Ayn Rand — VOICES for REASON

ARC senior fellow Dr. Onkar Ghate has an article published today on FoxNews.com’s opinion page.  Titled “The Radicalness of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged,” Dr. Ghate writes:

To give a taste of its radicalness, consider that  today it’s taken for granted that the man of virtue is Mother Teresa-like; he  selflessly lives to serve others and demands that you do the same. The man of  vice is selfish; he pursues his own interests and demands that his actions bring  him a profit. Whenever a television show or movie needs a stock villain, one  whose evil motivation will require no setup, you can be sure a businessman  erecting an office building on treed land or a corporation testing an  experimental drug will be written in. Simply to point out that they are pursuing  profit is sufficient to damn them. Judging from my experience, more murders on  television are committed by businessmen than by mobsters.

It is this entire viewpoint, entrenched for  centuries by religious and secular thinkers alike, that Atlas Shrugged challenges. What emerges from its pages is that the moral man is in fact truly  selfish: he chooses to embrace his own life by choosing to purposefully,  systematically, and unwaveringly do the thinking and take the actions necessary  for his own happiness.

Read the rest of Dr. Ghate’s op-ed here.  And if you’ve heard of the movie and are interested in exploring Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, you can start here.

On Earth Day, we’re told that we should take stock of our impact on our environment. The assumption, of course, is that it’s bad—that we are, to use the common phrase “destroying the planet.”

On this month’s Power Hour—my podcast/Internet-radio-show on energy issues—I bring in philosopher Dr. Onkar Ghate, a senior colleague of mine at the Ayn Rand Center, to question this assumption, and many other assumptions about the relationship between human beings in our environment. Dr. Ghate discusses everything from the political, philosophical, and religious origins of modern environmentalists (the leaders of Earth Day) to the Japanese nuclear situation to how industrialization has positively impacted our environment to the danger of “moderate” environmentalist policies.

I’ve read a lot about environmentalism over the years, and I sincerely believe that Dr. Ghate’s explanations in this podcast are some of the best, clearest explanations of environmental issues available anywhere. Make sure you listen to this interview at least once before Earth Day.

For more information on Power Hour, as well as other commentary on energy issues subscribe to my newsletter “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy” by sending an email.

Download “Power Hour with Alex Epstein,” Episode 3: Onkar Ghate

Subscribe to podcast | iTunes
image: sxc.hu

“Most of us do not take much note when February 2 passes–and if we do, it’s just in reference to Groundhog Day. But February 2nd marks something much more important than a mythical, weather-forecasting rodent. It is the birthday of the late, great author and philosopher Ayn Rand, the woman who gave us Atlas Shrugged (1957), one of the most influential works of the 20th century.”

“Although Atlas Shrugged is a must read for everyone, it is particularly the case for anyone in the business world. If you ask any hundred successful businessmen chosen at random to name the book that has most inspired them, you will undoubtedly hear Atlas Shrugged repeated over and over. Why?”

To find out, read “Why Businessmen Should Say Happy Birthday to Ayn Rand,” my latest article on FoxNews.com.

The official description of this creative video contest is as enticing as it is brief:

Create a short web video, 3 minutes max, on how Ayn Rand’s epic story relates to current issues in society or in your own life. And have fun doing it.

Sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute, videos will be judged on their intellectual strength, creativity and persuasiveness.

I can’t wait to see all the imaginative angles that creative people will be coming up with. But note: the deadline is December 8, 2010, less than a month away.

Entries are already being posted on the Atlas Shrugged website. First prize is $5,000! Viewers can also vote on their favorites, and the creator of the most popular entry will win an Apple iPad stocked with Ayn Rand’s writings.

The Objectivist Academic Center is currently accepting applications for its Fall 2010 incoming class. Designed to provide a comprehensive and systematic study of philosophy, Objectivism and objective communication, this unique program is for those who are serious about advocating pro-reason, pro-individual rights, pro-capitalism views.

The program is especially designed for full-time college students, for whom there is next to no cost. Applications from professionals interested in pursuing careers as intellectual activists are also welcome.

For those who are not able to commit to a full program, the OAC offers an auditing option. Consider taking our “Seminar in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Objectivism.”

The final application deadline for this year is July 30.

My colleague Onkar Ghate has written a guest post for the Division of Labour blog answering a question on the moral views of Adam Smith and of Ayn Rand. The question was prompted by a recent debate between ARI’s Yaron Brook and Prof. James Otteson (a scholar of Smith). That spirited debate took place at the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. The question:

Take Smith’s famous thought experiment about — by some fantastic unstated mechanism — you (“a man of humanity in Europe”, in 1759) could prevent an earthquake in China by cutting off your pinky. Smith says that of course you would do so, and then addresses why. Yaron, would you cut off your pinky? Assume that knowledge of the whole affair would necessarily remain entire personal. If yes, and you claim to square that with “selfishness,” aren’t you using words in an opportunistic and unmanageable way?

