Atlas Shrugged

Rating:
Summary: The best philosophy available
Review: I'd like to respond to those who suggest that a first-year course in philosophy should be sufficient to rebut the theses in Ayn Rand's books. To the contrary, it is the philosophy contained within first-year collegiate courses that insures her continuing and future popularity. I've taken first-year philosophy courses, and second year and third-year. I've hob-nobbed with our black-clad café philosophers, and I await a single intelligent reason to abandon the straightforward yet romantic world-view of Ms. Rand. The alternative to Rand seems to be the postulation of the existence of a reality unprovable by our senses followed by thousands of years of debate as to what the nature of that postulated reality might be.

Plato postulates that an alternative world of Forms exists, that reality might be akin to shadows in a cave, with the 'real' world existing in the unseen sunlight without. I see. St. Augustine would have us subordinate ourselves to a moral code that most people couldn't fully describe without justifying their efforts by reference to the historical significance of this man. Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas take philosophy to new, abysmally boring depths, from which few have ever emerged. William Blake wonders how we can know that a world is not contained within a grain of sand, without explaining how he can know that one does or how we should address our inability to prove the truth either way. Kierkegaard uses reason to prove that we must eventually abandon reason. Sartre insists that we feel anxiety about our choices after having firmly established that no wrong choices are possible. Hegel has yet to be read by more than a handful of exceptionally dull and uninspiring people. Marx, one of the few known exceptions to the prior sentence, has fallen flat on his face.

A few long days with Richard Rorty, Jean Lyotard and their ilk and one can confidently engage in friendships and relationships without any interference from meta-narratives. Eventually, those of us who must sooner or later put down our books and go to work realize that philosophy has nothing to offer other than a challenging way to spend an afternoon. If a man has ever read 'A Critique of Pure Reason' and changed his life for the better, I have not met him. Nonetheless, the academy ridicules a writer like Rand who refuses to waste either her time or ours on speculations that she can't prove, however interesting they may be. To the contrary, she concerns herself only with life on this earth, a self-imposed limitation that would have served many in the Western Canon well. As an example, we have the following passage from 'Atlas Shrugged' in which Dagny reacts to John Galt's refusal to let her out of her employment contract to live with Francisco, another friend of theirs, despite his pleas. This is Rand's description of the altruistic code and its effects:

'Part of the sincerity of her relief ' she thought, as she walked silently by his side ' was the shock of a contrast: she had seen, with the sudden, immediate vividness of sensory perception, an exact picture of what the code of self-sacrifice would have meant, if enacted by the three of them. Galt, giving up the woman he wanted, for the sake of his friend, faking his greatest feeling out of existence and himself out of her life, no matter what the cost to him and to her, then dragging the rest of his years through the waste of the unreached and the unfulfilled ' she, turning for consolation to a second choice, faking a love she did not feel, being willing to fake, since her will to self-deceit was the essential required for Galt's self-sacrifice, then living out her years in hopeless longing, accepting, as relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection, plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on earth ' Francisco, struggling in the elusive fog of a counterfeit reality, his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented substitute, half charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becoming his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible to man ' the three of them, who had all the gifts of existence spread out before them, ending up as embittered hulks, who cry in despair that life is frustration ' the frustration of not being able to make unreality real.'

Whatever pejorative terms our scholarly brethren may wish to attach to such observations, it actually addresses something that the reader might be better for knowing. I'm quite glad that Ms. Rand rescued me from the generally held conclusion that the more one mocks the rational, the more profound one is. Ayn Rand will always be my Gwenda the Good Witch, showing up later than preferred to remind me that I always had the capacity to escape the murky, useless blathering of those who would debate the details of life on a particular star before they even knew whether life existed there at all. If there is a reality out there unknowable by our senses, can we at least establish its existence in some form before we subject our students to long treatises containing the author's best guesses as to what that reality might be?

As the philosophy sections in our bookstores shrink and shrink and the philosophy majors in our colleges become fewer and fewer, we can at least hope that the stultifying crap that has passed for profound thought for too long is on its way out. Consciously or not, most people seem to realize that, as far as the academic alternative to Rand is concerned, the emperor has been nude for quite some time.

