Product Description
Ayn Rand is one of the most influential writers of thetwentieth century. As the author of two best-selling novels, TheFountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and numerous nonfiction works, Randhas influenced a generation of readers with her controversial ideasabout reason, atheism, egoism, and capitalism. Rand's ideas havepenetrated every level of society, and her influence has notdiminished since her death in 1982. She continues to have an impact oncontemporary culture, and her ideas are now experiencing a secondrenaissance.

Like many of Rand's admirers, Michael B. Yang was influencedby Rand's writings as a teenager and adopted her philosophy ofObjectivism. However, as Yang completed his undergraduate work at TheJohns Hopkins University and embarked upon his studies at HarvardMedical School, he discovered a number of inconsistencies in Rand'swritings. These problems prompted him to reexamine her philosophy andultimately led him to discover a different source of truth.

Reconsidering Ayn Rand tells the story of how an ordinaryperson who once believed in the philosophy of Ayn Rand ultimately cameto understand differently. It considers Rand's fiction from a criticalpoint of view exploring the themes of self-esteem, human worth,productive work, and romantic love that permeate much of herwritings. Finally, Reconsidering Ayn Rand is a comprehensive analysisof Objectivism. It covers the entire spectrum of Rand's philosophyfrom reason and reality to morality, government, science, andtheology.

Reconsidering Ayn Rand is self-contained. It includes avaluable synopsis of Rand's two major novels and a brief survey of herphilosophy. The book accommodates the beginning as well as theseasoned reader of Rand.

With the recent resurgence of interest in her ideas, itbecomes clear that Reconsidering Ayn Rand is a vitally importantcontribution to the growing body of works on the fiction andphilosophy of Ayn Rand. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Refusing to consider Ayn Rand
Michael Yang certainly writes in a lyrical, almost enthusiastic style when he is giving us his summary of various aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy. It is clear that he read and attended lectures on Ayn Rand's philosophy during the days of the Nathaniel Branded Institute.And, once in awhile, it appears that Michael Yang had the popular level of understanding of Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
But, when we get serious about what Objectivism offers us in the way of a clear understanding of human nature (not a pejorative in Objectivism) and the universe we live in, it is not so clear how much Mr. Yang actually grasped and applied to his life.One of the topics on which his rendition of what he thought he understood is shown in his summary of the Objectivist views of romantic love, a very juvenile and confusing summary, and clearly a source of anxiety for him.
But, the root of any philosophy and of any critic opposed to that philosphy is in its and his views on epistemology, the theory of knowledge, the study of how we know what we know, the focus on the details of the method of gaining knowledge.Here, Mr. Yang is so far off of an actual understanding of Rand's detailing of what reason, perception, concept-formation are that it is hard to untangle his confusions.
But, all you have to know is Yang's own theory of how you and I, as human beings, know anything.He literally skips past the careful argumentation of history's philosophical skeptics of sense perception, of reason, of the possibility of certainty and simply rejects the idea that we gain our knowledge of anything by means of sense perception.He believes that sensory material is NOT the starting point of our mental work to build knowledge.Leaves open the question of what our eyes, ears, nerve endings, and nose are for? What, then, is his idea of where knowledge starts?He actually holds, and he borrows it from Robbins, that God tells us what is real and, from there, it is our job to apply logic, the only function of reason whose validity he claims to accept.All our knowledge of the beginnings of the universe, of history (well, ancient Hebrew history, since the Bible ignores the history of all other peoples), of man's nature (fallen because a talking snake seduced a woman whose wisdom was one-day old) comes from a book replete with errors and contradictions that Yang (and those who told him so) thinks is the Word of God (a phrase never applied to the Bible in the Bible, a phrase the Bible applies to Jesus, making it blasphemy to refer to the Bible as the Word of God) and in which God tells us the only things we need to know. From there, Robbins (excuse me, I mean Yang) holds that the only reasoning an honest man can do is on the revelations of the Bible.No chemistry, no physics, no psychology, no economics, no physiological knowledge or medical knowledge, no mathematics...since there are no leads in the Bible which get us to the vast contributions of man's reason through science have given us...only dishonest, immoral, God-ignoring persons would spend any time on those, since they are most emphatically NOT revealed in the Bible.Oh, and did I mention that this book, which is Yang's source of love for Jesus, is unable to give us a non-contradictory answer to the question, Who was Jesus's grandfather, a question which should have an answer the simple mind of the average person could understand, IF there ever had been a flesh-and-blood, historical Jesus, as described in the Gospels.
Well,if you agree with a shallow epistemology of that kind, you may find something of value in Yang's book.
If you are concerned to learn anything about reason, reality, philosophy, about Ayn Rand, mankind's greatest moral teacher, or about her philosophy, how about this?How about reading Ayn Rand's books.
Skip Yang and Robbins and their child's-storybook view of reality.If you must buy a copy, I'll sell you mine.

What a disappointment: in the end it's just a theocratic book
This book might as well be entitled "Reconsidering Science" or "Reconsidering Common Sense".Yes, it offers a critique of Ayn Rand in its first half, but on its second half it just tries to convert you to Biblical Christianity.And it does so not just by attacking Ayn Rand, but by attacking every other philosophy out there, and by attacking science, and by attacking common sense.In the end, it's just another book written by a fundamentalist Christian on which you are told that abortion is murder, the universe was created in seven days and that Earth is about 5,000 years old or whatever the Bible says. And the author was once an Objectivist? Please.

Just because there are valid issues and critiques of Ayn Rand and Objectivism doesn't mean you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and conclude that it is a) completely wrong and b) that the only logical alternative is to throw your hands in the air and become a Born-again Christian!

-- from another MIT and Harvard grad who is still an Objectivist.

Controversial and worth reading
This book is provocative and controversial. That much can be gathered from the previous customer reviews that suggest a polarization of opinions regarding its worth. This is to be expected since readers of Rand generally either love her or hate her. However, it is unfortunate that some of the Yang's detractors seem not to have read his book very carefully. He has been criticized for, among other things, failing to understand Objectivism, treating Objectivism unfairly, taking an uncritical view of the Bible (including a failure to deal with the manuscript evidence), and failing to give an empirical, scientific basis for the existence of God.

For starters, Yang has understood Objectivism very well indeed. In this book, he gives quotation after quotation from Rand and her followers. He spells out the Objectivist position before he criticizes her and demonstrates her flawed thinking. Over 700 footnote citations and about 100 works cited in the bibliography are evidence of his meticulous effort. Furthermore, Yang consistently begins by presenting an empathetic view of Objectivism, especially in the early chapters, with respect to its beliefs about self-esteem, romantic love, and productive work. Gradually, he reveals the internal contradictions in Rand's views and then shows that Rand could not justify her ideals on the basis of her premises. And it was Rand who challenged readers: "Check your premises."

As for taking an uncritical view of the Bible and failing to account for the manuscript evidence, that accusation fails considering Yang's gargantuan effort to critically discuss Christianity and Objectivism in 367 pages. Furthermore, Yang's primary objective in his book was not the question of manuscript evidence for the Bible. One of his objectives seems to have been to point out the failure of the philosophical empiricism and materialism of Rand and contrast it with Christian revelation. Nevertheless, Yang gives a page-long footnote discussion on page 348 on the subject of manuscript evidence and offers some suggestions for further reading.

As to the subject of science, such as the question of an empirical proof for the existence of God, one would do well to read Yang's chapter on epistemology (Reason and Reality) or his chapter on Science and Christianity; (this last chapter of 55 some pages could easily have stood alone as a monograph on the subject). These chapters marshal the writings of scientists as well as non-Christian philosophers of science like Stephen Hawking, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakotos and others, to demonstrate the logical fallacies that are at the heart of the scientific method and reveal the utter skepticism that results from adopting an empirical philosophy. This leads to the intriguing conclusion: if science can't prove anything at all, it is begging the question to require Christianity to prove its veracity by the method of science. As to the issue of Creation and the question of the speed of light slowing down leading to the illusion of a older universe, a previous reader also seems to have misread Yang. Yang had already demonstrated that one problem with the scientific method was that an infinite number of hypotheses can "fit" the finite number of empirical, observed "facts".Although the belief in divine creation does not require that one knows for certain that the speed of light is slowing down; nevertheless, the slowing of the speed of light, as documented in a standard college physics textbook, supports one hypothesis, namely that the universe is much younger than we have been told it is. By the same token, it contradicts the theory of evolution and the idea of an ancient universe. Yang is merely taking one empirical finding of physics and using it against those who would utilize science to argue against the Christian belief in creation. He did not assert that the slowing of the speed of light is a certainty or that it was the basis of his belief in creation. How could he? He denies, along with reputable philosophers of science, that science can produce truth.

Rand's literary abilities were considerable, but her philosophy had numerous flaws, which unfortunately, many of her admirers have ignored. This excellent book by a former Rand admirer has shown us where the problems lie and discussed them honestly and thoughtfully. Moreover, this work takes readers beyond Rand's writings and challenges them to consider some broader philosophical issues. It is well worth the time and the money.

Intellectually and spiritually weak
When I came across this book on Amazon, I was really looking forward to it, because I believe that both Christianity and Objectivism have certain good points, or things that the other needs to learn. (For example, many Christians need to learn about objectivity and intellectual integrity, and that God's Love for us gives each of us a right to live as we individually see fit; while many Objectivists need to learn that Forgiveness is a positive and rationally self-interested virtue, and that saying "It is meaningless to ask why existence exists" is a blank-out on their part, not a meaningful answer to the question of why anything exists.)

I have to say honestly, however, that this book was a disappointment.I wish I had spent my money on something else.

Although Yang says he read Rand's books as a young teenager, this book left me suspecting he never really "got" them. Perhaps he read them at too young an age, or perhaps he just wasn't up to their challenge?In any case, Yang writes this book from the perspective of a fully committed, uncritical Christian who, despite all his pretenses at being fair and careful, wants nothing but to pick Objectivism apart.He has written, in other words, a book about Objectivism that fundamentally lacks objectivity.

The book is ultimately a sales pitch for Christianity and the Bible.But Yang seems to accept everything the Bible is *conventionally believed* to say, with little scrutiny - notwithstanding the Bible's own textual problems and internal contradictions. Thus, Yang does not bring to Christianity / the Bible even a thousandth of the carefulness and intellectual honesty he pretends to bring to Objectivism.

I must stress "pretends to bring" in the above, with sadness, because Yang's arguments against Objectivism are generally far more flawed and desperate than they need to be.In some places he combats "straw men" having little to do with real Objectivism; in many other places his arguments rest on fallacies of equivocation - also known as wordplay or sophistry.At certain points, Yang even tries to suggest there is no important difference between existence and non-existence. A person who advances the latter kind of idea is simply not to be taken seriously.

After reading the book, I wished I had not given it my hard-earned dollars and reading time.I felt (intellectually) cheated / abused / disgusted by this book.I would have loved a book that juxtaposes Objectivism and Christianity fairly, perhaps even showing each as an antidote to the other's undeniable bad points.This book is not that at all.Even accepting it as a purely one-sided critique of Objectivism, it manages to be intellectually cheap and dishonest, and that is sad.

A feast for the mind
Reconsidering_Ayn_Rand is a remarkable book. Written from the perspective of a person who was once a follower of Rand, this book should be taken seriously by any reader who is interested in Rand, regardless of whether he supports Rand's views or opposes them. The book is well-written and very readable. Yang, a former admirer of Rand, reveals a personal as well as a scholarly understanding of Rand's ideas and their applications. He does a good job in making everything understandable for those who may not be well-acquainted with Rand, but he also provides penetrating analysis that challenges even those who are familiar with Rand's fiction and philosophy. Yang begins by providing excellent synopses of Rand's two main novels, The_Fountainhead and Atlas_Shrugged. Theses synopses each span a mere 5 pages in comparison with the 700 and 1000 pages, respectively, of Rand's two novels, and they are perhaps the most succinct and well-written summaries of Rand's novels I have yet encountered, Cliff Notes or otherwise. Yang then looks at Rand's views of self-esteem, productive work, and romantic love, and shows how, in each case, Rand's views fail because they contain ideas that she ultimately had no right to and which are contradicted by the other elements of her philosophy. Particularly noteworthy are the chapters on love that show the contradictions in Rand's views and demonstrate the ramifications that Rand's ideas have for romantic love, both in theory and in real life. (This section complements and clarifies Barbara Branden's discussion of Rand's view of love in her book The_Passion_of_Ayn_Rand.)

