We’re adding another Q&A session at thinkspot, due to the number of very good questions I’ve been receiving.
July 4’s Q&A will focus on the questions about Nietzsche and Rand. (The ones so far are listed below.)
July 11’s Q&A will be an open session focusing on the questions about statues, violence from Right and Left, free will, Marxism, BLM, and applied postmodernism. The July 11 event will be free to all.
Questions for July 4 Q&A at thinkspot:
1. Rand personifies Nietzsche’s superman in Gail Wynand in her novel The Fountainhead. Do you agree and if so do you think Rand came to reject Nietzsche because she saw his view on power as primitive in that it lacked (her definition of) free will? Bradola
2. Max Stirner could be the predatory view of egoism? There are some works that argues that Nietzsche had influence from him, but it seems that his nihilism plus the early Schopenhauer influence lead Nietzsche to his “instinct” philosophy and the non-virtue of the selfishness (to say it in Rand’s terms) ?
3. What is Kant’s influence on Nietzsche & Locke’s influence on Rand?
4. On Kant’s influence on Nietzsche: if you read a mathematician’s book, and you come across 2+2=5 as the basis of his argument, you would possibly disregard his theory and move on. But if that was a philosopher’s book, the same argument doesn’t have the same effect, on the contrary. If Kant wants me to be disinterested, why his supporters still care?
5. Is Nietzsche right wing? Strauss wrote that any political “capture” of N would be against his “will” 😂 so to speak, but the Nazis were inspired by him. With the left acting so horrifically of late, violence-wise, does it make sense to make a differentiation between Right & Left?
6. I’m wondering how Rand squares inalienable rights granted by God with her atheism.
7. Is Individualism of Nietzsche the same or comparative to Personalism? If so how? If not, why not?
8. Are the producers in Atlas Shrugged demonstrating Ayn Rand’s plan for Objectivists in dealing with a world bent on collective altruism?
9. How much actual virtue or insight can we who live in modern times where women are in the political arena, in the work force, in the military. can we gain from Nietzsche writings? Was Nietzsche accurate at all about the women of the time if so is he still accurate at all towards the women of our time? Cameron1inm
Questions for July 11 Q&A at thinkspot:
1. When you wrote Explaining Postmodernism, did you expect to see a Chinese-style Cultural Revolution based on postmodernism so fast?
2. What do you think of free will? What do you think of this quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s: “If by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to do what you desire – then yes, humans have free will. But if by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to choose what to desire – then no, humans have no free will.”?
3. In an academic lecture at the German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, I learned that socialist euthanasia wasn’t racist. Can this be true? Is socialism per se not racist (may be due to its policy of internationalism, but in reality)? Is there an attempt to exclude the left side of the political spectrum from racism?
4. In your study of philosophy, did you ever find out why good and just societies are more like annual plants rather than perennials? Why decent societies such as ours never really last very long before collapsing? Why there is so much decay that rots away the good?
5. Statues and Building Names: “There is a petition by the Queen’s University Law Students Society to change the name of Sir John A MacDonald Hall … . Do you have an opinion on this sort of thing — philosophical or otherwise?
6. Which logical fallacy would it be to say “if you’re not saying something about X, you condone it” or “silence is violence”? Things along these lines. Just non-sequiturs? For example, I don’t condone obesity but I’m also not going out telling people to stop eating so much…
7. Are the riots we are experiencing very postmodern, especially the entire notion of law and order being “racist”? The worst part seems to me that academia, the press and then rich themselves seem to be driving this. The affluent always seem to want to impose these things on the rest of us.
8. We know that Marxism and / or Communist ideas end up bad (Maoist China, Stalin, etc.). Yet I have had trouble connecting the dots as to exactly why the ideology results in such despotism. I remember hearing you talk about how collective, centrally controlled systems are good at attracting bad individuals who crave power. Is it simply that these systems provide a ladder for bad people to rise to power? Does power become the be all end all, or is there more to it?
9. My question pertains to your previous view that Nietzsche discussed the distinctions between “master” and “slave” morality and posited that postmodernists’ significant weapon was to use words to attack that which they envy held most dear. I certainly see the logic of such a construct. What I am attempting to understand at this point is twofold. First, what has emboldened the “mob” to resort to physical confrontation over the last month throughout the country if they are indeed fearful of their “weakness” which has historically inhibited their action to deconstruction through speech? Second, (and quite possibly reflexively) why does the “leadership” of the society cower at their actions and seemingly go out of their way to “support” the mob? The recent calls for the renunciation of history and historic figures because of their imperfections as human and ignorance of their accomplishments has not engendered a backlash yet and I suffer from a heightened fear that the basis for the strong morality is currently a fiction because the strong appear unwilling to fight for their beliefs and cultural heritage.
10. What motivates current day Marxists/postmodernists to disregard the evidence of the success of the Enlightenment in bettering the lives of the masses? For if, to put it very (perhaps too) compactly, bettering the lives of the masses was Marx’s goal, shouldn’t they be happy with the general direction of developments? Shouldn’t they see that enlightenment and capitalism, without being perfect, clearly offer something “we can work with”?