Rand through a Nietzsche filter

[Xray]

What say you, Ellen?

I say it's Darren.

I too think it's Darren.

.It does seem weird to me that Darren would argue that Rand meant her philosophy as "entertainment." Doesn't Darren know better than that!!??.

I asked him and he replied that just because Rand was serious about her philosophy "doesn't entail that WE must be serious about her philosophy; at least, not as serious scholarship (which it quite obviously is not)". (end quote Darren)

But how he had phrased it in his original comment could lead to misunderstanding::

The philosophy of Objectivism (especially its metaphysics and epistemology) — like Atlas Shrugged itself — is ultimately meant as entertainment, not scholarship." (end quote Darren)

http://aynrand2.blog...s-floating.html

[caroljane]

Ask our friend Phil to bootleg you a copy in English.

We're all enjoying the Phil-free air, let's not be beckoning him back.

Here it is on Gutenberg.org

http://www.gutenberg...98-h/1998-h.htm

When you're done, for dessert, you can look at some of the early Wodehouse on the same site.

What if it is against my principles to read important philosophical works in translation? (How long is Zarathustra anyway?) Hmmm? I mean, if I don't know the original language, how can I know the translators are trustworthy? I would have to rely on second hand information and not use my own judgment. Those translators could have their own agenda....

Look at the Big Code and the Big Other -- what were the original words in what language? Maybe anything can "translate" as anything if you are postmodernist, it is only slippery old language after all.

Personal to Xray: Could you read that Nietszche book and give me the rundown? I'll pay you back!

Your bff

Carol

[seymourblogger]

Ask our friend Phil to bootleg you a copy in English.

We're all enjoying the Phil-free air, let's not be beckoning him back.

Here it is on Gutenberg.org

http://www.gutenberg...98-h/1998-h.htm

When you're done, for dessert, you can look at some of the early Wodehouse on the same site.

What if it is against my principles to read important philosophical works in translation? (How long is Zarathustra anyway?) Hmmm? I mean, if I don't know the original language, how can I know the translators are trustworthy? I would have to rely on second hand information and not use my own judgment. Those translators could have their own agenda....

Look at the Big Code and the Big Other -- what were the original words in what language? Maybe anything can "translate" as anything if you are postmodernist, it is only slippery old language after all.

Personal to Xray: Could you read that Nietszche book and give me the rundown? I'll pay you back!

Your bff

Carol

Until Kauffman's Nietzsche translations Nietzsche was abominably translated. In Kauffman's intro he gives some awful examples that he fixed. At this time Babette Babich is the Nietzsche scholar to goto.

She has taken advanced degrees in Germany, written Nietzsche articles and books in German and in English. Born in New York, prof at Fordham U, edits a Nietzsche journal she started and has written a few books on Nietzsche fairly recently. Also on Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, who also wrote a book on Nietzsche. I would trust Arendt with my mind before x-ray. And Babich.

Unless you are just being your typically ironic self in which case you won't bother but will still spout off.

[seymourblogger]

What say you, Ellen?

I say it's Darren.

I too think it's Darren.

.It does seem weird to me that Darren would argue that Rand meant her philosophy as "entertainment." Doesn't Darren know better than that!!??.

I asked him and he replied that just because Rand was serious about her philosophy "doesn't entail that WE must be serious about her philosophy; at least, not as serious scholarship (which it quite obviously is not)". (end quote Darren)

But how he had phrased it in his original comment could lead to misunderstanding::

The philosophy of Objectivism (especially its metaphysics and epistemology) — like Atlas Shrugged itself — is ultimately meant as entertainment, not scholarship." (end quote Darren)

http://aynrand2.blog...s-floating.html

Well chuttle he has answered you in detail today. Gulp.

[9thdoctor]

What if it is against my principles to read important philosophical works in translation?

Then how do you handle the Bible? Using the TARDIS I can tell you as a witness, He actually did say “Blessed are the cheese makers”.

[caroljane]

What if it is against my principles to read important philosophical works in translation?

Then how do you handle the Bible? Using the TARDIS I can tell you as a witness, He actually did say “Blessed are the cheese makers”.

Oh, God reads the bible directly to me. If I have questions I call J. Neil Schulman.

You're right about the cheesemakers, you wouldn't believe the media backlash fuelled by the Pottage Consortium that little slogan caused. And don't even get Him started on the Slayers of Fatted Calves -- oy.

[seymourblogger]

[quoting Xray] (bold type by Janet)

they go against the fundamental cosmic principle of permanent transformation.

Now where the fug did you get this fundamental cosmic principle of permanent transformation? I guess you dug it up with Obama's "hope and change" message.

I have not "dug up" anything with any Obama message; my interest in politicians is near zero, which is why I usually don't pay attention to their "messages".

