Phoenix Objectivists start new lecture series


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When: Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Black Bear Diner

2410 West Bell Road

Phoenix, AZ

Admission: Attendees must buy something to eat.

Event Description: For our first meeting at our new location and the last of the month, we will listen to the first in a six-part pre-recorded lecture series done by Diana Mertz-Hsieh titled: Objectivism 101 which was a lecture Mrs. Hsieh gave at The Atlas Society's Summer Seminar in 2003.

Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged offer a unique and inspiring moral vision, but translating those ideals into daily life can be challenging. Through a mixture of lecture and discussion, Diana Mertz Hsieh will survey the basic principles of Objectivism, from metaphysics to aesthetics.

She will focus on both the theory and practice of the philosophy, contrasting it with common religious and cultural views. Ideas discussed in these six sessions will include reason as the only means to knowledge, free will as the choice to think or not, the integration of mind and body, emotions as automatic value judgments, life as the standard of value, the major virtues, the trader principle, capitalism as the only moral social system, and much more.

Mrs. Hsieh is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Edited by Mike Renzulli
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Mrs Hsieh has gone over to the dark side. She is a total ARIan today with an interview in the current Impact.

There is no such thing as "a total ARIan." Even ARI ain't that bad. It keeps splintering and splitting. Money is its only cohesion--and delusion. As for Diana, since she's going to be/is, a philosopher, she's on the road to oblivion. You see, it's not philosophy that is the human primary, it's psychology. Philosophy is the add on, which needs integration to be of value and worth. Psychology is always what is, philosophy, if it's not crap, is what one's psychology might and should be. Diana is oblivious to this. So too, Rand and Peikoff. That's why Objectivism, "The Philosophy of Ayn Rand"--and ARI--is a dead end. It's dogmatic. It can't grow. She's dead. Long live Nathaniel Branden! That's why Howard Roark at the beginning is the same at the end: no childhood, no inner struggle, and frankly, no hero. It was too easy for him. Ayn Rand was the true hero, not her heroes. She gave their struggles, such as they were, lip service. Otherwise, she would have acknowledged their humanity and "Atlas Shrugged" would have been "Atlas Didn't Shrugged." Heroes never shrug.

--Brant

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I realize that. However, Ms. Hsieh's tracts on Objectivist philosophy are excellent. The lecture series itself is superb. Hence, I have no problem having us listening to this lecture any more than buying books or CD's where the proceeds go to ARI (despite my disagreement with them).

I also agree with Brant that ARI itself ain't all that bad. Some of the lectures ARI puts out are very interesting.

Mrs Hsieh has gone over to the dark side. She is a total ARIan today with an interview in the current Impact.
Edited by Mike Renzulli
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Yes I realize that and thanks for pointing that out. Despite my disagreement with Hsieh with regards to leaving TAS for ARI, this is still a damned good lecture series.

Fortunately, TAS is cranking out some good lectures too that I can use for my group meetings and I have bought more items from TAS than ARI.

These tapes are when Mrs. Hsieh was still with TOC. I buy items from ARI also.
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ARI lectures can't be played before a group without their permission.

I must add that some ARI lecturers I don't order. These include Lenny Peikoff, Peter "The Enforcer" Schwartz, and Harry Beinswanger.

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[...] Howard Roark at the beginning is the same at the end: no childhood, no inner struggle, and frankly, no hero. It was too easy for him.

I couldn't disagree more thoroughly and completely.

If anything, the worst of many inner struggles for the character was communicated far more directly in the novel's film version. Roark says to Dominique: "You want to know if you can make me suffer, don't you? ... You can."

Roark takes her I-can't-look-at-your-suffering outlook on its own terms, understands it thoroughly, won't stop her plans, but is far from indifferent as to how this ravages him. He's torn up by it.

I find it astonishing as to how so many admirers of The Fountainhead miss what is put plainly in front of them about Roark's emotional (and, before knowing Wynand, physical) isolation from Dominique: He proceeds to his work, which is far more important even than love, yet at the same time he's using work as a tool to escape from his emotions. Making that kind of misjudgment, and living with the consequences, is never "easy."

Many other inner struggles present themselves:

~ His trying to master his craft and deal with the inevitable mistakes, such as with the Sanborn house, which he re-makes at his own expense and loss. (I found the omission of such an episode from the film to be one of its weaknesses.)

~ His being bewildered by those who "live second-hand," as to their motives and M.O.s, and how he gropes for an understanding through such mid-tier friends as Heller, Lansing, Enright, and Mike the electrician. (Again, that only Enright made it into the movie was a weakness.)

~ His finding that understanding by means of such a panderer to the mass-man as Wynand, which goes against everything he'd thought to be true about friendships — and his mentor's departing curse on that publisher.

~ His realizing that being dedicated to his work didn't shield him from having to deal with, though not accept, the parasites of the world, as shown in the failure of his arrangement with Keating for secretly designing the housing project.

Roark doesn't change in moral stature from beginning to end. That doesn't mean he's immune from struggle and suffering. A god-figure, such as John Galt, approaches this far more than does Roark, and is weaker as a result in his characterization — though Rand always meant him more as a symbol, I'd say, than as flesh and blood, his being tortured notwithstanding.

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Very good and detailed list, Steve, but I always felt Roark's struggles were something he did with his left hand while he was Roark with his right--i.e., he wasn't totally engaged except with his work. That's why his being in the quarry is so powerful (and quite supportive of your point). I find Rand's most heroic characters to be Kira, Dagny and Hank. I'd put Roark fourth. The most heroic thing about Galt seems to be his self denial of Dagny all those years. I found that to be humanly impossible.

Ayn Rand was the greatest Randian hero.

--Brant

[...] Howard Roark at the beginning is the same at the end: no childhood, no inner struggle, and frankly, no hero. It was too easy for him.

I couldn't disagree more thoroughly and completely.

If anything, the worst of many inner struggles for the character was communicated far more directly in the novel's film version. Roark says to Dominique: "You want to know if you can make me suffer, don't you? ... You can."

Roark takes her I-can't-look-at-your-suffering outlook on its own terms, understands it thoroughly, won't stop her plans, but is far from indifferent as to how this ravages him. He's torn up by it.

I find it astonishing as to how so many admirers of The Fountainhead miss what is put plainly in front of them about Roark's emotional (and, before knowing Wynand, physical) isolation from Dominique: He proceeds to his work, which is far more important even than love, yet at the same time he's using work as a tool to escape from his emotions. Making that kind of misjudgment, and living with the consequences, is never "easy."

Many other inner struggles present themselves:

~ His trying to master his craft and deal with the inevitable mistakes, such as with the Sanborn house, which he re-makes at his own expense and loss. (I found the omission of such an episode from the film to be one of its weaknesses.)

~ His being bewildered by those who "live second-hand," as to their motives and M.O.s, and how he gropes for an understanding through such mid-tier friends as Heller, Lansing, Enright, and Mike the electrician. (Again, that only Enright made it into the movie was a weakness.)

~ His finding that understanding by means of such a panderer to the mass-man as Wynand, which goes against everything he'd thought to be true about friendships — and his mentor's departing curse on that publisher.

~ His realizing that being dedicated to his work didn't shield him from having to deal with, though not accept, the parasites of the world, as shown in the failure of his arrangement with Keating for secretly designing the housing project.

Roark doesn't change in moral stature from beginning to end. That doesn't mean he's immune from struggle and suffering. A god-figure, such as John Galt, approaches this far more than does Roark, and is weaker as a result in his characterization — though Rand always meant him more as a symbol, I'd say, than as flesh and blood, his being tortured notwithstanding.

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