After providing a fine criticism of Rand's fiction in part one of the book, Yang then tackles Rand's philosophy in the second half of the book. He discusses Rand's epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and politics with ample quotations from Rand and a number of critical works in philosophy. Yang does a remarkable job of sharing those aspects of Rand's philosophy that appealed to him as a teenager and collegian. (He accomplishes this partly by walking the reader through his mode of thinking when he first encountered Rand's writings.) He also effectively communicates the ideas that concerned him in his search for truth, and he describes where that search finally led him. He does not leave the reader in doubt, but offers the outlines of an alternative, rational, Christian philosophy to the reader for consideration. (By the way, it is bibilical Christianity that Yang contends for, not the Roman Catholicism that Rand confuses with Christianity.) In two additional chapters, he discusses the philosophy of science and the atheism of Rand, George Smith and others. Finally, Yang concludes with a beautifully written chapter that umasks the utter hopelessness of Rand's philosophy and points to a different way.

By way of comparison, Reconsidering_Ayn_Rand is superior to Ronald Merrill's Ideas_of_Ayn_Rand (which was scattered and superficial in its coverage). The book is devoid of the sarcasm of Jeff Walker's Ayn_Rand_Cult. Its coverage is broader, more unified, more easily readable, and less technical than Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen's Philosophical_Thought_of Ayn_Rand. All in all, Reconsidering_Ayn_Rand is an engaging and solid piece of literary and philosophical criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
Today man's mind is under attack by all the leading schools of philosophy. We are told that we cannot trust our senses, that logic is arbitrary, that concepts have no basis in reality. Ayn Rand opposes that torrent of nihilism, and she provides the alternative in this eloquent presentation of the essential nature--and power--of man's conceptual faculty. She offers a startlingly original solution to the problem that brought about the collapse of modern philosophy: the problem of universals. This brilliantly argued, superbly written work, together with an essay by philosophy professor Leonard Peikoff, is vital reading for all those who seek to discover that human beings can and should live by the guidance of reason. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (51)

An Solution to the Conceptual Mess In Philisophy
If you've studied other philosophers and found yourself wondering why their ideas are so detached from the real world and the truth, then Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology will tell you why. Therein she presents her original (and groundbreaking) theory of concepts.

Thanks to this book I am able to think clearer than ever before. I highly recommend it to those interested in philosophy and its truths.

Correction Needed
My grading of Ayn Rand`s "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" shows a bi-polarity: a-priori and upon analytic insight it is only worth one star and should be avoided by the vulnerable that might find their intellect injured by reading it; a-posterior and upon empirical insight it is possible to correct Rand`s objectivism and return logic to an intuitionism that is worth five stars to any reader that is able to understand the corrections.

I am an optimist, and so I give this very dangerous book four stars; but by subtracting one star note that you have been warned!

According to Rand`s objectivism, deduction, induction, and concept-formation are all that is needed to acquire objective knowledge. Rand`s "concept-formation" is to first differentiate (or particularize) a set into units and then to integrate (or generalize) over the set. Rand (1990, page 28) limits concepts to a bi-polarity and writes: "The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction." Rand correctly connects induction and deduction with the proclivities of generality and particularity, respectively, but in doing this she turns concept-formation into an empty bi-polarity that holds nothing else but induction and deduction.

Rand`s Chapter 8 puts a great deal of emphasis on the "Law of Identity," and something must be said about this. This law is only vaguely formulated if you check with the literature. Nevertheless, the Law of Identity is considered a law of thought, and is typically stipulated as a prelude to deductive logic. It is sometimes presented as a tautology, which says something to the affect that proposition A equals proposition A, or A=A for short. As a tautology that applies to grammar and logic, the fact that A=A, is very unilluminating. I can only guess that Rand uses this tautology because it enforces a type of literalism that applies when concepts are used in language and in logic. This seems to be an okay convention. However, I don`t believe we can assume that objectivism is pristine enough for such enforcement, and so the use of this law is on very thin ice.

Note the duplicity in Leonard Piekoff`s contribution in the same book (pages 88-121), where departure from the Law of Identity is blamed for Kant`s analytic-synthetic dichotomy. However, in passing judgment, Piekoff changed the meaning of the Law of Identity given as the simple tautology that merely resides in abstract thought. Piekoff (page 99) writes: "The fact that certain characteristic are, at a given time, unknown to man, does not indicate that these characteristics are excluded from the entity - or from the concept. A is A; existents are what they are, independent of the state of human knowledge; and a concept means the existents which it integrates. Thus, a concept subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not-yet-known."

We discover that the Law of Identity is meant to apply to the bi-polarity offered by concepts! This can only mean that the Law of Identity underwrites the most significant synthetic that is the giver of all pristine facts, represented by the time-sense polarity: {analytic a-priori <> empirical a-posteriori}! If a concept emerges from the polarity and comes with an utterance that asserts that A=A, we know automatically that the middle-term that unites the polarity`s left-hand side and right-hand side is found undeclared by the utterance. Mere tautology that asserts that "concept is concept" is only wallpaper and comes no where close to declaring the middle-term that holds the polarity together, and it gives us no license to take the middle-term for granted. In other words, the middle-term that holds all concepts together is found undeclared by objectivism. The Law of Identity is used as an excuse to enforce a brand of circular reasoning that will evade any mention of this weakness. I ask the question: what is it? The objectivist answers: it is what it is!

Objectivism is found unable to avoid Kant`s dualism, but I agree with Piekoff that this dualism is unnecessary. To find a hint of what the middle-term might be, note that Piekoff`s (page 113) writes this about the dichotomy: "To introduce an opposition between the logical and the factual is to create a split between consciousness and existence, between truths in accordance with man`s method of cognition and truths in accordance with the facts of reality. The result of such a dichotomy is that logic is divorced from reality (logical truths are empty and conventional) - and reality becomes unknowable (factual truths are contingent and uncertain). This amounts to the claim that man has no method of cognition, i.e., no way of acquiring knowledge."

We may conclude that the undeclared middle-term fills in the noted gap not filled by objectivism, and this act of filling is needed for cognition and knowledge! Yet Rand (page 87) writes, "The motive of all the attacks on man`s rational faculty, is a single basic premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity." The best she can do to defend her covert circular reasoning offered by objectivism is to point to "attacks" and "desire." Rand spent her life defending rationalism from the likes of collectivists, from Kant, from altruism, and from mysticism, and this effort was made by an objectivism that concealed its own circularity. At best she can only offer her emotions for acting the way she did, and that is the key to the undeclared middle-term that mystics have no trouble understanding.

The synthesis of deduction and induction that is necessary for Rand`s concept-formation shows reciprocity in the best tradition of Taoism, and it reveals naked emotionality! Revealed emotion informs on the middle-term that holds the bi-polar concepts together permitting the passing of objectivism over to intuitionism.

Yes, it is true, words are concepts that emerge from concept-formation as indicated by objectivism. However, the concepts are now recognized as Kantian synthetics that reach across the third antinomy (representing the rift offered by the One and Many of Greek philosophy), they are not products of Rand`s "law of identity" that is also conveniently found ignoring the very emotive middle-term that holds concepts together. Rather, it is the middle-term that signifies the changeless identity. It is the authentic synthesis that supports the identity that unites the analytic and the empirical. Even the facts of reality, that pass over to human concepts, come as authentic synthetics that are open to less than perfect interpretations. This simple modification corrects Rand`s epistemology. The Many now reconcile themselves with the One, and this implies that knowledge is vastly additive as predicted by objectivism, but coming with a proviso that emotion must become more fully integrated with logic.

Take this seriously...and the rest falls into place
I was a straight-A student in high school and college, but I didn't learn to think until I read Ayn Rand. Her philosophy (specifically her epistemology, which deals with how you know what you know) answers those thorny but important questions that put my philosophy professors in a tizzy. Does the fact that a pencil in water looks broken mean you can't trust anything your senses tell you? Do words (concepts) correspond to something to reality, or can you use them as politicians do, to mean anything you want? Can you know anything for certain?
Of Ayn Rand's nonfiction books, this one was definitely the most challenging to get through: I had to rethink so much of what I "knew." In the long run, though, it was the most worthwhile. Her demonstration of how to think showed me how to use reason to deal with people and the world. Because of her theories, I see the world as a place that I can understand, and where I can not only survive but ultimately achieve my own happiness. If you've read Atlas Shrugged, think of the scene where the heroine wakes up in a sunlit valley, smiles, and asks, "We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?" The ideas in ITOE are the foundation for that kind of smile.

The World Needs THIS Concept Formation Theory
I am borderline disgusted as to how few college professors actually take into account or even question how one really learns. Rote memorization will only remain in the brain for so long without any context or differentiation/integration done on its definition/characteristics. It's how I learned everything I've learned and forgotten through high school and several semesters of college. For this reason, I cannot recommend this book enough, especially chapter 3, which details the process of measurement omission/concept formation. It addresses the fallacies of how modern philosophers (the leaders of the anti conceptual movement) attempt to equate a concept with its definition, not realizing that a concept subsumes ALL possible existents with X characteristics. I enjoyed this book a lot, because it made me realize that my teachers do not know how to teach, and formed most of their knowledge by mere associative memorization of one concrete based on another - effectively producing the least conceptual understanding possible, let alone desire to learn more. You may laugh, but when you are forced to memorize 15 different types of tissue under a microscope and given absolutely no guidance whatsoever as to integrate/differentiate them other than their colors and prettiness, you will be very glad to have read this book and realize that your lack of understanding is by no means any fault of yours and that the professor has not a clue either. Upon reading this, the college student may realize how much of a responsibility it actually is to learn something given today's college professors theory or lack of theory of learning, and how much they really DO NOT know based on memorization techniques hailed by professors in the name of time saving which will get them nowhere.

An excellent basic guide to Objectivist Epistemology.
First off, in my opinion, this is not a book for those who have obsolutely no back ground of study in philosophy.I strongly suggest that one read a book on the basic principles and concepts of philosophy before reading this book.Empistemology is the area of philosophy that deals with how knowledge is obtained.It deals with the issue of concepts, the validity of man's knowledge and how it relates to man's ability to recognize reality.As anyone who has studied Objectivism to any degree, the term "reality exists" has important meaning.Objectivist epistemology is based upon the premise that man is capable of knowing reality and it is not some mystical concept.In conclusion, this is a book that must be read more than once to understand fully the material.Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Never Trust a Politician, Martial Art Myths, Season of the Warrior: a poetic tribute to warriors, PR-24 Police Baton Advanced Techniques). ... Read more

Product Description
Machan's book explores all the major themes of Ayn Rand'sphilosophical thought. He shows the frequent strengths and occasionalweaknesses of Rand's mature philosophy of Objectivism, drawing on hisown, and many others', discussion of this challenging and iconoclasticthinker's ideas. Machan's treatment of Rand is a welcome addition tothe growing literature of serious scholarship on Rand's philosophicalwork. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Not very informative
I gave it such a low score not because the book is badly written, or one cannot understand it, but rather because it is not very informative and I'm not sure to whom is it addressed.

If you are already have an interest for Objectivism or Ayn Rand, and might want to learn somewhat deeper into the subject, this book won't help you much. It is an introduction, but since it rarely explains where the claims of Objectivism comes from that it is not a very useful introduction. In this case one might do better going directly to another book.

If you are like me, and you only want to read one book on Objectivism because it was brought up in a conversation or something similar, this book will probably not satisfy you, since again, it makes claims that are not even remotely backed up.

The author spends most of the book saying that Rand gives way to an objective moral and ethical system. To me that sounded like the most interesting part of Objectivism, and yet the author never stops to explain how this is so. I wouldnt have expected the full outline of such a system in an introductory text, but it would have helped if even a little of the path was shown, or even delineated. Instead we are asked to believe (with no reason for it) that this is so, and we are kept this way through the whole book.

