Rand through a Nietzsche filter

[seymourblogger]

http://www.furious.c...ect/kdlang.html

Performing Desire and 'Recording Consciousness' on Facebook and YouTube

by Babette Babich

(October 2011)

The Hallelujah Effect on the Internet

The initial focus of this essay, apart from important preliminary references to Leonard Cohen is on kd lang, not as composer (although she is one) but musical performer and not as guitarist (although she is one) but as a singer and although her live performances have to make all the difference, very specifically, for the sake of any analysis, specifically as her singing is available in video format on YouTube. Of course there are many readings of kd lang and popular music, and of course most of them focus on the way she dresses, others look at her sexuality,¹ and here, just for a bit, I consider her musicality.

Radio Physiognomy, Facebook Contexts, YouTube Poker

I first heard Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -- rather improbably, given the sheer number of recording artists who have interpreted his song -- as 'sung' by Cohen himself, not in person of course, but and this will be the point and the heart of what follows especially as it bears on musical practice, on the radio. And with referring to radio, as we shall see, I am already referring to Adorno's notion of radio physiognomics as indeed to the sociology of music practice as well as philosophical aesthetics, just because hearing anything on the radio is always a matter of acoustics and often the reproduction of a reproduction, listening to a recording. Thus radio transmits music as we "consume" music today in the age of mechanical, electronic, virtual reproduction, so many species of digital dissemination.

Given the sheer coverage of the song, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" manifestly captivates singers but it's fair to say that I couldn't have guessed that from that first acquaintance and not being too much of a fan of Cohen or much pop music in general (apart that is from listening to the radio), I could, as we say, take it or leave it.

That was until what I call 'dueling video-posts' on Facebook.

bich

(October 2011)

The Hallelujah Effect on the Internet

The initial focus of this essay, apart from important preliminary references to Leonard Cohen is on kd lang, not as composer (although she is one) but musical performer and not as guitarist (although she is one) but as a singer and although her live performances have to make all the difference, very specifically, for the sake of any analysis, specifically as her singing is available in video format on YouTube. Of course there are many readings of kd lang and popular music, and of course most of them focus on the way she dresses, others look at her sexuality,¹ and here, just for a bit, I consider her musicality.

Radio Physiognomy, Facebook Contexts, YouTube Poker

I first heard Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -- rather improbably, given the sheer number of recording artists who have interpreted his song -- as 'sung' by Cohen himself, not in person of course, but and this will be the point and the heart of what follows especially as it bears on musical practice, on the radio. And with referring to radio, as we shall see, I am already referring to Adorno's notion of radio physiognomics as indeed to the sociology of music practice as well as philosophical aesthetics, just because hearing anything on the radio is always a matter of acoustics and often the reproduction of a reproduction, listening to a recording. Thus radio transmits music as we "consume" music today in the age of mechanical, electronic, virtual reproduction, so many species of digital dissemination.

Given the sheer coverage of the song, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" manifestly captivates singers but it's fair to say that I couldn't have guessed that from that first acquaintance and not being too much of a fan of Cohen or much pop music in general (apart that is from listening to the radio), I could, as we say, take it or leave it.

That was until what I call 'dueling video-posts' on Facebook.

I guess we can say that the "Bich" is back!

Right now I am just letting the world think me. I am going through Babich on Nietzsche.

[seymourblogger]

In your profile, you write: "I consider Rand Nietzsche's heir, at least one of them." and speak of her "deep absorption of Nietzsche".

Has Rand ever been directly asked if, and if yes, to what degree Nietzsche's thoughts influenced her own?

I think this has been hashed over a lot here and elsewhere. She read him when young outside of class in Russia. Beyond Good and Evil was the first book she bought in English over here. She had two or three quotes planned at the headings of the parts of Fountainhead. But she blew him off as a mystic later on. But his influence continued to flow in her bloodstream all her life. She refused to acknowledge him but then Hitler was praising him, so most everyone wanted to disassociate themselves with Nietzsche in those years.

[seymourblogger]

Nietzsche is in me in the mode of the unzeitgemass as he puts it himself, the mode of the untimely.

Yes, but this apothegm reads much better translated -- with intermediate steps at Catalan, Hebrew, Farsi, German and finally back to English:

• Nietzsche és en mi en el camí de unzeitgemass com ell diu, com el intempestiu.
  
• ניטשה הוא unzeitgemass הדרך שלי כמו שהוא אומר, כמו intempestiu.
  
• آیا منظورتان این بود : نیچه است unzeitgemass راه من به عنوان او می گوید، مانند intempestif.
  
• Unzeitgemass Nietzsche ist mein Weg, wie er sagt, wie intempestif.
  
• Nietzsche is my way out of date, as he says, as intempestif.
  

Speaking of Baudrillard, this video from an affiliated studio captures, for me, the shining clarity of his prose. As one wag said, "The abstract structure of relationships which a particular language imposes on the underlying substance shared by all." That is just so true! I want to bathe in it, but it is a grid, and I cannot.

