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Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 9:43amSanction this postReply
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Luther,

Excellent! I think you have argued well for a great idea (let's utilize the vast literature to increase public insight, understanding, and rationality)!

Also, regarding Adler - in a figurative (not literal) sense, I think that he was the Public Relations component of objective thinking and most objectivist principles in the Western World.

Atlas Shrugged is life-changing, no doubt, and it is so on a grand scale - but the comprehensive attack on Western irrationality by Adler, in my mind, has no equal. If you doubt this, then attempt to read Adler's book on How to Think About the Great Ideas, and see if you can maintain your position without contradiction.

Ed

Post 1

Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 12:23pmSanction this postReply
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I was in a Great Books program for an entire year in college, and overall, it was very rewarding. The Classics were great. Then came the modern era and Hegel and Kant. Kant at least makes some discernible point, though convoluted and wrong. Hegel's Phenomenology is just unintelligible rubbish. When confronted with seemingly impenetrable writing it is likely that either: (1) the author seeks to hide invalid ideas in such a garbled mess that you cannot begin to identify what the position is; or (2) the author has an inferiority complex such that he feels that his work must be obtuse to be profound. Maybe both. Reading Rand (fiction and non-fiction) is a breeze through the park in comparison and is the opposite of the former and refutation of the latter. The problem with a crowd that belives valid knowledge comes from mystical or non-effort-requiring activities (e.g, reading), is, you cannot get them to read anything but what scrolls across the screen of the television, or maybe an occasional magazine. Reading as hobby or pastime is dying. Our hope is for new, modern novelists and playwrights to present the underlying ideas of Objectivism in more easily digestible form--and eventually for televison and movies. And here's another for you--why can Michael Moore create an utterly watchable tripe-for-content documentary, but we do not have a single Objectivist documentarian in a similar vein.

Post 2

Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 12:59pmSanction this postReply
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why can Michael Moore create an utterly watchable tripe-for-content documentary, but we do not have a single Objectivist documentarian in a similar vein.
What about John Stossel?  He has done numerous specials on ABC that have a perspective similar to Objectivism.


Post 3

Friday, May 21, 2004 - 7:27amSanction this postReply
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Good point. I like watching his stuff, but he seems to back off, where Moore really pushes the envelope. Different media is probably the explanation. I think there is a market for Moore-esque pseudo-documentary with an objectivist spin.

Post 4

Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 10:02amSanction this postReply
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“Hegel's Phenomenology is just unintelligible rubbish.”

I would like to make a little plea for Hegel. If the above statement is correct, it makes it difficult to explain all those thinkers who have found Hegel, and especially the Phenomenology enlightening. Let’s start with Peikoff and Kelley. Peikoff likes to stress that Hegel was right! Right in at least one respect, viz., that the Truth is the Whole. And Kelley cites the Phenomenology against Kant’s notion that reason can critique itself. See p. 39 n. 45 in The Evidence of the Senses. Evidently neither Peikoff nor Kelley find Hegel unintelligible.
On the other hand, Hegel is damn tough. I don’t recommend him to the Reardens of the world, but only to the Ragnars. Nevertheless, if you insist, I can recommend two guides noted for their clarity and intelligibility; Walter Kaufmann and Robert Solomon. Take the latter. In his book, In the Spirit of Hegel (nice pun on Geist) he provides a wonderfully clear exegesis of the Phenomenology.
But if I had to recommend to Objectivists one chapter of the Phenomenology, I would choose “II. Perception: Or the Thing and Deception.” Since Objectivism is a thing or entity ontology, this chapter forces one to focus on what exactly we mean by “thing.” I also like the section on the “Unhappy Consciousness” where Hegel seems to be having so much (serious) fun with poor old Augustine.
Finally, if Sciabarra is right and Rand is a dialectical thinker, what better guy to cut your teeth on than the master of the dialectical thinkers, Hegel.
Fred Seddon


Post 5

Friday, June 4, 2004 - 6:35amSanction this postReply
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Thank you very much for the suggested reading, Fred. I'll check it out.

Post 6

Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - 9:51amSanction this postReply
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Luke - how has this played out over the past four years?

Post 7

Monday, January 12, 2009 - 12:02pmSanction this postReply
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We still use the Q&A format although now that we are on Reisman's Capitalism we use his own canned questions rather than creating our own interpretive and evaluative questions.

I really did enjoy the Great Books First Series and the other discussion group members did as well. I would like to find more ways to use them. However, the "main thing" is still Objectivism so we have limited our focus to those books with the Shared Inquiry(TM) Q&A method retained.

Post 8

Friday, September 2, 2016 - 6:30amSanction this postReply
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We continue to follow this format though with questions often made "on the fly" as we slog through the assigned reading.



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