>what is so alluring about her, from your perspective?
It's not so much her personal life. I think Ayn Rand herself would have been bored with reading her own biography. It's more the philosophy she developed which she had to do in order to write the kind of novels she wanted to write.
When she was a little girl, she would lie in bed and listen intently since she could overhear her mother reading books to her blind grandmother (or nearly blind, I'm not sure). She was captivated hearing certain scenes read from Victor Hugo's novels. One in particular that I can remember had to do with a man standing calmly in a small boat as it sank down into the water.
Well, she developed a strong sense of man as a heroic being and she decided at a very early age that she wanted to be a novelist. She also witnessed the beginning of the Communist revolution in Moscow as a child from her own balcony. Since her father owned a successful chemical business, they became oppressed. From these incredibly horrible experiences, she developed and incredible desire for justice. Somehow she managed to get through a bachelor's degree in the Soviet Union, just before they really started cracking down on people like her. Everyone knew she didn't belong in the USSR, so her mother sold her personal jewelery to buy passage for her to travel to the US to visit cousins (also remarkable that she got the visa). She married in the US and never returned to Europe again.
So far it sounds like the story of a gifted artist, but it turns out that because of her study of philosophy in college and her incredible intelligence and drive, she became more important as a philosopher then as a novelist (or perhaps equally important). She solved the "Problem of Universals" which was being discussed for since the time of the Greek philosophers and no philosopher had been able to solve.
But since she was not of the academic world, professors have resisted acknowledging her work. Finally, more than 20 years after her death, universities are offering courses in Objectivism and a couple even have endowed chairs for Objectivist philosophers. It's just a matter of time before Objectivism explodes into mainstream culture. It's going to be interesting to watch.
There's a neat video about her life that was nominated for an Academy Award called "Ayn Rand--A Sense of Life". See AynRandBookstore.com, if you're interested.
>I'm skeptic because i have never heard any answer to any philosophical question that was without doubt, have you?
Yes. Study Objectivism and you will see how we can attain certainty. Things exist. Things have natures. You exist as a conscious being. After that you can achieve certain knowledge about many things, even the question of certainty itself.
It's quite refreshing, given the nature of mainstream philosophy.
Here's an example, if someone says "No one can be certain of anything," he is presupposing that the statement itself is an absolute. All statements of this nature must presuppose that knowledge is possible. That's the contradiction of skepticism and subjectivism. You can excuse young people for getting tripped up on it, but there are a lot of dishonest college professors who know they are wrong, yet the continue with what they are doing just the same.
It's not so much her personal life. I think Ayn Rand herself would have been bored with reading her own biography. It's more the philosophy she developed which she had to do in order to write the kind of novels she wanted to write.
When she was a little girl, she would lie in bed and listen intently since she could overhear her mother reading books to her blind grandmother (or nearly blind, I'm not sure). She was captivated hearing certain scenes read from Victor Hugo's novels. One in particular that I can remember had to do with a man standing calmly in a small boat as it sank down into the water.
Well, she developed a strong sense of man as a heroic being and she decided at a very early age that she wanted to be a novelist. She also witnessed the beginning of the Communist revolution in Moscow as a child from her own balcony. Since her father owned a successful chemical business, they became oppressed. From these incredibly horrible experiences, she developed and incredible desire for justice. Somehow she managed to get through a bachelor's degree in the Soviet Union, just before they really started cracking down on people like her. Everyone knew she didn't belong in the USSR, so her mother sold her personal jewelery to buy passage for her to travel to the US to visit cousins (also remarkable that she got the visa). She married in the US and never returned to Europe again.
So far it sounds like the story of a gifted artist, but it turns out that because of her study of philosophy in college and her incredible intelligence and drive, she became more important as a philosopher then as a novelist (or perhaps equally important). She solved the "Problem of Universals" which was being discussed for since the time of the Greek philosophers and no philosopher had been able to solve.
But since she was not of the academic world, professors have resisted acknowledging her work. Finally, more than 20 years after her death, universities are offering courses in Objectivism and a couple even have endowed chairs for Objectivist philosophers. It's just a matter of time before Objectivism explodes into mainstream culture. It's going to be interesting to watch.
There's a neat video about her life that was nominated for an Academy Award called "Ayn Rand--A Sense of Life". See AynRandBookstore.com, if you're interested.
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I'm skeptic because i have never heard any answer to any philosophical question that was without doubt, have you?
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Yes. Study Objectivism and you will see how we can attain certainty. Things exist. Things have natures. You exist as a conscious being. After that you can achieve certain knowledge about many things, even the question of certainty itself.
It's quite refreshing, given the nature of mainstream philosophy.
Here's an example, if someone says "No one can be certain of anything," he is presupposing that the statement itself is an absolute. All statements of this nature must presuppose that knowledge is possible. That's the contradiction of skepticism and subjectivism. You can excuse young people for getting tripped up on it, but there are a lot of dishonest college professors who know they are wrong, yet the continue with what they are doing just the same.
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Is there any example besides objectivism that is unquestionable?
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