But if Obama actually said this about "hope and change", I suppose it has little to do with what I meant: that permanent transformation is a fundamental operating cosmic principle. Panta rhei. .

Nietzsche: Zarathustra's despair of the ETERNAL RETURN. No transformation there.

Transformation is what Foucault will analyze as the remnent of a belief in God. Transformation belongs to the dialectic. Reaching toward the Ideal, toward Heaven, or Heaven on earth.

You don't get my point: My focus in speaking of permanent transformation is on the motion aspect..On vita in motu, which is just another reflection of the cosmos in motion. And since there is no such thing as a standstill, it makes no sense trying to 'cement' cherished beliefs, ideologies etc.

And since there is no such thing as a standstill, I believe statis means standstill, eh. As Darren's comment on the Cambrian period read, "There are long periods of statis." Then of course there are Events, irruptions, abrupt changes discontinuities,which is how evolution goes, not in a steady, smooth, historical progressive manner.

[seymourblogger]

[quoting Xray] (bold type by Janet)

they go against the fundamental cosmic principle of permanent transformation.

Now where the fug did you get this fundamental cosmic principle of permanent transformation? I guess you dug it up with Obama's "hope and change" message.

I have not "dug up" anything with any Obama message; my interest in politicians is near zero, which is why I usually don't pay attention to their "messages".

But if Obama actually said this about "hope and change", I suppose it has little to do with what I meant: that permanent transformation is a fundamental operating cosmic principle. Panta rhei. .

Nietzsche: Zarathustra's despair of the ETERNAL RETURN. No transformation there.

Transformation is what Foucault will analyze as the remnent of a belief in God. Transformation belongs to the dialectic. Reaching toward the Ideal, toward Heaven, or Heaven on earth.

You don't get my point: My focus in speaking of permanent transformation is on the motion aspect..On vita in motu, which is just another reflection of the cosmos in motion. And since there is no such thing as a standstill, it makes no sense trying to 'cement' cherished beliefs, ideologies etc.

And since there is no such thing as a standstill, I believe statis means standstill, eh. As Darren's comment on the Cambrian period read, "There are long periods of statis." Then of course there are Events, irruptions, abrupt changes discontinuities,which is how evolution goes, not in a steady, smooth, historical progressive manner.

<b><i>stasis</b></i> not <b><i>statis</b></i> for the detailist trivial pursuitists among you who can't read a typo. Alas I have wasted a very precious comment because I couldn't edit and because I knew typos would just be seen as a way to attack and condemn.

[Ellen Stuttle]

.It does seem weird to me that Darren would argue that Rand meant her philosophy as "entertainment."  Doesn't Darren know better than that!!??.

I asked him and he replied that just because Rand was serious about her philosophy "doesn't entail that WE must be serious about her philosophy; at least, not as serious scholarship (which it quite obviously is not)".(end quote Darren)

How did you ask him?

I don't find a "comment" function on the blog.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....]

The "Ayn Rand and the Myth of Chemical Evolution" piece is what Darren argued on SOLO.

[....]

Ellen

Looks like 2 different cut and paste jobs to me. 

The first paragraph is pretty well written and shows some personality, and the remainder is downright pedestrian, with the same amount of punch as a bill of lading. 

The essay is not cohesive at all.   Makes me think there are two different sources, sloppily pasted together.

To each his or her own.

The "remainder" which you call "downright pedestrian" is the part which sparked my interest -- for once, directly addressing scientific issues without the polemics, and, I thought, a good presentation re the 2nd law of thermodynamics, plus raising an issue which hinted at views I've entertained for a long while.

So...I did some Googling, using full phrases, to see if I could find something from which the paragraphs were cribbed. I couldn't. Which doesn't mean that there isn't such a something. However, then I tried "thermodynamics Darren" specifically on the SOLO site and came up with a thread I hadn't looked at before.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8922

Darren is on a track there with which I partly agree, the idea that *directed* energy is a required real, though not included in current physics. I'm still reading through the thread.

Ellen

[Xray]

.It does seem weird to me that Darren would argue that Rand meant her philosophy as "entertainment." Doesn't Darren know better than that!!??.

I asked him and he replied that just because Rand was serious about her philosophy "doesn't entail that WE must be serious about her philosophy; at least, not as serious scholarship (which it quite obviously is not)".(end quote Darren)

How did you ask him?

I don't find a "comment" function on the blog.

Ellen

The pages are sorted by date; each page has a "view comments" section at the bottom.

Darren wrote his "Reading the Philosophy of Objectivism as "FLOATING SIGN" for Rand's Fiction" piece on March 5; my question is in the "view comments" section at the bottom of Part II:

http://aynrand2.blog...s-floating.html

[Xray]

So...I did some Googling, using full phrases, to see if I could find something from which the paragraphs were cribbed. I couldn't. Which doesn't mean that there isn't such a something. However, then I tried "thermodynamics Darren" specifically on the SOLO site and came up with a thread I hadn't looked at before.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8922

Darren is on a track there with which I partly agree, the idea that *directed* energy is a required real, though not included in current physics. I'm still reading through the thread.