Rating:
Summary: Prerequisites
Review: Once you start reading Atlas Shrugged, you won't be able to put it down; it will become an addiction because the plot is very intriguing and it stimulates your mind. The characters are well developed, similar to her other ficitonal works, the heroes and heroines are strong, anti-social, and intelligent. Also, the theme is reason versus ignorance or good versus evil. Even though the themes and the characters are similar, Rand has a talent of generating new and engrossing plots in her books. I recommend that you read her other fictional novels such as Anthem, We the Living, and The Fountainhead, in that sequence, before reading Atlas Shrugged; then read The Early Ayn Rand last. After reading Atlas Shrugged, I now have a better understanding of the world.

Rand is an artist; the proof is in her writings. I have realized that people either HATE her or they LOVE her. I am one of the ones that love her philosophy and her writings.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling novel; worthy of the title of "classic"
Review: I think the first, and most important, goal of a novel is to be INTERESTING. That is one thing I have to give "Atlas Shrugged" - it is one of the few so-called "classics" that is suspenseful, creative, and compelling to read. Whether you agree with the philosophical tenets or not, they are presented in a clear way, within the framework of an interesting plot.

The biggest reason I can give you for reading this book is that it really is inspirational. It is a book of heroes and heroines; its most insistent point is that the human mind makes anything possible. Most "classics" present the reality of human suffering; Rand presents a vision of human glory. And for sheer promotion of reason and logic, I think she is unmatched.

The one complaint I have to make about Rand is that she is no psychologist. As many reviewers have pointed out, her characters are one-dimensional, unrealistic, and stereotypical. All of them are divided into the pro-Objectivism and anti-Objectivism camps - Rand presents no middle ground. Objectivism itself - at least the way it's presented in "Atlas Shrugged" - also has a couple of major loopholes; the philosophy is worthy of analysis, and that is each reader's personal responsibility. But while Ayn Rand is not the best philosopher in the world, she does think for herself using logical, compelling arguments, which is more than I can say for some other intellectuals.

Please don't let your own philosophical opinions, or the stylistic flaws, stop you from reading "Atlas Shrugged." It will inspire you to keep working for the things you believe in, and to recognize your ability to create your own happiness. And if, as one reviewer said, "Atlas Shrugged" should only appeal to people ages 17-19, it is because they are the ones who have the most hope in the future, and the most trust in themselves.

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Summary: Ayn Rants !
Review: I read this book along with many other Ayn Rand books when I was in my 20s and it had a deep impact on me. Then again a lot of babble spoken out with authority can have a deep impact on impressionable 20-somethings.

It's fair to say that real life will never resemble this book or the Fountainhead, which makes the whole effort of reading them a waste for anyone searching for a philosophy of life. In real life, great inventors like Galt or Rearden create their inventions by building on the work of other scientists before them. And some of these scientists may be socialists and even communists. So a motor invented by a real-life Galt owes as much to Galt as it does to earlier inventors. You don't go from the Wright brothers to the Boeing 747 overnight just by being a bright egotistic guy with a major attitude.

In order to promote her philosophy, Ayn Rand chose a context (business and science in this book, architecture in the Fountainhead) that she's only had a vague exposure to. Frank Lloyd Wright who was allegedly her model hero for the Howard Roark character in the Fountainhead, regarded her as an eccentric with crackpot ideas, which is saying a lot coming from the great FLW.

The book is a useful antidote to the guilt-inducing messages we get from religion and society but beyond that, it's a huge fantasy.

Rating:
Summary: Junk Philosophy
Review: It's funny how the people who love Ayn Rand are almost never serious students of philosophy. There's something going on more than coincidence: it's the fact that Ayn Rand's work is the same kind of junk philosophy that is found in Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Celestine Prophecy--all are muddle-headed attempts that really only should appeal to young men and women between the ages of 17-19. Those would would subscribe to Rand's "philosophy" really just haven't tasted the real thing. Hopefully, they will.

Rating:
Summary: A great read but no way to live
Review: Let's start out by saying I liked Atlas Shrugged. I thought the book was so engrossing because it was so "alien" as another reviewer put it. I agree with Rand when she claims to have done something new, to have stated a new theme in an entirely new way. Psychologically speaking, the majority of us are raised to believe in the doctrine of original sin and all that it entails. That we should feel guilty for everything we do for ourselves, etc and that to sacrifice yourself for another is the highest virue. Regardless of whether Rand's opposite extreme has any more validity, the fiction itself is compelling and as I said, the characters are interesting even if they are just puppets for stating the tenets of Objectivism. Many good points about the failures of communism/socialism but of course she ignores the basic problems of capitalism, especially laissez faire. Perhaps her own experience justifies her prejudice, but then she wouldn't be being very objective, would she?

