Pure Liberal Fire


Guyau

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Wolf and Brant -- If you want to understand the best of neoliberal theory -- of the epistemology of reason, the ethics of individualism, and the politics of freedom, all cranked to infinity -- then those familiar books are the best ones I know. I still claim, however, that new neoliberal philosophies will eventually emerge, separate from Rand.

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For anyone curious about my possibly catastrophically mistaken mini-essay on Kant, here it is:


"The Smasher of Everything"

Ayn Rand called Immanuel Kant "the most evil man in mankind's history." As usual, she was right. Kant was the intellectual father of esentially pure philosophical unreason, pure cultural illiberalism, and pure personal and social destruction.

Kant builds magnificently upon the raw irrationality and depravity of Bishop Berkeley (early 1700s) and David Hume (middle 1700s) while leaving Friedrich Hegel (early 1800s) virtually nothing left to lie about or destroy. Kant (late 1700s) was the kung fu master of empty talk, double talk, and false talk. So too of general nihilism, intellectual irrationalism, fundamentalist Skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and today's deconstructivism. Kant even contributes to Objectivism's tendency toward scholasticism, rationalism, and "intrinsicism."

No-one writes in a more incompetent, incomprehensible, anfractuous, serpentine, stultifying, stupifying, tedious, tortured, baroque, baffling, vacuous, fatuous, ennui-inspiring manner. His impure thoughts lead to his impure words which lead to impure deeds done by and to everybody.

In his essentially limitless and undying hatred of life and mankind, Kant once said: "Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man." But the fact is: "Never a straight thing was written by the crooked pen of Kant."

It's hard to imagine a more false and corrupt title than his tour de force first book: The Critique of Pure Reason. And evidently nothing in the whole written universe is more unreadable and presumptuously outrageous than his 500-page (!) Introduction -- his pretentious and demonic "prolegomena" -- to that Pure Reason abortion.

Nothing is, or ever can be, more false and evil -- or more non-existent and yet destructive -- than his absurd "noumena" and "things-in-themselves." This "a priori" rot is unprecedented and unequaled. This irrational nonsense (literally) and utter bullshit (esthetically) ineluctably leads to the (mental) destruction of all real phenomena and the people who depend upon it (i.e. all of us). This nihilism taken to a height and state of near perfection ultimately leads -- via Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Khomenei, Osama, etc. -- to utter annihilism.

His best buddy, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, had it right: this malicious clown really is "the smasher of everything." All of reality dies and obtains non-existence in his theories -- and all people soon thereafter in the realization of his theories.

What can be more destructive of humanity than his Categorical Imperative in favor of self-sacrifice? Written in his trademark tortured, garbled syntax this ethical "ideal" is as self-repudiating, self-destructive, and universally annihilating as a thing can be.

If Plato and Aristotle are the two great archetypes of human philosophy -- the yin and yang of intellectual endeavor and the life of the mind -- then Kant brings alive the pure falsity and evil of Platonic "forms" and "idealism" like never before or since.

(from Pure Liberal Fire )

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For anyone curious about my possibly catastrophically mistaken mini-essay on Kant, here it is:

"The Smasher of Everything"

Ayn Rand called Immanuel Kant "the most evil man in mankind's history." As usual, she was right. Kant was the intellectual father of esentially pure philosophical unreason, pure cultural illiberalism, and pure personal and social destruction.

Kant builds magnificently upon the raw irrationality and depravity of Bishop Berkeley (early 1700s) and David Hume (middle 1700s) while leaving Friedrich Hegel (early 1800s) virtually nothing left to lie about or destroy. Kant (late 1700s) was the kung fu master of empty talk, double talk, and false talk. So too of general nihilism, intellectual irrationalism, fundamentalist Skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and today's deconstructivism. Kant even contributes to Objectivism's tendency toward scholasticism, rationalism, and "intrinsicism."

No-one writes in a more incompetent, incomprehensible, anfractuous, serpentine, stultifying, stupifying, tedious, tortured, baroque, baffling, vacuous, fatuous, ennui-inspiring manner. His impure thoughts lead to his impure words which lead to impure deeds done by and to everybody.

