gags

This point of view stands in stark contrast to the prevailing religious and Kantian notions that one has a "duty" to your fellow man. The more painful and difficult it is to fulfill your duty, the better. If you happen to pursue happiness or pleasure, then you should feel guilty about it. In fact, under the logical extension of the Kantian ideal, saving the life of someone who you despise is more moral than saving the life of someone you love. Pulling Hitler out of a burning building is more altruistic and, therefore preferable, to helping your spouse. Now if that isn’t immoral, I don’t know what is.

I think your's is a good approach. It would also be a good thing to define morality. "Morality," in Ayn Rand's definition, is "a code of values accepted by choice" - and man needs it for one reason only: he needs it in order to survive. Moral laws, in this view, are principles that define how to nourish and sustain human life; they are no more than this and no less. Morality is the instruction manual in regard to proper care and use that did not come with man. It is the science of human self-preservation. (OPAR, chpt. 7)

Hi EC, I live in the Detroit area. The East side to be more exact. Unfortunately it looks as if we may be the only ones here.

Hello Garin, nice to have you here. What is your prefered period of study for your history major?

Welcome Liriodendron. I was never much for Bio in school, so it's nice to have someone on board who knows her stuff.

It may also have to do with the fact that the first edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published in 1781 and he died in 1804. The list deals with books from the 19th and 20th centuries. Edit: I'm surprised there's nothing by Hegel on the list. He took Kant and added a collectivist twist that would result in some of the most despicable and murderous regimes in human history. On top of that, "The Phenomenology of Spirit" (1807) could be one of the most perplexing pieces of trash ever written. Schopenhauer (another wacky German philosopher who basically saw life as evil) said the following about Hegel's philosophy. "The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had been only previously known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced, general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument to German stupidity." How's that for a ringing endorsement?

You'd be a very good teacher Dave, as would JM Snow. Since I became a member of this site, you've both increased my understanding of Objectivism considerably.

Styles, if you carefully read dondigitalia's posts above, you'll note that man is the only being with a volitional and conceptual consciousness. In other words, we can choose whether or not to think and we also have the ability to form concepts, which other life forms do not. It is from these attributes that our rights are derived. I think most O'ists would agree that many animals make limited "choices" (if you want to call them that). I suppose a salmon "chooses" to swim upstream, rather than downstream, to spawn. A dog chooses to roll over on it's back when you whistle because it has been conditioned to expect a treat after it performs that behavior. However, the choices these animals make are based on instinct or biological factors that are designed to ensure their continued existence and/or the continuation of the species. This is quite different from having a volitional and conceptual consciousness, as man does.

I'm terribly sorry to hear about this. It's always a tragedy when a member of law enforcement is killed or injured by a criminal. I really have to give you guys credit. You work in an very difficult job where people want to constantly second guess the split-second decisions you have to make under extreme stress. If I had my way, I'd double or triple your pay. It's one of the few functions of government where I would happily pay an additional tax or surcharge to finance better compensation for police officers. Here in Detroit, we've been laying-off officers so that the mayor can drive around in a Lincoln Navigator and have parties with strippers at his mansion while the city heads for receivership. Talk about screwed up priorities.

You know what's even scarier? The fact that she was the one who wore the pants during the Clinton administration..... along with Hillary, of course.

Madonna. She has a new documentary called "I'm Going To Tell You a Secret" and she's out promoting it. I think these quotes qualify her for our list. In the film she warns people that they "are going to go to hell, if they don't turn from their wicked behavior." She also explains the meaning of the New Testament term "The Beast." "I refer to an entity called 'The Beast,' she says. "I feel I am describing the world that we live in right now. To me 'The Beast' is the modern world that we live in." Madonna sees the material world as a "world of illusion, that we think is real." "We live for it, we're enslaved by it. And it will ultimately be our undoing." I hope it's her "undoing" sooner rather than later.

Oh yes, your point is perfectly clear and a good one. I figured it was implicit in my earlier statement. If you think you're going to get paid for sitting around and twiddling your thumbs, then you're mistaken. You have to provide some value with your efforts.

What do you mean by this? Felix was correct when he said that you own yourself (your life). In a rational capitalist society, people deal with each other voluntarily as traders. Usually this involves working in exchange for money. In other words, they spend a portion of their life on a task and recieve compensation in exchange for the effort/life they have expended. They may then use that money to purchase property which they own. In a socialist society where one has no property/ownership rights, one also has no right to life because property is essentially an extension of your life. How can one be free if you don't own and control your life? BTW, the Lincoln quote in my sig gets at this point.