As Baudrillard's niece says in the video, "Maggle on my shit!"

Over my head but a lovely film.

[Selene]

And isn't it significant that Cohen and lang are both Canadians?

Folks:

This was in my NPR e-mail today...coincidence?

In a recent public conversation with fellow rock bard Jarvis Cocker about the new recording Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen answered the younger man's suggestion that his songs are "penitential hymns" (a phrase Cohen himself employs in his new song "Come Healing") with jocular humility. "I'm not sure what that means, to be honest," Cohen reportedly replied. He continued, "Who's to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out."

The catastrophe he mentions is life itself — a description Cohen probably picked up from a fictional character he admires, Zorba the Greek, who embraced the "full catastrophe" of a well-connected, joyfully physical existence. The Buddhist teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has also borrowed it for a book title, which is relevant, since Cohen's writing is famously philosophical, connecting his Jewish heritage to years of Zen meditation and an enduring existentialist bent.

But this spiritual master is a sensualist, too: His artistry is grounded in the careful examination of how the body and the soul interact. Old Ideas, his 12th studio album, was recorded after a triumphant world tour that had Cohen performing three-hour shows night after night — no mean feat for a man in his late 70s. It throbs with that life, its verses rife with zingers and painful confessions, and its music sounds more richly varied than anything Cohen has done in years.

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/22/145340430/first-listen-leonard-cohen-old-ideas?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20120129

[Rich Engle]

I'll admit I really blasted through this thread and I apologize in advance if I repeat, but what I have to say is that I just saw a film (via Netflix/Roku in my case) called "Nietzsche and the Nazis." It's very long, lecture like, you can catch it on You Tube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkq3Hn0x14I

It's Stephen R.C. Hicks, PhD.

Fairly early into it he mentions Rand, and the influence of F.N.'s work on her.

Again, it is quite lengthy, but he does show the revision work the Nazis did. Revision, and use out of context. It's pretty interesting.

Best,

rde

[seymourblogger]

Bob LeFevre! Never met him, but Rampart College, Rampart Journal of Individualistic Thought! Good stuff.

Was he involved with the League of Non-Voters because we were in NY?

Damn, just noticed that Charles G. Koch, one of the Koch brothers graduated from Ramparts College!

By the time I was at Ramparts, the summer of 64, Le Fevre taught in the morning and to me after 2 years of graduate study at the University of Delaware in psychology, he was an intellectual lightweight. I know. I'm an arrogant snob. The afternoons were done by Boardman and that was the first place I got dumped into the waters of the Freedom Philosophy as Boardman lived it. No formal lecture. Just what to talk about this afternoon. It drove one control freak so crazy he had a tantrum and left. He want to be told what to think. I was absolutely fascinated listening to everyone. It wasn't Montessori whom I loved, it was Summerhill! In 1966 I would take the opportunity to "do Summerhill" and run with it. I got the same resistance Boardman got that summer. Neither of us had techniques on how to manage it but both of us came out on the other side. It cost him problems with his health tho. I almost quit.

Modern Psychoanalytic practice teaches you how to work with this kind of murderous resistance. Students come expecting to learn. They expect you to teach - something - anything - so they can resist and argue with you. Now that's what you have to welcome and learn to love. You cannot imagine where it will take you or them. What the world could be like.

Dienes: Mathematics

Neill: Summerhill

Ashton-Warner: New Zealand teacher

John Holt

Ivan Illyich

Just a few.

[Mark]

Regarding part 1 of "Nietzsche and the Nazis" by Stephen Hicks which Rich linked to: it's a slick production but just repeats the same old story, as if historians had learned nothing since 1950. He might start with *Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler* by Anthony C. Sutton.

Ayn Rand’s *The Objectivist*, by the way, favorably reviewed Sutton's *Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development* -- the first volume of it that had just been published.

Mark

http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#ArmingOurEnemies

[seymourblogger]

I'll admit I really blasted through this thread and I apologize in advance if I repeat, but what I have to say is that I just saw a film (via Netflix/Roku in my case) called "Nietzsche and the Nazis." It's very long, lecture like, you can catch it on You Tube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkq3Hn0x14I

It's Stephen R.C. Hicks, PhD.

Fairly early into it he mentions Rand, and the influence of F.N.'s work on her.

Again, it is quite lengthy, but he does show the revision work the Nazis did. Revision, and use out of context. It's pretty interesting.

Best,

rde

You know how Rand used to dismiss people by saying they were a mystic.

Hicks is 35th rate. I have looked at some of his stuff. NOt even a second hander.

But thanks for posting it. I'm not so good at this yet. I see I will have to try harder.

[seymourblogger]

Damn! I was hoping the table would display...here is the link...http://www.atlassoci...he-and-ayn-rand

"After the table, I’ve added some comments on the significance of the tabulated results.

