Samtemdo8 said:
The basic jist I get from Ayn Randian philosophy is that special and talented people are being held back by societal norms and conformity. And strive to overcome the norms and conformity.
In which case it'd be nothing special, because Nietzche got there well over 50 years earlier.
Firstly, it's not really a philosophy such as a pseudophilosophy. Basically, it seems Ayn Rand read lots of Aristotle, quite a bit of Nietzche, and has a smattering of knowledge of a few other philosophers that she evidently doesn't really understand very well. Don't get me wrong, it's potentially the best amateur philosophy ever created, but it's amateur nonetheless. In terms of philosophical rigour, it's very weak - poorly logically defended, full of flaws. Not least, Objectivism has a fundamental problem by failing to be objective. It tries to simply ignore Hume's is-ought principle of morality, and claim its morality is logically proven. It goes much further - it claims the only moral economic system is laissez faire capitalism, for instance, through whatever torturous chain of logic.
I would suggest Objectivism is philosophy for narcissists, probably because Ayn Rand was almost certainly a colossal narcissist herself. Philosophers, after all, like to describe reality according to their own gut instinct. It's catnip for people who think they are cleverer and more special than other people - it tells them how awesome they are and how much other people who disagree with them suck - those naysayers aren't just wrong, they're
immoral. There's a mean-spiritedness in there too. Ayn Rand's deadly leaden magnus opus, Atlas Shrugged, gleefully delights in the deaths of a load of people she considered immoral. She defended the mass slaughter and dispossession of the native Americans because... oh, it goes something like that because they hadn't developed property rights, their culture was totally immoral. Gross simplification from me there, but not so inaccurate.
Objectivism is also funny because it was run, and to some extent still is, like a cult. Ayn Rand did not tolerate anyone disagreeing with her, so she collected a bunch of acolytes who had to obey or they were exiled from her circle. And you ever meet an Objectivist, they have a slightly disturbing tendency to lord over you their logical superiority, boast about how much philosophy they know, and call you an ignorant idiot who doesn't understand the genius if you point out any of the (many) flaws on Objectivism. They act with a sort of exaggerated tone of logical rigour, which is one of the reason they're called "Randroids". Hey, we might even find one of the few Objectivist crusaders still around will spot this and choose to weigh in. To be fair, they're not all bad - I've had a couple of pleasant and reasonable ones turn up randomly and weigh in on debates, but they're the minority.
Ayn Rand handed over her estate to a supremely loyal but mediocre guy called Leonard Peikoff, who has continued the trend of exiling deviants. As a result, any Objectivists who did have somewhere useful to go philosophically - basically by merging and diluting Objectivism with proper philosophy - have been ostracised. Core, Randian Objectivism has thus withered intellectually. However, much as it may be an intellectual dead-end, it has of course had a very considerable societal impact, chiefly on elements of the right wing for its espousal of capitalism, hostility to government, disinterest in the poor, etc.