All in all, I found the book disapointing, and it was unable to answer my passing curiosity on the subject. If you are more interested on the subject, I would also recomend that you go for another book where a more indepth analysis is shown.

Hastily put together but rather friendly and interesting
"Rand's Objectivism, of all the schools of contemporary philosophy, may well be the one that holds out the best, most ..........." Tibor R. Machan

Unlike most independent Ayn Rand scholars, who tend to consider themselves as superiorprofessionals correcting the childish blunders of an incompetent amateur,Tibor Machan, as the above quote suggests, is a respectful commentator whocorrectly recognizes that Ayn Rand was a major philosopher and that most ofwhat Randian scholars today can hope to accomplish is to polish up someaspects of her philosophical system, develop new applications of it andconfront the latest batch of criticisms from academia. As far as hispersonal philosophy is concerned, he seems to have accepted most of thefundamentals of Objectivism, and in most contemporary philosophicalbattles, he is generally on the right side, defending free-will againstdeterminism, ethical cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, the free society vs.welfare statism and marxism, and the morality of business against leftistand conservative smears. I would therefore consider him an estranged friendof Objectivism, to be distinguished from the self-styled "sympatheticobservers" of the philosophy who in the next breath call Rand apseudo-philosopher.

Unfortunately, Machan tends to suffer from a lack ofsystem and hierarchy in his writings, and nowhere is this clearer than inthe present book. Compared to Peikoff's *Objectivism: The Philosophy of AynRand* or even Gotthelf's *On Ayn Rand*, which are beautifully structuredand clearly distinguish fundamentals from derivatives, Machan's *Ayn Rand*is much less integrated and systematic.

This lack of system of courseneed not be a reflection of Machan's own mental functioning, even though hedoes have a penchant for pluralism and eclecticism, but is probably due tothe way the book was put together: *Ayn Rand* is essentially a disjointedcollection of articles previously published in various reviews, newslettersand books. Chapter 4, "Rand's Rational Individualism", forinstance, is a slightly edited copy of chapter 10 of *The PhilosophicalThought of Ayn Rand*.

Machan's lack of enthusiasm for philosophicalhierarchy does sometimes affect his conclusions, though. For instance, whenhe states that "in some parts of his moral philosophy and in politics,Kant was closer to [Rand's] own ideas than are most otherphilosophers" (p117), he clearly shows his rejection of theObjectivist tenet that one cannot understand a statement out of the wholehierarchy of a man's philosophical ideas. This may also explain why hefeels sympathetic to the libertarians and leans to the "moraltolerationist" wing of Objectivism.

Anyway, I do recommend this bookas a good overview of Objectivism, and perhaps as a better *introduction*to this philosophy than Gotthelf's very compact volume (though the latteris a more reliable statement of the content of the philosophy). Machan makes interesting comments on the distinction between derivation anddeduction and he identifies a few contemporary philosophers whose views arevery similar to Objectivism. His more haphazard reflections on"Problems Left for Objectivism" however suffer from a lack offamiliarity with the more recent taped material and simplemisinterpretations of Objectivist tenets. (For instance, though he has read*We The Living*, he asks: "Cannot a work of art be quite excellent,yet... sad? Tragic?", perpetuating a common caricature of theObjectivist esthetics.) Finally, I must say I found some of the statementsin the book cryptic or highly dubious: "Rand's foundationalism can becharacterized as post-epistemological" or "Rand's approach isalso consistent with... an (almost) anything-goes, (almost) Feyerabendianlaissez-faire attitude towards the methods of factual investigation".

Best Book on Rand
This is the best introduction to Ayn Rand available.Because Prof. Machan was never a member of Rand's inner circle, he can write freely on her philosophy and discuss its strengths as well as weaknesses.Nonetheless, Prof. Machan clearly admires Rand and considers her an importantphilosopher.

There are a number of merits to this book: (1) Prof.Machan provides a clear overview of Rand's position on most philosophicalquestions, placing prominence on Rand's axiomatic concepts; (2) the bookcontains a solid discussion of Rand's works; and (3) chapter 7 - on variousquestions that Rand failed to consider - is excellent.

There are someweaknesses to the work as well. First, Prof. Machan doesn't spend enoughtime on Rand's theory of concept formation, which her followers consider hegreatest contribution to philosophy.Second, he is too kind to Rand whenit comes to her often unfair and inaccurate attacks on other philosophers. While he says that Rand caricatures other thinkers, the fact is that Randhad little knowledge of the history of philosophy and her discussion ofother philosophers is simply pathetic.Anyone who doubts this should readher essay, "For the New Intellectual." Third, like many of Rand'sadmirers, Prof. Machan overestimates Rand's originality.The fact is thatmost of Rand's ideas can be found in other writers.

In spite of itsflaws, this is generally an outstanding book.I recommend it highly. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (6)

An excellent overview
While the discussions of the influence of Nietzsche on Rand and the analyses of her novels are interesting, the real strength of this book is the clarification and extension of Rand's ethics.The unification of oughts, operational ought and normative ought are the same, the replacement of Man's Life as ultimate end with Man's Life as ultimate means, and his clarification of the goals of ethics (as making yourself the kind of person you should be, rational, productive, and self-improving) are more than worth the price of the book.

He points out the weaknesses and problems with Rand's esthetic theories.

Unfortunately, he does not do the same for Rand's epistemology, which has always been the weakest part of her work.

The last part of the book deals with her attempts to make a practical difference through politics and the continuing disagreements Objectivists have with libertarianism.

The book is also extremely readable and well organized.

Comprehensive, But Not Deep
In recent years, we have witnessed what has aptly been called a "Renaissance" in Ayn Rand scholarship. In 1995, Chris Sciabarra came out with AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL which (although controversial) placed Ayn Rand in the context of the history of philosophy and filled in a few gaps in her biography as well. After that work, the Ayn Rand Institute published lengthy collections of her diaries and letters (although I'd like to see the originals). In 1999, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies began publishing, which gives Rand's ideas serious attention. Finally, we recently saw the publication of Scott Ryan's critical OBJECTIVISM AND THE CORRUPTION OF RATIONALITY, which surpasses all previous criticism of Rand.

In light of this high quality work and the increase in primary sources available, one might expect that a scholar would come out with a concise 150-200 page book providing a solid and up-to-date overview of Rand's work, dealing with all the major areas of her thought. Unfortunately, such a book is lacking.

The above digression brings me to Ron Merrill's THE IDEAS OF AYN RAND, published in 1991 and therefore before the "Renaissance." There are some good things about this work. First, it is comprehensive. Mr. Merrill provides the reader with an overview of Rand's life, the plots of her novels, an introduction to her philosophy, and her place within the conservative and libertarian traditions. Second, there are a few interesting observations about the influence of Nietzsche on Rand and also some Jewish imagery in Rand's novels. Third, Mr. Merrill appreciates Rand and lets the reader understand why many people are so absorbed by her ideas. Fourth, the discussion of the novels is extensive. Fifth, the work includes a discussion of the Objectivist "movement."

On the other hand, as a guide to Rand's philosophy it leaves a lot to be desired. As an example, the discussion of axioms (so central to Rand) is given 4 lines. However, the "analytic-synthetic dichotomy" is given over a page. And it is presented exclusively in the context of Peikoff's misleading article of the same name. In any event, I don't see how Mr. Merrill's pointing out that W. V. O. ("I espouse a more thorough pragmatism") Quine also objected to the "analytic-synthetic dichotomy" helps his case that this concept is flawed [p. 170, n. 8]. (For a defense of how - contrary to Peikoff - a priori knowledge provides knowledge of "facts of experience," see Brand Blanshard, REASON & ANALYSIS, pp. 249-307, esp. pp. 303-04.)

This book should be read in conjunction with other books on Rand, including Tibor Machan's work, AYN RAND and Chris Sciabarra's AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL.

An excellent compact overview of Rand's views
Long before she died, Ayn Rand was praised as a goddess, and damned as a devil.In all the fuss, her actual ideas and views were generally shoved to one side, to the point where she said in her _Playboy_ interview that she could sympathize with Karl Marx(!) toward the end of his life, when he said that he was not a Marxist.The rather abrupt end of the organized Objectivist movement in 1968 was also the end of a great deal of her influence, and she became a figure more of legend than history long before her death.With this book, Merrill gives us a view of Ayn Rand's actual beliefs, as opposed to those attributed to her by the Usual Suspects, and some background as to how she came to the conclusions she did.It's disappointingly short, but Rand scholarship is evolving constantly.

Objective Book of Objectivism's founder
Free of the subjective rehashing that tainted the summations offered by Leonard Peikoff and the Brandens, this book is a fair, albeit much too brief, representation of Ayn Rand's history, ideas, and continuing legacy. Merril, a true student of Objectivism, is fair and balanced in his book. It is a mistake to rely solely on the admittedly worthy and remarkableworks of Peikoff and/or the Brandens without using this book to reconcilethe arguments put forth by the three of them in their own accounts.Readthis work and make up your own mind.

Nice book
This is a nice work in independent commentary and interpretation, something Peikovians cannot stand.And yes, the book has useful commentary. ... Read more

Product Description
Auburn University professor of philosophy offers new interpretations of Aristotle and Ayn Rand in ethics and epistemology. Among the issues at stake: Does Rand's thought contain Platonic, Humean, Hobbesian, and Kantian elements? Does Aristotle share Rand's committment to sense-perception as the foundation of knowledge? What is the meaning of the ethical standard of man's life-qua-man?,... and much more. Also contains two critical commentaries and a reply by the author. Sure to ignite debate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Rand debunked
Roderick Long deals Ayn Rand's epistemology a fatal blow.He demonstrates how she's committed to the so-called alien-explorer version of man.You can't deeply dismiss Rand until you've read this.

Excellent
Roderick Long is a libertarian philosopher who (like many of us) was first introduced to philosophy via the works of Ayn Rand.And (like many of us) he has to a greater or lesser extent "moved on."Prof. Long is still broadly Aristotelian in his outlook, but has integrated his Aristotelianism with many insights from the Austrian school of economics.

In this relatively brief work Prof. Long discusses Rand's conception of reason and value and compares it to the views of other philosophers.He discovers Humean, Aristotelian, Platonic, Kantian and Hobbesian aspects to Rand's ethical thought.I found Prof. Long's discussion of the instrumentalist aspects of Rand's ethics quite interesting.Take the issue of dishonesty.Since Objectivists are opposed to "instrinsicism," they often discuss the virtue of honesty in terms of the consequences that flow from dishonest acts.Objectivists typically argue that a person who undertakes a sophisticated swindle has to engage in so many lies and deceptions that he is likely to get caught.Indeed his machinations are so in conflict with their likely result that it in fact amounts to an attempt to "fake reality."This reduces to don't lie because you'll get caught.However, as Prof. Long points out, the virtuous characters in Rand's novels don't act on such blatantly instrumentalist premises.Is John Galt honest because he fears the consequences of cheating? Is he really not bright enough to "pull it off"? In fact, implicit in the "faking reality" approach is a noninstrumentalist (and even vaguely Nietzschian) rationale.There is even a Kantian subtheme here, e.g., when Rand demands "consistency" in one's conduct toward others.

Prof. Long's essay is particularly broad and covers aspects of Rand's epistemology and even politics.There is a particularly interesting discussion of whether Rand is a foundationalist and, if so, what kind.

It's not often that you see a book that takes Rand's philosophy seriously enough to critique it respectfully.I recommend it highly.

Nice Try
Thank goodness that Rand departs from Aristotle on a number of points. The author has it just backwards: it is Aristotle's errors that gave rise to "corrosive skepticism" and ethical subjectivism. In arguing that there are values outside of the context of life, the author has also departed from what may be the implicit and overriding idea behind Aristotle's own thought. There still can be no values outside of that context and these arguments only confirm Rand's thesis.

THIS BOOK RAND ME OVER!!! FULL (ARIS)THROTTLE!!!
This book has changed my life. Seriously.
Amazingly enough, the author easily commands an intellect far greater than those his book is about, combined! I sleep with this book at night...
if you know what I mean.