I have given references for Nietzsche’s works; but I’ve assumed that we are all familiar enough with Rand’s works to know where to look for her view on any given issue. In the references to Nietzsche’s works, I’ve used the following abbreviations:

A Antichrist

BGE Beyond Good and Evil

D Dawn

EH Ecce Homo

GM Genealogy of Morals

GS Gay Science

HA Human All-too-Human

TI Twilight of the Idols

WP Will to Power

Z Thus Spake Zarathustra

Comparing Nietzsche's and Rand's Philosophies

Issue

Nietzsche's position

Rand's position

Metaphysical

Entity or process

Process (GM I:13; WP 552, 1067; BGE 54)

Entities as objective; be wary of armchair physics

Monism, dualism, or pluralism

Monism (WP 1067)

Naturalism: no armchair physics

Identity

No (WP 507-517)

Yes

Identity and change compatible

No (WP 520)

Yes

Causality

No (WP 497, 545-552)

Yes

Teleology

No (WP 552, 1067, Postcard to Overbeck)

Yes for organisms

Direction to evolution

Yes (GM II.24)

No armchair physics or biology

Existence of God

No (GS 125)

No

Consciousness as identification

No (WP 507, 511, 513; GM II.16)

Yes

Consciousness as functional/useful

Yes (WP 505)

Yes

Consciousness as causal

No (WP 477-478, 524)

Yes

Epistemological

Consciousness as identification

No (BGE 211; WP 473, 479, 481, 516, 521)

Yes

Sensations as awareness of reality

No (WP 479)

Yes

Sensations as value laden

Yes (WP 505)

No

Concepts as awareness of reality

No (WP 507, 513)

Yes

Logic as reality-based

No (WP 477, 512)

Yes

Sensations, concepts, and theories as impositions upon reality

Always (WP 515-516)

Sensations never; false conceptions only

Truth

As functional only (WP 487), as a useful error (WP 493)

Both as identification and as functional

Reason as efficacious

Weakly at best

Yes

Reason as primary cognitive tool

No (GS 354)

Yes

Instinct as cognitively efficacious

Yes (GM II.16)

No

Philosophy as systematic

Yes (GM, Preface, 2)

Yes

Intrinsicism

False (GM III.12; BGE 207)

False

Objectivism

False (GM III.12)

True

Subjectivism

True (BGE 211), but not in the dualistic sense (WP 481)

False

Perspectivalism/ Relativism

True (GM III.12; WP 540)

False

Human Nature

Reduction of morality to psychology

Yes (BGE 6; GM I.10?)

No

Reduction of psychology to biology

Yes (TI 33; WP 529)

No

Individual as real

No (TI 33)

Yes

Will as primary

Yes (WP 1067)

No

Free will

No (BGE 21; GM II.10: no "guilt," only sickness; Postcard to Overbeck)

Yes

Reason and passion/emotion priority

Passion/emotion has priority (BGE 36, 68, 158, 191)

Reason primary

Reason and Passion/emotion relationship

Conflict (EH: "The Birth of Tragedy" 1: "'Rationality' against instinct")

Should be harmony

Tabula rasa or nativism

Strong nativism (BGE 231, 264)

Cognitive and moral tabula rasa

Science as ennobling

No (GM III.25)

Yes

Ethics

Morality in the service of life

Yes (BGE; GM)

Yes

Psychological egoism

Yes (BGE)

No

Conflict of interest the fundamental social fact

Yes (BGE 259)

No

Values as intrinsic

No (GM I.10)

No

Values as objective

No

Yes

Values as subjective

Yes (BGE 260?)

No

Individuals as ends in themselves

No (WP 287), yes (BGE 287)

Yes

Individuals responsible for their characters

No (BGE 264)

Yes

Individuals responsible for their actions

No and yes

Yes

Sacrificing self to others

Yes, if a weakling (TI 33)

No

Sacrificing others to self

Yes, if strong (BGE 265; WP 369, 982)

No

Individual life as the standard

No (BGE 188)

Yes

The improvement of the species as the end

Yes (BGE 126; Z Prologue 4)

No

Sacrificing some for the sake of the species

Yes (BGE 62, 258; WP 246; GM II.12)

No

Power as the end

As means and end (WP 1067)

As means only

Survival as standard

No (BGE 13)

Yes

Happiness as the end

No

Yes

Egoism as good

Depends (TI 33). "[T]he subject--the striving individual bent on furthering his egoistic purposes--can be thought of only as the enemy of art, never its source" (BT)

Yes

Altruism as bad

Yes; depends (TI 33)

Yes

Altruism as the egoism of the weak

Yes (GM I.8, III.14)

No

Rationality as a virtue

No (EH: "Birth of Tragedy" 1)

Primary virtue

War as good

Yes (GS 283; HA 477)

No

Morality as relative to psychological type

Yes (BGE 221)

