INTRODUCTION

I wonder what would happen if somebody with a real philosophical propensity were to take a logical wrecking ball to the so-called "philosophy of Ayn Rand"?

I'm not referring to myself, of course; I'm not a philosopher. A real philosopher would inflate something like this into some huge tome full of:

-- gigantic words;

-- weird jargon;

-- endless discussions of the meaning of words like "is, "was", and "will be" (ARISTOTLE);

-- paragraphs like spaghetti (HEGEL);

-- run-on sentences a mile long (ARISTOTLE);

-- huge passages in Greek and Latin which are never translated (SCHOPENHAUER);

(Aristotle wrote in Greek; why quote him in Latin?)

-- the same sentences repeated over and over and over again ("the meaning of Being" ["das Sinn von Sein"]; "the question of the meaning of Being; raising the question of the meaning of Being; the need to raise the question of the meaning of Being; the difficulty of raising the question of the meaning of Being", etc. etc. etc., for 20 -- or 200 -- pages);

-- complex footnotes drawing arcane distinctions between the various grammatical forms of the same word in ancient Greek (verb, noun, present participle) (HEIDEGGER, same as above);

-- complex distinctions drawn between 3 different German words, all of which mean exactly the same thing ("Sein", "Dasein" and "das Seiende", all of which mean "Being" or "Existence"), the last of which having been invented for the purpose by the philosopher himself (HEIDEGGER again) (who else?);

NOTE: In German, almost any word can be used as a noun; just put it in the neuter case and capitalize it! The verb "sein" (with a small "s") is the verb "to be", so "das Sein" means "Being" or "Existence"! The word "seiend" (with a small "s" is the present participle of "sein"; so "das Seiende" = "Being-ing"!

(Profondeur, s'il vous plaît).

Since all these words mean exactly the same thing, translators cheat by translating "Sein" as "Being", leaving "Dasein" in German, and inventing fake pseudo-Latinisms for "das Seiende" (usually "Essente").

QUAESTIO: Why stop there? Why not "werden, das Werdende" ("to become", "Becoming-ing"? Or "wesen", "das Wesende"? ("Being-ing" again! etc. etc.

But I digress.

-- grotesque, fake and ugly German compound words used in English ("In-the-World-Being", not to be confused with "Being-in-the-World", which may or may not be exactly the same thing or completely different, probably the latter (HEIDEGGER or HEGEL, I forget which);

-- and, my personal favourite, from HEGEL, "in-itself-being" ["in-sich-selbst-seiend"] (used as an adjective; of course, you could also use it as a noun, "In-Itself-Being");

-- ridiculous redundancies ("in-itself-being Self", "in-itself-being Being", etc.) (hey, I just made that up, pretty good, huh? I oughta get a patent on it);

-- ugly and grotesque German words, used, again, in English ("Ausgeworfenheit", i..e., "Thrown-out-there-ed-ness" (HEIDEGGER).

NOTE: Since "da sein" means exactly the same thing in German as "ex-sistere" in Latin or "ex-ist" in English ("to be out there" or "to exist"), this means that "Dasein" has been "flung out there in Existence"!

Po' widdo' Dasein!

(Tragic music, violins).

(This is the basis for "Existentialism", a French import. L'enfer, c'est les philosophes...)

-- complete nonsense ("the historicity of Being"), (i.e., ....uh, duh.... yesterday..... duh, uh... today..., etc.) (HEIDEGGER);

Sed contra:

Since I'm not a philosopher (I don't have syphillis, either), I am afraid that the present humble but wholly disinterested effort will have to be just about the best I can do.

Randophagia delenda est.

C. PORTER

16 February 2015





Disclaimer:

P.S. For what it's worth, I haven't ridiculed the Scholastics, because I respect them (in small doses, like cod liver oil).

Absolve me, Philosophus, quia peccavi.


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--
"If I meet a philospher upon the road, I shun him as I would a mad dog."
- Lucian, Greek satirist

-- What do you read, my lord?
-- Words, words, words....
Hamlet, Act II, scene 2