
Ask HN: What important truth do few people agree with you on? - ahmaman
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?<p>After reading Teter Thiel&#x27;s book zero to one awhile back, that question is still stuck in my head!
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dmfdmf
Ayn Rand was a thinker of the first rank and a genius that comes along once
every 1000 years. Most people have a superficial view of her ideas and that
she was primarily an advocate of capitalism in politics and selfishness as a
virtue in ethics. While true, these ideas both follow from her more
fundamental work in epistemology and her epochal achievement was solving the
problem of universals, i.e. how do concepts work, thus validating and
defending reason against the mystics and skeptics.

Without going into all the details, the history of Western thought can be
summarized as a battle between Plato/Kant and Aristotle/Rand or the Primacy of
Consciousness versus the Primacy of Existence, respectively.

~~~
ahmaman
Haven't really read any of her work. Do you have any recommendation regarding
some of her books?

Wonder what are some of today's thinkers important thoughts are just lost due
to the noise!

~~~
dmfdmf
I recommend starting with "Philosophy:Who Needs It" which is only indirectly
about her philosophy but more about why everyone needs and has some kind of
philosophy (i.e. integrated view of life) whether they explicitly identify it
or not.

Second book would be "The Virtue of Selfishness" where she challenges the 2000
year old ethic that selflessness and sacrifice are good and argues that
selfishness (properly defined) is good and a fundamental virtue for a rational
man.

NB: One caveat, she is chronically smeared by her enemies and her ideas are
almost always misrepresented in today's world. For example, she is commonly
accused of being a hypocrite for accepting social security and medicare toward
the end of her life despite advocating against those institutions. She clearly
explained the moral principles involved in her essay "The Question of
Scholarships". So I highly recommend that you do not accept other's
interpretations of what she said or meant without reading her ideas for
yourself, firsthand.

~~~
ahmaman
Thanks, added Philosophy:Who Needs It to my to-read list!

I guess reading for yourself applies to most of these kind of books. I also
been trying learn more about Stoicism and stoics.

Been helpful sometimes to read someone own interpretation since sometimes the
translations from Greek to English were not that clear. But definitely not
enough. Unfortunately I can't read these texts in their original language so
that also takes away some of the context.

