First of all, I want to thank you and James for making this thread “active” again. I think that it is important for the objectivists among us to at least consider the points I am raising.
7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.
Over and again, I have noted how in the past I had come to embrace what I did construe to be the “philosophical truth” – the objective truth: Christianity, Objectivism, Marxism, Existentialism etc. I did indeed try to embody all of point 7 either through God or through Reason.
But now, regarding the question “how ought one to live?”, I have come to believe that such essentialist points of view are, instead, rooted more in the existential parameters of dasein…and that the “goods” they propagated were predicated only on certain assumptions. In other words, that the Objectivists embraced one set of premises while the Marxists embraced a different set. Yet both sides insisted that only their own assumptions were necessarily true for all rational human beings.
And then there are all of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of additional objectivists out there [both ecclesiastic and secular] who insist that, on the contrary, it is only their assumptions that count.
Right?
Also, as I note time and again, I recognize that in a world brimming with contingency, chance and change there is always the possibilty that, through a new experience, relationship, point of view etc., I might change my mind yet again.
[u][b]IF ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE SO OFTEN IN THE PAST![/u][/b]
Ah, but it is when I tap others on the shoulder and suggest this is also applicable to them, that the truly hardcore objectivists demur. After all, if my own narrative is more reasonable than theirs they might have to admit that maybe, just maybe, their own moral and political agenda is as well largely rootecd in dasein and in conflicted goods. Which [in my opinion] means point 7 is, in fact, more applicable TO an objectivist frame of mind that is in fact embracing one or another God or one or another deontological approach to ethics.
Also, your ad hom responses, in several threads, show that #6 applies - you are defending your Self from objectivist arguments.
6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.
And yet my very argument here starts with the assumption that “intellectual integrity” is in itself rooted existentially in daseins interacting in a world where, intersubjectively, the “self” is prefabricated in childhood and then ceaselessly refabricated to the grave. And that in a world of contingency, chance and change, we come upon new experiences, relationships, sources of information etc. which always have the potential to reconfigure our points of view pertaining to moral and political values – and to the manner in which we come to understand the fabrication/construction of a “self”.
Now, sure, you can insist that this too is just another “objectivist” frame of mind. Then all I can do is to speculate that others will see it more in the manner in which I do instead.
As for the “ad homs”, that is more reflective of the manner in which I do so enjoy “polemics”. And very often it reflects in turn the manner in which others will try to make me the argument instead.
In other words, they started it!!!