YAYYY, My Book Finally Arrived!

[Mal12345]

This is a book I've wanted to read for at least 20 years, but it has been out of print forever. I finally decided to search for it on Amazon and found it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-R...253&sr=8-1&keywords=is+objectivism+a+religion

Is Objectivism a Religion?, by Dr. Albert Ellis.

 

[Nicodemus]

Depends on one's definition of 'religion', because even today there is no accepted one in religious studies.

The end.

Probably a book only INTPs hungry for meaningless categorization buy.

 

[Totenkindly]

Look -- someone else read the book!
http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/ellis.htm

(the book came out in 1968; the review in 1969.)

Probably a book only INTPs hungry for meaningless categorization buy.

Oh, you. Flattery will get you everywhere.

 

[Mal12345]

Depends on one's definition of 'religion', because even today there is no accepted one in religious studies.

The end.

Probably a book only INTPs hungry for meaningless categorization buy.

Apparently you believe that categorization is meaningless, since you don't list any category for yourself.

 

[Mal12345]

Look -- someone else read the book!
http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/ellis.htm

(the book came out in 1968; the review in 1969.)

It must have had only a single printing, and the cover itself is flawed as you can see on Amazon. The cover of mine looks exactly the same, with the large white blotch.

I'm an aficianado (meaning, I'm knowledgeable) of Objectivism (and Kant), although I'm not a practitioner of either philosophy. Ellis makes a huge blunder in chapter 1, something so bad that it should not have escaped even the worst editor's attention.

 

[Mal12345]

Depends on one's definition of 'religion', because even today there is no accepted one in religious studies.

Albert Ellis states that inventing one's own definition of rationality, of virtue, and so on, is like inventing a God that approves of everything that you do.

 

[Nicodemus]

Albert Ellis states that inventing one's own definition of rationality, of virtue, and so on, is like inventing a God that approves of everything that you do.

Already done it.

 

[Lark]

This is a book I've wanted to read for at least 20 years, but it has been out of print forever. I finally decided to search for it on Amazon and found it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-R...253&sr=8-1&keywords=is+objectivism+a+religion

Is Objectivism a Religion?, by Dr. Albert Ellis.

I like it when out of print books become available again, is it a reprint or just one from the marketplace?

What is the book about or would you like to say a little about it?

 

[greenfairy]

Albert Ellis states that inventing one's own definition of rationality, of virtue, and so on, is like inventing a God that approves of everything that you do.

True. But religion is a human invention reflective of the creators' own values anyway, and rationality and such are also human inventions. The patterns and structure of reality is objective, but we will always understand it through our own subjective limited lens.

Therefore objectivism is an admirable thing to strive for, but it will never be 100% reached.

 

[Lark]

True. But religion is a human invention reflective of the creators' own values anyway, and rationality and such are also human inventions. The patterns and structure of reality is objective, but we will always understand it through our own subjective limited lens.

Therefore objectivism is an admirable thing to strive for, but it will never be 100% reached.

And that is a different matter to what Ayn Rand describes as objectivism which is nothing more than a rationalisation for greed and a rich man's paradise writ large and equated with reality.

And that was Marx's original literary critique of english political economy as genre fiction too.

I'm not sure that religion or rationality are inventions, I dont and couldnt endorse a completely social constructionist view of the world, while subjectivism, intersubjectivity and other schools of thought like it are interesting they all, like post-modernism, fall into a similar trap and that is deciding that because certainty and truth are often difficult to assertain that they are therefore impossible and one "truth" is as good as another. That is were they are not all simply pseudo-intellectual semantic games.

A lot of them are, and I still believe they are the bastard off spring of the historic "loss of nerve" by the left wing, the right wing have no doubts about their ideas, ideology and what is real, true, objective and that is in part why they've got the proper balls to call their ideology something like objectivism. Perhaps it was true of the left wing at one time, with marxism's so called "scientific socialism", but those days are long gone and anyone seriously asserting anything other than that would rightly be considered laughable.

 

[Lark]

You know I'm intrigued about this book now, although its not available in the UK, at least not from Amazon.co.uk, a similarly titled one is but its obscenely expensive, interesting that this guy Ellis was probably they founder of Cognitive Beharioural Therapy and deemed more important than Carl Rogers or Freud.

 

[greenfairy]

And that is a different matter to what Ayn Rand describes as objectivism which is nothing more than a rationalisation for greed and a rich man's paradise writ large and equated with reality.

And that was Marx's original literary critique of english political economy as genre fiction too.

I'm not sure that religion or rationality are inventions, I dont and couldnt endorse a completely social constructionist view of the world, while subjectivism, intersubjectivity and other schools of thought like it are interesting they all, like post-modernism, fall into a similar trap and that is deciding that because certainty and truth are often difficult to assertain that they are therefore impossible and one "truth" is as good as another. That is were they are not all simply pseudo-intellectual semantic games.

