Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1627995 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse....
_The Fountainhead_ and _Atlas Shrugged_ are two of the worst novels of the 20th century to garner a large readership. Most of these readers are naive, impressionable people who feel dissatisfied with society and who have money and time for reading long novels. To this volatile combination Rand is a catalyst, and the result is "objectivism," a cult of Rand followers who know very little about epistemology or ethics or critical thinking, but who claim that Rand answered once and for all the major questions investigated by these studies. It is really pathetic to see my community college students who have been smitten with the Ayn Rand bug take my philosophy and political science classes only to find that she is not even paid attention to by professional philosophers or political scientists because her ideas, such as they can be made sense of, are so outlandish.

My advice is to not waste your time on either of these novels. If you want philosophy, read Aristotle or Nietzsche. If you want philosophical fiction, read _Sophie's World_ by Jostein Gaarder. If you want an introduction to economics, try Heilbroner's _The Worldly Philosophers_. If you want political theory, check out the soft-cover version of Blackwell's _Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy_.

One of the most important benefits of an education in the liberal arts is the ability to distinguish good writers from bad ones. Rand is definitely among the latter. You can either learn for yourself the hard way, or you can take some friendly advice from a teacher and look elsewhere for your ideological inspiration.

I am a quite normal everyday guy who now has Ambition
I chanced across this book (Atlas Shrugged)in a second hand book shop, I bought it on a whim and it has given me such a lust to achieve that I intend to ensure that the ideas held in this book are at least presented to my children when they are old enough to understand. I won't force them one way or another and you really will either love or hate it. It depends a lot on how you lean politically, but do not assume you are wrong for being right or left of centre, though extremes are negative their core principles may not be. This book will teach you or anger you..... An unsung classic?

A TRIBUTE TO THE HEROIC WITHIN MAN!
Two outstanding novels that will inspire all those who oppose dictatorship, slavery ( service to others as the moral justification to one's existence) and all forms of collectivist ideology.

Ayn Rand's unique philosophy Objectivism, provides excellent ammunition against contemporary intellectual "mystics" who preach that an individual's life, work and identity are the property of the "group",( whether a "race", "class", "state", or "religion" etc.) and that self-sacrifice,(the surrender of that which one values in favour of that which one does not value), should be upheld as the "moral ideal".

Objectivism provides a valid alternative to modern philosophy's attempts to enslave and destroy man's conceptual faculty, these novels will offer you the chance to believe in the concept of man as an heroic,independent, benevolent being; with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, (neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself),with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason his only absolute.