In his essentially limitless and undying hatred of life and mankind, Kant once said: "Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man." But the fact is: "Never a straight thing was written by the crooked pen of Kant."

It's hard to imagine a more false and corrupt title than his tour de force first book: The Critique of Pure Reason. And evidently nothing in the whole written universe is more unreadable and presumptuously outrageous than his 500-page (!) Introduction -- his pretentious and demonic "prolegomena" -- to that Pure Reason abortion.

Nothing is, or ever can be, more false and evil -- or more non-existent and yet destructive -- than his absurd "noumena" and "things-in-themselves." This "a priori" rot is unprecedented and unequaled. This irrational nonsense (literally) and utter bullshit (esthetically) ineluctably leads to the (mental) destruction of all real phenomena and the people who depend upon it (i.e. all of us). This nihilism taken to a height and state of near perfection ultimately leads -- via Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Khomenei, Osama, etc. -- to utter annihilism.

His best buddy, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, had it right: this malicious clown really is "the smasher of everything." All of reality dies and obtains non-existence in his theories -- and all people soon thereafter in the realization of his theories.

What can be more destructive of humanity than his Categorical Imperative in favor of self-sacrifice? Written in his trademark tortured, garbled syntax this ethical "ideal" is as self-repudiating, self-destructive, and universally annihilating as a thing can be.

If Plato and Aristotle are the two great archetypes of human philosophy -- the yin and yang of intellectual endeavor and the life of the mind -- then Kant brings alive the pure falsity and evil of Platonic "forms" and "idealism" like never before or since.

(from Pure Liberal Fire )

Kant died in 1804. He is not responsible for anything that happened thereafter. If you want to blame people blame his followers.

Aristotle did not screw up subsequent science It was Aristotelian s that did.

Likewise for Kantians.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I think this may be a right moment to mention and elaborate further a point I’ve made before about errors of a philosopher concerning the history of philosophy. Many medieval and early modern philosophers’ understanding of Aristotle can be reasonably seen as questionable on various points, as seen by expert modern scholars of Aristotle. Then too, Kant’s understanding of various early moderns before him has been rightly impugned on various points.

That Rand (or Kant) gets some history of philosophy wrong does not undermine correctness of her own philosophy. Further, to argue against a view misattributed to a predecessor is to argue, in terms of one’s own philosophy, against some definite philosophic view nevertheless. That could be a view, and even an importantly wrong one, that people do actually hold, and they may hold it due to common misunderstanding of some philosopher’s writings. Say, Kant’s. The view can be worth refuting, even were it not held by the philosopher to whom it is being attributed. The arguments one brings against a view so situated does show one’s own philosophy and may show something of it otherwise not on show. As always, the correctness of the displayed view is assessable apart from the history of philosophy.

Which errors of a prior philosopher one emphasizes also reveals something about one’s own philosophy. Non-identity of consciousness is an error Rand emphasizes as an error in Kant’s critical idealism. It is actually an error that should be laid at the feet of Aristotle, but suppose for a moment Rand’s reading of the history of philosophy were right on this point, namely, that Kant makes this error and it is a significant error for him and for subsequent philosophers on account of him. That Rand emphasizes that error over, for examples, Kant’s ideality of space or his presumption that mind is root of any unity can tell things about Rand’s philosophy, such as its hierarchies and its fortes, as seen by its author, and its possible feebleness in regions of Kant error (e.g. space) on which Rand is nearly silent.

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Sufficient unto one's own day are the errors thereof.

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Neither Kant nor any philosopher is the most evil man in history. Ideas move the world, but evil has not required the service of philosophy for its ideas. Neither Napoleon nor Stalin nor Hilter needed Kant’s ideas to win their ancient evils. Moreover, as Eichmann had to admit, when it came to the mass murders, he knew damn well that that was contrary Kant’s imperative to treat people as ends in themselves. Kant was not a proponent of irrationality (nor of enthusiasm in religion). He was a champion of reason so far as he comprehended it. He was a champion of modern science. He is difficult, but he is not talking gibberish. Your quote of his infamous remark about the crooked timber of humanity was a conception of human nature not one whit worse than was taught from Luther to every child in his or her catechism instruction (whether Lutheran, Pietist, or Reformed), and it was Luther and the teachings of the Bible that was, at least to WWII, the far greater influence, good and bad, on the people making war and death camps.

