Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

You'll only agree with this author if you agreed with him before you read his essay; he's not going to persuade anyone with Objectivist leanings and here's why: Two Senses of Self is really just a semantical argument. What do we mean when we say "self"? If you already know who you are and where your nose ends and someone else's begins, you can skip through this, Objectivist. Oh, and don't be sucked in by the paragraph about the people in the car at the beginning -- it's got nothing to do with what he's really saying, just a foreshadowing for ... The Case Against Egoism. This is where he discusses how people can act as a group or collective, subordinating individual needs and opinions to work for the higher good. He fails to recognize that when individuals do this, they are still working for their *individual* good. He seems never to have read Ayn Rand's discussion of how people can hold certain values (truth, justice)in such high esteem that they can die for them, and how that is not a contradiction of rational self-interest but an extension of it. I am surprised that he's missed these discussions since they are all over Objectivist literature. Also, he's never writing about "rational self-interest"; he's writing about egoism. They are not the same things and he's missed this entirely! I don't know how if he's read and studied Ayn Rand as extensively as he's claimed. A Shot In The Arm -- This is a sophistical discussion of empathy and how it must mean something important about our connectedness as human beings if we can feel each other's pain, etc. I guess the idea that I can be I -- alone -- and yet still connected through various important commonalities to other separate individuals is too complicated a concept to be admitted here. He has missed a lot of Rand's ideas about love and that's going to be evident when he brings it up. That's the essay, except for the last chapter where he spoofs Ayn Rand, making up for any misplaced flattery he might have extended to her in his introduction. It's where he makes the big mistake of assuming Alan Greenspan was an Objectivist in operation and in principle, and where he assumes that the lending institutions that crashed our economy were working on an Objectivist model of rational self-interest. LOL. Someone should tell him that no matter what Greenspan was in the 50s, he long ago divorced himself from any connections with Rand and Objectivism. I do like his "moderate conclusion" paragraph and I agree with it. Ayn Rand would probably agree as well, and if Asher has read Atlas Shrugged he has certainly seen how Rand envisioned a world of rationally self-interested people acting together to produce something of value to all. That's how Dagny's railroad got built. As a rationally self-interested person, I don't "yearn to commune with the collective self" and the statement makes me gag. I yearn to connect with others who provide value to my life intellectually, emotionally and in other ways. I was happy to buy and read Asher's essay and I know he's a smart guy. I had hoped for more. Maybe it's just not possible for non-Objectivists to understand Ayn Rand's ideas properly. Something goes missing in the translation ...