What we have left is muddling through with rationality as a guide.

Well, I am puzzled to see that my valid criticism of Rand is considered “sublimation” of “unhealthy emotions”. If Rand is just used as inspiration, fine. I don’t see particular problems with using an irrational source as inspiration for rational actions or theories. However, I see a significant group who seem to rely on her for more than that. See D. Vision’s comment for an example.

I don’t think it’s helpful to character an opposing point of view as “anti-reason, anti-logic, anti-freedom, anti-life”. That connotation pidgeon-holing comes directly from Rand and shouldn’t be one of the things that inspires a rational being.

Having said that, she is a remarkable author of her age, but in my humble opinion, Objectivism (and related philosophies) needs newer, more rational inspiration to put her arguments in context.

That same care is most important for the design of any future political system, whether inspired by Rand or inspired by Plato. Inspiration is simply a motivational force–not a detailed blueprint. Laying on lashes to Rand may serve to sublimate unhealthy emotions for some, but it rather misses the point.

Second, I no longer believe in the existence of non-trivial self-evident propositions. There’s always an underlying set of axioms and a semantics system that needs to be included. Too many schools of thought suffer from the delusion that their founding principles are “self-evident”.

In Rand’s case, I have serious questions about why she needed to redefine things such as “good/evil” and come up with dubious (ie, packaged with heavy negative or positive connotations that shouldn’t IMHO be present in philosophy) terms like “anti-life”. Why did she believe such a shuffling of the semantics was necessary? It taints her work.

Ultimately, I think objectivism and related philosophies will have to distance themselves from Rand (and perhaps have done so?). The problem is that Rand suffers from the symptoms of the age. The messenger is flawed and somewhat irrational. That means that we need to seperate the message from the messenger.

I had just been pondering the idea that “reasonoing from first principles is a closed system,” and concluding that that is bloody nonsense.

I know someone here who might seriously benefit from reading Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” and thinking hard about what she has to say.

In a strange nexus, it’s all the same: anti-reason, anti-logic, anti-freedom, anti-life. It’s about control and distribution, equality, and dependence rather than freedom, production, quality, and independence. All such delusions are necessary to float collectivism–to maintain feelings above reason.

In the next century there will be great potential for collectivism to harness if its delusions are not countered and disarmed. The creep of “need” threatens to swallow us all in a mutually dependent liability that cannot allow freedom.