No

Social and Political

Individual rights

No. "For the preservation of society, for making possible higher and highest types--the inequality of rights is the condition"

Yes

On equality

False and destructive (WP 246)

Before the law

On democracy

Bad (BGE 202)

Secondary to rights

On socialism

Bad

Bad

On the welfare state

Bad

Bad

On aristocracy

Good (BGE 257, 258)

Bad

On slavery

Sometimes good (BGE 188)

Evil

On the role of government

Limited (D 179)

Limited

On capitalism

Dehumanizing for most (D 2 6)

Moral, productive

Civilization as ascending or declining

Dec|ining (BGE 202; GM I.11,12); but Zarathustra will come (GM II.24)

Currently declining; future could go either way

Sense of Life

Exalted sense of human potential

Yes (GM I.12)

Yes

Engaged in a cosmic battle

Yes

Yes

Struggle as good

Yes (BGE 262)

Yes?

On Others

On Christianity

"A rebellion of everything that crawls on the ground against that which has height" (A 43)

Ditto

On Plato

"A coward before reality" (TI 2)

Ditto

On Kant

"A catastrophic spider" (A 11)

Ditto"

You don't fuck around, do you. Well I am going to go through Babich before I try this. I hope you have a lot of patience. Arendt would be helpful too.

[seymourblogger]

Regarding part 1 of "Nietzsche and the Nazis" by Stephen Hicks which Rich linked to: it's a slick production but just repeats the same old story, as if historians had learned nothing since 1950. He might start with *Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler* by Anthony C. Sutton.

Ayn Rand’s *The Objectivist*, by the way, favorably reviewed Sutton's *Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development* -- the first volume of it that had just been published.

Mark

http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#ArmingOurEnemies

Hicks sucks.

[seymourblogger]

"After the table, I’ve added some comments on the significance of the tabulated results."

selene/adam

What you have presented me with is lot of information within the Order of Production. When set in a table it becomes quantifiable, can be counted, and stats can be run on it. It is measurable.

It is almost exactly what Foucault discusses in his essay on representation in The Archeology of Knowledge. It is the first essay and it is on Las Meninas the painting by Valasquez. It's all there and I know you will love it.

So I don't think I have to say more. Please don't blow me off for this.

That's not what I am after.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hicks sucks.

Suddenly I'm interested in seeing the video.

I have Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks. I haven't read it yet. This recent barrage aspiring to be a discussion mght be a good prompt for me to crack it open.

Michael

[seymourblogger]

Hicks sucks.

Suddenly I'm interested in seeing the video.

I have Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks. I haven't read it yet. This recent barrage aspiring to be a discussion mght be a good prompt for me to crack it open.

Michael

Be my guest.

[seymourblogger]

Hicks sucks.

Suddenly I'm interested in seeing the video.

I have Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks. I haven't read it yet. This recent barrage aspiring to be a discussion mght be a good prompt for me to crack it open.

Michael

You're funny and oppositional.

[ThatGuy]

To supplement this thread's theme, Janet, Chris Sciabarra's Journal of Ayn Rand Studies has a Rand and Nietzsche symposium that's now available online, with a discussion of the Merrill work you mentioned.

<a href="http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/v10_n2/10_2toc.asp">A Symposium on Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand</a>

STEPHEN R. C. HICKS

Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism.

EGOISM IN NIETZSCHE AND RAND:

A SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT APPROACH, pp. 293-312

LESTER HUNT

If we examine Rand’s relation to Nietzsche in terms of the number of issues on which the late Rand agreed with him, the connection between them looks extremely weak. On the other hand, if we look at the relation in terms of Rand’s philosophical development, the connection is much more profound. Nietzsche is where Rand began as a thinker, and though she traveled far from this source, her thinking always bore important traces of her beginnings.

RONALD E. MERRILL AND THE DISCOVERY OF AYN RAND’S NIETZSCHEAN PERIOD, pp. 313-28

ADAM REED

In scientific and technological journals, it is customary to include in the first special issue on a mature invention or discovery a traditionally informal, first-person memoir of how the invention or discovery came about. Because Ronald E. Merrill died of myeloma in 1998, Reed has written an inevitably second-hand account of his discovery of Nietzsche’s influence on the young Ayn Rand, and of the subsequent intellectual history of this discovery.

NIETZSCHE, RAND, AND THE ETHICS OF THE GREAT TASK, pp. 329-42

PETER SAINT-ANDRE

This essay traces a trajectory of ethical thought from Epicurus through Friedrich Nietzsche to Ayn Rand. Nietzsche originally celebrated Epicureanism as a form of refined heroism but subsequently repudiated Epicurus for being overly concerned with mere happiness. Out of Nietzsche’s turn away from Epicurus came a focus on the nobility of creative work, which provided a springboard for Rand’s ethics of productivity and achievement.

WILL THE REAL APOLLO PLEASE STAND UP?

