Book Review: Ayn Rand Explained (2013) by Merrill/Enright

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This book was originally written by the late Ronald E. Merrill under the title The Ideas of Ayn Rand (1991).  In 2013 Marsha Familaro Enright revised and updated it under the present title. 

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Rand was one of my earliest philosophical teachers, waking me up to the awareness of rigorous rationality as an all-important human virtue and to a new respect for science (for this poetic mind).  I had already been a radical individualist, contemptuous of coercion against any peaceful pursuits of happiness, and from early on I have been an extreme advocate of equal freedom for all, as well as a lover of heroic esthetics (e.g., Zorro, Robin Hood, etc.), so those parts of me were only reinforced by her similar tastes and her writings. 

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I still am fond of reading about Rand’s life and the cultural movement created in her trail.  Since I have read most of her primary published works, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as a lot of the secondary literature of Objectivism and its history, her heritage is one of my main specialties on both philosophical systems and in the study of mass movements. 

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Objectivism has had its cultic, true believer aspects right from the start – but that contradicts the very heart of ‘objectivism’ as a standard of sovereign individual judgment and intellectual honesty, doesn’t it?  Rand herself is not above criticism here, as she helped create that culture of ideological ‘conformity’ sometimes seen within this movement of ‘individualists’.  Merrill/Enright sees this and doesn’t brush it aside, but they instead balance their portrait of praise and blame rather well – rather ‘objectively’, I think.  No one will agree with everything they say – and I certainly don’t – but the book is a good read for anyone curious about Rand or already knowledgeable about her ideas. 

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Spoiler Alert!  Merrill/Enright gives away important plot details from Rand’s fiction, so if you haven’t already read her major fiction you might put reading this book on hold until you do. 

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The book’s chapters are:  The Controversial Ayn Rand; Who Was Ayn Rand?; Ayn Rand in Person; The Young Nietzschean; Scourge of the Second-Handers; The Book that Changed the World; Rand the Philosopher; Rand’s Politics; and Ayn Rand’s Revolution. 

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I stalled out at ‘Rand the Philosopher’.  I had already read and digested so much of this in my youth – and, since technical philosophical arguments and logical entanglements are not my favorite part of the discipline, they often bore me to death.  (Yet the chapter is very well done.)  I got distracted and read other things before returning to the book.  I must read this book again to savor the parts I liked most and the information that I’d never heard before.  I may revise parts of this review later. 

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-Zenwind.

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Book Review: Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (3rd century AD)

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I just finished reading a book that I started browsing randomly over 40 years ago.  Diogenes Laertius lived in the early 3^rd century AD and wrote in Greek, drawing his biographies of the Greek philosophers from an immense number of sources available to him but of which a vast amount are no longer extant.  He is one of the few sources we have about many of these thinkers. 

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Reading Diogenes Laertius, I get the sense of the huge irreplaceable loss of most of the writings of the ancient Greeks.  He catalogues extensive lists of the books that they wrote and that we will never see, and he also quotes or makes reference to numerous other (lost) ancient biographies of these philosophers.  But what really knocked me over was that, while we see him as a rare ancient voice from the distant ages, he looked at many of his own biographical subjects as ancients, with many of their works lost to his own times!  Apparently, even parts of this very book of Diogenes Laertius are lost, as evidence suggests that he wrote about many more thinkers not included in the received book.  How fragile the transmission of human knowledge is. 

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Diogenes Laertius may not have been the greatest biographer or philosopher.  He often seems gossipy and a recorder of trivialities.  He also provides little verses of his own about several of these thinkers, often dealing with their tragic-comic moments of death.  These ditties are a bit trite, but they reinforce in me the sense that he wrote as much for entertainment as for philosophic enlightenment.

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But I really like his treatment of the philosopher’s life in its full biographical sweep, recording them as mortal men, through their lives and including their troubles, illnesses, and last days.  He gives us the texts of many of the wills and letters of the old philosophers. He provides three long important letters of Epicurus, of which the third is my favorite.  I often see – especially in his accounts of the Epicurean predecessors and then Epicurus and his later school, and of the Stoics, the Cynics, and Skeptics – a familiar primacy of achieving “tranquility” that reminds me of the Buddha’s early teachings. 

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Montaigne (1533-1592) said it well for me:  “I am very sorry we have not a dozen Diogenes Laertius, or that he was not further extended; for I am equally curious to know the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of the world, as to know the diversities of their doctrines and opinions” (Essays, book X, “On Books”). 

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I read this work in a textually corrupted eBook version of the 1853 translation by Charles Duke Yonge.  I’m not sure where I downloaded it from, but I will look for another eBook version that is formatted better for my Kindle. 

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I will look for the classic 1925 translation by Robert Drew Hicks (Loeb Classical Library, with the slightly shorter title, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers), originally in a two-volume bound edition (with English and Greek texts), which is said to be now in the public domain.   I will look for the Hicks version because it was one of my favorite books to browse in the old Warren Public Library when I was a young crazed Dionysian recently dumped from war into civilian life.  It eased my sorry soul. 

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-Zenwind.

