THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND | THE PHILOSOPHICAL ACHIEVEMENT OF AYN RAND

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND
THE PHILOSOPHICAL ACHIEVEMENT OF AYN RAND

She made utterly clear that existence is absolute, and now there is no escape from reality, she elevated FACTS to the level of reverential acceptance.

IN the history of philosophy, this basic fact has been incredibly obfuscated.

Basically…

By “religion” as tradition that still continues. And in the subconscious in the best of people.

We are still not able to accept that we live simply in a universe that is governed by law through it is really known to be true in our century and in fact from the past 350 years.

Ayn Rand ended that obfuscation, and hence we are now freed!!

Simply and yet profoundly. It is really an astounding thing. But it will obviously take many more centuries to spred and take deep root.

All modern philosophers, gook the path of simply obfuscating and bringing in a nihilism. Mainly Kant, Hegel and Marx.

2) She emphasized the law of identity, in that she made it utterly clear that a thing is what it is, and hence follows its nature in action , and that is "why" there are no "contradictory" behaviours in entities.

3) She said--there is such a thing as knowledge and logic, and this aspect of her philosophy is the most un-understood/mis-understood. For her, knowledge, truth was not a dry thing...no!! But...

The very nature of man, and his power, and his value,hence, as MAN!! That LIGHT that shines when you get/grasp/understand something, she elevated that into a new religion, the religion of man, and ....

4) ROOTED that as his greatest VALUE. REASON the faculty that makes man, man and that operates naturally with FOCUS in us integrates NOT empty things, BUT the material that our inviolate senses give us, observations leads to deep GRASPING of things, THAT LIGHT inside.

That opening of EYES leads to grasping the whole world, where you HAVE to get the whole, and cannot rest till then, and that natural thinking in each of us, she not only released, but made it look so simple!! She truly made the TRUE IS THE WHOLE simple obvious and possible to be achieved by each of us.

5) Not only did she elevate this, she concretized this aspect, OH!! By 100s of pages in her action packed, bitter, beautiful novels where the HEROES HAVE TO triumph, even if they have to go against the whole world.

6) Courage? Yes, and more than that...a passionate dedication, exaltation of man's stature and power!! And yet, a down to earth philosophy, that ANYONE and everyone can/should and yes, would want to practice!! WHY EVER NOT?

7) Thus she opened the floodgates of the possibility, finally, of social activism, that celebrates happiness and integrity, honesty, and independence, productiveness, money, love, sex, pride....all of that simply rooted in our power of reason, in action, our obvious, now, commitment to rationality.

Thus, she celebrated man and his life, thus making living, not a drudgery, duty bound pain, but a freedom to feel NO fear/pain/ and especially no guilt..she made Man innocent, pure, chaste, and brought in the pure elements in religious/spiritual living to the fore, sacredness, worship pf Man, and self exaltation!!

9) She rooted finally all the above to a social philosophy that celebrated capitalism, outlining its incalculable energy, power released, and thus was a passionate advocate of Man's rights, and equally, by implication, exposed Socialism, to the core blind, power lusting evil it really is...

10) Thus she LIBERATED Man, and ultimately Men, and brought in a possibility of freedom, happiness, finally peace on earth, for man, of man, possible only BY man.

11) And thus she celebrated ARTS, all arts, opened up them all, giving profound ,meaning to each, its power to influence, give that METAPHYSICAL joy!! She showed ART as concretization of all of the above in graspable form, thus givng the highest pleasure, priceless to Man in his often constant struggle to bring his values to reality. Thuis she refuelled the fuel that is ART.

12) AND....she opened up ALL fields..you name it..Education, Science, Computers, Engineering,Medicine, Finance, Economics, whatever might be your field, her FUNDAMENTAL LENS takes you deep in it, and bring in innovation that are practically inexhaustible and begging, and any man can learn..and create..Thus she LEVELLED men, no more/less..each in his profound self respecting living, yet deep brotherhood, she gave a new, proper meaning to man as a social being..he is, is he not?