I have immense respect for Stephen Boydstun. He seems considerably smarter and better educated than myself. I certainly welcome his contribution to the discussion. And yet...I just don't agree with a large part of the above view regarding the power of ideas in human history and practical affairs. In my judgment:

Philosophy rules the world. Political leaders don't. Not even great kings, powerful dictators, or highly persuasive and beloved prime ministers and presidents.

However powerful these political leaders may seem, they are almost slaves to the ideological theories in their head, with minimal room to innovate, deviate, operate, and maneuver. They have little free will available to exercise. And their interior, driving philosophy is almost always the most prominent and dominant belief in that part of the world. Deep thinkers pretty much control all.

As Ayn Rand frequently said: "Ideas matter." [1] And as John Maynard Keynes once observed: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." [2] Especially a philosophical scribbler.

Heinrich Heine predicted Adolf Hitler more than a century before this dictator ever presided over the destruction of a large part of our planet. Heine stated resonantly: "Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder [will cause] a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history.... At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll." [3]

Hitler is widely hated as a monster and destroyer beyond compare. And yet he was also a silly twit and goofball who in many senses had no real authority or power. For all his unchallenged political and military command, Hitler was a contemptible little twerp, not respected by a single person of quality, who in many regards had essentially no impact upon the world. The theories and ideals of fascism, socialism, nationalism, altruism, self-sacrifice, etc. badly hurt the peoples of the world. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and the other Nazi leaders mostly didn't.

Similarly, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad -- with all their false and evil ideas and values -- did tremendous damage to the planet during the WW II era. And the deep-thinking Germans Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx did even more.

The 20th century horrors nominally perpetrated by the virtually impotent government leaders of fascism and socialism -- by the tyrannical rulers of Germany, Japan, Russia, and China -- couldn't have happened without the ideology, and mental evil, upon which these material horrors were founded. Nor, on the other hand, could these physical nightmares have been much avoided. Philosophy dictated the course of events.

However good or bad individual government leaders are, they have little impact upon their nations and the world, whether for good or ill. They are overwhelmingly the playthings of the most pervasive and dominant ideology of their place and time.

However odd it may seem at first glance, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao -- along with Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Osama bin Laden -- were not orginal actors. They were much more like puppets on a string. They were almost entirely dominated, and ordered about, by the obscure, behind-the-curtains intellectuals. Thus these fiends never really hurt the world.

But as for the profound, powerful, influential, all-controlling philosophers of the anti-Enlightenment, Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Hegel -- they damaged the hell out of mankind! And the terrible, almost-phantomless pain continues still.

Henry David Thoreau once noted: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." [4] I strike at the root.

--------------------

[1] The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, Ayn Rand, 1971

[2] The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes, 1936

[3] The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Heinrich Heine, 1834

[4] Walden, Henry David Thoreau, 1854

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"Philosophy rules the world." This begs the question of what is philosophy--really is philosophy? The starting off observation is everyone has one. After knowing what that is--what those are--which fluctuates through and between various cultural-political-economic-psychological agglomerations, we can indeed say it rules. Now, go ahead and try to change things by running in new ideas. It can be done, extremely slowly (over centuries) if constructively, in possibly greater haste if one is of a destructive bent--at least that's what the Marxists did. If we trace the Marxists back to a certain 18th C. French philosopher, we can say two centuries for those SOBs.

Changing philosophy is not pulling out one (intellectual) module and running in another. It's been a lifetime experiential brainiac trip for me still going on, the most noteable thing being I keep leaving the peer groups I entered along the way behind. I do claim that fundamentally I've always had one immutable philosophy and that's finding and working off the truth--or a philosophy of truth. What's going on? What should be going on? Most people don't care about that. They want peace and security--to be taken care of. Guess who's doing that? The Devil's bargain. They also, like myself, want their fragile egos taken care of so they, unlike myself (I'm not pure here), lard them up with defensive and even reactive armors. If an ego is reality based, it's a pretty strong fortress to ward off any envious and hateful and stupid from hoi polloi land.

