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Comment by simbolit | Hacker News Reader

The idea that Ayn Rand is a philosopher in any meaningful sense is very debatable.

She was an author of fiction, like Terry Pratchett. Lots of people draw philosophical inspiration from Pratchett, but that doesn't make him a philosopher.

Sorry to burst some bubble here, but most of the philosophical content of her writings is just rehashed Nietzsche, sometimes near-verbatim. All the while she claimed, she never read any philosopher but Aristotle. For anyone who has read Nietzsche and then opens a Rand book, this is laughable.

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I don't think we need to gatekeep who philosophers are. It's okay if she's a bad philosopher. There are already so many already; what's one more?

'Author of fiction' and philosopher aren't in any way mutually exclusive. If a fictional story contains new philosophical ideas, it's both philosophy and fiction, and should not in any way devalue the philosophy as somehow less serious. Some of the most famous philosophical books are formatted as fictional stories- like Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Even Plato's Socratic dialogue uses fictional conversations to explain philosophy.

Rand's fiction books seem like thinly veiled philosophy- there is not much story or character development, and very long rants about ideas. I think it's worth mentioning in the context of Rand that Terry Goodkind is a very popular fantasy novelist whose books are also all based on Objectivism.

Platos cave is also a work of fiction.

Are you even aware of the books and articles she wrote for decades? Check your premises.

Yes.

You don't seem to be.

Perfectly happy with haven given you this impression.

How far'd you make it in The Virtue of Selfishness before throwing it across the room for yet another dubious premise that's presented as fact without justification, used to build a giant sandcastle of reasoning upon, and never revisited with an eye to addressing the obvious objections to it?

Your notion that any philosophers write books that have complete philosophical justifications from metaphysics to politics in a single book is a strange one. As I told the other person not familiar with her writings, she has an incredible amount of books and essays. The most important being her book on epistemology.

The very least you could do is use the proper title:

Ayn Rand (1966/1979) Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

it can be found on libgen, if people are really interested. (It's not a good book.)

> it can be found on libgen, if people are really interested. (It's not a good book.)

Yowzer. I'd never dug quite that deep. You're not kidding.

> The idea that Ayn Rand is a philosopher in any meaningful sense is very debatable.

Its not entirely unfair, though "polemicist" is more accurate than "philosopher"; moreso than to say that Ayn Rand is worth reading in any meaningful way, at least.

> She was an author of fiction, like Terry Pratchett.

In terms of the works that make this a reasonable statement, I would more say she was an author of religious (or, if you prefer, ideological) polemic packaged as long-form fiction, like Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

Can agree with what you write.

Calling Ayn Rand religious, is a clear sign you know nothing about her. Her entire work is basically a claim that objective reality should paid attention to in our beliefs.

If you have an internet archive account (and even free market fanatics should have), these are 328 pages you might want to read:

https://archive.org/embed/isobjectivismrel0000elli

Albert Ellis (1968) Is Objectivism a religion?

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