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7 von 7 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
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Review of the Book, not the Ideas, 11. Juni 2000
I am writing, ostensibly, to provide you with some information regarding the book, in order that you may make a more rational decision as to whether you will purchase it.Rand is often provocative, and mention of her/and or her philosophy can create instant dichotomies. I will not, in this review, critique the ideational content of her work. I offer this review with some "objective", pardon the pun, criticism. 1. This work offers a concise, fairly complete philosophy (which you may or may not agree with), from the essential and foundational steps, to their eventual results in daily life. This complete-package approach is an interesting window into her philosophy. Several issues could have been explored in more detail surely, but this collection of essays acts primarily to spark thinking on behalf of the reader. 2. Her philosophy is a shocking alternative to the present implicity accepted norms in society. Her counter-arguments to both traditional and contemporary systems of ethics are interesting and worth consideration, even if you eventually endeavour to refute them. 3. This work presents profound ideas in rather straightforward text. Topics include: ethics metaphysics politics values comments on contemporary trends in philosophy comments on ethical relativism 4. This work provides some insight into the breadth and depth which simple assumptions may have on daily life. Rands ideas, and those she illustrates for purposes of refutation, are extrapolated from basic intellectual concepts to day-to-day effects on human life. This concept-to-consequence style of writing offers a holistic perspective that can easily be applied to the work of other philosophers. For this reason I suggest this book to students of philosophy to gain a perspective of the impact of philosophical ideas. 5. Finally, this is perhaps the most succinct and most accessible of Rand's works, and a reading of it should allow sufficient insight into the body of her thought to understand her stance on several issues. If you are looking for a 'summary of Rand', this is the book I would suggest.
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We are free to live., 25. Mai 2000
The most basic element of Ayn Rand's philosophy is that every man has, not only the right, but the unavoidable duty, to live for his own interests and goals. If a man decides to live for something other than himself, he is evading his responsibility to himself. A man that seeks to live for a cause is a man who is afraid to live for himself. Ayn Rand was born in Imperial Russia, and was raised in the early stages of the drawn-out murder of the Soviet Union. She knew, from first hand experience, the inevitable terror of a society that attempts to use irrationality and slogans in place of logic and economical integrity (for, make no mistakes, economics are the highest expression of morality and integrity). To preserve this country, nearly the last country on earth which had not succumbed to the disease of socialist thinking, she wrote her novels, to make her logic an available weapon against this illness. And as we look around today, we can see that she succeeded, and we may say a moment's silent thanks to the incredible will, the indomitable mind that saved this country.Her thoughts are easily argued with, but that was her intent. To make people think, to make them use their minds in a clear and logical way, to examine the world around them and see where it was headed. Whenever anyone reads her books and says "But wait, is this so?", they come a step closer to making this world clearer, and brighter. And that, in essence, was the purpose of Ayn Rand's writing. To make the people of the world think, and see for themselves the state of the world, and the causes of it.
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A perversion of Jewish ethics, 30. November 1999
Our Sages held that each person should keep a piece of paper in one pocket reading, 'The world was created for my sake', and a piece in another pocket reading, 'I am but dust and ashes'. Each statement, it was said, should be taken out and read as a corrective - the first to overhumility, the second to an excess of pride.Ayn Rand (born Alyssa Rosenbaum) had only one pocket. As a result her secular morality is a one-sided perversion of Jewish ethics. There is certainly an important place for what Rand would have called 'egoism' - proper concern for one's own well-being - and Judaism certainly does not advocate what she called 'sacrifice'. However, her contemptuous dismissal of charity and benevolence as of merely marginal ethical importance is altogether at odds with the Jewish emphasis on tzedakah. It should not take much 'Jewish learning' to see that practising the 'Objectivist' ethic leads directly to a hypertrophy of pride and self-concern. That is why the 'Objectivist' cult is so heavily slanted against communal concerns and so thoroughly blind to the goal of interpersonal harmony. But it is also why there will never be an actual 'Objectivist' *community* - and why 'Objectivists' will therefore never find personal fulfillment. According to Judaism, the individual and the community are not opposed to one another, but each finds its proper fulfillment in the other. Not so 'Objectivism', which - following its false Messiah - regards community as of only secondary importance and elevates the 'self' to the status of an idol (as a replacement for the G-d that Miss Rand rejected). As far as interpersonal relations are concerned, 'selfishness', in and of itself, is no more a virtue than is 'altruism'. Genuine virtue is to behave justly toward *both* oneself *and* others (in accordance with the mitzvot), thus fostering both individual well-being and communal harmony. But neither of these goals can be achieved by itself. Miss Rand's personal history is evidence enough of that.
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