| | Michael Moeller,
Imagine you paid several thousand dollars to take a class on the history of the Civil War. You show up for the first class, and the professor starts lecturing about Pop Tarts. Maybe you humor him, but he does it again in the next class. And the next. You get angry, and go and ask for your money back. The girl at the administration office says no, and she says that you should not " treat knowledge as if it is contained in hermetically sealed bags, but rather to grasp the *interrelationships* among different bodies of knowledge and to examine those relationships on many different levels." Yes, there is a connection between Pop Tarts and the Civil War, if you look hard enough. Clearly there are errors in the way you approach Rand's paradigm!!!
Seriously, though. The reverse is true. Anyone who can't see a problem with the hypothetical lectures is unable to grasp degrees of significance. There may in fact me a relationship, but it's ridiculous to treat it like every other.
And so it is with esthetics and politics. Your own example is very weak, especially given that Rand rejected the government's ability to censor or judge what is "artistic". But even if you want to emphasize that connection, wouldn't it be the case that every branch is then derived from government? After all, governments pass laws about the other branches as well.
Now let me ask you whether you're being serious here, or hypothetical? Are you trying to make a broad point about the interconnectedness of knowledge, or are you really arguing that esthetics is more tightly coupled with politics than it is with any of the other branches?
Luke, Jason Q, and George, excellent posts. Thanks for defending Objectivism from those that would distort it into its opposite.
|
|