality-according individual human life. She tried to weave the prima facie virtue of truth-telling to others as a derivative of the need to be honest with oneself about the facts. That is not plausibly the basic reason one wants to and should want to be honest with others. Rand’s account of honesty is inadequate by reliance on a purely egoistic basis. Ethical egoism, a genuine one such as hers, one attempting to derive all its moral virtues purely from self-interest, is false. It rests on an inadequate view of what is the constitution of the human self. (To be continued.)