RAND, NIETZSCHE, AND THE REASON-EMOTION DICHOTOMY, pp. 343-69

ROGER E. BISSELL

The author probes the "Tower of Babel" effect surrounding Western civilization’s long-standing fascination with the Greek god Apollo. He clarifies the reason-emotion dichotomy and shows the Classical-Romantic opposition of Apollo and Dionysus, as adopted by Ayn Rand and (supposedly) Friedrich Nietzsche, to be an inaccurate way to characterize either Apollo (god of reason) or Dionysus (god of emotion). Temperament theorist David Keirsey’s linkage of Apollo with emotion is found similarly wanting, and an argument based on insights of personality type theorist Janet Germane is offered that Apollo instead is most fundamentally the god of intuition.

EMBRACING POWER ROLES NATURALLY:

RAND’S NIETZSCHEAN HEROES AND VILLAINS, pp. 371-98

ROBERT POWELL

Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters, Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero. Wynand meets the criteria of both the Nietzschean Superman and Rand’s Objectivism. Roark’s false integrity taints his greatness and improperly vulgarizes him as a Nietzschean Superman. Rand problematically wants her heroes to accept the greatness of the Übermensch, but reject his natural existence and will to power. Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others.

[seymourblogger]

To supplement this thread's theme, Janet, Chris Sciabarra's Journal of Ayn Rand Studies has a Rand and Nietzsche symposium that's now available online, with a discussion of the Merrill work you mentioned.

<a href="http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/v10_n2/10_2toc.asp">A Symposium on Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand</a>

STEPHEN R. C. HICKS

Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism.

EGOISM IN NIETZSCHE AND RAND:

A SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT APPROACH, pp. 293-312

LESTER HUNT

If we examine Rand’s relation to Nietzsche in terms of the number of issues on which the late Rand agreed with him, the connection between them looks extremely weak. On the other hand, if we look at the relation in terms of Rand’s philosophical development, the connection is much more profound. Nietzsche is where Rand began as a thinker, and though she traveled far from this source, her thinking always bore important traces of her beginnings.

RONALD E. MERRILL AND THE DISCOVERY OF AYN RAND’S NIETZSCHEAN PERIOD, pp. 313-28

ADAM REED

In scientific and technological journals, it is customary to include in the first special issue on a mature invention or discovery a traditionally informal, first-person memoir of how the invention or discovery came about. Because Ronald E. Merrill died of myeloma in 1998, Reed has written an inevitably second-hand account of his discovery of Nietzsche’s influence on the young Ayn Rand, and of the subsequent intellectual history of this discovery.

NIETZSCHE, RAND, AND THE ETHICS OF THE GREAT TASK, pp. 329-42

PETER SAINT-ANDRE

This essay traces a trajectory of ethical thought from Epicurus through Friedrich Nietzsche to Ayn Rand. Nietzsche originally celebrated Epicureanism as a form of refined heroism but subsequently repudiated Epicurus for being overly concerned with mere happiness. Out of Nietzsche’s turn away from Epicurus came a focus on the nobility of creative work, which provided a springboard for Rand’s ethics of productivity and achievement.

WILL THE REAL APOLLO PLEASE STAND UP?

RAND, NIETZSCHE, AND THE REASON-EMOTION DICHOTOMY, pp. 343-69

ROGER E. BISSELL

The author probes the "Tower of Babel" effect surrounding Western civilization’s long-standing fascination with the Greek god Apollo. He clarifies the reason-emotion dichotomy and shows the Classical-Romantic opposition of Apollo and Dionysus, as adopted by Ayn Rand and (supposedly) Friedrich Nietzsche, to be an inaccurate way to characterize either Apollo (god of reason) or Dionysus (god of emotion). Temperament theorist David Keirsey’s linkage of Apollo with emotion is found similarly wanting, and an argument based on insights of personality type theorist Janet Germane is offered that Apollo instead is most fundamentally the god of intuition.

EMBRACING POWER ROLES NATURALLY:

RAND’S NIETZSCHEAN HEROES AND VILLAINS, pp. 371-98

ROBERT POWELL

Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters, Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero. Wynand meets the criteria of both the Nietzschean Superman and Rand’s Objectivism. Roark’s false integrity taints his greatness and improperly vulgarizes him as a Nietzschean Superman. Rand problematically wants her heroes to accept the greatness of the Übermensch, but reject his natural existence and will to power. Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others.

First thanks for your very reasoned response. I am familiar with the JARS and the Merrill book. I will repeat myself on that when I get to it.

On the refutation of Epicurus, I have never read a better one than Solzhenitsyn's in The 12th Circle I believe. I don't think it's the beginning of the gulag, no I am right it's 12th Circle. The opening has the protagonist at a cocktail party discussing/arguing philosophy and Epicurus is debated. Shortly after he is taken, put in a holding cell in the Lubyanka and all of a sudden he knows about Epicurus and what he should have said at that discussion. How futile that philosophy. It may not convince everyone, but for me Solzhenitsyn is the real deal. I will listen carefully to anything at all that he says. I said listen.