A New Term for this Garbage: "Philoso-Babble"
If the following quote from the author (see also above) says anything about his writing skills, clarity of mind, and awareness of "reason", then it's obvious who should buy this book. Come on, you reality-hating academic philosophers, crawl out of the woodwork, dust yourselves off, and buy this book!

"In particular, I maintain that Rand's rejection of Aristotle's coherentist, testimony-based epistemology in favor of her own version of foundationalist empiricism both opens the door to a corrosive skepticism that she rightly wishes to avoid, and forces her into defending an instrumental survival-oriented conception of the relation of morality to self-interest, even though a constitutive, flourishing-oriented relation along Aristotelian lines would more closely match her basic ethical insights."

But seriously, folks. Doesn't this quote make you laugh out loud? Can you believe there are people who actually spout this nonsense without blushing? Somebody tell this guy that the emperor does not, in fact, have any clothes! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rand Won't be Found in this Book
Preface: The Woman
Chronology
Ch. 1 The Life and Times of Ayn Rand 1
Ch. 2 Ayn Rand as Creative Writer29
Ch. 3 Ayn Rand as Public Philosopher 65
Ch. 4 The Themes and Theories of Ayn Rand94
Ch. 5 Ayn Rand's Defenders and Accusers 124
Postscript: The Writer 149

Published in 1987 this short biography is one of the earlier to come out after Rand's death in 1982. As such it relies heavily upon then published material concerning Rand's life and her works. Among these Baker goes out of his way to reiterate the many negative journalistic views on Rand prevalent during her time. Baker is more of a mouthpiece for Rand-bashing than an objective historian making critically insightful commentary.

The implicit negative evaluations of Rand which the reader picks up along the way illustrate Baker's inability to analyze Rand's theories within the necessary context. Taking his cue from The Passion of Ayn Rand Baker goes so far as to psychologize about Rand's reason for holding to certain positions, such as her atheism being a, "subconscious admiration for the Marxists who won the Russian soul." (p. 114) This of course ignores the fact that Rand being educated under the Soviets went on to develop ideas completely opposed to communism or any other form of collectivism. Being so "impressionable", how does Rand defy this "subconscious admiration" in other areas of knowledge? No answer is given. Instead of recognizing the contradiction within his own writing Baker instead like all others critical of Rand push the contradiction onto her and claim that she was a tragically flawed person. He also mistakenly attributes to Rand agreement with Aristotle's view of concepts being metaphysically real but being part of the entities they represent. (p. 84) This however is not the Objectivist position on concepts. Concepts do not exist out in reality. They are instead the recognition of the identity of the entities in reality by a consciousness. The details may be too specific for a small biography but he still claims this agreement matter-of-factly. This is one of the few instances of disagreement between Aristotle and Rand, something that could have been highlighted had Baker gotten it right.

Because this was published in '87 it might be said that this book is a little dated especially now that there is an ever growing biographical library on Rand. But I would say that this is not an issue because this book never got it right in the first place when it came to evaluating Rand. The parts that summarize Rand's novels or give a brief sketch of her life history are possibly the parts that are the most valuable to the curious reader uninitiated to Rand. And it may have been these parts that made this book relevant when it first was published. So to that extent it is dated. But, these aren't without simplification and so must be taken with a grain of salt. If you must look for strict facts on Rand's life or theories I would recommend you look elsewhere.

Of side interest I noticed that the front and back cover photographs are acknowledged "courtesy of Leonard Peikoff, Executor." One can only speculate, if the acknowledgment is valid, the extent of involvement by Peikoff in the production of this book.

Excellent overview of Ayn Rand's life, writing, and philosophy.
Wonderful overview of Ayn Rand, her life, loves, writings, philosophy, friends and foes. James T. Baker was conspicuouslyneutral in this book. He made great efforts to neither praise nor demonize Ms. Rand, a very polarizing figure in American history.
Despite being a huge fan of Ayn Rand I knew little about her life other than what I could gather by reading her three best selling books (Anthem, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). Mr. Baker's book opened my eyes to the many facets of Ms. Rand, including her apparent megalomania in running the Objectivist Movement. Still, I forgive her despite what her detractors have to say as quoted by Mr. Baker. Her friends may have been overly enthusiastic, but she never led them over a cliff, she just insisted on purity of thought, as Mr. Baker made clear in this book.
Mr. Baker summed up nicely Ayn's take on the chasm between Capitalism and Socialism with this statement: "Still others will find her a necessary antidote to collectivism, agreeing with her that men lusting after money are less dangerous than those lusting after power."
To my mind, very important words given the events of this new century.

A two sided profile of a complex woman
This book is a really good, short read for anyone who has either read any of Ayn Rand's books or has just heard about her and wants to know more.These days, most people under 30 years of age have probably heard very brief references to her on episodes of The Simpsons or South Park, unless they read the Wall Street Journal.

I first heard about Ayn Rand from a 1999 article in the WSJ about a hedge fund operator who had set up shop in the Carribean and made everyone who worked for him read Atlas Shrugged.This hedge fund manager had gotten into trouble with the law in regards to his brothers's death (if memory serves) which is why the story was in the WSJ to begin with.After that I tried reading Atlas Shrugged and it took me 3 separate tries because its such a long and engrossing book.Reading it and then realizing that Rand wrote it only a few years after really learning English made me really admire how hard she worked to make it in the United States and also to learn, and be truly fluent, in English.As I read the Baker Biography, I also realized that many other people throughout the years must have used her as a sort of idol of ideas.

But as I read further, I realized that she was a bit of a hypocrite and seemed to live some of the very things that she fought against.For instance, she felt that no one should live for anyone else and that no one should want anyone else living for them--individualism!!!!But she also brow-beat members of her inner circle who refused to take up smoking cigarettes.I just found that to be mutually exclusive to the things that she taught.Also it seemed like she admired powerful men in her novels: John Galt, Hank Reardon, Francisco D'Aconia and others; but she married a man who almost seemed to live off her income and do very little on his own except raise birds.

The Baker book made no bones that it was unbiased either way about Ayn Rand and her ideas and just set out to express both sides of her life and also the people who worshipped or hated her--sometimes that person was one and the same. ... Read more

Product Description
This interdisciplinary study examines the interrelations between the documentary poetics of "Objectivism" in the United States during the 1930s. Focusing on three volumes published by the Objectivist Press in 1934--Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, George Oppen's Discrete Series, and William Carlos William's Collected Poems, 1921-1931--the book examines both photographic and linguistic images, along with criticism, correspondence, transcripts of interviews and lectures, contemporary periodicals and other documentary sources from these years. Reznikoff, Oppen, and Williams each constructed textual objects that aspired to the condition of the photograph, and the successes as well as the failures of that aspiration are the subject of this book. Juxtaposing selected works by these three poets with the camera work of Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, and Alfred Stieglitz, Depression Glass also exposes some of the fundamental affinities between documentary photography and modern poetry as forms of expression. This study challenges some of the critical commonplaces of American modernism by demonstrating how these poets comprised an alternative "tradition" dedicated to a project of social realism that would later become the exclusive territory of prose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Ignore the Nit-Picky, I missed the Point Review Above
Ignore reviewers who nit-pick irrelevant details in Atlas Shrugged and the other novels of Ayn Rand.Far from promoting a a persecution, victimization attitude, Rand's books promote individualism, independent thinking and reason.Unfortunately, her philosophy contradicts centuries of flawed philosophy taught by and to our "intellectuals."For this reason, Rand's philosophy must be studied.It cannot be spoon-fed, like baby food, to those who "wish" that her book was written differently.

Go to http://www.aynrandbookstore.com for books and tapes by authors and teacher who really understand the precise literary and philosophic integrations contained in her novels.You will find that Rand wasn't 100% accurate, but she formulated a philosophy that answers some of the most profoundly perplexing problems of our time.Her philosophy was formed by induction-that is, from the facts of reality, not wishful thinking or faith.

Rand is decidedly anti-cult.If some of her followers have lapsed into cultism, then they, too, miss the entire point.The cultishness of some devotees does not detract from the fundamental soundness of her philosophy.

Interesting analysis of a flawed novel.
Mimi Reisel Gladstein concludes from the whole cult phenomenon surrounding Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_ that the novel must have some deep literary merit. But that is not necessarily the case. The cultish enthusiasm says more about the frustrations and repressed desires of adolescent and young adult Americans, of both sexes, than it does about Rand's particular abilities. I recall reading in Jeff Walker's book, _The Ayn Rand Cult_, that Rand figured out how to project into her novels the common adolescent feeling that you are being misappreciated and exploited by your "objective" inferiors, and meant for better things. _Atlas Shrugged_, frankly, isn't all that good as literature, though it does hold its own when compared with other productions of popular culture with cult followings among the young, like the novels of Robert A. Heinlein, for example. Rand's magnum opus acts more as a kind of literary Rorschach Test than anything else.

Gladstein is on target when she discusses the genre-crossing aspects of _Atlas Shrugged_. Is it dystopian fiction, science fiction, a detective novel, a feminist-flavored romance? All of the above, it seems, though Gladstein doesn't persuade me that Rand consciously borrowed from Arthurian romance as well. The feminist and female-romantic elements of the novel were never emphasized all that much by Rand's "orthodox" followers, but Gladstein does make the case that Rand pioneered a new kind of strong, independent female character -- Dagny Taggart -- who holds her own in a man's world and doesn't need a man to make her life complete, though finding her ideal lover in John Galt certainly helps. In the 1950's such an idea was radical, but because many fictional female characters these days are "Xenafied," Dagny Taggart's prototypical role has been obscured. Perhaps the miniseries version of _Atlas Shrugged_ due out sometime next year will give Rand the credit in this one area she deserves.

Still, I found some flaws in Gladstein's exposition of Rand's make-believe world. Gladstein fails to explore _Atlas Shrugged's_ unsubtle family-hating subtext: All of the major characters are alienated from immediate relatives as if that were a good thing. Even after Dagny makes an emotional connection with her hapless sister-in-law Cherryl, she displays no emotional response to Cherryl's suicide. The question of Hank Rearden's paternity never comes up, nor whether he and his wastrel brother Philip even share the same father. (If not, that could in itself explain the hostility between the two!) At the end of the novel, the strikers plan to leave their Rocky Mountain stronghold and rebuild an America where young people can look towards the future with hope -- but because the heroes don't have children, and apparently don't plan to, given the shortage of worthy females for them, you have to wonder where these youngsters are going to come from. (Because Dagny never seems to need contraception, despite having sex with three of the novel's heroes, she must be infertile.)

Perhaps the creepiest aspect of all in the novel, which Gladstein seems oblivious to despite her feminist sensibilities, is how John Galt's behavior towards Dagny throughout most of the story resembles love-obsessional stalking. In the real world, a guy in his late 30's who is still a virgin, abandons a well-paying technological career so he can hold a menial job on a railroad, and obsesses over and surveils the railroad's attractive female Vice President (even going so far as to sabotage her business deals), would be considered potentially threatening. (Call Gavin de Becker!) I don't know if many women fantasize about falling in love with their stalkers, but this is an aspect of _Atlas Shrugged_ I don't quite understand.

Nonetheless, Gladstein has written yet another contribution to Rand studies that I found worth the money, despite its limitations and brevity. ... Read more

Product Description
A detailed philosophical study of Ayn Rand's Introductionto Objectivist Epistemology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Whats wrong with you lot
I suppose it is enivitable that Porter would get bad reviews: He is often critical of Rand which will alienate the randroids. He is always critical of contemporary philosophy, which will alienate most people who have wasted their time pursuing the subject academically.(i.e. anyone who has studied in a western university).He shows how Rand successfully undercuts the modern Left at the deepest metaphysical and epistemological levels. Thats probably a substantial proportion of readers of any philosophical book.

In this book Porter demonstrates that Rand has developed a theory of concepts which is extremely powerful and which resolves both a multitude of philosophical mistakes and philosophical problems. Careful reading of this book gives you a superb grip on her theory, but it is hard, detailed work. This work is well worth doing as it will give you deeper insight into philosophy in general and concepts and conceptual thought in particular.

