Real Life Philosophy Top Ten

[archas]

Rock critic and all-around pop culture intellectual Greil Marcus has, for a number of years and across a number of different publications, written a list he calls "Real Life Rock Top Ten." It's a chance to look back across the year and take stock--mostly citing the good, occasionally citing the bad, and in general marking the important and/or

Comments

[anonymous]

Funny you should mention Kierkegaard! My friends asked me to read works of love and i enjoyed it very much. So I was searching the blogosphere about what about people are saying about him and came upon your entry; I didn't know he wasn't popular before. I'm no philosophy student, but I just like the topics he discusses, like love and faith and the interesting stories he uses to explain it.

Ayn Rand

[anonymous]

Is it self-centered greed or legitimate self-interest that is the main concern with those who do not understand Ayn Rand? Those who admire and criticize Ayn Rand’s beliefs about people who stand on their own feet often say she promoted selfishness, thereby greed, which is self-centered and anti-individual creativity. That is anti-Rand. Rand admired the creative individual, people like railroad builder James Jerome Hill, on whom she was reputed to have based her character Nathaniel Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. Independent “I’m OK, you’re OK” people are OK with Rand, not the criminal takers. If we look at Howard Roark’s summation to the jury, from Fountainhead, we do not see a self-centered individual destroying his work. If he was greedy he would have simply accepted his payment. We see an other- and outer-centered individual in love with his own dreams and creations, as one would love a spouse, child or family and refuse to allow them to be assaulted. That is the kind of self-interest that built America. Though love for anything