Rating:
Summary: Philosophy or Literature
Review: I could go on and on in my review about the merits of Ayn Rand's philosophical beliefs and whether or not I subscribe to her theory of how the world works. I do not think that would be very helpful, however. Instead I will say that reading Atlas Shrugged is no small feat. It is over a thousand pages and it can waver on the side of overly preachy at times. On the other hand, I actually found it to be a fairly gripping little mystery story at the same time. All of America's leading brains seem to be disappearing while the structure of society seems to be collapsing. Thus we watch two industrialists, Dagny Taggert, who runs a railroad, and Hank Rearden, who runs a steel mill, attempt to keep their businesses afloat amidst this turbulent time in America. With dozens of side plots and quite a good deal of imagination, parts of this book simply fly by. Other parts lend more towards the philosophical, which, if that's your bag, will also fly by. Basically, this is a 1000 page book by one of the most revered thinkers of our century, just keep that in mind if you pick up this novel expecting to find some light reading.

Rating:
Summary: This is the single greatest piece of literature ever crafted
Review: There are some who do not like this book. Those people are united by one common factor. They do not wish to think. Whether it is because of fear, or laziness they are afraid of new ideas. A common critique of this book by many statists is that Ms. Rand's view of the world is myopic. Is it really? Or is it merely the unwillingness of those critics to actually address Ms. Rand's points. Is it that much of a stretch to believe that human beings should dedicate their lives to themselves and not to others? I think not.

Even if you do not agree with the underlying politics of Objectivism, you must read this book. If nothing else, but to challenge yourself with ideas. Ms. Rand wrote this book "to prevent it from becoming prophetic"... If you can conjure up solutions other than Ms. Rand's, then good for you. It proves that you're willing to think and quite creative. Remember, that above all else this book is about REASON. A world changed with ideas, not force or feelings. If nothing else, this is an inspirational tale.

Beware, however. This book does have an uncanny habit of being increasingly prophetic... The news becomes a little unnerving sometimes. But you have to shrug your shoulders and ask "who is John Galt?".

Now repeat after me: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I shall live for the sake of no man, nor will I alow any other to live for my sake"

Rating:
Summary: Save yourself some time and read the Fountainhead
Review: As I say in the title, read the Fountainhead and save yourself about 300 or so pages. The theme and philosophy are the same in both books. Atlas Shrugged just takes it to a wider scale. But it is also too repetitive. Rand has some very good ideas. We should all strive for our creative best. Productivity should be valued. We should be the best that we can be without leeching off of others. But that's about it. Don't read this book as it were a bible. Take the parts of the philosophy that you want to integrate into your life. That's what I did. And that's what I did when I finished reading the Fountainhead. And now I realize that I didn't have to read Atlas Shrugged at all. They're the same thing.

Rating:
Summary: An angry child with a pen created an appalling world....
Review: Rand wrote a book filled with heterosexual arayan aristocrats (some born into money, some born in poverty) battling the only "Evil" in the world: Communism! Rand states that there is only one way in which to be happy, and that is through productive work. there is an objective standard by which all ideas, art, architecture and decisions can be gauged as "right" or "wrong." "Crimes" that are not rooted in an economic basis and aspects of life and nature that call into question the perfection and infallability of objectivism are conveniently left out of the book's 1075 pages. All who do not adhere to the aforementioned philosophy are deemed immoral and irrational, and are not to be dealt with. Does this sound like a free-thinking novel that glorifies the individual? In my opinion, it does not. It sounds like a work of propaganda, touting a rigid ethos just as myopic and flawed as that which is deemed "evil" and "Collectivist." Of course the Capitalists prevail in the end, Ayn Rand was a capitalist, and she held in her hands the typewriter with which she could play God. In closing, Ayn Rand was an adamant opponent of anything subjective, but I ask the objectivists: Does it not stand to reason that if we, as humans, are all individuals that should live by no ideas other than our own, why should we live stringently by a set of rules and a suppposed blueprint for happiness if we, as individuals, have not come by this "knowledge" throgh our own experiences? What are we if not a composite of (and reaction to) our subjective experiences? Perhaps your Great Leader would not have been such an advocate of Capitalism had she prospered under Communism. Think about it.