You see, hoi polloi rules the world (with hoi polloi philosophy), but they don't have to rule me or you. Many nasty agents of enforcement are used; not all government laws and thuggery, and frequently the nasty agents wear marshmallow gloves over their rusty claws. (I got that from Ayn Rand, but don't remember the exact quote or the exact context.)

To understand Stephen Boydstun in all this simply understand he's writting for the thousand-year future. Most of us have more pressing concerns and interests for the luxury of pure thought. Kyrel's book, with its hundred plus 98 essays, needs a hundred 98 plus expansions. Many of those won't withstand that and go "poof," but so what? I strongly expect many will live long and prosper, but not if left in their present form strewn across the landscape like so many abandoned babies crying out for their mothers' comfort and milk.

--Brant

heh, heh--I got on a roll! ("I can't help myself!")

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Brant said: "Most people don't care about [philosophy of truth]. They want peace and security--to be taken care of."

I concur 100% and both ways from Sunday, Saturday, and Friday, depending on lineage.

from a recent screed sent to (and ignored by) Lew Rockwell:

Food and Fuel

I've given a great deal of thought recently to the millions. What I concluded is that they can live with incompetent government, a flood of illegal immigrants, bad movies, brainless children, and freeway road rage – but something has to be done pretty damn quick about inflation.

The rising cost of food and fuel matter most to the average American family. It hits them hard, on a daily basis, every time they fill up with the cheapest gasoline they can find and then wander through a discount supermarket, aghast at the price of hamburger and potato chips. Delicious dinners with fresh vegetables are not on the menu.

The middle class family budget for food and fuel is being stressed at a shockingly painful pace. In response to rising retail prices, with no increase in family income, there has been massive “demand destruction” – particularly in consumption of gasoline, which has collapsed by two-thirds since 2008, according to EIA.

20140530_gas_0.png

We are less mobile, eating cheap food, and worried as hell about the future, no matter what lies we're fed by government statisticians and smiling faces on television. If public confidence in Congress is at an all-time low (7% in a recent poll), average Joes have absolutely zero respect for the BLS consumer price index that excludes food and fuel. They known damn fine that inflation is running at 10%.

But the deceit goes deeper than anyone can possibly imagine. CPI has been twisted by switching items in the average family's basket of purchases and dreaming up imaginary “hedonic quality gains” that knock down 10% real retail inflation to a trivial 2%, to fit the formula that the Federal Reserve needs to justify its carnival of cheap money.

For instance, the BLS has determined that since no one makes or sells conventional TV sets any more and consumers are forced to buy digital flatscreen TVs that cost five times more, an imaginary hedonic quality gain makes a new $1250 65" flatscreen cheaper than a $250 Zenith 27” sold ten years ago.

LCD direct view and plasma televisions have prices that are about 70% greater than CRT televisions, all other characteristics being equal. When an item is replaced and it is possible to apply the hedonic model, the CPI estimates what the price of the new version of item would have been if it had been in the CPI sample in the previous period. To obtain that estimate, the previous period price of the old version is adjusted using the value of the change in characteristics between the two versions.” [BLS Hedonic Quality FAQ]

Imaginary comparison of what expensive new products (cars, phablets, cotton shirts) might have cost in the past (if they existed) clouds the big crystal ball BLS uses to calculate CPI. If consumers buy less gasoline, they knock down the weight given to fuel. If people stop eating beef tenderloin, it no longer exists as far as BLS is concerned. I know it sounds nuts, but if average Americans were destitute and starving, fighting each other for scraps of garbage at a McDonald's grease trap, CPI would fall to 0%, because new cars that no one can afford have cameras and proximity sensors.

Rather than fix the goofy way that bureaucrats deceive themselves, let's consider a simple idea that will make sense to average Americans. It's easy to show that Singapore is doing much better than the United States economically.

