Conservatism and liberalism are more or less parallel in contrast to egalitarianism. How is Ayn Rand best described? A hedonist perhaps? No maybe not. She was individualist which precludes utilitarianism and the felicific calculus.
If there is no hedonic substratum underpinning Objectivism then I really don’t understand what Objectivism is for.
If all history is protracted epistemological warfare between Aristotelians (empiricists) and Platonists (idealists) then Ayn Rand is firmly in the Aristotelian garrison.
On 6/30/2024 at 4:20 PM, irreligious said:
If there is no hedonic substratum underpinning Objectivism then I really don’t understand what Objectivism is for.
Objectivism is for life.
On 6/30/2024 at 4:20 PM, irreligious said:
Conservatism and liberalism are more or less parallel in contrast to egalitarianism. How is Ayn Rand best described? A hedonist perhaps? No maybe not. She was individualist which precludes utilitarianism and the felicific calculus.
If there is no hedonic substratum underpinning Objectivism then I really don’t understand what Objectivism is for.
Not even remotely hedonist. You need to do your reading before posting. Start with OPAR, then read The Virtue of Selfishness, then Philosophy: Who Needs It?, then Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, then Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and then go from there based on preference. But right now you clearly have read next to nothing except for maybe some summary from Anti-Objectivist enemies.
Objectivism is for how Man living a proper moral life on Earth (and everywhere else in the Universe) qua Man. It is the only philosophical system that produces the correct principles for proper epistemological methods (reason) from a metaphysical base (reality as such) that leads to the correct ethics for living a happy prosperous and virtuous life (rational egoism), which leads to the only moral political system, capitalism which is the socio-political system that protects individual rights of all Men equally with zero exceptions, and also results in the esthetics of Romantic Realism.
https://www.atlassociety.org/post/philosophy-on-one-foot
Also start with those as an introductory summary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5IEhIow4Cg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S5WK8nfSLE
Also this is a beautiful exposition that answers everything you asked at once.
Also, here’s a quote about the hedonism and I’ll supply the link to the rest from the Lexicon and it should be a requirement to read and understand all proper definitions of concepts contained within the Lexicon before *any* post is created that is the complete opposite of the correct definitions and things that are the complete opposite of Objectivism such as hedonism will never be made.
https://courses.aynrand.org/lexicon/hedonism/ :and from that point you have access to every concept essentially.
This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism — in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. “Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that “the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that “the proper value is whatever you happen to value” — which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.