Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life

As someone who spent a lot of time reading and thinking about Rand's ideas many years ago, I found this film very informative and entertaining. It presents Rand with just the right breath of grandeur. It shows her the way I like to think of her.

Like Thomas Jefferson, flaws in Rand's personal life throw a bit of shadow on her intellectual triumphs. This is not to suggest that Rand's achievements come close to Jefferson's. But, like Rand, his lifestyle contradicted his life's major achievement: the Author of The Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder.

In Rand's case, the champion of individualism surrounded herself with a "Collective" of yes-men (and -women) that systematically excluded anyone who didn't toe the line on matters of philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and even cigarette smoking. Incredibly, this champion of "independent judgement based on facts" would actually forbid her followers from reading things written by people she deemed "evil."

But, just as a tribute to Jefferson might not dwell on slavery at Monticello or mention Sally Hemmings, this love letter to Ayn doesn't explore her problematic social life or her peculiar band of followers. But I still think this documentary earned its accolades from the film industry. Ayn Rand probably would have approved of the film herself.

I find this film to be little more than veneration for a woman who claimed she had no time for veneration but was more than willing to have people worship her. Rand was a hypocrite. At the end of her life she took Medicare for her lung cancer which was due to her lifetime of smoking. Thats not even mentioned in the film. I gave Rand's ideas my full attention for some 3 months a few years ago and was intrigued by them before coming to the conclusion her ideas are badly flawed. I read the Fountainhead and a number of her essays but didn't get far with Atlas Shrugged, by then I'd had enough. I'm a geriatric nurse, and I meet many people near the end of their lives and I meet their families, and see the quality of their relationships (or lack there of) and I can tell you, consistently, its those who live and care for others and open themselves and receive the care of others who have the happiest lives. I see it again and again and again. There's a name for it, its called love. Rands "individualism" is suicidal for the individual, the family and society. I'm rating this film so low because it does little more than promote these ill gotten ideas.

What a horrible woman. I have never read anything by her or about her but was really astounded by this documentary. Basically, she believes that everyone should be selfish and think only of themselves. Government should not take care of anyone. There is no God. she babbles incoherently about the future of the human race and her greatest philosophical achievement is a book about an architect that every selfish conservative in the world has bought next to only the bible. She sounds like a cult. I plan to watch Fountainhead. I wonder how it became the favorite book of Anne Hathoway (The Princess Diary). Wonder what her parents were like? If I somehow come up with a different opinion, I will let you know. Until then, watch this and tell me if you can find any redeeming value. Check out the parts where the audience is watching her on talk shows of the 70's with a collective look of horror as she spouts out her ideas that God doesn't exist, people should not seek help from their government and people who believe in helping others are wimps. Now you will know why conservatives love her and shun Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other petty altruists. Ugh....

Ayn Rand has helped me to have an integrated view of life.

She teaches for reason and trade, instead of faith and force.

She is against mysticism, which rules by means of guilt, by keeping men convinced of their insignificance on earth. She is against the dogma of man's poverty and misery on earth.

She teaches you to face the universe, free to declare your mind is competent to deal with all the problems of existence and that reason is the only means of knowledge.

Ayn Rand states that intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man's successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality (as well as the production of wealth), not contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the "unknowable".

She is for that productive person who is confident of his ability to earn his living - who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product - who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better - who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements - who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible - who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions - who stands in full sun light and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, or for any code from psycho-epistemology of guilt.

Her words will help people to free themselves from fear and force forever.

Thanks Ayn for you direction. She has given me an integrated view of life. I hope, by reading her books, you get it too.

Rand philosopher or Novelist?

Rand seems to exemplify the notion that our unreflected ideas are products of our environment and childhood experiences. The chief force motivating her life was a hatred of left-wing politics from the time when her family was expelled from Russia, and an accompanying acceptance of the glamour of the fascist dictators of the 1930s and 40s.

Is she a philosopher? I have just read a rather good synthesis of the History of Philosophy from Plato to the modern day. "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. I heartily recommend it to all. He does not mention Ayn Rand once. In fact he does not mention ANY novelist because novelists do not do serious philosophy. Rand plays no part in Philosophy her ideas are bankrupt and without merit. They are second hand and undigested reflections on the now discredited Vienna school of logical positivism applied to wider society, yet her limited bourgeois effete experiences prove of no use for the sort of pan-social application to which her words are increasingly being used by the neo-cons of the present day. Her ideas are simple and appeal to simple people. The sort of people who glean their philosophical ideas from the back of a Cornflakes packet: homespun red-neck notions delivered by a naive middle-class woman under the spell of the glamour of the fascists of the pre1945 period.

Rand is no philosopher.

Chazwin