4 pages already and nobody has yet tossed this one into the discussion?
Source unknown to me.
I think that is John Rogers. One of the best things said by anyone whose name is not Oscar Wilde.
So what would be an pseudo philosophy for “smart people”?
Poststructuralism.
I didn’t know this one, but it sounds very much like post-modernism, which was severly critized by Alan Sokal. Very nice book.
As a response to the question above: most of the Works by Joseph Stiglitz, for example this one.
Atlas Shrugged is not nearly the best-selling book of all time. However, it is one of the most influential books in America. In 1991, the Book-of-the-Month club asked its members to rate the most influential books they had ever read. The Bible came in at #1, and Atlas Shrugged at #2. It appears regularly on other lists of the most influential books.
As for overall sales, it certainly went through a long period where it didn’t sell all that many per year, but in this decade its sales have been steadily climbing. In 2008, it sold over 200,000 copies. In 2007, it sold 185,000 copies. This year, it’s on pace to sell over 500,000 copies. Its sales rank on Amazon.com is currently #149, which is pretty impressive for a 50 year old book.
In addition, two new biographies of Rand are big sellers, and a favorable documentary of her life was nominated for an Oscar for best documetary a couple of years ago. The movie adaptation of Atlas Shrugged is apparently in the works, with Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie being considered for the part of Dagny Taggart. If that movie gets made, expect sales of Atlas Shrugged to take off again.
Like her or not, it’s indisputable that she’s a very important force in American political discourse.
Sam Stone, I am enjoined from responding to you by tomndebb’s recent edict. Do not equate my lack of response as assent.
Perhaps so, but they’ll be facing the daunting comparisons to Travolta’s Battlefield Earth. I understand that Forest Whitaker still wakes up screaming…
Guys, guys! Ixnay on the alkingtay about ookbay alesay. It is the thread topic that dares not speak its name, because it is not of interest to omndebbtay.
Well - yes!
But IIRC it was a very distant second, and followed closely by Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea and L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. This is not exactly good company.
There is something to that. In perusing Rand books - never finished any, unreadable to my tastes - I had a queer sense of reading liberal free market thought being lensed through a totalitarian, even communist mode of thinking. The idealised proles replaced by the idealised man of industry.
If you want some raw material for the “philosophy of Objectivism” I would focus on the last 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged (John Galt speaks), the rest of the book paints people who follow her philosophy as good and pure and everyone else as evil leeches.
Its a bit rambling, repetitive and hard to follow and could probably have been condensed into 15 pages without losing anything but shipping costs but that is where you will find her philosophy if you want to call it that.
My take is that Ayn Rand gives license to immoral people to act immorally.
But if that is what Objectivism is about, then it doesn’t really say anything new does it?
Yeah but they seem to gravitate to Ayn Rand quite a bit.
I think he is saying you should inster the word “is” between the words “Rand” and “for” in the title.
It’s amazing how much hostility one finds towards Rand from her critics. If all she is is just a bad writer and childish pseudo-philosopher, why does she generate so much ill feelings? Do people feel that way about Dan Brown?
Many people hate Rand because of the fascination libertarians have for the work.
Dan Brown has spawned no similar political movement so he is nothing to be concerned about. Stephen King sells a hell of a lot of books but the last time I looked he did not advocate a political philosophy which would turn us back of the Gilded Age. Lots of other authors are in the same category. It is the FOLLOWERS and DISCIPLES of Rand and they beliefs they have that are the pimple on the ass of the body politic.
Well, that’s a pretty stupid reason to hate her. But whatever rocks your boat.
Why is that a “stupid reason”? Ron Paul - the libertarian pin up boy - names his son RAND after her. Most libertarians you talk to think she wrote the equal of the Bible for their way of thinking. Why is that a “stupid reason” not to like what she spawned?