On the Apolla/Dionysian thing I go to Norman O Brown, and it's been a long long time but I never had any problems thinking about that problem after I read him, so it is obvious to me that he settled that for me, so I didn't have to think about it anymore. I refer anyone to Love's Body and everything else he wrote on this subject matter. Sorry but I do not want to spend weeks reviewing it just to regurgitate it here. If people are interested then they might want to read Brown.

Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters, Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero. Wynand meets the criteria of both the Nietzschean Superman and Rand’s Objectivism. Roark’s false integrity taints his greatness and improperly vulgarizes him as a Nietzschean Superman. Rand problematically wants her heroes to accept the greatness of the Übermensch, but reject his natural existence and will to power. Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others

This is a very loaded paragraph, full of land mines. Let's deconstruct it:

Because of Ayn Rand’s problematic moral labels on her characters -

Who says? Moral labels?

I don't even know where that came from. Evidently someone (s) has problems labeling the morality of her characters. Is there a reason a character has to be labeled with a moral identification tag? BTW they are doing this with Duroy in Bel Ami and the feminists have done it to Lily Bart in House of MIrth. If we look at the characters as specks caught in the power/knowledge grid Foucault has so carefully constructed for us, teaching us to see it, we watch how much wiggle room they have. This appears to smack up against Sartre and Genet and Rand as far as existential choice. But Foucault in his work and in his life has taught us that wherever there is the power/knowledge relation, and it is always in relation, never separate, then there is always resistance, and that resistance is in the interstices of the matrix where power lies. Or at least the opportunity for resistance; the choice.

Baudrillard will go on to discuss the silent resistance of the masses and how powerful a thing it is in its dumb animal stubborness. (This is Nietzsche within Baudrillard without his ever mentioning him.)

Gail Wynand, not Howard Roark, should be her true Nietzschean hero.

The assumption of this statement is that of course we are in the Dominating Discourse of the dialectic: hero and villian; good and bad; good and evil; masochist/sadist etc etc etc

Here is the false dichotomy problem that Deleuze evades so well. He says, Not either/or but and, and, and, and,.........This is Repetition and Difference. Both Roark and Wynand are Nietzschean strategists, not heroes or villains. They are both/and. And let's add Dominique to the mix, also as a Nietzschean strategist:.

Dominique Francon should be her true Nietzschean villain, because, unlike Ellsworth Toohey, she enjoys the painful destruction of herself and others

Enjoys? Who says?

This is an interpretation. Dominique has unfortunately, with Rand's complicity, (her screen treatment Journal letter to Patricia Neal on the character of Dominique) been labeled a masochist and as a masochist she has been known for 70 fucking years now. It is hard to dislodge it. It is part of the Dominating Discourse of lit crit on that novel. (At the moment I am trying to forestall Eric Packer in DeLillo's Cosmopolis from getting the same label pasted on him.)

Dominique is following the exact same strategy Baudrillard recommends for destroying evil anywhere it exists. Take it to excess (Are you reading Nietzsche here? You should be.) Dominique is well aware of the marketplace of marriage and she chooses the worse one around her. She doesn't have to look very far, and it is Peter Keating. Her interactions with her husband are will less. Whatever you want, Peter. You want to talk? What do you want to talk about, etc. (The perfect analyst,eh?)

When she can do worse, it is to whore with Wynand to get her husband the commission he wants. Keating agrees to it. BTW this sort of thing is done all the time. Just not openly and it's never thought of as masochism. Wynand is on to her, so he proposes marriage. For Dominique this is worse. (NIetzsche uses the term "worse than worse". Baudrillard uses it then elaborates on it for our time: excess, more so, hyper so as to move it into simulated reality.)

This folks is not masochism. Masochism is unconscious. Freud's paper on Mourning and Melancholia goes into the masochistic gratification of excessive mourning. Wallowing in it for the pleasure it forces one to feel. Behaviorists think about it in terms of reinforcement theory. It does not give Dominique pleasure to destroy Roark. Her review in the Banner of his work is a "floating sign" praising what she is negating. She is following de Maupassant’s advice to Duroy in Bel Ami:

Following Baudrillard in the instructions given to him for his journalism:

Things should be hinted at in such a manner as to allow of any construction being placed on them, refuted in a manner that confirms the rumor, or affirmed in such a way that no one believes them. (BA 120 1910 ed)

Not pleasure but it reinforces her world view of the world as evil. BTW this is exactly the world view the Catharists had. If the world is evil, then willing is useless.Baudrillard suggests this as a strategy so you are happily surprised when things turn out! It is also a widely held world view but not in pragmatic America. So we are always surprised by misfortune.(I don’t want to go there now.)

