Ayn Rand connected her view of architecture to her emotions

Why was Ayn Rand in favor of modernist architecture? 🤔

Watch our episode on YouTube or Rumble: The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand | Aristotelean or Kant-Hegelian?

[gabrielduran]

Is there proof that she based her evaluation purely on her emotion?

She actually is very systematic if you study her philosophy. She based her philosophy of art based on a metaphysics, epistemology and ethics which she discovered using induction and deduction with reference to all the crucial philisophical mistakes made throughout the history if philosophy.

You cannot understand her philosophy of art without understanding her foundation.

[johnwayne]

Mistake? Ayn using feelings over reason to form a connection between what's good architecture and freedom? I beg to differ.

> The great distinction of the United States of America, up to the last few decades, was the modesty of its public monuments. Such monuments as did exist were genuine: they were not erected for “prestige, ” but were functional structures that had housed events of great historical impor­tance. If you have seen the austere simplicity of Indepen­dence Hall, you have seen the difference between authentic grandeur and the pyramids of “public-spirited” prestige-seekers.

In America, human effort and material resources were not expropriated for public monuments and public projects, but were spent on the progress of the private, personal, individual well-being of individual citizens. America’s great­ness lies in the fact that her actual monuments *are not public*.




> The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America’s skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these sky­scrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people’s standard of living—including the inhabitants of the slums, who lead a life of luxury compared to the life of an ancient Egyptian slave or of a modern Soviet Socialist worker.




> Such is the difference—both in theory and practice—be­tween capitalism and socialism.

It is impossible to compute the human suffering, degrada­tion, deprivation and horror that went to pay for a single, much-touted skyscraper of Moscow, or for the Soviet facto­ries or mines or dams, or for any part of their loot-and-blood-supported “industrialization.” What we do know, how­ever, is that forty-five years is a long time: it is the span of two generations; we do know that, in the name of a prom­ised abundance, two generations of human beings have lived and died in subhuman poverty; and we do know that today’s advocates of socialism are not deterred by a fact of this kind.

From the essay The Monument Builders by Ayn Rand

[benjackson]

PLEASE STOP. If you don't understand Rand, which you clearly do not, then please don't talk about her. There is a VERY famous book called The Fountainhead which is all the source material one would ever need to prove just how incredibly wrong you are. If you think Rand doesn't use reason for her arguments its like say Oppenheimer doesn't understand bombs and never used them.