I wonder if any of the reviewers above who gave it one star could substantiate their judgement in detail. It appears to be the usual sneering, devoid of reflection.

Don't waste your money.
The other reviewers are right - this dog of a book should never have been published. In fact it seems to have been published by the author himself by way of a vanity press. Well, he shouldn't have wasted his time or hismoney, and I shouldn't have wasted mine. This author knows NOTHING aboutphilosophy, but that doesn't stop him from complaining REPEATEDLY thatphilosophers are a bunch of idiots. If possible, he's even more ignorant(and prouder of it) than Rand herself.

Clunk!
I've recently started to study Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" (ITOE).I decided to purchase Mr. Porter's paragraph by paragraph commentary in the hopes that it would illuminatesome of ITOE's obscure, contradictory and bizarre passages (which, come tothink of it, pretty well describes every sentence in the book).

Well,call me philosophically unsophisticated, but I couldn't find a singlecommment in Mr. Porter's book that helped me better understand ITOE.(Infairness to Mr. Porter, I didn't read the entire book, but I did read afair amount of it.)

There may be some gems of wisdom in Mr. Porter'ssmarmy, know-it-all commentary, but I didn't find any.

The blind leading the blind.
I wouldn't have thought it was possible to write a _worse_ book on "Objectivist epistemology" than Rand herself wrote. But I was wrong; Tom Porter has managed it.

If you're looking for a book written bysomeone who possesses less than a college-freshman-level understanding ofphilosophy, who thinks that historically important philosophers have beenpretty much one and all dishonest or stupid or both, and who grinds hisantiphilosophical axe under the name of Ayn Rand while providing even fewerreferences and explanations than Rand herself bothered to provide, thenthis is the book for you. But if you're looking for a book that actuallyevinces a faint glimmer of hope that something in Rand's hodgepodge of anepistemology _might_, on one or two points, be modified into somethingbarely salvageable at the hands of someone with some philosophicalcompetence, try David Kelley's _The Evidence of the Senses_ instead. Thisbook ain't it.

Of course, this book will be of tremendous interest topeople who want to see a fairly typical example (which Kelley is not) ofthe "philosophical" pretensions of Rand's die-hard followers. Soperhaps its publication isn't a _total_ loss.

Space won't permit me todetail everything that's wrong with this book (I tried once, but Amazondidn't post the review, presumably for reasons of length). But I reviewedit some time ago for the Daily Objectivist at the request of editor DavidBrown, and I've made the review available on my own website.

If you'dlike to read it, go to my "About You Page" and click on thepersonal-info section; I give the URL of my site there. Then go to the siteand scroll down to the "Contents" link; click there and you'llfind, among the list of essays, an item entitled "Tom Porter on AynRand's Epistemology." That's my review.

By the way, you'll also findon my site a series of essays (still in progress) providing a systematicdissection of Rand's own epistemology. ... Read more

Product Description
Loving Life demonstrates that morality is a matter not of divine revelation or social convention or personal opinion -- but, rather, of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Live life to the fullest
Many critics of Ayn Rand's philosophy fail to understand how it is supposed to work. Readers of her fictional works are offered characters who are somewhat idealized, who do not reflect the confusing set of mixed emotions and doubts that afflict "real' people. Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It restates the Objectivist philosophy and explains it in terms of how we can apply its principles to our own lives. This book brings objectivism home to real people living real lives. Very worthwhile for the individual who is seeking to make sense of life through a philosophical understanding -- or for those who have realized the inescapable flaws in the mainstream philosophical point of view.

For those who have only modest exposure to Rand's works -- and who may have read critiques of Objectivism as a philosophy -- this book puts the misinformation into perspective and will help you better understand what objectivism is -- and what it is not.

An easy and well written introduction to Objectivism
This book is written in a style that is not only very clear, but allows the reader to move along quite nicely.It is a philosophy book written by an author that obviously knows the philosophy quite well, but it is not written in the style of an academic.It is packaged for the reader who wants to know about Objectivism but who is not ready to tackle OPAR.I bought it for my son, started reading it to get a good idea of what it is like, and found myself quite engaged.The language is straightforward, the ideas are well built and supported, the examples are numerous, applicable, and are things you might see happening in everyday life.

Easy-to-understand and extremely cogent overview of Objectivism
For a number of years now it's often been my observation that many of the major spokepersons of the Objectivist movement are not always the most effective communicators.

Thankfully, this seems to be changing for the better with an emerging new generation of Objectivists.

Biddle's compelling book is an outstanding "breath of fresh air" in comparison to the frequently dry and overly-academic presentations of the powerful philosophy of Ayn Rand given by her most prominent followers.

Without question "Loving Life" is the BEST and most concise overview summary of Objectivism out there today.

An ethics based solely on objective reality
This book clearly and concisely restates the ethics piece of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.Objectivism, focusing on an objective reality, as the name implies, has as its ethics what has been called elsewhere enlightened selfishness.The "enlightened" term refers to the fact that individuals should selfishly want what is really best for them, not necessarily what yields the best immediate result.This introduces a challenge in that individuals must decide what is best for them among infinite choices.While the book later goes on to identify that taking actions that inhibit others' rights (except in self-defense) is clearly wrong, the initial presentation does not make this point.

While I enjoyed the details of the ethics presented here, especially when contrasted with the book Ethics for the Real World (by Ronald A. Howard and Clinton D. Korver) that left ethics up to individual choice, I was looking/hoping for more.Specifically, I would have liked to see more depth of coverage of complex topics such as creating value hierarchies and the theory that rational interests of individuals don't conflict.That said, this makes a good intro to (and case for) Objectivist eithics for those not familiar with the subject.

Concise and Powerful
Is there morality without god?Every thinking person asks this question at some time, but the available answers are so often buried the impenetrable language of centuries past or in the indecipherable jargon of modern academia.

If one turns to popular books such as those by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, one finds powerful arguments against god, but virtually nothing in support of a rational alternative.Ayn Rand was almost a century ahead of these writers in her refutation of religion, and light years ahead in terms of identifying the principles of a rational morality based in this world.

Loving Life is a lucid and concise presentation of Ayn Rand's theory of ethics.It is recommended for anyone who seeks to understand that theory or anyone who simply wishes to explore the possibility of a morality based on reason.As someone who majored in philosophy and suffered through miles of pointless verbiage along the way, I was stunned by author's ability to get to the heart of the matter within the first few paragraphs of the first Chapter. Instead of endless particularizing of various ethical "viewpoints," we are shown the *essence* of religious morality, and the *essence* of the subjectivist nihilism of today's culture. The principles of Ayn Rand's alternative, a universal and absolute morality based on reason, are then explained.In validating these principles the book does not remain safely in the realm of abstraction. Abstract principles are frequently demonstrated and applied in everyday examples.The writing is clear and jargon-free throughout.I thought I knew the subject, but I couldn't put this book down.Virtually anyone can profit from reading it.I cannot recommend it highly enough.
... Read more

Product Description
According to Objectivist David Kelley, financier Michael Milken has done more for mankind than humanitarian Mother Teresa. Working from this statement, Then Athena Said examines Objectivism, a philosophy founded by Ayn Rand, and ultimately concludes, in opposition to essential claims of Objectivism, that other people are a fundamental part of reality. Relying, in part, upon economic theory, decision theory under uncertainty, and game theory, Then Athena Said examines unilateral transfers_including charity, childrearing, bequests, retribution, gifts, favors, forgiveness, and various infringements against persons or property_within the Objectivist framework. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (14)

Ayn Rand walks into a gallery, the abstract horse says, "...
...Who is she... some sort of joke?"

2 amateurs attempt to re-write art history to honor their chosen savior.
This grand embarrassment of a book is not humanist in the least. It closes off opportunities and possibilities, attempts to squelch the unstoppable creativity of art in the last 75 years, and proposes a recipe limiting that which by nature is unlimited. Its claims against art are as delusional and grandiose as the illusion of expertise by its authors.
The tremendous lack of understanding and misreading of modern and contemporary art it pukes forth is as laughable as its complete ignorance about postmodernism.
Read it for a laugh if you have time to waste, but in the end you'll know the verdict on this bile loud and clear.
"Nay." (plop, plop. plop.)

Ayn or Mine?
That Russian-born novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-82) had some profound insights into esthetics I do not doubt, based on my evaluation of her other writings and especially the depths of her published insights into current "artistic" practices -- which have only become more pronounced since her death. That Mr. Torres and Ms. Kamhi would be highly qualified to comment on Ms. Rand's esthetic ideas I also have little reason to doubt, primarily based on their (sporadic and all-too-infrequent) publication of the art journal Aristos. But I found `What Are Is' -- nominally Torres' and Kamhi's magnum opus on Rand's definition of art and philosophy of esthetics -- curiously wanting in several areas and read more like a series of (albeit interesting) articles rather than a comprehensive work. Given Ms. Rand's rigidly integrated view of this subject matter I found this disorganization curious and ironic.

Not that the authors don't score some serious points, if nothing else for tackling Rand's still-highly-relevant definition of art, not to mention how the willful ignorance of definitions and concepts have turned the current artworld (the authors gleefully use this fabricated compound word) into a chamber of absurd horrors. The first third of this book plunges headlong into Rand's published works and statements on esthetics, covering concepts familiar to readers of her philosophy including psycho-epistemology, sense of life, and art and cognition. Herein lies the meat of the book: the authors clearly show both Rand's strongest strengths (e.g., the role of concepts and values in esthetic appreciation, why photography can't be defined as art) and weaknesses (e.g., the inclusion of architecture as art against her own definition) on the subject and -- unlike many of Rand's followers -- pull no punches when they find her self-contradictory, flippant, or even needlessly extreme. Reasoned, calm and objective critiques of Rand -- on any subject -- are painfully infrequent and Torres and Kamhi deserve high praise for giving her ideas the critical respect and attention they deserve.

When they turn to applying Rand's ideas and their own critiques to the current state of the arts, however, the authors lose their momentum. The clarity evident when discussing Rand's ideas flags noticeably throughout the balance of the book (vaguely titled "Extension and Application of Rand's Theory") when they turn their attention to the modern artworld in all its absurdities: from the roots of abstract "art" in the early 20th century to the current pastiche of "art is what any artist says it is." While their attack here should be painfully easy, the authors are handicapped by indecision--applying Rand's ideas where applicable but also throwing in their own (often unsupported) notions as well. I was often left wondering whose voice was taking a stand; this ambiguity was doubly frustrating when the authors propose a brilliant concept of their own (e.g., dubbing the aforementioned art definition by fiat the "authoritarian theory of art"). Simply put, I couldn't tell if they were "extending" Rand's ideas or "applying" them. I would assume both, but too often they came across with neither.

Nevertheless, `What Art Is' provides a strong riposte to the current comical state of the fine arts. The search for clear, consistent definitions is more than welcome and the authors go to no small trouble to show how Rand's theories provide an excellent guide. If they had had the gumption to form their *own* ideas based on the solid foundation Rand built -- rather than selectively and confusingly applying the two - their work would have been a more reliable guide.

This book should be called "What Art ISN'T"
I never agreed with the theory of Ayn Rand to begin with-- I thought she was just a mean, selfish, self-centered person to begin with. This book just proves my point even further. The book seems to focus more on what Rand believes is NOT art than what art actually IS. I find the writing style to be quite boring and drawn out, as well. I'm not any established art scholar (as I'm sure Torres and Kamhi are), but this book is just downright boring and offensive to those in the world (including myself) who consider themselves to be artists in fields that Rand doesn't consider to be art.

WOW!
My response to this work is captured in the title of my review. Torres and Khamy have achieved a level of scholarship in What Art Is that no other writer on the aesthetic theory of Rand has accomplished in the twenty years since the author's death. I would rank it along with Sciabarra's monumental Ayn Rand the Russian Radical. It's enormous accomplishment will keep Rand studies alive and bring her fame. Like Oscar Wilde she set out on her literary career either to be a writer or to become notorious. Notorious is mostly what she has become. Despite anyone's personal views on Rand's aesthetic theory whether completely sound or not, these authors have demonstrated that what they are going to be known for is EXCELLENT scholarship. This book has enough reference and bibliographical material to baffle any academic, and their grasp of the areas that are relevent to Rand scholarship is enormous! I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what the work of a genuine scholar is. Jacques Barzun got it right, if these authors are students of his, they deserve the highest marks.