In response, Dr. Ghate begins his post:

The question’s undertone is that everyone “just knows” it’s right to cut off your finger. Moral theory’s task is to rationalize this incontrovertible conclusion; Rand’s theory can’t, however, because it’s an abuse of language to call the action selfish.

But it’s a mistake to think that Rand’s ethics begins with the moral beliefs that happen to saturate the culture, not with reality. True, it would be an abuse of language to label the action Smith envisions “selfish”: it is self-sacrificial. Precisely for this reason, Rand’s ethics would pronounce the action immoral.

To understand the radical difference between Smith and Rand here, one must grasp the principles at work.

Read the whole thing.

image: wikimedia commons

In honor of the 105th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth (February 2, 1905), I’d like to recommend Jeff Britting’s short but surprisingly comprehensive biography, Ayn Rand. Lavishly illustrated with items from the Ayn Rand Archives (a special department Britting manages within the Ayn Rand Institute), this biography is especially valuable because it pays close attention to the mental choices and processes by which Ayn Rand shaped her own character and ideology.

Britting’s biography traces Rand’s brilliant successes to the fundamental choices she made—choices about how to manage her own thinking and action. It started in early childhood, Britting observes, with a vigorously questioning attitude “aimed at understanding the things around her.” (p. 4) As she entered her teens, she “began asking why she liked what she did and, as a result, she began integrating her ideas into wider generalizations. She called this approach to integrating ideas ‘thinking in principle.’” (p. 13) Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an unpublished letter ARC’s Yaron Brook sent to the Wall Street Journal in response to an op-ed by Heather Wilhelm:

Dear Editor,

After indulging in a truly dazzling series of ad hominem attacks on philosopher Ayn Rand, Heather Wilhelm does manage to raise one important issue: she asserts that Rand, whose books continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands a year, is not an effective salesman for capitalism. Whereas Rand is allegedly “elitist, cold and laser-focused on the supermen and superwomen of the world,” Wilhelm claims that what capitalism truly needs is an explanation of “how everyone, especially society’s neediest” benefit from economic liberty. That claim betrays an appalling ignorance of history.

Capitalism’s defenders have appealed to its beneficent effects since its inception. Accepting the conventional view that service to the needy is the essence of morality, they have downplayed and denied the essence of capitalism: the profit motive and the unrestricted pursuit of rational self-interest. This approach hasn’t worked. So long as even the free market’s defenders feel guilty and embarrassed by capitalism’s selfish nature, any attempt to reverse the anticapitalist trend is hopeless. Who is going to believe that vice is the path to the good?

What Rand offers is a radical alternative—a proper, moral defense of capitalism’s essence.

Rand argued that the proper standard of morality is the objective requirements of human life. She argued that human life requires productive achievement, and that the noblest act of moral virtue is using one’s mind to create life-sustaining values. She argued that profit is moral because it enriches the individual who achieves it—that someone like Bill Gates deserves the highest moral praise, not for giving away his wealth, but for creating it. Thus Rand advocated capitalism precisely because it is the only system that rewards the profit motive and respects the individual’s right to act on his own judgment in the pursuit of his own life and happiness. And yes, that includes not only the most intelligent and successful, but every individual committed to making his life the best life it can be. Capitalism is good, Rand argued, because selfishness, correctly understood, is a virtue.

Wilhelm’s views aside, Rand continues to be the greatest salesman capitalism has ever had. It’s not hard to discern why: whereas the rest of the world looked at capitalism and saw the hollow pursuit of material gain, Rand saw man the hero free to seek his highest values.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, arguably the most famous event signaling the fall of Communism. In the days following November 9, 1989, the world saw residents of East Germany—a satellite state of the supposedly great and powerful Soviet empire—flee en masse to West Germany, revealing how hellish life under Communism truly was. The sight of Germans literally breaking down the wall is an inspiring one that should be remembered as a great landmark of the 20^th century—as Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate explain in this must-see interview.

As we celebrate an event that revealed to the world the oppression of Communism, it is important and instructive to note that for the seven decades of the Soviet Union’s existence, many journalists, authors, and intellectuals in the West evaded the atrocities of Communism, even as Communist states were racking up death tolls in the tens of millions.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal recently commissioned Karen Armstrong, author of numerous books on religion, and Richard Dawkins, author of numerous books on evolution and atheism, to answer the question: “Where does evolution leave God?”

What I found most interesting about the exchange was an issue that neither discussed explicitly, but which lurked just beneath the surface of their answers: the fact that religion has co-opted the entire realm of the spiritual.

Read the rest of this entry »