Reply To: Atlas Shrugged and the Torah

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charliehall
Participant

Point 4 actually follows from Points 1, 2, and 3:

As far as Rand is concerned, if you can’t observe it and/or prove it with logic, it doesn’t exist. Hence her militant atheism. That is what point 1 is about.

Point 2 elevates humans to the level of gods. Point 3 furthers that and elevates hedonism to the rank of the highest purpose of humankind. And she practiced what she preached; among other things she enjoyed sleeping with the spouses of her followers.

And the purpose of laissez-faire capitalism, Point 4, is to enable the hedonism in point 3. Religion, on the other hand, puts limits both on the understanding of human objective understanding (Point 1), on the power of human reasoning (Point 2), and on human conduct (Point 3). And contrary to what some unlearned people think, Judaism puts very strict limits on economic conduct in its requirements for transparency in business operations, its insistence on total honesty (no “buyer beware”), the requirements for fair pricing, and its requirement for a social safety net. Ayn Rand would condemn all this as interfering with her right to hedonism!

Rabbi Dr. Aharon Levine z’tz’l, the late chairman of the economics department at Yeshiva University, spent a career documenting not only how the Torah mandated levels of ethical conduct well beyond what laissez-faire would permit, but that society itself would be better off were we to follow such mandates rather than the laissez-faire that people think is permitted by the Torah. His work on the causes of the 2008 financial crash should be read by all.