Posted on 10/23/2009, 6:15:47 PM by Publius
In my experience, people who've read Ayn Rand's books either love them or hate them. I'm one of the few who fall somewhere in between. When I first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the 1980s, I was blown away. Those books portray the power of the free individual in ways I had never thought about before. Since then, I've grown more critical of Rand's outlook because it doesn't include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact. Yet I still believe firmly that her books deserve attention, and in that regard, Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made provides important and meaningful insight into the evolution of Rand's world view.
The Fountainhead is a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society. Howard Roark is an architect who cares nothing about the world's approval; his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs. What strikes me as still relevant is its central insight—that it isn't "collective action" that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it's the initiative and creativity of the individual. The novel's "second-handers," as Rand called them—the opportunistic Peter Keating, who appropriates Roark's architectural talent for his own purposes, and Ellsworth Toohey, the journalist who doesn't know what to write until he knows what people want to hear—symbolize a mindset that's sadly familiar today.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Ayn Rand ping.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Not a bad piece, but they could have picked a better messenger.
I’m reading Atlas Shrugged for the second time.
I want to find out what I missed the first time, as I wasn’t really awake then.
Stupid, greedy SC republicans are gumming up the works at the statehouse trying to get all tied up in impeachment hearings, even though there's only a year to go in Sanford's term.
Sitting in my office in my “Galt’s Gulch, CO” sweatshirt. I’m surrounded by libs at work, and nobody has ANY clue what my sweatshirt means. It always cracks me up.
LOL.Good one.
Sanford sees himself as Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d’Anconia and wishes he too was born in Argentina.
Ditto.
He wouldn’t like Dagney because she’s American.
I have read Atlas Shrugged at least four times, and listened to the audiobook (unabridged) twice.
My brother is a recovering liberal, and he is almost through the audiobook now, and all he can say is “Oh my God. It sounds like what we are seeing now...” (He just finished Galt’s monologue, and he hated that. I told him I did too. I read it all the way through the first time, and skipped it every time since. Once was enough!)
I don’t think my brother is a liberal anymore...:)
BWAHA! Ya got me! I was getting up to throw something right before “orcs”...
Colonel, USAFR
Did Jesus preach “enlightened self-interest” or the “virtue of selfishness”? Would He have sworn the Objectivist Oath (”I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”)?
Of course not. Our Lord was God, but He voluntarily renounced His self-interest. And He lived and died for the sake of all of us.
Hmmm, whom to follow: Ayn Rand on Jesus Christ?
I’ll follow Ayn Rand, thank you.
KuKuKashew has spouted more of his meanless leftist dribble.
This is not directed at you, you just happened to say something that many people say.
I’ve been a studant of philosophy for many years, and that study included Ayn Rand. I regard the most important philosophers (in the positive sense) as Aristotle, Abelard, Locke, Aquinas, and Rand. There are other very important philosophers, because they were very bad, like Plato, Hume, and Kant.) Most people do not know that Rand was a philosopher, though a writer first.
All Rand’s writing was a concretization of her philosophy. Atlas was the means of making her philosophical principles of morality and individuality something that could be experienced. My personal view is that those who read Atlas and do not like Galt’s speech to the world, do not really understand Atlas. For me, it was the most breathtaking part of the entire book, everything else was just an “illustration” of the contents of that speech.
There is nothing wrong with reading the book, and skipping the speech, but it’s like children who “read” National Geographic, but actually only look at the pictures.
Hank
Then I pity you.
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