Posted by Scott Ryan on September 20, 19101 at 18:51:05:

In Reply to: Re: A Critique of Objectivism posted by E. LeBaron on August 04, 19101 at 22:14:00:

I turned up this discussion while searching to see who had linked to my own site so that I could link back to them.

Thanks for your comments on my critique of Rand. I agree with Mr. LeBaron that my discussion probably falls short of establishing objective idealism, but I must add that establishing its truth isn't my purpose in my critique.

The real point is that Rand offered an explicit philosophy that was at odds with the underlying principles on which she implicitly (and pretty uncritically) relied in arriving at it -- and those underlying principles belong, logically and historically, to objective idealism. I happen to think this occurs because objective idealism is in fact true. But as I remark at several points in my discussion, my critique doesn't depend on this claim; an express philosophy that explicitly contradicts its implicit presumptions is flawed whether those implicit presumptions are true or false.

Owing to various demands on my time, I won't be able to return for further discussion here, but I appreciate the fact that you've taken the trouble to look over my essays. I've also recently done a major, top-to-bottom revision of my website in which, among other things, I posted the full, book-length, highly-revised-and-expanded version of _Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality_. You're welcome to come read it, and if you like, I'll probably have time for short bits of e-mail correspondence about it.

• Essays by Scott Ryan

Follow Ups:

Post a Followup