Singapore's economy has been ranked as the most open in the world, least corrupt, most pro-business, with low tax rates, and the third highest per capita GDP in the world. [Wikipedia]

Personally, I love Singapore. It's beautiful architecturally and spotlessly clean. To fix what's wrong with the United States, we should do what the imbecilic Malaysians did in 1965 when they kicked Singapore out of Malaysia – i.e., spin off some of our failed U.S. cities and states as new island countries.

Socialist enclaves like San Francisco-Marin County (“S&M”) and Seattle-Portland (“Utopia”) can vote themselves into a gay rainbow all of their own. Alaska would be able to find its own way to peace and prosperity liberated from environmental do-gooders, and Hawaii (“Choom”) can concentrate on getting high and entertaining rich tourists, instead of inflicting more community organizers on the mainland.

I think the only hope for Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Youngstown (“Hell”) is to fence them off, wave goodbye, and force them learn the hard lesson of self-government. Something similar has to happen in South Florida (“Fierno Sur”) and to New Hampshire, whose slogan of “Live Free or Die” should be extended to a hostile takeover of Maine's natural resources and access to shipping.

These new Singapores can experiment all they like with money printing, immigration rules, and laws. I doubt they could do any worse than our bankrupt Union. For the rest of us, chained hand and foot to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, foreign wars, and Too Big To Fail financial frauds galore, we could toy with the bitter truth about Singapore, too. It might our only hope of resuscitating the Rump 46. Libertarians are not going to like the medicine, but our backs are against the wall, and it's an issue of food and fuel.

If you read the standard account of Singapore's economic success in places like the Economist or the Wall Street Journal, you will only hear about Singapore's free trade and welcoming attitude towards foreign investment. You will never hear about how almost all the land in Singapore is owned by the government, while 85% of housing is supplied by the government's housing corporation. 22% of GDP is produced by state-owned enterprises, when the world average in that respect is only about 9%. To put it bluntly, there isn't one economic theory that can explain Singapore's success; its economy combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial; reality is complex. [Ha Joon Chang]

I know it's heresy. So is throwing Detroit and Cleveland into Hell, where they belong.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Kyrel's book, with its hundred plus 98 essays, needs a hundred 98 plus expansions. Many of those won't withstand that and go "poof," but so what? I strongly expect many will live long and prosper, but not if left in their present form strewn across the landscape like so many abandoned babies crying out for their mothers' comfort and milk.

Brant -- Which are the five or ten -- or at least two or three -- mini-essays which need the most expansion? Which are the ones most crying out for mother's comfort and milk? It would help me if you could state something specific and clear. I'm virtually certain I can provide some solid expatiation here.

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Kant died in 1804. He is not responsible for anything that happened thereafter. If you want to blame people blame his followers.

Does responsibility for one's writings end at death? Is no-one responsible for their intellectual legacy, neither good nor bad? Doesn't their powerful impact continue, and their profound ideas live on? I think the world is a far, far better place today for all the writings of the philosophical liberals of the past 2600 years. I think humanity is vastly uplifted -- and life is much sweeter today -- due to the good works and true writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Smith, Voltaire, Jefferson, Mises, Hayek, and Rand. Too bad they didn't do even better, and there weren't even more of them!

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Kant died in 1804. He is not responsible for anything that happened thereafter. If you want to blame people blame his followers.

Does responsibility for one's writings end at death? Is no-one responsible for their intellectual legacy, neither good nor bad? Doesn't their powerful impact continue, and their profound ideas live on? I think the world is a far, far better place today for all the writings of the philosophical liberals of the past 2600 years. I think humanity is vastly uplifted -- and life is much sweeter today -- due to the good works and true writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Smith, Voltaire, Jefferson, Mises, Hayek, and Rand. Too bad they didn't do even better, and there weren't even more of them!

Yes. No one compels anyone to be a follower of any philosophy. It is a matter of choice. If you believe in Free Will then you cannot blame a philosopher for the folly of those who follow him (if his philosophy is defective).

No philosopher has a mortmain on the minds of future generations.

