
The Voice of Reason
Essays in Objectivist Thought
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Narrated by:
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Bernadette Dunne
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Critic reviews
"Persuasive...well-articulated...prime Rand!" ( Kirkus Reviews)
"Thirty-one entirely provocative essays." ( Charleston Evening Post)
"Thirty-one entirely provocative essays." ( Charleston Evening Post)
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Inspirational
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Funny, I had just finished the Communist Manifesto (again 😣). I struggled with Marx when I was young so went back into it and realized now in my 50s that it really was just a bunch of gobbledygook. My goodnes.
Where has this been all my life?
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perfect to finish her legacy
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Important, true, and enjoyable
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Almost a masterpiece.
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Yet most striking to me was the penultimate chapter, chapter 31, ‘Libertarianism, the Perversion of Liberty”, by Peter Schwartz. Schwartz brings up the interesting and true point that we can only be good or evil if we can choose, and that morality, therefore, depends on freedom.
From this observation that liberty, irrespective of any subsequent good or evil, is required for good, Schwartz —and here he did not make sense to me— vituperatively lambasts —in my estimation, misrepresents and libels— libertarianism as adhering to a ‘litany of irrationalities’, ’rejecting all values’ as ‘logically leading to nihilism’. He writes that ‘nothing matters to libertarians, not even the value of life itself… they [libertarians] want to be free to act without purpose reason, to achieve nothing in particular’, seeking ‘freedom from the demands of existence’. ‘Libertarians reject anything that tells them that there is something that they should not do, that there is something that will not yield to their emotions -that there is something; reality itself is the limitation they ultimately resent, it is from the universe as such that libertarians wish to be liberated.’
Schwartz then warns libertarians and people who might know a libertarian that many Nazi’s and Stalinist Marxists were —just as libertarians are today— blind to the essential nature of their own philosophies, and informs the reader that ‘libertarianism is incompatible with laissez-faire capitalism, incompatible with morality, incompatible with reason, and incompatible with the requirements of human life’.
This book was a great read for people interested in the fundamental ideas that Rand promoted, and for those interested in freedom and morality generally. Chapter 31, however, was either sorrily out of place in this book, or a crucially important chapter whose point I failed to comprehend. I’ll read it again in a few months, and in the interim will read other defenses and elaborations on this pretty inflammatory chapter —perhaps I’ll come to see that Schwartz, in what seemed initially like rambling nonsense and misconstrued ideas, made a very useful critical point. ...The judge and jury will reconvene on this in future.
Smart, insightful —with 1 very perplexing chapter
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If you are new to Ayn Rand, this will give you some insight in some of her perspectives.
Many good essays
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Out of this World Meaning
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