A lot of them are, and I still believe they are the bastard off spring of the historic "loss of nerve" by the left wing, the right wing have no doubts about their ideas, ideology and what is real, true, objective and that is in part why they've got the proper balls to call their ideology something like objectivism. Perhaps it was true of the left wing at one time, with marxism's so called "scientific socialism", but those days are long gone and anyone seriously asserting anything other than that would rightly be considered laughable.

Nothing is objectively true other than the laws of nature. We are made of natural stuff and nature created the systems in which we live, and we are therefore subject to its laws. So insofar as humans are dependent on laws and systems to survive, there is truth to be known which approaches objectivity; like it is better to not be a liar to people one wishes to have a relationship with, and people tend to function best if they are healthy. But everything relating to human experience has a subjective quality to it.

I think it is neither better to be too sure of one's convictions nor too unsure, as both objective and subjective components exist, and one can never 100% know the truth. If you are really sure of something incorrect, you are really wrong. But if you never decide on anything, nothing will get done.

 

[Mal12345]

I like it when out of print books become available again, is it a reprint or just one from the marketplace?

What is the book about or would you like to say a little about it?

This is an original hardback copy published in 1968 by the "major" publishing house known as "The Institute for Rational Living."
[That's the copyright holder, not the publishing house.]

Albert Ellis wrote the book as a response to the Branden-Ellis debate. "Prior to his excommunication, Nathaniel Branden and Albert Ellis staged a debate during which the pro-Objectivist audience booed, hissed, and laughed at Dr. Ellis whenever he 'made a telling point against one of their sacred tenets.' With the memory of this debate fresh in his mind Dr. Ellis wrote his virtual declaration of war against Objectivism."
http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/ellis.htm

 

[Mal12345]

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/other/religion.html
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/reviews/rehash.html
http://authormichaelprescott.blogspot.com/2005/04/god-and-albert-ellis.html

 

[Lark]

This is an original hardback copy published in 1968 by the "major" publishing house known as "The Institute for Rational Living."
[That's the copyright holder, not the publishing house.]

Albert Ellis wrote the book as a response to the Branden-Ellis debate. "Prior to his excommunication, Nathaniel Branden and Albert Ellis staged a debate during which the pro-Objectivist audience booed, hissed, and laughed at Dr. Ellis whenever he 'made a telling point against one of their sacred tenets.' With the memory of this debate fresh in his mind Dr. Ellis wrote his virtual declaration of war against Objectivism."
http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/ellis.htm

I'm not a fan of REBT or CBT but I think I like the sound of such a consolidated and serious attack against objectivism.

 

[Mal12345]

I'm not a fan of REBT or CBT but I think I like the sound of such a consolidated and serious attack against objectivism.

Objectivism is a theory of individualism which has created a mind-set of dependence and a group of cult-like followers. The truth about a philosophy is revealed when it is applied in reality. And Ellis argues that Rand's bouts of depression reveals the psychological consequences of following a philosophy of ideals and perfectionism.

 

[Mal12345]

From Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne Heller.

“In 1987. . . [Peikoff's] second wife, Cynthia Pastor, wrote a poignant letter to Sidney Hook, her husband’s former academic adviser at NYU, pleading for help in finding her husband a post in which to exercise ‘his talent and passion for teaching’. . . Hook replied, not unkindly, that before recommending his former student for another teaching job, he would have to be satisfied that Peikoff would not inject, where inappropriate, Randian dogma into classroom instruction. ‘I made that a condition before giving him a couple of classes to teach at NYU many years ago,’ Hook wrote. ‘He didn’t live up to the condition. . . I still recommended him in hopes he would mature and try to follow the pedagogic model to which he had been exposed in my classes. . . I do not believe, concerned as he is with teaching the message, he is interested in students as individual human beings and helping them develop their own independent personalities.'"

Leonard Peikoff was one of Ayn Rand's closest disciples.

 

[Lark]

Objectivism is a theory of individualism which has created a mind-set of dependence and a group of cult-like followers. The truth about a philosophy is revealed when it is applied in reality. And Ellis argues that Rand's bouts of depression reveals the psychological consequences of following a philosophy of ideals and perfectionism.

Being a selfish capitalist pig will make you sick.

 

[Mal12345]

Being a selfish capitalist pig will make you sick.

Ellis was not an absolutist or extremist, nor did he think of anybody in terms of being a "pig" or whatever.

 

[Typh0n]

Being a selfish capitalist pig will make you sick.

I think that being overly attacthed to any ideology, without felxibity or adaptability to reality will make you depressed, and Ayn Rand didnt seem like the person who had much adaptability to reality in her ideals. Still, Im not a psychologist so as to explain why exatcly she was depressed.