Surprisingly good, despite some flaws
I did not expect to like this book. Rand's esthetics are the part of her philosophy I find most deplorable.And although Torres and Kamhi are not slavish admirers of Rand who follow her every word, I can't say I cared much for their dreary essentialism.Rand was part of the Aristotlean tradition in philosophy.Her philosophy is more telogically centered than the naturalism of the pre-Socratics or modern science.It also embraces a form of "methdological essentialism," as the philosopher Karl Popper dubbed it, which I find hard to take, especially in strong doses.Methodological essentialists stress the importance of "What is" questions and the definitions of words.Torres and Kamhi, like Rand herself, are uncompromising definition mongers and "what is" analyzers. But I don't think esthetic questions can be solved by answering such questions as "What is art?" or "What is literature?" or by claiming that the bad, non-representational art of modernism and post-modernism is not really art at all, but a kind of fraudulent non-art pretending to be art.Torres and Kamhi stress the importance of defining art, but I have little use for this mode of analysis.Emphasis on definitions simply leads to hopeless arguments about words.I would much rather know why some works of art are successful and some not than know how art should be defined.Art is far too complicated to be summed up in essence of some definition.What I want to know is how does this or that piece of art function aesthetically, and if it functions well or poorly, than why?Science and naturalism emphasize "why" and "how" questions.This is what I would have liked to see from Torres and Kamhi.But being from the Socratic/Aristotlean tradition in philosophy, they have a different methodological point of view on this matter, one I find hopelessly inferior to the methodological nominalism of the sciences.

Nevertheless, despite these criticisms, I urge all those who are interested in art to read the book, regardless of what they think of Rand.The book is written on a much higher level than most pro-Rand books that are published nowadays.Torres and Kamhi, unlike Rand's orthodox disciples, at least are sound scholars with an appreciation for empirical evidence and close logical analysis.They are fair to opposing viewpoints (unlike Rand herself, who treated opponents as if they were sub-human), and they provide an excellent overview of the excesses of modern and post-modern art.Merely as a phillipic against bad art (or, as the authors would insist, "non-art"), I would give this book a five star rating.But because of the methodological essentialism, I have to drop it down to four.The emphasis on definitions really can get annoying. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Judge, And Prepare To Be Judged
A lot has been said about the memoirs of Nathaniel Branden.JUDGMENT DAY, published in 1989 in part as a response to his ex-wife's 1986 memoir/biography THE PASSION OF AYN RAND, presents a somewhat different take on Ayn Rand.Instead of the repressed genius of Barbara Branden's book, we get a Rand who, although a genius, was conventionally nasty and ungrateful (worst of all to Nathaniel Branden).

Branden also tries to settle some scores, not only with Rand, but with his cousin, Leonard Peikoff, and his ex-wife.Personally I don't find this particularly edifying.Nor am I interested in learning about how Rand was in the sack.

Nathaniel Branden revised this book in 1999, using the more modest MY YEARS WITH AYN RAND as a title. It's a bit more toned down with respect to others, but the description of Rand is basically the same.

Of the three books, I think Barbara Branden's biography is the best.Those interested in Rand should start there.

Intense Drama between Two Great Figures
Recounting his struggle with romance, Nathaniel Branden takes us from his teenage fascination with "The Fountainhead" to the height of his career with Objectivism and his affair with the woman who started it all, Ayn Rand. Anyone interested in the people who built this movement will be fascinated with this memoir.

The focus of the story is on Branden's marriage with Barbara Branden and his affair with Ayn Rand leading to their eventual break, but the author takes the time to develop the personalities (including his own) that led to this unique, dramatic situation.

With the dispositions involved, Branden skillfully unravels the events in a telling worthy of a novel filled with hope, success, and disappointment. In addition, we see Branden balance his professional challenges with psychology, the Collective (a group of Ayn Rand's closest friends), and the Objectivist movement at large.

This could have been an angry rant against Ayn Rand, but instead an honest and introspective Branden narrates the story. He admits the mistakes he made and shares blame in the part he plays.

There have been other accounts of the story, including a revised version of this memoir entitled My Years with Ayn Rand, but I have not yet read any of these. Certainly I am interested the factuality of Branden's account and will follow up on this, but Branden's sense of drama for these real-life events already makes this book worth reading.

These Folks Needed To Get Outside More Often
It's obvious that Ayn Rand's immediate inner circle spent FAR too much time and energy analyzing and re-analyzing the living daylights out of every single minute facet of their existence-- they spent so much paralysis-by-analysis time mulling over life, that they didn't HAVE much genuine life.And as things turned out, the true living in which they bothered to engage got fouled up beyond belief.I have never encountered a situation not involving crime/violence that was as much of a pluperfect MESS as Ayn Rand and Nathan Branden (abetted by their spouses) made of their lives.

It it, however, a fascinating tale, if you only lightly skim the occasional bouts of psycho-babble in which Branden engages.I speak not with disdain or ridicule, for I buy into objectivism about 96 percent -- it's not at though, like many others, I denounce objectivism due to the personal problems Ayn Rand caused herself.Her work was marvelous, and it generated thinking that completely changed (upgraded) my view of the world -- but Good Grief, she certainly did botch her personal life, and she dragged young Nathan (and his wife, and her husband Frank) right down into the mud with her.

Nathan spoke with odd affection for a softball game the Collective played one time, how they simply played baseball for awhile and avoided philosophy completely.They should have engaged in such activities more frequently, they should have gotten out more... and really enjoyed life (in addition to getting some much-needed physical exercise).

Inside the Objectivist cult
How did Ayn Rand affect your life?Are you infatuated with her infallible logic, or are you repulsed by her cold-hearted nature?Did her novels inspire you to greatness, or did they make you retch?Have you embraced her philosophy, or have you sworn to destroy it?Was she someone you wanted to emulate, or was she someone you wanted to kill?

Whether or not you agreed with her, Ayn Rand was a woman who provoked extreme reactions.And no matter how much she affected your life, she had far more impact on the life of Nathaniel Branden.

Earlier, I tried to read a couple of Branden's other works, but couldn't wade through all the Objectivist head-shrinker jargon.He wrote like someone who spent too much of his life in college.

However, Judgment Day is surprisingly readable.Though he's sometimes a bit wordy, Branden uses plain English for a change.Most of his psychologizing is kept down to a paragraph or less at a time, and these explanations are generally helpful.

Branden writes from personal experience, and usually goes into detail.He concentrates mostly on the 18-year association with Ayn Rand that dominated his life, as she progressively became his mentor, friend, lover, and business partner.While he still defends her philosophy, he also provides a full account of her erratic personality.

Rand could patiently discuss all sorts of worldly topics, but would lose her temper at the most trivial annoyances.Jammed locks, missing buttons and broken toasters conspired against her.She never learned to drive, and had a hard time mastering any real technology, despite writing extensively about it.

Branden entered Rand's life while she was writing Atlas Shrugged.He soon persuaded a few relatives and close friends (including Alan Greenspan) to join her inner circle.They met weekly in her apartment to read the ongoing manuscript, and jokingly referred to themselves as "the Collective".In exchange for letting them into her life, Rand demanded total allegiance and unquestioning loyalty.

Over the years, the Collective became increasingly cult-like.A follower who was charged with some treasonable offense, like associating with the wrong people or not adequately defending Ayn Rand, would be brought before the whole group to be tried, with Branden acting as prosecutor.If the charge was serious enough, the defendant would be banished.

Rand did nothing to discourage these dictatorial tendencies; if anything, she enhanced them.Nobody was immune to her self-righteous moral condemnation.She couldn't trust anyone who didn't share her artistic, musical, literary and theatrical tastes.She was quick to judge people by their looks, even before getting to know them.She was coolly ruthless when dealing with the feelings of others.The Collective was a very emotionally repressed group, though she was free to lose her temper at any time.She boasted that she could rationally explain every emotion she had.

Branden writes about the good times too, and there were plenty of those, though they happened less frequently after the affair ended.Still, he evaded the inevitable confrontation for over 4 years because he didn't want to relinquish his position as the "intellectual heir" to Ayn Rand.

While Branden admits his past mistakes and seems apologetic for many of his actions, the old arrogance is still there.For instance, he brags about the breakthroughs he's made in psychology.Shouldn't his peers in the field, or perhaps independent studies, determine whether he was a great innovater or an ineffective experimenter?

He commits a few errors, too.He calls anarchism a political philosophy when it should be defined as the absence of politics, much like atheism is the absence of religion.He misrepresents Murray Rothbard as an anarchist because he claimed to be one, when Rothbard actually advocated mob rule.

Branden's role in founding the Objectivist movement seems to have gotten lost among the protests, riots, assassinations, wars, cultural upheavals, and other events of the 1960s.This book may be his attempt to claim a spot in that era, since he often relates the feeling that he was participating in history.Nathaniel, you don't work for a cause because you think you'll be remembered, you do so because it's right.

The front of Judgment Day's dust jacket is perhaps the most striking summary of Branden's life:no matter what he does, says or thinks, Ayn Rand will always be lurking in his background.

Provides good insight into two remarkable individuals
This book gives keen insight into the minds of two people who have influenced many through their writings, philosophical and otherwise. As the author reveals in extreme detail, their relationship was an extremely intense one, and this is not surprising given the capacity and power of their intellects. Their eventual separation was bitter, and even before this book came out, in fact long before, those who are familiar with their early writings could sense that something very bad had happened between them. Their break however did not affect their productivity and in spite of the pain they no doubt felt after it, both of them still exhibited a brilliance that is still being felt today through their writings.

Some who read the book may say that it is the age difference between Rand and Branden that exacerbated their problems. This no doubt played a factor, and the author acknowledges this also, but as the book reveals, there were other things that aggravated such a relationship between two intellectual powerhouses as these are (were). Rand would like to say that it is the rational intellect that serves as the glue for a lasting and true relationship. Her limited definition of rationality though results in a narrow bandwidth that limits any alternative notions of love and friendship from getting through to her. The aesthetic quality of two people can play a large role in their attraction, and this should cause no surprise if one thinks of it in the context of human evolution. In addition, two people can be quite at odds philosophically and still have a satisfying relationship, a notion though that Rand would not be able to entertain.

One can only imagine the pain that the spouses of these two individuals felt during their affair, which, interestingly, was known and revealed to them beforehand. The 'rational' decision that all four of them agreed to, namely that such an affair was 'meaningful' given the context, and to be shouldered lightly by their spouses. But such adventures, no matter how sophisticated the morality that brings them about, can be a heavy burden to those that decide to engage in them. Rand herself spoke of the proper identification of the facts of reality in order to live a successful life, but she had no prior experience in the affair she decided to participate in. Its consequences, and the feelings brought about therein, were not, and perhaps could not, be predicted by the moral system that all parties believed in at the time. It is easy to engage in the thinking about such systems; it is quite another to give them empirical content, and to show that they indeed are the ultimate guide to human conduct.

In the beginning of the book, the author, in spite of their break, still expresses deep feelings for Rand, and deep regret at the announcement of her death. One can only wonder if Rand herself, after their break, ever, in the privacy of her thoughts, missed the author and the times they spent together. Anger takes much concentration to sustain itself, and is contrary to the natural human state of optimism, the latter both Rand and the author arguing well for. But these two individuals, through their personal interactions with each other, and via their writings, have had an enormous influence on many individuals, both positive and negative, but mostly positive...indeed overwhelmingly positive. In spite of the pain brought to others and themselves because of their affair, this influence is something both of them should be proud of. ... Read more

Product Description
Previous Praise for Nathaniel Branden"Relentlessly revealing. . . the myth of Ayn Rand gives way to a full-sized portrait in contrasting colors, appealing and appalling, potent and paradoxical. . . . it takes a special kind of nerve to write such a book."--Norman Cousins, author of Head First and The Healing Heart

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is one of the most influential books of the twentieth century-its popular impact ranked second only to the Bible in a major poll. Millions know Rand as one of this century's great thinkers, writers, and philosophers, yet much about the private Ayn Rand remains shrouded in mystery.

