A life time ago I lost a friend to Objectivist philosophy. Not wanting to lose said friend, I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to try and figure out why he was acting like an asshole all of a sudden.
I took a couple points of psychic damage in the process, but at least I can stand my own when offering counter arguments against their edgy philosophies.
What are some other works that it would be handy to be knowledgeable of the next time a philosophical edge lord tries to quote me into a corner?
I’m looking to be more well informed in conversation.
Mein Kampf is notoriously just not a good text in any way, even when ignoring the abhorrent views. It’s an unhinged shapeless rant. It’s pretty funny to see the wikipedia page quoting translators comments about how poorly-written the original is. Of course, neo-Nazis insist that any faithful translation is a [communist/Jewish/pick one] trick to make them look bad.
Yeah, it just read like the angry rantings of a man left alone with hateful thoughts for too long. I can’t speak to the quality of German in it and I’m certain some translations make his writings seem academic but they all just fall flat if you take a few hours to read up on economics and policy in Europe around the time he wrote the book.
Just the angry rants of some dude who feels like he isn’t getting what he deserves. Some things never change. We just have podcasts for that now.