OK now we are at Toohey. Who Rand through Dominique feels his pure evil, which Wynand denies and tells her to shut up about the subject of Toohey. Toohey’s strategy is to abolish all distinctions between opposites: good/bad; beautiful/ugly; moral/immoral; and uses the Banner to do this to the masses, to form their opinions on everything he wants, to brainwash them permanently. As Baudrillard will say, “to steal their reality from them in homeopathic doses,” The Perfect Crime. No body, no victim, no aggressor, no crime scene, invisible. This is what Baudrillard will define as evil, which is not the opposite of good BTW, the erasure of the reality of opposites. And when this is accomplished, what do we get? Simulated reality. When simulated reality is total, we are then in Virtual Reality, from which there is no escape. Only seduction, because seduction cannot be produced. So this is the evil that is Toohey, that Rand correctly identified, not as a villian, but as a philosophical statement, in fiction, 70 years before the non-fiction post modernist philosophers would catch up to her.

Dominique, Roark, Wynand and Toohey are not heroes and villians in the dialectic. They are Nietzschean strategists, the possibility of future man, not Superman, but a possible future human being. A human being Beyond Good and Evil.

Strategists.

Beyond Good and Evil,

There is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

Rumi – Persian sufi poet – 13th century

[seymourblogger]

Dominique's Nietzschean strategy is shown in the way she tells Gail she is with Roark. She spends the night with Roark in Monadnock Valley that he designed. The next morning she reports a valuable ring as stolen to the police. They come to get the report from her, find Mrs. Wynand in the morning with Howard Roark and it is obvious they have spent the night together. The police are forced to file the report and the papers get the story, The Banner of course is right there at the ready. Wynand is advised to publicly announce his plans to divorce her, which he caves in and does.

She did not call him or see him to say she was leaving him, nor discuss it with him, she took an excessive action to smear herself and force him to divorce her. She left him no way out. No Exit. The way she married him, publicly in a huge wedding, dressed in black is a wedding that is more than a wedding, "worse" than a wedding to use Nietzsche's term. So the way she leaves him is to leave him "worse", even more so, publicly and making a scandal, worse than leaving, excessively worse.

This is not psychological, nor does a psychological interpretation cover her actions. She is a Nietzschean strategist, Beyond Good and Evil.

[seymourblogger]

And isn't it significant that Cohen and lang are both Canadians?

Folks:

This was in my NPR e-mail today...coincidence?

In a recent public conversation with fellow rock bard Jarvis Cocker about the new recording Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen answered the younger man's suggestion that his songs are "penitential hymns" (a phrase Cohen himself employs in his new song "Come Healing") with jocular humility. "I'm not sure what that means, to be honest," Cohen reportedly replied. He continued, "Who's to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out."

The catastrophe he mentions is life itself — a description Cohen probably picked up from a fictional character he admires, Zorba the Greek, who embraced the "full catastrophe" of a well-connected, joyfully physical existence. The Buddhist teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has also borrowed it for a book title, which is relevant, since Cohen's writing is famously philosophical, connecting his Jewish heritage to years of Zen meditation and an enduring existentialist bent.

But this spiritual master is a sensualist, too: His artistry is grounded in the careful examination of how the body and the soul interact. Old Ideas, his 12th studio album, was recorded after a triumphant world tour that had Cohen performing three-hour shows night after night — no mean feat for a man in his late 70s. It throbs with that life, its verses rife with zingers and painful confessions, and its music sounds more richly varied than anything Cohen has done in years.

http://www.npr.org/2...&cc=es-20120129

I love Cohen so. Thank you for this lovely post and pic. What a happiness for my day.

There are no coincidences.

The Music of Chance - Paul Auster

[PDS]

And isn't it significant that Cohen and lang are both Canadians?

Folks:

This was in my NPR e-mail today...coincidence?

In a recent public conversation with fellow rock bard Jarvis Cocker about the new recording Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen answered the younger man's suggestion that his songs are "penitential hymns" (a phrase Cohen himself employs in his new song "Come Healing") with jocular humility. "I'm not sure what that means, to be honest," Cohen reportedly replied. He continued, "Who's to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out."

The catastrophe he mentions is life itself — a description Cohen probably picked up from a fictional character he admires, Zorba the Greek, who embraced the "full catastrophe" of a well-connected, joyfully physical existence. The Buddhist teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has also borrowed it for a book title, which is relevant, since Cohen's writing is famously philosophical, connecting his Jewish heritage to years of Zen meditation and an enduring existentialist bent.

But this spiritual master is a sensualist, too: His artistry is grounded in the careful examination of how the body and the soul interact. Old Ideas, his 12th studio album, was recorded after a triumphant world tour that had Cohen performing three-hour shows night after night — no mean feat for a man in his late 70s. It throbs with that life, its verses rife with zingers and painful confessions, and its music sounds more richly varied than anything Cohen has done in years.

http://www.npr.org/2...&cc=es-20120129

I love Cohen so. Thank you for this lovely post and pic. What a happiness for my day.

