(Word
to the wise: Ayn Rand's books make great gifts!)Reason, Egoism, Capitalism—spreading
underground
Ayn Rand
| To learn philosophy, begin with Ayn Rand. She is the only first rank philosopher who lived in our era. Because she lived in our era, you need no preliminary training to understand her examples and language. Because she is a first rank philosopher, she hacked a path through the centuries' long accumulation of BS, hogwash, balderdash and lies that has passed for philosophy since David Hume. You can lope down the trail she cleared. |
| To learn Ayn Rand, begin with her major novels: The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. Through them, she was able to express more than even she knew explicitly; it is on record that she herself learned new things from them. If you haven't read Rand, I envy you the joy of discovering, probably for the first time, a deep thinker who is committed to reality. |
| Ayn Rand's works are still under copyright and selling briskly, so only snippets are available to download from the net. You'll have to buy or borrow copies to read them. |
You can buy Ayn Rand's works right here!
(Word
to the wise: Ayn Rand's books make great gifts!)
| Atlas Shrugged | paperback | hardcover |
| The Fountainhead | paperback | hardcover |
| Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal Essays on political philosophy. The essay "What is Capitalism?" presents her fundamental distinction between subjective, intrinsic and objective theories. | paperback | hardcover |
| For the New Intellectual Major philosophical passages from her fiction, with a title essay sketching the cause and cure of the West's intellectual plight. | paperback | hardcover |
| Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Her revolutionary theory of concepts, centered on "measurement omission." Close to the core of her achievement, and pregnant with the future. Not easy, but essential. | paperback | hardcover |
| Philosophy: Who Needs It? The answer is: you do! The title essay is probably the best introduction to philosophy ever written! (I say "probably," only because Aristotle's has been lost, and isn't available for comparison.) | paperback | hardcover |
| Romantic Manifesto Man the rational animal is man the artistic animal. Why? The role of art in making your deepest, most abstract convictions concretely real to you, and so in preserving the integrity of your mind. Essential reading. | paperback | hardcover |
| Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism In the essay "The Objectivist Ethics," she shows how to derive values logically from facts, an "ought" from an "is," and thereby cuts off irrationality in ethics at the root. | paperback | hardcover |
| The New Left An excellent demonstration of her skill at tracing the practical consequences of doctrines which most people would think impossible to believe, let alone to practice. | paperback | hardcover |
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