Ellen

Darren is very adamant about scenarios of chemical evolution allegedly violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

From his post on SOLO (Sun, 2012-02-19):

[Darren]:

That's why scenarios of chemical evolution violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics: the scenarios all REQUIRE, by the NATURE OF THE PROBLEM AT HAND, to make use of a concept like "useful work" or "directed energy" but the concept isn't forthcoming in classical thermodynamics, so the theorists engage in the usual sort of "hand-waving" type of argument: SOMEHOW, random, uniformly-dispersed energy, like that radiating out from a star, was able to sequence the precursors of biologically important molecules like proteins and nucleic acids. How could uniformly-dispersed, high-entropy energy like that coming from a star, impose a higher degree of order on a chemical system thus lowering its entropy? Easy. SOMEHOW. But doesn't that "somehow" assume a violation of the 2nd law? "Let's not discuss it." (end quote)

But here is an article in the Scientific American (Oct 28/2008 issue) discussing just that:

Link to the preview site:

http://www.scientifi...-the-second-law

In Brief:

Waste is unavoidable—a sad fact of life quantified by the famous second law of thermodynamics. But if the world is steadily becoming more disordered, how do you explain the self-organization that often occurs in nature? At root, the trouble is that classical thermodynamics assumes systems are in equilibrium, a placid condition seldom truly achieved in the real world.

A new approach closes this loophole and finds that the second law holds far from equilibrium. But the evolution from order to disorder can be unsteady, allowing for pockets of self-organization.

I posted the link on SOLO too but he did not comment on it; instead he replied to my previous post which was about non-conscious living matter organizing itself 'intelligently', and that's where he mentioned that an "intelligent designer" is necessary for such processes to occur.

Maybe he was going to reply to the "pockets of order" link later, but since this was around when his time on SOLO was nearing its end and he got carried away insulting other posters, I don't know if he just didn't get around to replying anymore or if he deliberately chose not to reply.

[edited to add]: I just found an OL thread about Evolution where AristotlesAdvance posted (who in all probability is "Darren" on SOLO and on SB's blog), which has some interesting comments by Ba'al - maybe we could continue the discussion there?

http://www.objectivi...40

[PDS]

Does anybody have a non-snarky answer for why Rand was hesitant about Darwin in the first place?

I have a pseudo-theory, which I have sort of felt was right ever since the first time I saw that response/remark from mid 80's, but am hesitant to throw it out there.

The theory, in a nutshell, is that apes are disgusting, let alone little wiggly things in the primordal soup...

[caroljane]

Does anybody have a non-snarky answer for why Rand was hesitant about Darwin in the first place?

I have a pseudo-theory, which I have sort of felt was right ever since the first time I saw that response/remark from mid 80's, but am hesitant to throw it out there.

The theory, in a nutshell, is that apes are disgusting, let alone little wiggly things in the primordal soup...

You don't detect a "feaful symmetry" with us nobly-evolved critters today?

Sorry, I guess that does not qualify as non-snarky.

[George H. Smith]

Does anybody have a non-snarky answer for why Rand was hesitant about Darwin in the first place?

I have a pseudo-theory, which I have sort of felt was right ever since the first time I saw that response/remark from mid 80's, but am hesitant to throw it out there.

The theory, in a nutshell, is that apes are disgusting, let alone little wiggly things in the primordal soup...

I don't recall the passage in question, but Rand might have been questioning natural selection. Some atheists, such as Arthur Koeslter, have been critical of natural selection, opting for an updated version of Larmarckianism instead. See: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=143547.0

Ghs

[seymourblogger]

Does anybody have a non-snarky answer for why Rand was hesitant about Darwin in the first place?

I have a pseudo-theory, which I have sort of felt was right ever since the first time I saw that response/remark from mid 80's, but am hesitant to throw it out there.

The theory, in a nutshell, is that apes are disgusting, let alone little wiggly things in the primordal soup...

What I think is that she never studied it and she was not the sort of person who was going to speak in public about something she knew she knew nothing about. She studied in the USSR but once she got to the US she became a sort of autodidact. Her library was composed of a lot of bad literature and 35th rate non-fiction for the most part. I don't think she felt comfortable in English reading something difficult. She was excellent at pop research and early on her mind was so keen at grasping the propaganda in everything pop. She learned from people she knew by arguing dialectically with them. But in the US she received nor looked for any formal education. This freed her and crippled her at the same time.

