I prefer her fiction over her non-fiction. I don’t feel her attempts at philosophy do much justice to the subject, and she doesn’t seem to recognize the complexities of the issues she deals with (see her claim that solving the problem of the universals requires only 10 minutes of hard thought.) That said, I agree with her that Aristotle is a good philosopher, and Plato is scary. I really like Anthem, which avoids entirely the economic issues that she screws with in her other works. Atlas, though, is worth reading for the depiction of heroism and ideal humanity, but try not to internalize too much of the specific economic claims - big business is good, producers should make whatever they feel like, and so on. Fountainhead is even worse on economics, featuring as it does heros who blow up other people’s buildings and rape people. Really, I recommend Anthem and Atlas. Return of the Primitive has some good essays on education.
Value? Who is to decide that but the individual reader?
I tried reading Atlas Shrugged, but the themes were so heavy-handed, and wrong that I could never get beyond twenty pages.
What specifically?
I could not get beyond whoever the metal-inventor-guy’s-name-was-in-Atlas Shrugged’s conversation with his family in the first twenty-ish pages. The fact that he was so enclosed upon himself almost made me throw the book against the wall, especially with the celebration of such an attitude. I had a little laugh when his wife suggested that he had the “makings of a saint” because of the fact that he is pretty much the generic pre-conversion personality of many saints.
I’m not very far in the book (I’m at that point, actually; I read on and off, as I have to read other books, as well), but it seems to me that it is an exaggerated example of her belief in the virtue of selfishness, in the sense that entrepreneurs who invest for the sake of being wealthy are in turn benefiting everybody else. This is true. Although it does seem to be quite a dysfunctional family, up to that point every “selfish” character has had some type of family member who is the direct opposite.
Yes!
Atlas Srugged was the best book I have ever read. Ayn Rand’s philosophy and ethics are very solid. Utilitarian ethics isn’t ethics. It is nihilistic. But objectivist ethics describes the human nature the best.
That book completely changed my way of thinking. Fist I liked it for positive view on businessmen, than it was hard to read because of a lot of anger. After a time I finished that. And the book is still influencing me more and more.
Murray Rothbard was randian. His Ethics of Liberty is objectivistic.
I have to say “no” to that.
The relationship between Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard is a complex one, moreso on the part of the latter than the former. Rothbard was in and out of Objectivist social circles a couple times, and eventually swore it off altogether, due in no small part to Rand’s cult of personality. From my knowledge, he did, however, regard Atlas Shrugged to be quite an impressive and important book (as did Mises, interestingly enough), and seemed to have respect for Rand’s views, if not necessarily her personality.
To what has already been written, I can only agree that Rand’s fiction, though flawed, is superb in many areas. Atlas Shrugged is a marvel of solid prose, setting and story. The characters are a little bit cookie-cutter and she is unfair to any character she disagrees with. But AS is a wonderful read. Fountainhead is quite good, and We the Living and Anthem are solid.
I’m always wondering why she supports capitalism if she is such a dogmatic empiricist. Don’t empiricist economists tend to support interventionism? Do you think it’s because she doesn’t care to know if capitalism is economically efficient and just takes the capitalist stance purely on the basis of morality?
Think of the opportunity cost.
As far as the OP goes, I would say that there is a very general value in reading just about any book in terms of being exposed to information, if not simply to obtain better knowledge of what you tend to disagree with already. But to get to the more specific question of Rand’s books, I would suggest reading her non-fiction if one wants to understand Objectivism. While her fiction is essentially a dramatized metaphor for her philosophy in which the characters represent ideas, it seems to me that most people don’t end up coming away with a genuine understanding of her philosophy by simply reading Atlas Shrugged.
On a more personal note, I couldn’t make it past the first 50 pages or so of Atlas Shrugged. I found the book boring and the characters one-dimensional. Yet I had no problem with her non-fiction books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and For The New Intellectual. Her non-fiction is almost the exact opposite of her fiction in terms of form, which is to say that her fiction tends to be huge novels while her non-fiction tends to be broken up into small bits to constitute what amounts to a collections of essays. I think the non-fiction is much more digestable and gives a more clear picture of what she was trying to get at.
When it comes to the actual content of her ideas, that’s a whole 'nother discussion.
She does say even if Capitalism was less effective than another economic system she would still be a Capitalist solely based on morality.
Yes, Rand believed that an objective moral defense of capitalism was of the utmost importance, and dispairaged the conservative and libertarian movements for failing to provide that.
Yes, there’s definitely value in reading Rand. Personally, I’d take her over any of these utilitarian ancaps like D.D Friedman any day of the week.
BTW, if you think Ayn Rand is a waste of time, you should know that Mises and Rothbard would greatly disagree with you (for what it’s worth.)
Here are their letters to Ayn rand: http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_4/21_4_3.pdf
On that ntoe though it’s also worth listening to this.
The Fountainhead was her best book in my opinion.
Her ideas… I think most people don’t understand what she is saying, including a lot of objectivists. Thing is I don’t think she wrote in order to prove that she was right in the same way that Mises did. Mises give you a blue print of an idea with foot notes and many many qualifications. Rand just says things in a certain order, and if you don’t see how one thing leads to another it is up to you to figure out.
This is why many academics might see her treatment of 2500 years of philosophy to be cocky. Her arguments are way to short to have dealt with every argument. I don’t think she cared though. The quote below will explain.
“The most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth.”
Ethical arguments, although I certainly find the ideas to be attractive, but rational selfishness has many problems completely unrelated to the non-sesne called altruism. I mean, before you can even get into selfishness, you need to define the self. She basically defined it as the mind, which is interesting for a lot of reasons but leads to a lot more questions.
Just, if you want to understand objectivism, try to look at some of her successors/frenemies.
Atlas Shrugged has been so influential to so many in the Libertarian Movement, I would say it’s valuable to read just for the cultural background. I’ve read all four novels, and they’re all good. They’re inspiational, to me – hard core, heady stuff, celebrating raw individualist acheivement and greatness (well, except for We, The Living). I wish she would have kept writing novels so we had ten more instead of the non-fiction stuff.
Anyway, maybe give Atlas Shrugged a chance, at least, and if you’re not enjoying it after a couple hundred pages (hey, you’ve got to give it a fair chance; it gets off to a slow start), read something else. There’s so much good stuff out there to read! We’ll never finish it all!
There was a critical review of the book posted on Lew Rockwell blog, recently.. i.e last few weeks.
Anyone got a link to that?
I’ve read the books etc.. would recommend them to beginners / trying to get folks interested in the moral ideas etc, it’s ok to start with Rand - but if you get stuck in objectivism, it’ll end in tears imo.