October 10 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. To commemorate that event, we asked Jeff Britting, curator of the Ayn Rand Archives, to supply us with images and text from one of the many exhibits he has mounted over the years, this one devoted to Rand’s handwritten notes and drafts for the novel, which was published in 1957.
Today we at ARI will unapologetically celebrate Columbus Day — and so should you. Why? Because Columbus Day celebrates the life-promoting core of Western Civilization; namely, reason and individualism.
Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas – Austin, recently addressed an audience of approximately two hundred and fifty members of the intelligence community, imparting an Objectivist perspective on the nature and value of objectivity as a safeguard against politicized or biased military intelligence.
Although Ayn Rand is virtually unknown in France, the release of the French edition of Atlas Shrugged (La Grève) in paperback this March has sparked a burst of interest in Rand in the French media.
“Oh, hi there,” says Carl Benjamin in a recent video, looking up at the camera from his well-bookmarked copy of The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff. “I’ve been doing some reading, and I’ve discovered something I think you should know. The Nazis were bad. Let me explain to you why.”
“The creation of John Galt was Ayn Rand’s life story,” said Shoshana Milgram, “and telling about it allowed me to spend time not only with the character she brought to life but with the process of dramatization.” To celebrate the 60th publication anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, we’re talking to the authors of chapters in Robert Mayhew’s book Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”
“It always intrigued me that the great romantic writers are impassioned moralists who seek to change the world,” said Andrew Bernstein, the next author in our series celebrating the 60th publication anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “Yet in their novels, these authors can only rarely imagine a way for their heroes to succeed.”
“Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. . . . "
In this short course, philosopher Robert Mayhew presents Ayn Rand’s conception of humor and shows its connection to basic issues in Objectivism such as metaphysical value-judgments, the metaphysical versus the man-made, and the benevolent universe premise.