She ended all divisions, precisely because she brought man as the same entity....is that not brotherhood?

13) She has brought IN PRINCIPLE, benevolence, justice, clarity, happiness, unlimited discovery, innovation, to all!!

14) She brought in a Vision of Man and Life, finally, in a form, that is ideal and practical, both, as it ought to be, and could be....

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND | POWER OF AYN RAND'S EPISTEMOLOGY - Some Reflections

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND
POWER OF AYN RAND'S EPISTEMOLOGY - 

Some Reflections

Her theory of knowledge gave me a remarkable power. .

What is knowledge and how do we really know things...what is knowing as such? And she gave me some remarkable insights....

1) The first thing is that we CAN know. This is no small thing for me or anyone. We are living in a world where nothing is really clear or knowable. This she gave with her absolute metaphysics. Existence exists and ONLY existence exists.

THIS ITSELF IS LIBERATING...IS IT NOT?

Because there is no mystery and cannot be. So we can know fully, clearly , exactly with utter certainty, and with no speck of confusion.

2) This means that the test of knowledge is the simplicity, rich and deep, but clear and true.

3) The very concept of truth is now clear. We need to have truth and there is no escape.

4) And I seek no escape and do not want to!! So my motivation to know is complete. I am good through and through, honest to the core, and profoundly independent and with utter almost natural integrity!!

Look at the connection to ethics here.

Which too she ELABORATES AND BREAKS INTO FULLY CLEAR CONCEPTS AND CONSTITUENT PARTS.

5) SO i AM MOTIVATED TOTALLY TO KNOW. AND IN THE STRUGGLE TO KNOW I AM CLEAR THAT i NEED TO KNOW BY CONCEPT FORMATION AND INTEGRATION.

6) This means I cannot fool myself in the process too. No matter how difficult the concepts are, in the sense of how involved and interconnected they may be in their logic, I have to get it, grasp it, see it for myself.

7) Thus a natural discipline comes to me. I am driven and it is a life and death issue because THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!

Rand traps me and I like the trap, the highest in me, is awakened and truth is always welcome to man qua man as deep within, biologically, I know I need and would love to know.

I start really connecting things, Discovering the underlying, fundamental principles behind data/phenomena ....seeing that I can know and that pleasure is so intense ., feels so good, that that acts like a fuel and a virtuous circle and slowly that field of mine becomes CLEAR AND CONNECTED.

9) WHETHER IT IS MUSIC, PHYSICS, EVEN ARTS, LIKE PAINTING OR ANY FIELD LIKE ENGINEERING, MEDICINE ETC...MY FIELD COMES ALIVE IN MY MIND, AND I AM ABLE TO MATCH THE BEST BRAINS IN IT, AND HAVE THE METHOD TO EVEN CORRECT, ENHANCE, EXPAND, AND BE CREATIVE!!

10) I REALIZE A PROFOUND THING. THAT i HAVE BEEN GIFTED BY A THING ETERNAL.

That my use of my mind, is a plain , clear and engaging, difficult but possible thing. And I begin to marvel at how I am BECOMING intelligent. I realize that intelligence is a personally passionate and , driven process. And that there is truly no limit.

11) The feeling of being in touch with reality, the feeling of reducing a complex data to simple principles, the feeling of power and values that is inherently there in the process, the feeling of being literally a Gulliver and really expanding my mind...is indecribable and I reach for her novels for confirmation, enjoyment and fuel!! And security and double certainty, a a sensory feeling floods me then, of being true and real and yes, flaming joy is mine.

12) I am serene, passionate...clam and energetic...wondering about how I got this power and knowing the process of knowing too...

Thus things become profoundly, deeply, simple. And the UNITization of things, the chip like thing I hold is too good and true too.

Rand gave all this to me, to anyone and everyone, in principle, mathematically (EXACTLY) covering and unifying the whole world, man and his life on earth........

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND | OBJECTIVISM, THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND - FOR EVERYONE

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF AYN RAND
OBJECTIVISM, THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND - FOR EVERYONE

Ayn Rand formulated a philosophy that she called Objectivism, and by the nature of that term she discovered and put that WHOLE in a form, that I can say at the very outset is TRUE.

