I do wonder if Rand was a sort of an evangelist in a sense for a more reasoned-out philosophy than what existed and maybe she thought something like, “Okay, this is good enough for now—now I’m going to go out and spread the word of this particular philosophy.” Certainty does have a certain rhetorical use, and if it persuades people away form a less reasonable approach, maybe it’s worthwhile. If we all sat around waiting for perfect knowledge before we started talking about our ideas, we’d never speak.
Not to say I necessarily endorse Rand’s approach—my impression is she was too rigid, but at the same time, did she do a service for advancing better ideas than the average to the general public? I think a decent case could be made for her on that count.
I do wonder if Rand was a sort of an evangelist in a sense for a more reasoned-out philosophy than what existed and maybe she thought something like, “Okay, this is good enough for now—now I’m going to go out and spread the word of this particular philosophy.” Certainty does have a certain rhetorical use, and if it persuades people away form a less reasonable approach, maybe it’s worthwhile. If we all sat around waiting for perfect knowledge before we started talking about our ideas, we’d never speak.
Not to say I necessarily endorse Rand’s approach—my impression is she was too rigid, but at the same time, did she do a service for advancing better ideas than the average to the general public? I think a decent case could be made for her on that count.
I don’t think so because analytical philosophy was well established in the fifties, and the idealsim she railed against was out of fashion.