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Originally Posted by Jasper84  Should note that utabintarbo said he thought of the website as 'Cliff notes'. I find the attempts to define it interesting though, are there more social sites that try to define it also. I have done a little trying to define it myself, but not much yet. I do have the feeling that a-priori, i am not sure whether one should base such a system on trying to define it precisely. |
Yeah, it's hard to define "objectivism" because Ayn Rand was a novelist, not a philosopher. Rather than preferring to state her political views explicitly, she often intertwined them with long rambling fictional prose (much like L. Ron Hubbard). Of course, mostly the ideas weren't even her own thoughts ... she borrowed ideas from other thinkers (like Aristotle, Ludwig Von Mises, Nietzsche), sometimes mangling the ideas in the process.
Generally though she was just describing the polar opposite of communism (jumping from one extreme to another). She wanted, I think, to refute communism based on irrefutable, a apriori principles ... which is quite naive on her part. Although it makes sense given her bad experiences with it as a child.
What's scary to me though is that fans who read her novels actually want to apply the political/economic system in real life. I mean, if it works in a fictional world with imaginary people, why shouldn't it work in real life???