There are no coincidences.

The Music of Chance - Paul Auster

Agreed. Cohen's Live in London CD is a beautiful thing. Highly recommended, especially for the rendition of "If It Be Your Will."

[Xray]

I agree Rand's writing is terrible in WTL, but it is also terrible in Atlas, but that is precisely what makes it perfct for the theme she is writing about. Later I will get into her style.

Janet,

What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged?

Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

[seymourblogger]

I agree Rand's writing is terrible in WTL, but it is also terrible in Atlas, but that is precisely what makes it perfct for the theme she is writing about. Later I will get into her style.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

I'll answer you at solo.

[Xray]

I agree Rand's writing is terrible in WTL, but it is also terrible in Atlas, but that is precisely what makes it perfct for the theme she is writing about. Later I will get into her style.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

I'll answer you at solo.

I'd prefer you to answer it here since you have decided to come back to OL.

On another thread, you wrote that you want to place Rand among the post-modernist philosophers. What are your criteria for this?

But Rand certainly is no postmodern writer.

I have dug out some old notes from a seminar on modern vs postmodern literature I attended during my student years; the characteristics of post-modern llterature listed there in no way fit Rand's writing. On the contrary, those post-modern traits are diametrically opposed to everything Rand valued highly, for example the disjunction, deconstruction, the indetermination, the refusal to offer a definite meaning, to name but a few. All that is completely un-Randian.

[seymourblogger]

I agree Rand's writing is terrible in WTL, but it is also terrible in Atlas, but that is precisely what makes it perfct for the theme she is writing about. Later I will get into her style.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

I'll answer you at solo.

I'd prefer you to answer it here since you have decided to come back to OL. On another thread, you wrote that you want to place Rand among the post-modernist philosophers. What are your criteria for this? But Rand certainly is no postmodern writer. I have dug out some old notes from a seminar on modern vs postmodern literature I attended during my student years; the characteristics of post-modern llterature listed there in no way fit Rand's writing. On the contrary, those post-modern traits are diametrically opposed to everything Rand valued highly, for example the disjunction, deconstruction, the indetermination, the refusal to offer a definite meaning, to name but a few. All that is completely un-Randian.

The software here does lend itself to pro and con much better than at solo. You cvan quote over there by cutting and pasting. I have already answered your question partly on my blogs: guerrillablog ; cosmoplisfilm and intellectual terrorist, as all 3 have posts on Rand.

You can go over there and ask your question in the comments part and I can answer it there if you don't like solo software. At my blog it is disqus which I like in some respects as it is more comprehensive taking in many many blogs. I can show you why she is POMO. Remember Fountainhead was in the 40's and Atlas in the 50's which is the cut off for modernism. Rand was following Nietzsche's instructions on reading and writing, particularly in F in which she wrote and was known for writing aphoristically.

I can give you examples if you haven't identified them. But not here. I do not plan to be around here very much at all; just in certain circumstances.

Her fiction anticipated POMO while at the same time exemplifying it as F was following Nietzsche

[caroljane]

I agree Rand's writing is terrible in WTL, but it is also terrible in Atlas, but that is precisely what makes it perfct for the theme she is writing about. Later I will get into her style.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

I'll answer you at solo.

I'd prefer you to answer it here since you have decided to come back to OL. On another thread, you wrote that you want to place Rand among the post-modernist philosophers. What are your criteria for this? But Rand certainly is no postmodern writer. I have dug out some old notes from a seminar on modern vs postmodern literature I attended during my student years; the characteristics of post-modern llterature listed there in no way fit Rand's writing. On the contrary, those post-modern traits are diametrically opposed to everything Rand valued highly, for example the disjunction, deconstruction, the indetermination, the refusal to offer a definite meaning, to name but a few. All that is completely un-Randian.

The software here does lend itself to pro and con much better than at solo. You cvan quote over there by cutting and pasting. I have already answered your question partly on my blogs: guerrillablog ; cosmoplisfilm and intellectual terrorist, as all 3 have posts on Rand.

You can go over there and ask your question in the comments part and I can answer it there if you don't like solo software. At my blog it is disqus which I like in some respects as it is more comprehensive taking in many many blogs. I can show you why she is POMO. Remember Fountainhead was in the 40's and Atlas in the 50's which is the cut off for modernism. Rand was following Nietzsche's instructions on reading and writing, particularly in F in which she wrote and was known for writing aphoristically.

I can give you examples if you haven't identified them. But not here. I do not plan to be around here very much at all; just in certain circumstances.

Her fiction anticipated POMO while at the same time exemplifying it as F was following Nietzsche

Really, this takes the cake.

"Go to my blogs or to another website, or I won't answer you!"

Talk about evasive. Jaysus Murphy.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's the universal dialectic of pose qua pose, pose as an end in itself, pose as both form and substance, pose without meaning.

Ephemeral glimpses of nothingness in search of an audience.

Michael