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I am an Objectivist from Israel. It's nice to hear about you Nada, specially when I think about 2006. I graduated the same high school Yaron Brook did. By the way, there were few pupils from south Lebanon in my class. Perheps you can write a blog in arabic? I can spread it among some arab acquaintances of mine. Sandmonkey (Egypt) is not an objectivist as far as i know, but he writes very well. Leonid: The New Liberal movement is not an Objectivist movement, though there are Objectivists among the supporters. Boaz Arad is one of the founders of the movement. Isn't it odd for Americans to hear about Objectivists supporting Liberal movement? here the semantics is different.

http://www.objectivi...81 Fascinating! If only more Muslims and Israelis were exposed to Objectivism it would be everlasting peace in the Middle East.

I haven't read this whole thread, but here's my take on Paul Ryan as VP with Romney: http://www.meetup.co...925312#80683292 There is a very interesting story about Paul Ryan and Objectivism now that Ryan has been chosen to be the Vice-Presidential candidate along side Mitt Romney for President come this November election cycle. In the story, it is claimed that Ryan has rejected Ayn Rand in favor of Thomas Aquinas to be his intellectual guidance for national policy. When Ryan first announced that he liked Ayn Rand, the Marxist / Leftist jumped all over him trying to get him to drop her in favor of the policies of the Left -- which is more Socialism and a government run economy. Looks like to some extend they succeeded in that Ryan has explicitly dropped Rand as an intellectual guidance position. However, Ayn Rand still had some influence on him and he has spoken out in favor of capitalism due to this influence. That Ryan has chosen Thomas Aquinas as his new intellectual leader is also encouraging, in that it was Thomas Aquinas who brought mankind out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, where reason was held in high esteem for the first time since Ancient Greece and Athens. I'm not really sure if Aquinas would have been in favor of capitalism or not, but he was most definitely in favor of reason as an absolute, bringing forth the argument that God gave you a mind and that it is important to use it to understand His Creation based upon the evidence of the senses which give us a direct connection to the Beauty and Rational Operations of God's Universe. And Aquinas helped to re-introduce Aristotle to the West, thereby setting up the grounds for a rational culture based upon reason and reality. These positions did eventually lead to The Age of Reason and The Enlightenment, and to the founding of the United States of America and the full recognition of individual rights. So, Ryan is in great company to defend capitalism and man's rights qua individual against the collectivism and unreason of the Marxist Left, even though he will waver a bit here and there due to his dropping of Ayn Rand as an explicit guide. But even if Ryan does waver in his support of individual rights and capitalism, the very fact that he was once in support of Ayn Rand will help to bring the ideas of Objectivism to the forefront of intellectual debates this election cycle. The Leftist will bring it up against Romney and Ryan in order to throw selfishness into their face, but they will bring it up. This will give Objectivist intellectual activists a great setting for exposing more people to Ayn Rand and to hit upon key issues that might be made more explicit due to the mud slinging. And I certain encourage admirers and followers of Ayn Rand and Objectivism to take full advantage of the intellectual debate that will ensue due to this attempt to cower Romney and Ryan into dropping capitalism in favor of socialism. Added on Edit: In this context, it is worth noting that The University of Dallas, my Alma Matter, and a staunch Catholic university, has a pretty decent Masters of Business degree program. While I was living in the Dallas area, I often thought about joining that degree / career course, and my career would have been entirely different had I done so, but the costs and the fact that I thought getting a degree in Physics and Philosophy might get me into management without an MBA prevented me from taking advantage of this course. Besides, I didn't really want to get an MBA from a Catholic perspective, but the point is that at least they do have a business oriented degree program.

The way "personal" was used suggests to me what OT was saying is that just because people don't have a way to make objective judgments (rendering the judgements in effect subjective) doesn't mean there is no objective judgment method to be discovered. No one in this thread has ever claimed otherwise, and I don't even think Hsieh did either, other than try to get started on identifying a standard to use. I see no reason, though, to accept your claim that "someday we'll discover a standard is [not allowed]". Reality and everything in it can be defined and understood objectively. Everything has an identity, any valid concept anyway. You seem to be saying "we don't know if there is even an objective standard", but that's equivalent to say "we don't know if everything that exists has an identity". If you're only saying beauty is an emotion like anger or joy, then what you say makes sense - you can't say there is "objectively true" anger. You can explain the cause, but that's a question about psychology. I take beauty as a measurement right now, so I don't think it's an emotion. As such, it can be objectively defined. Beauty, being a positive judgment, indicates a positive value judgment. If you're judging a Kandinsky painting, a person's body, or a sunset as beautiful, it is a value judgment. I'd call this judgment of meaning. This is different than judging if a painting is good art in the sense good or bad there is just about fulfilling successfully a definition of art (in Rand's case, epistemological need of concretizing abstractions). I call this a judgment of technique and craftsmanship. For a positive value judgment, though, that's inextricably tied to your life in some capacity, in a similar same way you judge a coffee ice cream with chocolate chips is great. Meaning in art is deeper than that though, because it has a lot more to do with how a certain art piece presents to you a view or sense of life about existence. Certain viewpoints are more beneficial to life than others, more obvious examples being the Bible versus The Illiad. I'm not going to claim that I know the proper standards in all of art. I'd have to study more than I have. (aside: I was reading Understanding Objectivism yesterday, and that distinction was used to clarify why Rand said that right now, she sees no way to objectively judge the *meaning* of music as could be done with literature). At the least, beauty involves judging the essential aesthetic fundamentals of what you're judging, and its relationship with your life (i.e. the positive value judgment). When judging human beauty, I'd say health is a consideration, because that produces an appearance, but to be clear, I'm only saying it is a necessary yet insufficient criterion for beauty judgment. For me, use of reason is even bigger to consider, which is what you'd use for clothing, hair style, body modification, etc. I wrote about this in another thread I wrote up a while ago. Again, if beauty is just an emotional reaction, my above reasoning is void.

I do not think it was supposed to be an end-all "Answer". I think it is relevant when judging the appearance of animate creatures to consider the essential features of that creature, with health being a *consideration* where applicable. What makes a human, human? This is how philosophy is done with Objectivism *anyway*, by considering some concretes, and breaking up a concept into constituent parts. Part of an aesthetic judgment involves health - health has an appearance. No, it's not the whole picture, but it's a piece of the picture. In the same way, we'd consider health as part of morality - health allows you to exist. But morality is not judged on health alone! Also, the ITOE quote is pretty good, because it talks about teleological measurement, a fundamental part of judging values. Aesthetic judgment is related to value, so also involves teleological measurement. Tone it down a bit - I think OT does have standards in mind (and I respect his insights quite a bit), just opted to mention some quotes first. That quote is a good starting point of discussion.