Now this itself could bug somebody. He would think, who is she to tell and declare that this is the "final" truth?

And here the interesting thing is that her philosophy by its very nature answers this question too!!

So let us begin...at the beginning.

We live in a world, and she said and affirmed this world's existence. This might seem silly to many. The world exists, what is there to affirm in that. And that is the point she really made. Yes, this world exists, and only this world, because if you posit another world "beyond" this world, you would go into a void!!

So this world is all there is..and we are specific entities, with a consciousness that has a sensory apparatus, that can SEE, HEAR, TASTE, SMELL and TOUCH.

But we also have a wondrous and specific ability--to form words or as she called CONCEPTS. You see a table and another and another, and you have an ability here to arrive at the word(concept) - table...

The word TABLE refers to any and every table, otherwise the word /concept would be meaningless. That is all that she said, and any one who can speak cannot really disagree on such an elementary thing!!

So we have a whole language, and of course a grammar that covers all situations, we know how to form sentences and think/communicate.

Then what is knowledge?

Here I think, she made a deep, unique almost a new kind of contribution. Most of us think of reason and logic as piece meal. But she looked at LOGIC and REASON very profoundly as

AN INTERCONNECTED, INTEGRATED GRASP OF THE WORLD.

This is not as simple as it looks. There are some issues here. What she said was that knowledge at any time is a SUM< even for a child. And you can claim it as valid knowledge only if one part of the seeming whole does not contradict any other part!! Thus she defined Logic as a non contradictory identification of the whole sum that you are holding at present.

The key word here, is the FULL context of your knowledge at present...is it a correct whole? If one part does not contradict another part, then, yes. So errors are allowed for some time, for the person to go through a process of THINKING, and relating and to arrive at his whole.

So it was in this way that all science is both absolute and contextual. It is not as if what Newton had discovered is not the truth, it is and it was. But later dicoveries EXPANDED THE CONTEXT...!!

Then in ethics, she looked at MAN. What does he need to LIVE well? But then to live well, is the context for a MORALITY in the first place. So morality cannot be RULES.

If what you are doing benefits you, it is GOOD...if it harms you, it is bad. Thus the ideal is the practical!!

But do you need to live for others...?

No she said, because by nature each man is literally alone!!

He needs others of course but HE needs them!!

So each person incredibly should live for himself not sacrifice himself for others or others to himself.

So morality of living for others she rejected as beyond any context of anything!!

She defined living for others not as a wrong morality but as NO MORALITY!!

How do people live together? They should preserve the individual, and here the concept of rights come in naturally. So each lives with right to his life, property and freedom to work, and produce and hold property. That system is full capitalism.

This is the whole she gave,and if you notice this whole is dependent of acceptance of reality, and the deep way she defined reason.

Of course people debate these issues, and to my mind,they debate because they DO NOT THINK IN FUNDAMENTALS.

FOR EXAMPLE THE SILLIEST DEBATE AMONG 2 CAMPS OF OBJECTIVISTS IS WHETHER THIS PHILOSOPHY IS CLOSED/OPEN.

NOW WHEN THEY DEBATE, THEY DO NOT DEFINE WHAT IS THE WORD CLOSE/OPEN. AGAIN THEY FOLLOW THE NON FUNDAMENTAL APPROACH. TRUTH IS CLOSED IF BY CLOSE YOU MEAN IT IS TRUE!!

Again existence exists. It is, so it is closed. Reason in the way I explained above is the way we hold / use knowledge. If it is true, it is true. So it is closed.

In ethics, we have silly debates that Rand was against charity and helping others. Was she? By the philosophy explained above she said, YOU are the end, to which the values should be directed.

Every human in the world to me, is an "objectivist" but it is precisely being NON ABSOLUTE about it that creates problems for each individual. Rand gave me certainty, simplicity and depth all at once!! And what else is needed for serenity and deep happiness...