She did not move in scientific circles at all and after Branden was in her life, with his family, the collective, her other friends drifted away because they didn't like them and deplored their influence on her, as she became an arrogant tyrant with them.

This is what happens when a genius associates always with inferiors. They can't keep up and so they must follow slavishly or attack her, which they dared not do until they were a collective no more. We see what has happened to Peikoff. Heller discusses this: what happened to the bright, enthusiastic witty boy. But Branden's sexual charisma won.

For me it might have except for the fact that I went to the U of Del to grad school when I decided that I wasn't a stupid cunt any more, and the men in the psycho dept there at that time ........well, they were so astute, sharp, charismatic, accomplished etc that Branden became in my mind's eye, just an amateur psychologist. I am sure people went into treatment with him because of this. As a teacher I became aware that my students wanted to be in treatment with me.

A way to get closer.

[Brant Gaede]

Does anybody have a non-snarky answer for why Rand was hesitant about Darwin in the first place?

I have a pseudo-theory, which I have sort of felt was right ever since the first time I saw that response/remark from mid 80's, but am hesitant to throw it out there.

The theory, in a nutshell, is that apes are disgusting, let alone little wiggly things in the primordal soup...

I don't recall the passage in question, but Rand might have been questioning natural selection. Some atheists, such as Arthur Koeslter, have been critical of natural selection, opting for an updated version of Larmarckianism instead. See: http://forum.prisonp...?topic=143547.0

Ghs

Rand was so ignorant here that only her acknowledgement of her ignorance--if she merely said "I don't know"--is worth commenting on positively. As far as I know she never went further in any explication. I salute her for refusing to be railroaded by a common cultural-intellectual acceptance.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

She did not move in scientific circles at all and after Branden was in her life, with his family, the collective, her other friends drifted away because they didn't like them and deplored their influence on her, as she became an arrogant tyrant with them.

This is what happens when a genius associates always with inferiors. They can't keep up and so they must follow slavishly or attack her, which they dared not do until they were a collective no more. We see what has happened to Peikoff.

You do not have a good understanding of Rand's social and intellectual dynamics and needs in the 1950s and 1960s. The big problem wasn't brains, but the generational differences between her and the other members of the "Collective."

--Brant

[Xray]

What if it is against my principles to read important philosophical works in translation? (How long is Zarathustra anyway?)

It's 284 pages in my Nietzsche paperback edition.

Hmmm? I mean, if I don't know the original language, how can I know the translators are trustworthy? I would have to rely on second hand information and not use my own judgment. Those translators could have their own agenda....

Until Kauffman's Nietzsche translations Nietzsche was abominably translated. In Kauffman's intro he gives some awful examples that he fixed.

Kaufmann replaced the translation of ("Übermensch") 'superman' by 'overman'. 'Superman' always sounded a bit odd to my ears because of the comic figure "Superman" ...

[Xray]

Well chuttle he has answered you in detail today. Gulp.

"Chuttle"?? I that another another of your postmodernist typos?

Gulp

To whom does "gulp" refer? You mean that you have gulped, or that I would gulp?

[caroljane]

Well chuttle he has answered you in detail today. Gulp.

"Chuttle"?? I that another another of your postmodernist typos?

Gulp

To whom does "gulp" refer? You mean that you have gulped, or that I would gulp?

I think Janet was just gulping her meds.

[PDS]

Well chuttle he has answered you in detail today. Gulp.

"Chuttle"?? I that another another of your postmodernist typos?

Gulp

To whom does "gulp" refer? You mean that you have gulped, or that I would gulp?

I think Janet was just gulping her meds.

Daunce: dayaaaam! Well played, ma'm.

[Xray]

To whom does "gulp" refer? You mean that you have gulped, or that I would gulp?

I think Janet was just gulping her meds.

Daunce: dayaaaam! Well played, ma'm.

ITA. Brilliant reply, Carol!

[Brant Gaede]

What say you, Ellen?

I say it's Darren.

I too think it's Darren.

.It does seem weird to me that Darren would argue that Rand meant her philosophy as "entertainment." Doesn't Darren know better than that!!??.

I asked him and he replied that just because Rand was serious about her philosophy "doesn't entail that WE must be serious about her philosophy; at least, not as serious scholarship (which it quite obviously is not)". (end quote Darren)

But how he had phrased it in his original comment could lead to misunderstanding::

The philosophy of Objectivism (especially its metaphysics and epistemology) — like Atlas Shrugged itself — is ultimately meant as entertainment, not scholarship." (end quote Darren)

http://aynrand2.blog...s-floating.html

What philosophy starts out with scholarship?

--Brant

deconstruction?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There was a new poster who started one-liner type trolling on this discussion and I have peeled off the posts (including discussion, since nothing of substance was happening) and moved them to the following thread in the Garbage Pile:

Bad Start from New Member

Michael