[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
anyone care to summarize Objectivism?
[/ QUOTE ]
Why not go right to the source rather than judge it based on six or seven probably inaccurate sentences on a gambling forum? Read one or two of her non-fiction books. They typically contain easily read 3 or 4 page topical articles.
A terse summary from Leonard Peikoff, her long-time friend and student, is available online:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServ...jectivism_pobs. It is about 4 pages long and hits all the main points.
(Incidentally, AR wrote that the conservatives were much more dangerous than the liberals, so she didn't really align herself with the right. She was fervently against the military draft, in favor of legalized abortion, and was a very loud critic of conservatives. Take a look through her book,
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, to see if she thought conservatives were her allies.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Based on a verfy quick read, Objectivism looks indistinguishable from skeptical Realism, none the worse for that, but
[ QUOTE ]
The answer lies in man's nature as a living organism. A living organism has to act in the face of a constant alternative: life or death. Life is conditional; it can be sustained only by a specific course of action performed by the living organism, such as the actions of obtaining food. In this regard plants and animals have no choice: within the limits of their powers, they take automatically the actions their life requires. Man does have a choice. He does not know automatically what actions will sustain him; if he is to survive he must discover, then practice by choice, a code of values and virtues, the specific code which human life requires. The purpose of ethics is to define such a code.
[/ QUOTE ]
Is there any justification for this? Why is my ethic a code for my own survival. My survival is important to me but its not the only thing, I see no reason to believe its even the most important thing. Does by my survival she include the survival of that which is important to me even to the detriment of my own personal survival?
chez