So if I own a car, I'm depriving others of freedom because I don't allow the entire neigborhood to drive it? Likewise, if I own some food, am I depriving others of freedom when I eat it and they don't? Only a socialist could come up with such a silly notion.

Good for you. There really isn't that much Nietzsche has done that's actually worth spending time on.

Hi Ravane, welcome. If you're at all interested in Nietzsche, you might consider listening to this set of tapes by Dr. Bernstein. http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/store/pro...item=9&mitem=22 It's pretty informative and Dr. B does a nice job of isolating the good aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy from the bad.

This idea of actions in themselves reminded me of an article I read by John Ridpath entitled “Nietzsche and Individualism” that appeared in the February 1986 issue of The Objectivist Forum, the quote is from page 12. Nietzsche repeatedly praised Heraclitus [the Greek philosopher, c. 500 B.C.] as “the great dark philosopher,” as a man who possessed “the highest powers of intuitive conception,” and Nietzsche’s metaphysics is, in essence, the Heraclitean view of reality. Reality is, Nietzsche writes: “The eternal and exclusive Becoming, the total instability of all reality, which continually works and never is, as Heraclitus teaches.” At the base of such a world, there cannot be, and are not, according to Nietzsche, any entities, facts, or things. Such notions, Nietzsche tells us, are “articles of faith.” There is no “being” behind the doing, “the doing is everything.” “What is basic is not that which acts, but activity itself.” There is, Nietzsche is claiming, change without entities that change, a change of nothing into nothing. In essence, he is denying the axiom of identity.emphasis added Nietzsche's error (and yours as well) is what I believe Ayn Rand at some point called the most critical and therefore the most dangerous metaphysical error, and that is accepting the Primacy of Consciousness over the Primacy of Existence. In other words, the idea that our minds/consciousness create reality as opposed to reality existing independent of our minds.

That's a good explanation Dave. Clears up my thinking on the issue.

I'm asking myself the same question Inspector. Doesn't man have rights because of his unique combination of both volition and reason? Some more advanced species of animals appear to be capable of very elementary reasoning (I'm thinking of the recent stories about an ape that uses crude tools), but we don't grant rights to apes. Also, I would think that some more advanced animals would be crudely volitional in that they can make choices. They choose one type of food over another, as an example. Man is the only being with a volitional consciousness. Man can choose to use reason or not. I'm not aware of any animals capable of making such a choice.

Their apparent anti-man ethics should make us examine and question their theories intensely. That doesn't mean they can never be correct. However, on issues like this they rarely turn out to be right.

From what I've read, Heinberg sounds like a radical environmentalist. You don't need to go too far past the opening statement on the home page of his site to see exactly where he's coming from: "MuseLetter's purpose is to offer a continuing critique of corporate-capitalist industrial civilization and a re-visioning of humanity's prospects for the next millennium. Subjects range from global economics to religion to the origin of humanity's antipathy toward nature." Sounds like the typical university professor.

Are any of you aware of the "abiotic" oil theory? It seems far fetched, but I don't have the background necessary to determine whether the theory is valid. If you're interested in reading more, go here: http://www.drydipstick.com/peakoil-abiotic-oil.html

I don't think you have to endorse every part of the party's platform. In fact, as you said above, there are plenty of Republican officeholders who are pro-choice while the platform regularly calls for the elimination of abortion. I suppose if you were running for Pres. and you took a position opposite of the one in the party's platform, that might cause a stir.

ex banana eater: Armstrong seems like an admirable character but I've always wondered what the story was with his first wife and kids (2?). He seemed to leave them for Sheryl Crow, who I find fairly annoying.

Haha, there's no doubt the Republican party is a mess and their views on the Pledge of Allegiance are the least of our worries. However, having worked in politics a bit when I was younger, I know that political change comes incrementally. This country didn't become a statist paradise overnight and it won't be converted back into a free, constitutionally limited republic in a couple of weeks or even a couple of years. That being the case, I would much rather win incremental victories through organizations that have actual power like the Republican party, than continue to sit on the outside and have virtually no influence while feeling (and being) morally superior in an obsure 3rd party. Dondigitalia is also right in that you have to change the way people think first. When you've changed their philosophies, then wholesale changes in their politics will follow.