>From the afterward of Scott Ryan's Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality; a Critique of Ayn Rand's Epistemology:
We have examined some of these features in this volume and confirmed many of my friend's opinions. My own view is that Rand added nothing whatsoever of importance to the philosophical foundations of classical liberalism, indeed what she did add is not only philosophically negligible but also positively dangerous. To paraphrase a remark attributed to Oscar Wilde in another context: what is good in Objectivism is not original and what is original is not good. The philosophy of liberty and the economic theory of capitalism can best be studied from other sources, and the psychological hazards of cleaving to Rand's principles seem to me to outweigh by far any possible benefits therefrom. The responsibility for those hazards, rest with Rand herself. They are merely the expression, in psuedophilosophical form, of her own psychological tendencies and character traits. her account of "reason" is not only flawed, but culpably flawed; she should have known better, she had access to the works of philosophers who did know better, and she deliberately offered a philosophy of reason that was expressly intended to undermine and discredit the foundations not only of theology but any philosophical outlook that bore any remote threat of entailing theism. In the process she undermined and discredited the foundations--and the exercise-- of reason itself. I can hardly think that classical liberalism is any stronger for her influence. Those who think otherwise should at least be warned of the hazards of her philosophy, and I hope this critique has in some manner helped to provide such a warning. How he describes himself: I am a theologically liberal pantheist, in same philsophical camp as Spinoza, Royce and Timothy L.S. Sprigge and spiritually at home among Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman; I share Blanshard's essential views of reason; and among traditional religions my primary loyalties lie with Judaism. But for the purposes of the present study we shall not attempt to adjudicate among these traditions but shall instead focus on what I take to be the view roughly common to them all. Paraphrasing Blanshard, at the end of The Nature of Thought, it is the view that a single intelligible order is in the process of construction or reconstruction in and through all individual knowing minds, and itself constitutes the common order in which all such minds participate. How i feel about him: Good enough to add him to my amazonian bday collection, right after BA Wallace and just ahead of J Royce's Problem of Christianity. Yummm... Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
