The Probligo, who has kindly commented on a couple of my posts

This one and this one, sent me an email to get around the 1000 word limit on my free Haloscan comments. (Anyone who feels that way is welcome to do the same.) His comments require me to do a little editing on my posting of the section from Tibor Machan's Ayn Rand (see links at that post). I hope to say, "done," here in a moment.

Done.

Hopefully that's a lot clearer. Let's see what points remain. I'd like to post the letter, so you could see the respectful tone. I hope to do it justice, but occasionally, my Spartan laconism defeats me when I'm passing along "the word" from someone else. (One could also blame my tendency to think of myself as a Superior being.)

Sorry. One's hometown is just another kind of granfalloon.

No, I'm quite excited to get such a thoughtful response to a post, though the credit goes mostly to Mr. Machan (and Miss Rand, of course). I eagerly await a response to my edited post.

Points remaining:
1. Machan's pedantry.

Hopefully I've improve the context enough for you to understand something of Objectivism. If this doesn't do it, well, Andrew Bernstein says that the best salesman (Rand would not say "salesperson") of Rand's ideas is Rand. Frankly, she's the better writer.

2. The hammer and soft word example is a koan.

Koans, as I'm sure you know, serve the purpose of promoting enlightenment, whether suddenly, in a satori experience, or slowly through meditation. Of course, the assumption is that the enlightenment would be comprehensive, or holistic, about the true and complete nature of reality. I doubt that any Objectivist would assume they could do that. A flash of enlightenment couldn't cover more than an aspect of reality, an probably only a small one at that.

3. Question: is Rand telling us how to think or what to think?

I believe that, at least up until the 1960s, Miss Rand considered it most important to tell us how to think. When she began directly publishing essays about current event using her philosophy, it could be argued that she was telling us what to think. I doubt that she would accept the distinction. Chris Matthew Sciabarra has written a large book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (a pigeonhole The Ayn Rand Institute would reject as too confining), describing the degree to which dialectic thought - the collapsing of false dichotomies - figures in to Rand's thought.

4. Defense of Cartesian rationalism.

My own study of Descartes is weak, but what I hear is that the result of the Cogito was Humean Skepticism and it's less well-grounded descendants. Doubt of the status quo in science has born great fruits, true, but I think Rand would argue that actual buildings (and railroads) are built on certainty, or rather making certain, that they would stand and serve their users well. Scientists and engineers make good use of the scientific method (also expounded by Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon) but thinkers in the social sciences and philosophy have not, it seems to me (and Machan), been equally meticulous.