Ayn Rand, What is the Difference Between Objectivism and Nietzsche's Philosophy?


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Thanks, George.

Delighted to hear these voices from long ago. Pleased to hear Rand’s allusions to Schopenhauer in connection with Nietzsche, consistent with her report in some television interview that she read some Schopenhauer (at about age 16, as I recall). Nice discussions of superior, place of action in human nature, and connection of Nietzsche to contemporary existentialism. Mention of opposition to Aristotelian form noted, mentioned also in ITOE seminar.

I’ll reenter one Nay:

Truth of Will and Value

Part 2 – Zarathustra and Beyond (conclusion)

~Rand in Full~

. . .

Rand contests Nietzsche’s mature philosophy in her 1960 essay “For the New Intellectual.” She stands against Nietzsche’s proclamations “that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his ‘blood’, by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power—that he is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself, while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves—that reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality is useless, the ‘superman’ is ‘beyond good and evil’, that he is a ‘beast of prey’ whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim” (36).

. . . Nietzsche would deny, of course, that the ultimate standard of his ideal, super human is nothing but whim. . . .

We have seen that, for Nietzsche, underneath will to truth and will to life is will to power. This he takes to be in the nature of human life independently of anyone’s whim. That will to power manifests itself in higher humans and in superhumans in the form of those particular virtues is not subject to the whims of those beings. Not just anything an individual might set up as a value for himself can pass for noble or be worthy of a superhuman. Weakness, pity, altruism, unconditional faith, and respect of equal rights for all will not fit the bill. (The middle three are issues on which Rand was in some steady agreement with Nietzsche.) Beyond those constraints on the values of a superhuman are the required perpetual drive to fashion new values and the circumstance that not just any new value can be grown out of his previous values. . . .
. . .

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