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Kyrel's book, with its hundred plus 98 essays, needs a hundred 98 plus expansions. Many of those won't withstand that and go "poof," but so what? I strongly expect many will live long and prosper, but not if left in their present form strewn across the landscape like so many abandoned babies crying out for their mothers' comfort and milk.

Brant -- Which are the five or ten -- or at least two or three -- mini-essays which need the most expansion? Which are the ones most crying out for mother's comfort and milk? It would help me if you could state something specific and clear. I'm virtually certain I can provide some solid expatiation here.

Trying to find the time.

--Brant

each essay needs the same attention as a longer one would and there are so many of them

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No one compels anyone to be a follower of any philosophy. It is a matter of choice. If you believe in Free Will then you cannot blame a philosopher for the folly of those who follow him (if his philosophy is defective).

But I do. Ideas matter. False ideas hurt. Evil philosophers cause evil in the world. Even long after they're dead.

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Trying to find the time....each essay needs the same attention as a longer one would and there are so many of them

Gotta give me something specific and solid. Something I can work with. Even a single sentence you (or anyone else) think false, or consider mere unproven assertion, would help! :smile:

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No one compels anyone to be a follower of any philosophy. It is a matter of choice. If you believe in Free Will then you cannot blame a philosopher for the folly of those who follow him (if his philosophy is defective).

But I do. Ideas matter. False ideas hurt. Evil philosophers cause evil in the world. Even long after they're dead.

Not true. No one is compelled to take up their ideas. That is the choice of the follows, not the originator.

You have committed the so-called generic fallacy./

Ba'al Chatzaf

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REVIEW Pure Liberal Fire by Kyrel Zantonavitch

Introduction

The author claims to be a "pure liberal -- the only one on this earth." This is the "new and perfected version of classical liberalism."

I'll take his word for it. I'll not examine whether he's a megalomaniac, deluded or objectively truthful. I don't care. I'm not interested in perfection regardless. I'll simply examine these ideas of his which are not exclusive to him as a person. I do point out, however, that from being the only one to the existence of others of this ilk only takes a few more paragraphs. This is not a good portent. The first paragraph needs to be rewritten to get rid of the contradiction. Or the other paragraph, if the author hates any intimation of modesty.

Not yet enough reason to buy this book, but the review has only just started. So far it is a set up for a religious tract, a notion of which I hope to be quickly disabused.

Instead of reviewing this book essay by essay--there are 98 of them--I will review it section by section, of which there are eight. Next review will be on "Metaphysics and Epistemology." Look for it by this weekend or even by tomorrow.

--Brant

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REVIEW

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Reality exists. Man using reason learns of and knows reality both generally and in many particulars.

You can claw this information out of this section of Mr. Zantonavitch's book or you can read the above two sentences. Better yet, read Ayn Rand.

Do not read this book to learn about axioms. I found it confusing and obscuring.

So far, no footnotes, same as Rand, so we aren't going to be dealing with scholarship but a fountainhead of thinking.

--Brant

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REVIEW

Ethics

I can recommend this section while disagreeing with an awful lot and seeing its confirming religious tone and stricture. Rand's Objectivist Ethics is much more complete and substantial, though in itself quite incomplete and too inclusive. I expected a lot more here but there's still a lot to think about in only twelve pages, for the author's specialty is condensation. What's to think most about is the overall gross deficiency of this section. Ethics are the heart of Objectivism as presented by Rand. Not here.

--Brant

note: there's a lot of religious tone and stricture in Objectivism too

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REVIEW

Politics, Economics, and Sociology

This section is a scattering of articles, some only a paragraph long, about all sorts of items that fit the header. Each might have been a thread header on Objectivist Living and made better consequently by the feedback. If you aren't into giving feedback then this section is recommended for think pieces, but there is something wrong with a bunch of "essays" one of which describes democrary as "garbage" and others that don't.

--Brant

note: Kyrel is on my "Ignore" list until I finish the reviews of his book, then I'll read anything he has said

Edited by Brant Gaede
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REVIEW

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Reality exists. Man using reason learns of and knows reality both generally and in many particulars.

Most of our generalities come from particulars by induction.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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