All of these claims are either controversial even among Kant scholars (at best), oversimplifications, distortions, taken out of context, or, for the most part, simply false.

I'm writing my PhD dissertation on Kant. In the course of studying him, I became a (reluctant) convert to some of the basic points of his moral theory, as I understood it (of which Rand's picture is a caricature). I could go into detail here, but I doubt anyone here has much interest in Kant's theory for its own sake.

I'm interested. Hell, if I knew more about Rand or Kant I'd hop right in, but I doubt I'm qualified and I'd rather learn from somebody else.

I strongly suggest Atlas Shrugged. I'm currently reading The Fountainhead but I'm afraid it's kind of a snooze fest, if not a little confusing.

Hmm. Maybe I'll start a thread about it in the next few days.

If you publish your thesis in book form, or convince someone else to publish it, there's at least one person in the world who'll buy it and read it. Me.

Yo también. So, make that two.

Now now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. I have to FINISH the darn thing.

But thank you both!

I PM'd you earlier, but obviously add me to that list.



Yeah, there will be exceptions to every rule, just as the fact that men are generally taller than women doesn't mean that you can't have a Gary Coleman or a Rebecca Lobo ... or for that matter, that 5'7" Tom Cruise and 5'11" Nicole Kidman can't make being a couple work. (All right, they're no longer together, but they were for eleven years -- an eternity by Hollywood standards.)

I'm very skeptical of the idea that people have innate qualities which correspond to body type; for example, that there's some genetic-level correlation between having a slender frame and higher-than-average intelligence. But what I'm not skeptical at all about is that those stereotypes, somatypes, or whatever you want to call them, are present in our culture and that people are at least somewhat socialized into them. The mesomorphic kid is expected to be a good athlete and a leader, and teachers, parents, etc. urge him into this in all sorts of subtle ways. The skinny kid is expected to be brainy, and is assumed more likely to be the kid the teacher can call on for the correct answer when the rest of the class is stumped. Et cetera.

Somewhere in TSS (and Kindle seems to have lost my bookmarks, I can't find the passage), Gilmore said something to the effect that it was futile for a person to get stressed out wanting others to "get to know the real me" -- most of those others aren't smart enough to look past their own preconceptions, and even if they were, they wouldn't care. Speaking as someone who at age thirty could have passed for a high school student, and was often "sized up" on the basis of that in a matter of seconds by people I met, my reaction to reading that was -- man, you ain't kidding!

I'm about midway through the part of TSW in which LaVey talks about this idea, the clock representing personality types, etc. What I'm getting out of it so far is basically -- to "bewitch" someone, present yourself as someone who naturally has the personality that society does not recognize in the "target person" (his/her "demonic self"). If your target is a (stereotypically dumb) jock, for example, and isn't taken seriously as a thinker by most, be receptive to that person's interesting ideas and let him/her approach you on that basis.

That's my understanding so far ... OTOH, I'm a clueless newbie, so I might have the whole thing bass-ackwards?

I would find it fascinating as well. I harbor the greatest respect for knowledge as power, I value the words of those who put the effort in to obtaining that powerful knowledge. I would also enjoy the comparison information to RealityPrinciple.
I would compare such an opportunity to reading ahead. I can do a great deal more, when my influences are of such a high caliber (so there is no confusion this does not imply copying. It is a lesser magic skill stemming from empathy). Perhaps you might share it on a personal site like a blog, or My space, or even in the essay section here. I would pay for VIP status, to read PhD class dissertation.

Sorry, I get a little caught up when it comes to a few of my favorite things.

Welcome DanielM
Let me just say there is a wealth of information here.
Rand aside, Satan draws in a lot of adversity, try to remain objective.
It will serve you well here or anywhere on the Internet for that matter.

Enjoy
Hail Knowledge because it is Power !

(I'mPerfecting, could you PM me again please?)

Please excuse me everyone... Welcome DanielM!

I read Anthem about 2 years ago and did not like it. I tried to interact with Atlas Shrugged; The Fountainhead, but fell asleep. I read the website, watched some Rand youtube. I did not feel any relation to her beyond her obviously sharp intellect and single-mindedness. I guess Rand just isn't my cup of tea, but I could see why many people would be drawn to her philosophy.

That would be awesome. Kant is someone who comes up all the time in my studies, yet I don't know much beyond the wiki, the intro, and the occasional essay and conversation. I do know a bunch of weird facts relating to him--the townsfolk set their watches by the punctuality of his walks (he had a servant that carried an umbrella over him, easy to spot on time). So maybe I know more than I think I know, but I do know that when I've sat down to read anything actually written by him I find myself at a loss.

I've got this chain that goes Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Nagarjuna. That last one should be Kant, but I go East instead of further back in my explorations of The Archive. I blame the wonderfully faulty wiring in my cranial unit.

Honestly, the only Rand I could stomach to read was her nonfiction "philosophy" books, with the exception of Anthem (and that only because it fit in nicely with my little collection of dystopian novels).

The Fountainhead struck a chord with me, because Howard Roark is someone I might have aspired to be. Rand's philosophy captivated me for a time, being the only moral system that almost convinced me. I still think of philosophy as she thought of it, metaphysics justifying epistemology justifying ethics justifying politics, but I do this with a twist, because I cynically believe that she, and all other philosophers who present that sort of progression to their readership, actually would have moved in the opposite direction when first formulating their ideas, politics driving ethics driving epistemology driving metaphysics. The will to power explains so much, and in no one is the will to power so great as in the systematic philosopher, whose program is nothing less than to remake all of civilization.

I had mixed reactions to her writing. On the one hand, if there was someone who I thought was really full of shit, and who I hated so much that I was willing to spend some money to tell off properly, I might hire Rand to do the cussing out for me.[*]

But occasionally she'd come out with turns of phrase that were hilarious, because the clear intended meaning wasn't sexual at all, but she'd use a sexual idiom. For example, at one point in Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden said something like this to an opponent -- "you've heard of having your cake and eating it too? Well, you want to have me and eat me too." In some other work, she talked about her style of writing as "man-worship." Et cetera. I'm tempted to say these were unintentional, but given that Howard Roark of The Fountainhead wasn't above rape to get what he wanted, well ... I've gotta wonder.

Most of the time when I read her writing, I could enjoy it well enough, and I consider myself an open-minded guy, but moments like that gave me the same slimy feeling I might have if I accidentally stumbled across a diary of someone's most secret and personal fantasies. I think more than anything else, it wsa the feeling I kept getting that she wasn't intending these things to come out, rather they just were.

Danny

[*] OTOH, I might hire Al Pacino to do the cussing out as the "Richard Roma" character from "Glengarry Glen Ross"; specifically the "You fairy! You company man!" speech. Nothing to do with Rand, but it's a great movie, if you haven't seen it I recommend it. Now, if I really had the bucks, I'd hire them both to do a tag team job on a real prick I used to work for.