Who was Ayn Rand?

My Years with Ayn Rand charts the course of the clandestine, tempestuous relationship between the enigmatic author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and Nathaniel Branden-her young disciple and future pioneer of the self-esteem movement. In this book, discover the real Ayn Rand through the eyes of the man who became her soul mate and shared her passions and philosophical ideals.

Their tragic and tumultuous love story began with a letter written by Branden as an admiring teenage fan and Anded, more than twenty years later, with accusations of betrayal and bitter recriminations. My Years with Ayn Rand paints an unforgettable portrait of Ayn Rand-whose ideas, even today, can generate a maelstrom of controversy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (38)

Nathan is a Survivor
I could not put this down. It was almost like reading a non fiction account of the characters of Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead - all put into a real life story. Ayn Rand was not lying when she said that Nathaniel Branden is the male embodiment of her philosophy. Behind any differences that may have developed in the lives of these characters and the tragedies they overcame(especially Nathaniel)emerges the sincere, completely accounted for objective account of what happened through the eyes of one of the characters. I enjoyed how Nathaniel included exactly how he felt throughout his entire life in addition to exact accounts of conversations on almost every page. I think the principle that illuminated my mind most in this book was one that I naturally derived from the life of Nathaniel. Here is a man who was exposed to a great woman (Ayn Rand) and presented with a body of knowledge. He essentially never stopped growing, and never stopped confronting new situations and learning more - always building upon the knowledge he had. The beauty of the story is how Nathaniel puts into practice the valuing of his own moral judgment above others throughout the story and achieves his happiness/sanity through doing just that. Nathaniel is torn before assuming full responsibility for guiding his life with his own moral judgment. We can all relate to this. This all culminates with his decision to leave Ayn and Barbara and marry Patrecia, a gorgeous, jubilant model who the reader immediately fell in love with after seeing her picture and reading her thoughts. She tragically dies at a high point in the story, though Nathaniel carries on and marries another attractive woman and writes more books. I do not care what the Ayn Rand Institute has to say about Nathaniel Branden. He is one who has not gave up in pursuing his ecstasy. It is apparent that how we seek that ecstasy, and the consistence/confidence (self esteem) we put in our ability to achieve our unique form of it through our own moral judgment to sustain the creation of that ecstasy is what makes us successful individuals. I learned a lot from this book. I doubt a memoir by any other psychologist could be this fascinating. I truly enjoyed this book - it is a memoir which says that happiness is truly possible to the man who honestly pursues it.

A Revised Judgment
A lot has been said about the memoirs of Nathaniel Branden.JUDGMENT DAY, published in 1989 in part as a response to his ex-wife's 1986 memoir/biography THE PASSION OF AYN RAND, presents a somewhat different take on Ayn Rand.Instead of the repressed genius of Barbara Branden's book, we get a Rand who, although a genius, was conventionally nasty and ungrateful (worst of all to Nathaniel Branden).

Branden also tries to settle some scores, not only with Rand, but with his cousin, Leonard Peikoff, and his ex-wife.Personally I don't find this particularly edifying.Nor am I interested in learning about how Rand was in the sack.

Nathaniel Branden revised this book in 1999, using the more modest MY YEARS WITH AYN RAND as a title. It's a bit more toned down with respect to others (in particular his ex-wife and cousin), but the description of Rand is basically the same.

Of the three books, I think Barbara Branden's biography is the best.Those interested in Rand should start there.

A memoir Ayn Rand's followers need to read.
I read Fountainhead when I was 18 and soon followed it with Atlas Shrugged. I liked Fountainhead for its individualist philosophy. Roark became my hero. I read Atlas Shrugged and was appalled at Rand's extremist views. Anyone who differs from her ideas is evil according to her. She spews venom and hopes to convert readers to her ideas with the force of her contempt.

I decided to read Branden's memoir in an appempt to gain more insight into what made this lady so bitter and angry. Its clear she lived only in amake believe world of ideas. She did not see reality as it was. She believed she was the personification of all her ideal values. Yet her need for adulation , her childish need to seek total acquiescence from her followers show she was far removed from her idea of a Hero.
Branden does a good job of humanising this self styled demi goddess. You just need to read this and you never need to be tempted again to read the churlish, self righteous sermonising of Rand.

read it and bathe
This book was lying around the house, undoubtedly the result of the peregrinations of someone in the family through the remainder bins. I think I should clarify that the book I am reviewing, Judgment Day, is actually an earlier version of "My Years with Ayn Rand." I guess Branden got tired of being judged, or maybe needed to display Rand's name more prominently on the cover--or realized the Christian implication of his title.

I also should state that I couldn't care less about Branden, Rand, Objectivism, the Self-Esteem Movement, Libertarianism, or any other person or idea associated with the people involved in the book--a point I mention because many reviewers seem to feel strongly about some or all of the above. I did read the Fountainhead, many years ago, when I was 14, which seems to be a favorable age for finding prose like "Howard Roark laughed" not laughable. For a year or so I thought the book was great; then I lost interest. Personally, I think I developed greater literary sensitivity and a more adult appreciation of human psychology, but I don't want to patronize the many adults in the world who think everything Ayn is fine. Therefore, to anyone who needs to know--as Rand-people need to know--whether I'm "for" them, the answer is "no," which I guess means I'm against them.

I gave this book any stars at all because I believe it would speed the clear-eyed adolescent admirer of Objectivism to a better realization of the implications of all that hero-worship and examining premises stuff. I cannot imagine anyone finishing this book without having shuddered in disgust at least once. Was it possible Branden actually wrote a cautionary tale in the form of an apologia? Is he that clever?

I think not. I think Branden was trying to rehabilitate himself. Yet he remains so thickly encased in his own sense of self-importance that he cannot place himself in the position of any other human being. Therefore, when he describes a cousin who fails to understand him as "a eunuch," or lists his first wife as not the victim but the perpetrator of her own pain, I think he does not realize that a lot of readers will read the subtext rather than the text, and think, "What an unsympathetic creep." And, I should add, an unsympathetic creep who has made his living for the past 25 years as a psychologist in Southern California (which helps explain, now that this East Coast writer thinks about it, the mental disequilibrium of Los Angeles).

Here is an analogy I bet no one has made: The person Branden most reminded me of was our past beloved president, Bill Clinton. There is the same broad intellectual ability, charisma, and extroversion, wrecked by a sense of personal infallibility, an adolescent ego that sees his own life writ large across the cosmos, and, most damaging, an inability to take personal responsibility for bad decisions and suffer the negative consequences thereof. This guy (for those who don't know what I'm talking about) for over 20 years couldn't manage to extricate himself from a wacky mother-son romance (while married to a woman his own age) with Ayn Rand, that for at least half that time he didn't want. Couldn't help himself; didn't want to hurt her; didn't want to hurt the movement; didn't know which way was up; surrounded by moralists and enemies; help, get me outta here! His house of cards fell down around him when Woman Number 3 entered the picture and the bed just got too crowded. Studliness hath its price: Branden's not the first middle-aged guy who lost it all toa young bimbo, but true to type, he acted, and writes, like he was and is. I suppose in the days of the Patriarchs love meant never having to say you're sorry, but, as Rand and Branden spent most of their lives lamenting in a very Gloria Swanson-way, life has gotten smaller since then.

I took off 3 stars because the writing is boring and repetitive, there is almost no character development in spite of pages and pages of self-analysis and breast-beating (or chest-thumping), and most of the characters are very unpleasant. I will say that Wife #1, Barbara, seems like a real piece of work who I'd be interested in knowing better--that Nathaniel got away with this book without having her sue his tail off is testimony in that single fact to more strength of character on her part than her ex-husband displayed all the times of his life, added up.

Smear and exploitation of Ayn Rand (read The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics for the whole story)
This book is a smear job against Ayn Rand so that Nathaniel Branden can clean up his own tarnished reputation while cashing in on Ayn Rand's fame.

James S. Valliant, in his book The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics: The Case Against the Brandens, thoroughly dissects the claims made by the Brandens against Ayn Rand. He then references Ayn Rand's own personal journals to systematically demonstrate how Barbara and Nathaniel Branden deceived and exploited Ayn Rand for years for their own illegitimate aims. Even after Ayn Rand's death, the Brandens continue to cash in on Ayn Rand's self-made fame and her original philosophy of Objectivism. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Objectivism is a philosophy created by Ayn Rand, which some homosexuals have been interested in for its celebration of personal freedom and individuality at the expense of government power. Although her personal views of homosexuality were unambiguously negative, Rand consistently advocated the right to political freedom and equality for homosexuals while opposing laws against discrimination affecting the private sector. ... Read more

Product Description
This brief text assists students in understanding Ayn Rand's philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series," (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON AYN RAND is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher better enabling students to engage the reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

An excellent introduction and explanation to the meat of Ayn Rand's philosophy.
John V. Karavitis wishes to encourage everyone who wants to learn more about how Ayn Rand came up with Objectivism to read this excellent entry in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series.To quote from the beginning of Chapter 10, 'Virtue, Self and Others':"The fundamental values required for man's survival are constants.Reason.Purpose.Self-esteem.These are values which one must develop and achieve throughout one's life."Just incredible.I myself John V. Karavitis think that it is absolutely amazing how Ayn Rand begins with Aristotle's "Law of Identity", then immediately leads to the "Law of Causality", and from there creates the most liberating philosophical edifice ever created.John V. Karavitis having read "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" now more fully appreciates what Ayn Rand was driving at, and why.Many people feel that Ayn Rand is a "philosophical hack", a "poseur", if you will.John V. Karavitis says READ THIS BOOK.Five stars for yet another entry in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series.John Karavitis.

Mediocre Introduction to Rand
Allan Gotthelf is a philosopher and a follower of the ideas of philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand. He is associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, which advocates the "Official Objectivism" of Leonard Peikoff.

Generally speaking, ON AYN RAND is reliable introduction to Rand's thought. On the other hand, it's of the strangest books I've read in terms of its "construction."The endnotes take up an unusually large percentage of the book.For example, chapter 4 is 5 pages long and the endnotes almost 3 full pages.In addition, much valuable information that is contained in the endnotes belongs in the text.The discussion of her first novel, WE THE LIVING, takes up one paragraph in the text, but there are three paragraph length endnotes that tell you much more about the novel.This is highly unusual for any book, particularly an introduction.It's almost as if the book was put together from two separate sources.And, although the book is 97 pages long, the section on Rand's politics is one page long!Simply put, this is not a book that will grab the attention of those new to Rand or those who know her mostly through her novels and politics.

What is most troubling about the book is its partisan tone, which at times approaches agitprop.There is not a single word of criticism of Rand, and Gotthelf's praise is overboard.We read about the "poignant and beautiful lines" of one of her books, how her theories are "remarkable" and "original," and how her theory of concept formation would change the world if only we would let it into our heart.There is also a deliberate attempt to downplay the influence of Nietzsche (or any other thinker) on her thought.But what I found most irritating is that 100% of the time she is referred to as "Ayn Rand."A huge flaw is the failure to mention any books on Ayn Rand not written by Official Objectivists.Indeed, when he mentions in a footnote that Barbara Branden wrote a memoir/biography of Rand, he doesn't even name the book (although he insists that it's riddled with errors).He claims that there is no evidence that Rand's philosophy professors in Russia influenced her - an obvious reference to Chris Sciabarra's book AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL - but he doesn't mention Sciabarra or the book's title.The bibliography mentions only books by Rand, with the exception of Peikoff's OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND.

Although Rand has been the subject of considerable interest of late, there is still no completely satisfactory introduction to her thought.The best introduction remains Tibor Machan's AYN RAND.

A good gloss-over of Rand
This book is good for someone who wants to understand Rand but does not yet want to dive into the endless books by and on Rand.It is a good overview of her philosophy and life, but certainly not complete.

