Sarcasm noted. My reference was to Ayn Rand's materialism.
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Ayn Rand's Legacy as a Philosopher
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Sarcasm noted. My reference was to Ayn Rand's materialism.
Shadow Link
Active Member
...after all, something you constantly fail to do yourself.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
In Rand's view, any mutually beneficial, voluntary agreement is the basis for good business. Problem is, what might be mutually beneficial for two parties (coal miner and power plant for example) may be detrimental to third parties (environmental pollution.)
PureX
Veteran Member
I don't hold Darwin responsible for the foolishness some of the rest of us got up to in the name of his theory.
Of a bastardization of his theory, you mean. If not a satire outright.
So no?
Also, saying something so gratuitously does not make you credible, you know.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Quite. We have learned by experience that free market economics needs a lot of regulation if it is to work for the good of society. This started, arguably, as early as the South Sea Bubble, was painfully apparent in the terrible working conditions of c.19th industrial England, the "robber barons" era in the US, and so on, right down to the thalidomide scandal, the 2008 financial crisis and now the "surveillance society" of Faecebook and its ilk. It is incredibly naive to ignore this history, yet one still encounters politicians who affect to think that society can be run on a laissez-faire basis - some of them citing Ayn Rand.
Can you give specific examples of where you believe the author of that piece was "bending the truth", please?
Augustus
…
Many people seem to have a compulsive need to absolve Darwin of any connection whatsoever to the spread of social Darwinistic ideas, but the reality is far less straightforward.
Although Darwin in no way encouraged such social interpretations of his theory, his use of metaphorical concepts from Malthus and Spencer made possible the social interpretation of what Darwin intended only to be a biological theory of evolution. The in- vestigation of the interrelationship between Darwin and what was later called Social Darwinism consequently must begin with the question of why Darwin expressed part of his theory of natural selection in those metaphorical concepts of Malthus and Spencer...
In the Origin of Species Darwin had avoided a direct discussion of the significance of the theory of natural selection for human history. But in his letters he was more candid.
He wrote to Alfred Wallace in 1864: "Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women; but oh, what a shame is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!"37 In his Descent of Man (1871), Darwin came directly to the point: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."38 Darwin added, however, that even if men could restrain their sympathy for the less fortunate members of society, it would only be by a deterioration of the most noble part of their nature.
But Darwin did not expect all men to act in such a noble manner. This and the increase in human population meant that men would never escape the evils arising from the struggle for existence. But this was not a bad thing, Darwin assured his readers: if men had not been subject to natural selection in former times, they would not have attained their present eminence in the world.39 Darwin's strong belief in the importance of natural selection for the development of human society by eliminating the "unfit" continued to the end of his life.
A year before his death, he complained to W. Graham that natural selection did more for the progress of civilization than Graham wanted to admit: "Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so- called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an end- less number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."
Rogers, JA, Darwinism and Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(2)
I do not believe 'bending the truth' applies to philosophy, since philosophy does not deal with 'truth.'
Ayn Rand proposed an extreme materialist perspective of philosophy. It simply is not meaningful at all beyond her matter of fact conclusion.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
She has none, and no real following to speak of outside of America.
There are an influenced few outside of Americastan....
List of people influenced by Ayn Rand - Wikipedia
Btw, a few I luminaries noticed....
Steve Ditko
Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder)
Hunter S Thompson
Gene Roddenberry
Frank Miller
Penn Jillette
Alan Greenspan
Liu Junning
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Out of all I checked, all but 2 are/were American.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Out of 109 entries, 99 seem to be North Americans.
exchemist
Veteran Member
I counted 10 I think who were not N American, so less than 10%.
Check more carefully....
There are more Canuckistanians than that in Wikipedia's list.
And in my list of luminaries, Liu Junning is Chinese.
You realize Darwin was a biologist, right?
Hey, I never claimed a lot...just some, ie, "an influenced few".
So no need to try to debunk a claim I didn't even make.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Interesting, because he was Marxist-Left.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Which, is in line with my claim that outside of America she doesn't really have a following outside of a scant following. Her fame and influence is pretty much regarded and acknowledged as an American thing.