Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism

[CapnAwesome]

Yeah, I agree so much. So many criticisms of Ayn Rand are attacks on her personal life (who's personal life is without flaws?) and strawmanning of her philosophy. This is despite the fact that there is so so so much of her philosophy that is easy to criticize in it's own right and not the strawman version of it that most people have. I think mostly the reason that people do so is because it's easy. It's far easier to criticize a strawrand, then it is to read Atlas Shrugged, which I personally found to be extremely dull and tedious.

But her way of living stemmed precisely from her philosophy, of "fuck you, I got mine". She used her ideas about "enlightened self interest" and altruism being a false good to justify her own shittiness an immorality. To her, any action was justified as long as the right person was doing it, and if you weren't the right person your best option was to knuckle down, work harder, eat and earn less and be more of a doornat.

You cannot strawman a "philosophy" which is a rationalisation for unbounded greed.

What? You can strawman any philosophy. Strawman is just misportrayal of something to make it easier to argue against, which you just did by the way. Which people do to Rand constantly. Also many philosophers, probably all of them have personal problems of one nature or another. Big deal. Attack the philosophy as it is. That's easy enough. Attacking a person for not being perfect or for being an asshole is lazy. You can easily do with the same with Marx, say that his philosophy stems from his personal ability to not manage money. Like with Ayn Rand, that's the lazy way out.