Those liking this book will also like "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" by Leonard Piekoff

A good short summary of Rand's errors
Allan Gotthelf has written a decent little book here. Aside from a couple of annoying verbal habits (e.g. always writing out Ayn Rand's full name every time he refers to her) and a couple of unpleasantnesses (e.g. some nasty remarks about the Brandens and the existing secondary literature on Objectivism), this is actually a pretty well-written and well-organized brief overview of Rand's thought. (Of course -- heh heh! -- you shouldn't expect to understand it all _right away_. It takes _many, many years of serious study_ to learn that Rand was absolutely correct in every single particular.)

The presentation is orderly, if occasionally skimpy. Gotthelf devotes a couple of short, fawning chapters (well, all the chapters are short -- and fawning, too, come to think of it) to Rand's sinless life and then proceeds to take the reader on a guided tour through the main features of her thought in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Political theory gets short shrift, but that's okay; while it was undoubtedly the strongest (or at any rate the least vulnerable) portion of Rand's philosophy, it was also by far the least original (which, actually, is _why_ it was the least vulnerable). Aesthetics doesn't get much attention either, which is sort of too bad, but maybe Gotthelf doesn't want to give away too many of Rand's propaganda techniques.

I especially enjoyed the tour; it's always a pleasure to encounter a book that one has completely refuted before it was even published. The reviewer from Austin is right: Rand _wasn't_ really a very good philosopher. And Gotthelf's accurate-but-uncritical summary of Rand has been a tremendous help to me in rewriting, for publication, my critique of Rand's epistemology (still available in an earlier draft form on my website); he confirms and recommits every error I pick on her for, and may even introduce one or two new ones of his own. (For example, at one point he seems to imply that the "primacy of existence" premise commits him to materialism.)

You may well imagine that critics of Objectivism (of whom I am obviously one) receive lots of silly e-mails telling them they've gotten this or that point entirely wrong (usually from people who don't seem to be able to read all that well themselves). So I'm happy to say that at numerous points I have been able to use Gotthelf's handy little text to confirm (yet again) that I was reading Rand correctly after all, and that she was just as wrong as I said she was. Now that I've taken account of his work in rewriting my own, the result is a much clearer critique. (Which just goes to show, I suppose, that Objectivists and libertarians _can_ cooperate in a good cause.)

And I'm not kidding about the quality of Gotthelf's work; this _is_ a fairly well-executed introduction, although it will probably be a bit hard to read for anyone completely unfamiliar with Rand's work. For the most part (but not entirely!) this little book reads like a precis of Leonard Peikoff's _Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand_ (which is, by the way, one of the few items of "secondary Objectivist literature" about which Gotthelf has anything good to say). As such it will make a helpful companion to that volume, whether Peikoff likes it or not. (And as I hinted, if you read carefully you'll find a few points at which Gotthelf disagrees with Peikoff and the ARI mainstream. For example, did Rand think her ethic was founded on an "axiom"? Compare Gotthelf's remarks with David Harriman's in the _Journals of Ayn Rand_.)

It will also be helpful to anyone -- Randie or otherwise -- who wants a quick and dirty summary of what Objectivism is all about. Love it or hate it, here it is.

All of Rand's Sins, None of Her Virtues
Gotthelf's book is probably the worst introduction to Rand yet written.

The book is clear to a reader only if that reader is already highly familiar with the idiosyncratic semi-technical vocabulary of Objectivism. Indeed, not only does Gotthelf express Rand's thoughts in Rand's rather obscure way of speaking, he typically lets her speak for herself - literally. Most of the main ideas are introduced by way of quoting Rand, at length. This might be okay were Gotthelf to then elucidate Rand's strange formulations, but he takes it for granted that the quotations are clear.But, when cut from context, the quotations lose most of their original flavor. This means that Gotthelf has managed to replicate all of the problems with Rand's unclear and inconsistent language without replicating any of her energy and lively style.

Gotthelf has a skewed approach to the question of how much of the book to use on a given subject. He devotes quite a bit of it to deeply a adoring account of Rand's biography, without citing the unauthorized memoir and biography by Rand's closest companions or even the authorized biography written by Barbara Branden in the early 1960's. He does cite Leonard Peikoff's biographical essay on Rand. It is appropriate that Gotthelf, who fails to display much concern with the truth about Rand's life, should cite Peikoff: Peikoff concludes that essay by explaining that our wishes determine what kind of a person Rand was.

One could tolerate hagiography if it at least included some relevant information about the development of Rand's philosophy. But this one does not. The well-articulated and strongly defended theory that Rand's philosophical development was much influenced by her immersion, in the Russia of her youth and education, in the dialectical methodology characteristic to the approach of virtually all academics in virtually all subjects on virtually all sides of virtually all questions. That is, Gotthelf manages to spend about a third of the book celebrating Rand, without mentioning the one and only fact about her personal history that is at all interesting from a philosophical point of view: that she may have taken elements of her philosophical methodology from the educational system in which she studied.

Gotthelf's skewed sense for what is worth including is displayed elsewhere, in his decision to spend about 40% of the book on Rand's metaphysics; primarily her theory of concepts. This leads him to shortchange Rand's politics, dealing with Rand's most well-known theory on a single page.

But, since Gotthelf spends so much of the book on Rand's metaphysics, and uses quotations from Rand to do most of his explaining, we must ask whether this book is a more efficient introduction to Rand's metaphysics than just reading Rand. Rand's work on metaphysics is about 100 pages long; more if you count the appendices, which help to elucidate but add little that's really essential. So now we're wading through 35 pages of hagiography and 40 pages of metaphysics to get not just the same old explanations but quotations that one could have found in Rand in a book that's only about 25 pages longer.

The discussion of ethics is similarly problematic. Rand's meta-ethical argument is deeply obscure. One cannot, by reading her essay on the subject, discover what are its premises, what are its conclusions, and how one infers the conclusions from the premises. All of the various interpretations of this argument that have been offered have been subjected to serious criticism. Gotthelf neither explains the argument (more quotations) nor even tries to show how it can deal with the criticisms that have been offered.

Rand was not a really very good philosopher; her programmatic, mostly methodological, insights require a total reworking from the bottom up. One wonders whether she'll ever acquire a scholarly following capable of doing this, or if the poor woman will be forever cursed with unconstructive, admiring sycophants on the scale of Gotthelf. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A Mind Out Of Focus
Ayn Rand was a thinker whose ideas ranged from the insightful to the ill informed.Occasionally she says something interesting and you think she had a unique ability to get to the heart of the matter.Other times, you shake your head and ask yourself how could someone be so misguided.I don't have a good explanation for why this is the case, but if you want to see Rand's mind *not* at work, her "marginalia" (comments she wrote in books she read) is the place to start.

Part of Rand's problem is that she is intent on misreading and misinterpreting what others write.She thinks she knows that an author means better than he does.At times, her misunderstandings border on the bizarre.For example, she comments on von Mises's work HUMAN ACTION.For page after page, Rand misconstrues what Mises said.(At one point she even "corrects" his definition of money.I'd like to see *her* 500 page treatise on monetary theory.)In one section, Mises discusses the Austrian concept of "the sovereignty of the consumer."This idea means that in a free market economy, businesses must produce and sell what consumers want if they are to stay in business.If consumers want dishwashers and porno mags instead of Beethoven CDs, then that's what will be produced.If you think about it, this is a powerful argument against socialism and government planning.The economy is already "planned" by consumers who vote with their dollars.Do government bureaucrats know better what consumers want?Yet Rand will have none of this.She goes into a tizzy about the term "sovereignty."It has"altruist-parasite implication[s]."It turns people into "slaves" of the "whims" of the consumer.

Even worse is Rand's misunderstanding of C.S. Lewis's work THE ABOLITION OF MAN.Lewis makes the point that planners use the power they have gained from science to dominate man.He concludes that any power won by man is also a power over man.Rand goes bonkers and comments "So when you cure men of . . .[diseases] - you make them weaker!!!" Uh, that wasn't exactly his point.She even accuses Lewis (an Anglican) of wanting science subservient to the Pope!

The most of obvious question is why would Ayn Rand's estate publish stuff which makes her look like something of a, well, loon?As the editor Robert Mayhew (a professor philosophy at Seton Hall) admits, Rand never imagined that her jottings would be published.Incredibly, Prof. Mayhew, while conceding the harshness of some of Rand's comments, says there isn't one case where what Rand said was "unfair."He even holds Rand's comment about C.S. Lewis that I quoted above as an example of her "matchless mind in action."

I like Ayn
As a fan of Ayn Rand, I'm tired of it feeling like a "guilty pleasure" to like her.

Every time I come out of the closet about my affection for Rand, it turns out bad, because I have to defend or at least explain the silly bunch of humorless crackpots that the Peikoff Factory keeps churning out. It's like being a Christian trying to explain away the Inquisitors.

Rand was frequently ridiculous, often pathetic, and permanently out-of-touch with her own internal emotional realities. (Come on, after the Branden affair, can even her most ardent followers deny that she was a little screwed up in the bedroom?).

She reminds us all just how hard it is to not be full of it when your emotions are involved, especially if you pride yourself more than anything else on not being full of it.

Rand was still a great human being, and I wish I'd known her personally. She might not have liked me, but I like her. She remains a great litmus test. I've observed that people who react to her like vampires to garlic are usually about as judgmental and arrogant as she was, just not as bright.

Still, it would help me a lot if you true believers would stop trying to mimic her pejorative style. Your constant overuse in ordinary conversation of words like cowardice, evasion, appall(ing/ed) immoral, depraved, etc. is like 4 year olds trying to swear. When Ayn smote the wicked, it was magnificant, but you guys couldn't smite your way out of a wet paper bag.

Oh, and please, nobody come back at me with any form of the archetype of Randian smite-speech: "there (is/can be) no greater (depravity/crime/abdication/evasion/immorality) than to...."

I swear I've heard you people use that phrasing for every thoughtcrime from putting up with your born-again sister-in-law's preaching without humiliating her at Thanksgiving dinner, to liking Elvis (it doesn't matter which Elvis, they're all depraved, you know).

And while I'm at it, you all can quit recoiling in horror every time you read something you don't agree with.

I just re-read Atlas Shrugged again for the first time in 20 years. Pretty cool book, and it helped me come up with a new drinking game. Start reading the book, and every time you find the word "torture" in a love scene, you get to take a shot. You can stay drunk for a week!

Rand never looked worse
I agree with other "negative" reviewers who regard this work as embarrassing.This book ends up making Rand look very bad indeed.In note after note, she seems determined to misunderstand, distort, even re-writewhat she is reading.If I were the executors of Rand's estate, I wouldhave burned these notes.To publish them to the world is practicallyscandalous.

A negative review with my name on it
I don't know what "cowards" that other reviewer has in mind, but there are several negative reviews here with the reviewers' names on them -- including an earlier one from me that has scrolled off the page. Maybethe anonymous reviewers just don't like getting spammed by angryObjectivists; me, I collect that stuff. The really choice examples I postto discussion lists so everybody can see them.

As for this volume itself,it's a collection of rather embarrassing marginal notes from some booksthat Rand attempted to read. Unfortunately she read them as though theirauthors were using terms with the meanings _she_ assigned them, andtherefore often misunderstood them. (As I and other reviewers have noted,her misreading of Ludwig von Mises' "subjectivism" is a very goodexample.)

It _is_ possible to support this contention by argument andexample. But this review board isn't a discussion list; reviewers here postfairly brief opinions, not lengthy, thoroughly argued essays. Objectivistswho expect otherwise, and then criticize only the _negative_ reviewers fornot giving all their reasons, are simply revealing their ownbiases.

Intellectual cowardice, indeed. I think that charge appliesrather to Objectivists who respond only with insults when their guru iscriticized. But please, keep those insults coming; sooner or later,_everyone_ will know just how centrally important reason and rationalityare to Rand's devoted followers.

cowardly critics
It's very nice to see all of the critical comments on Rand backed up by nothing in terms of substance.Indeed, the reviews are almost akin to, "I don't understand Rand but I shall say she is bad regardless." I don't blame those of you who identify yourselves as "A Reader"rather than leaving your email addresses and names.I would expect no lessconsidering the intellectual cowardice within your reviews. ... Read more