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Barbara Branden, R.I.P. (1929-2013)

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I never met Barbara Branden face to face, but I was an occasional online acquaintance and correspondent of hers some years ago on Objectivist e-list discussion groups first hosted by Jimmy Wales (later of Wikipedia fame).  Barbara was always gracious and generous, sometimes answering my questions off-list.  She died 11 December 2013 at age 84. 

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I first encountered the writings of Barbara Branden and her then-husband, Nathaniel Branden, in the late 1960s as colleagues of the great novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982).  I discovered the world of Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism as a 17-year-old, and it was a clarion call for me to knock off my kid shit and get some integrity.  It is a philosophy advocating rationality, ruthless intellectual honesty, passionate vision, individualism, liberty, and love of life. 

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Rand was the solid star of Objectivism, and Barbara and Nathaniel were the major planets in her orbit.  Rand’s work is on record; but Barbara’s was not as well known to many outside the movement.  Barbara wrote Who Is Ayn Rand (1962), the biographical lead essay in the volume by that name.  This was greatly enlarged upon later in her fine biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand (1986). 

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When I was in Vietnam in 1969, I asked my mother to send me books.  I specifically asked for Randian periodicals, and she ordered and sent to me back copies of The Objectivist Newsletter and its successor The Objectivist.  In these back issues I read many of Barbara’s essays, movie and book reviews, and other writings on philosophy and culture along with those of Rand and others. They recommended other philosophers' books, and thus started my wider philosophical education. 

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Barbara was associated closely with Rand from 1950 until 1968, the year she (and Nathaniel) was disassociated completely from Rand due to (as Nietzsche would say) “human, all too human” personal complications, natural in retrospect.  Philosophically, they were all in the same camp; they were all just a bit high-strung.  Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism would never have grown into such a well-articulated movement without the Brandens. 

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At the dawn of the 1970s, the newly born American libertarian movement was influenced as much by Rand as anyone else, and the Brandens were in there personally on its early development.  Libertarians that I know from online contact and who knew Barbara for many years testify as to what a fine lady and intellectual she was. 

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I first ran into Barbara online around 1998 or so on Jimmy Wales’s e-list, “Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy,” or its successor Objectivist e-lists that he hosted on his servers and that were moderated and run by his friends.  We all had questions about the early days of the philosophy’s development, and Barbara was the one with the details and grand overview.  It was wonderful to have her in the forum. 

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On these online forums I once defended Barbara from an extremely crazy series of attacks from a weird female who called herself an Objectivist and who ranted and raved against men, against certain kinds of libertarians, and against Jews (and Barbara, like Rand, was of Jewish lineage).  This same bitch has often appeared and disappeared in Objectivist circles with equal nuttiness.  She ranted against male circumcision and talked about feminist street fighters kicking the shit out of men – or some such raving.  She was entertaining and irritating at the same time, but her savaging and idiotic insults of everyone on the list got tiring.  And when she focused personal attacks on Barbara, on her writing, and on her Jewish lineage, I got righteously pissed off.  I’m ugly when I’m angry.  I have a mean streak you don't want to see. 

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This was in winter of 2001 or 2002, and it was a Saturday afternoon.  My back was killing me from shoveling snow, so I opened a bottle of whisky and did my internet browsing between schoolwork tasks.  Throughout the day I worked off and on writing a post to answer that obnoxious bitch and to defend Barbara.  As the day went on (and the bottle got emptier) I fashioned a reply, editing, re-editing, and cutting it down to two short paragraphs of sheer poetic rant.  I wish I still had a copy of that completed post, because it was one of the best I’ve ever written – a gem:  rude, crude, mean, sarcastic, and with a nasty personal aim, straight for the jugular. 

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All I can remember about the gist of my rant was that it was a mocking pseudo-veneration of the bitch, ending with something like:  “Oh, Bitch! Enlighten us as we kneel at thy feet, oh, thou dominatrix goddess!  Oh!  Favor us with lashes from thy whip!”  (Or something close to that, but much, much cruder.)  I immediately got a private email from Jimmy, who complimented me with:  “LOL.  I haven’t seen a Grade-A rant like that in years!”  I became a bit of a hero on the list for mocking the bitch so savagely.  She became a laughingstock and soon faded away.  Good riddance. 

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So my main acquaintance with Barbara Branden was to defend her from a bully by my own crude, inebriated online rant.  I’m selfish about my friends.  She never mentioned that rant of mine, but she was always exceptionally friendly to me in both on- and off-list conversations from then on.  I believe she appreciated it even though it wasn’t in her style. 

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Barbara kept tabs on many of us, even on those like me who were marginal in her life.  I was surprised and very touched when I received a personal email from her in 2006.  It was immediately after the Thai military overthrew the government here in a coup, with tanks on the streets, and front-page headlines throughout the world.  She remembered that I had moved here and she asked me with urgent concern if I was okay.  That is the way I will remember her – thoughtful, humane, and loyal. 

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Many of us were surprised at her sudden passing.  She had just sent out (on November 30) a mass email to those on her huge contacts list, announcing that her book The Passion of Ayn Rand was now available as an eBook.  As a long-time dedicated Kindle user, she was excited, happy, and proud. 

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Rest in Peace, Barbara.  You helped inspire a generation. 

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-Zenwind.

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