This writing is the final part (Chapters 7 and 8) of a whole book, which was published by courtesy of the "Rebirth of Reason" webpage. You can find the whole series, starting with "Ayn Rand and Rational Egoism", which was written in lieu of a prologue for the book, at http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Schieder/Ayn_Rand_and_Rational_Egoism_The_dynamo_of_human_progress.shtml.

Your comment that Ayn Rand should be read in the original is nothing new and merely reveals that you haven't read my work, for I specifically mention your suggestion already in the "General Comment" of Chapter 1 of the series (See: http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Schieder/Ayn_Rand,_I_and_The_Universe_Part_1.shtml). I took up the task of providing a unique proof of the non-existence of any "god" (unique in the sense that I couldn't find my argument nor any other writings closely related to it among the works of other atheists). To this I added to the philosophy of Ayn Rand specific ideas of my own. However, my book would have run the chance to look incomplete if I hadn't added what the logically related conclusion that my arguments on the non-existence of any "god", the falsehood of any religion and the description of the structure of the universe necessarily yields: the complete set of ideas that make up the philosophy of Objectivism. But I mentioned this too at the beginning of the series.

Further on, to protest that it is unnecessary to "repeat" Ayn Rand's ideas doesn't make any sense. Worldwide there are hundreds of thousands of "Cliff Notes", summaries, etc. of every philosophical, political, moral, esthetic work of literature existing. So why shouldn't we add ours? In what refers to Objectivism itself, there are too many to be even named. It suffices to call your attention to the excellent works presented by the management and people related with "Rebirth of Reason" itself, such as http://objectivism101.com/ and

http://members.tripod.com/AttitudeAdjustment/Books/OPAR.htm. Moreover, the world of academe has always rejected Objectivism under the excuse that it had never been presented in a "structured" way, whatever this may mean. Professor Leonard Peikoff took up this task ("Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand"), splendidly covering this demand and revealing with it that academe had only used it as an excuse to not be bothered with the fundamentally really uniquely new philosophy that Ayn Rand deduced from reality itself. For, in spite of Dr. Peikoff's works, academe continues to reject Objectivism (though now they have run out of the former "argument" of requiring it to be presented in a "structured" way).

My book was written in plain, easily understandable English. If it contains a few terms that aren't used in everyday's speech (such as, for example, "epistemology"), none of these are unknown either to Objectivists or to scholars of philosophy in general, for these terms - as the one just mentioned - are part not just of Objectivism but also of every philosophical work itself. Should some reader find them somewhat arcane, it will be necessary for him to start learning philosophy itself or take the nearest available dictionary to find the definition (Wikipedia is very useful for this). Besides, please look at chapter 8 of my book; it's a glossary of terms used.

I also can't agree with your request to know what is being done nowadays against the so-called "modern art" (this term REALLY needs explanation, since neither those who first set it up - the left-wing "artists" of "Avant Garde" at the turn of the 19^th to the 20^th century - nor those who followed them, ever explained what it means) as nowadays there are the artists of "Romantic Realism". They may be few, but fast growing in numbers - as I mention in my writing - and their works are totally related to reality and fully understandable (against the smears of Pollock, Nitsch, and the like). Accusing the characters of Roark, Galt and so forth to come out of communist and fascist art, decries the fact that you are totally missing the philosophical basis that places the Objectivist heroes completely at the opposite end of communist-fascist figures. It's no big news that Roark, Galt, etc. are fictional characters. So are Hugo's and Rostand's and, by the way, all other characters of left-wing (and not-left-wing) fantasy. I never thought that Zola's, Victor Marguerite's characters, or Sinclair Lewis Babbitt ever existed physically. They are fictional models, but so are Superman, Batman and The Fantastic Four. They stand for ideal types, but even kids reading comic strips are perfectly aware of this. To accuse Objectivism of not having "real" archetypes is, further on, very wrong. In fact, it is precisely Objectivism that presents more and more "real life" heroes: for example the editor of The Fountainhead, Ogden, or the valiant publishers of the Spanish edition of Ayn Rand's works in Argentina, who distribute these books through Latin America, or all those Webpage promoters presenting Objectivist's ideas against hell and damnation, so to speak. As a matter of fact, not long ago, an Egyptian newspaperman, evidently of the Al-Qaida type, commented that, compared with Peikoff (we may not always agree with Peikoff, but he stands as one of the main representatives of Objectivism), Bush comes close to be a figure like Mother Teresa for the Arab world (Personally I don't consider this sister to be a hero either). So you ask for heroes? We don't need any "mental masturbations" (your term) for them, for we have galore in the real world and already right now!



(Edited by Manfred F. Schieder on 12/09, 10:04pm)

Mr. Keats:

The first sentence of your message (Post 2) managed to invert what you sustain in your first post, for it is now I who find it extremely difficult, nay, practically impossible to understand what you mean when holding that I "misread and misunderstood" your post. Could you please explain this to render it easier to understand? What did I "misread and misunderstood" and how did I do so?

The second sentence evidently connects to the last sentence of your post, as you state that Objectivists "often (use) an omnipotent voice" while you would rather prefer "a little humility". Humility may be a virtue to religions but it is a fault to Objectivists, not being the adequate environment for knowledge.

Understanding what I wrote must not have presented any difficulty to any of the readers of my book and further articles, since none, excepting you, complained about my style or wording. Thus, it seems to me that the difficulty to understand my writing lays not in the text itself but rather in the eyes of a particular beholder. Further on, having already asserted twice that what I wrote is an interesting read, reveals that you and your students understood at least the general gist of its content. To clarify where it was so complicate to understand, it would have been convenient to cite a few paragraphs and analyze them. This, however, was avoided.

Should it, though, be related to any technical detail that may be alien to the area of literature as such (as poetry and the like would be), then the purported obscurity is not connected with what I wrote but with the fact that I write on matters that have little if any attachment to the belles lettres, i.e. imaginative writings as distinguished from technical and scientific analysis, especially when characterized by a polished, highly literary style and, often, a somewhat dilettantish manner. My writing has no pretension whatsoever to belong to such artistic literary undertakings. For these I prefer to read Zweig, Schnitzler, etc.

In general - pardon me if I sense you wrongly - the context of your messages yields the impression that you feel no sympathy for Objectivism. Thus, it conveys another of those by now boring efforts to discredit the splendid philosophy of Objectivism.