The Romantic Manifesto

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1. IsaacLNov 2016
   I also practiced meditation (Vipassana) for several years, and, like you, realised that positing the non-existence of consciousness is a dead-end.

   Buddhism seemed to go deeper than many other philosophical frameworkss for this reason. However, I looked into many philosophical systems, and I was extremely surprised to discover that the thinker with the most consistent views on reality and consciousness (both self-consistent and consistent with my own experiences) was drumroll Ayn Rand.

   Though she's known for her views on egoism and capitalism, she wrote a ton about consciousness, perception and concept-formation. If you look at my comment history you'll see I talk about her a lot on HN, and that's because I think computer scientists will gain immense value from studying her works. Introdution to Objectivist Epistemology and The Romantic Manifesto contain her deepest writings on consciousness and cognition and are the books I'd recommend. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/consciousness.html is a good taster.

   http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/introduction-to-obj...

   http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/the-romantic-manife...

   I've met a couple of other Objectivists who have practiced meditation - not many but they exist. I was very surprised to discover the connection between the two areas. Hopefully in a thread like this on a site like this, curious minds will read this comment and be persuaded to investigate further. It's a fascinating journey!

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2. objectivistbritMay 2016
   You're doing what's typical for people trained in modern philosophy when debating online, i.e. complaining that I didn't write a full philosophical treatise in one comment.

   E.g., I didn't go into details of my view on Locke because they weren't central to my point. After I became an Objectivist, I did some research on Enlightenment thinkers precisely because people dismiss Objectivists for being ignorant of past philosophy, and what I found tallied with what I'd heard from well-informed Objectivists. Locke is an empiricist and holds that certain knowledge is generally impossible outside of areas like geometry. This skepticism subtly undermines any philosophy built on top of it; Rand's epistemology, in contrast, shows how certain knowledge can be possible (within a particular context), which gives her the framework to build an entire system of integrated principles, basing politics and aesthetics on ethics, and ethics on metaphysics and epistemology.

   Likewise, I didn't list what I think is novel in Rand's philosophy as I assumed honest readers could research it for themselves. Here's some: her solution to the is-ought problem, her solution to the problem of universals, her theory of the nature of romantic art, and, obviously, a complete moral code justified via rational self-interest. Locke and other writers did talk about the evils of force (and I often enjoy telling people that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was originally Locke's "life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness"). However, it was Rand who first coined the phrase "initiation of force", and Rand who first argued that reason and force were essentially the only two means of dealing with men, making non-initiation of force the fundamental social principle.

   (For said honest readers, the books which persuaded me were The Romantic Manifesto and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, though Virtue of Selfishness is probably the easiest starting point. Once I studied Nozick's famous criticism of Rand, I concluded that he was someone very smart making a deliberate attempt to misunderstand her argument, and I was pretty much soured permanently on 20th century analytic philosophy, "libertarian" or otherwise).

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3. IsaacLAug 2015
   Heh. It does add a certain something when you read her books.

   1984 probably packed more of a punch when it was distributed covertly in totalitarian Soviet states. You're reading about a society which bans books, in a book banned by your society. It's less meaningful in a liberal democracy where 1984 is widely read.

   Likewise, in Atlas Shrugged you're reading about a society which doesn't ban certain ideas but sneers at them and makes them unseemly in polite society. Which is exactly how Atlas Shrugged is treated.

   For the record, I think the Fountainhead is the most literary of her books. Rand is more original when discussing psychology than politics, and the Fountainhead paints a more interesting spectrum of characters than Atlas Shrugged, especially in her "almost-heroes". Gail Wynand, the tabloid newspaper tycoon who transformed the idiocy of the masses into a personal fortune, who lives a shamelessly public life except for a secret private art gallery he only enters alone -- in Rand's words, a man who "could have been", who possessed every other Randian virute but who had abandoned his integrity -- is such an original character, and shows how nuanced her views could be. Were her political ideas not anathema to modern academia, the Fountainhead at least would certainly be more widely studied.

   I found Atlas Shrugged to be a good page turner, but to my eyes it's clear that Ayn Rand was pissed off that everyone misunderstood the Fountainhead and so she turned the intensity and contrast up to 11, making everything as black-and-white as possible, at the expensive of believability. The political focus means people like or dislike AS based on their prior feelings towards libertarian philosophy, which obscures the fact that her ideas have some distinctions from libertarianism. In particular the focus on maintaining an independent mind; something which always requires effort, not rote formulas or blindly relying on other's opinions. In one memorable scene a group of people invest in a company based purely on the stock price movement going up, in another the heroine bets on a new alloy, going against the scientific consensus which, after studying it, she believes to be unfounded. In the first case people who follow the herd go down with the herd; in the second case one who goes against the herd succeeds.

   On the same note, her best non-fiction book is the obscure Romantic Manifesto, a set of her essays on art. Her philosophical essays aren't as bad as some people make out, but she oversimplifies and makes false dichotomies, and there isn't much which is original in her political ideas. She also has some horribly confused notions about intellectual history which alone are enough to exclude her from the top rank of philosophers. She's a philosophical novellist but not a philosopher; her gift is for portraying characters which embody particular ideas.

   This has turned into quite an effortpost so I might as well finish with a comment on her and Nietszche, someone she's often compared to, though who is surprisingly much more tolerated in the intellectual establishment. Nietzsche didn't originate the wave of Nihilism which spread over European culture from the top down in the 20th century, but he was the first to properly anticipate it. The guy managed to inspire a diverse array of groups, from Nazis to French postmodernists to new age shamanists, but I think the Objectivists might be the ones with the seed of an actual solution. Specifically, their focus on reason and a purpose-driven life, and their embrace of industrial capitalism (as the most natural thing for man, even).

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4. IsaacLAug 2015
   You've persuaded me to take another look at her philosophy. If you're still here, any books you'd recommend? Is Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology worth the read? I read Virtue of Selfishness which was OK -- I preferred the Romantic Manifesto as I felt her ideas in there were better worked out.
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5. dmfdmfAug 2015
   I'd be curious to know your background such that The Romantic Manifesto was an "easy" read. It was not easy for me.

   As for the difficulty of that book, the topic is one of the widest possible integrations in that she explains the psychological purpose of art, something I don't think anyone has ever done before. She connects the nature of concepts and abstractions to the nature of consciousness (finite) and the psychological (motivational) need to concretize our widest philosophic beliefs. It is truly an historic achievement.

   I will contact you privately.

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6. p3anomanMay 2013
   Its naive only becaue it is idealist. If you have read her non-fiction, The Romantic Manifesto might give you the reasoning behind it. Art is the realm of the ideal, not the real. (I often give the analogy of the cave painters wasting their time painting skinny meatless cattle (which may have been the reality) instead of fat cattle that would feed their tribe for months...). And we all know what ideals are don't we?
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