Isn’t summer the perfect time to read a good book? We think so. That is why we at ARI have compiled a summer reading list with a selection of great books covering today’s important issues from a distinctly Objectivist perspective. These books address topics such as the inequality debate, the threat from Islamic totalitarianism, the state of American education and other significant issues.
Every year, the Objectivist Summer Conference attracts people who are relatively new to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. That’s why we’re offering an OCON 2016 introductory course tailored to newcomers who would like to learn more. The course, “An Orientation to Objectivism,” will address important aspects of the philosophy and its real world applications. Beginning with a session on Rand as both a novelist and philosopher, the course will explore the relation between Objectivism and religion, the implications of selfishness for our relations with others, the proper role of government and the nature of a rational foreign policy.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living. In her foreword to the novel, Rand explains that although the book is set in 1920s Soviet Russia, We the Living is not a historical novel: it “is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time” and its goal is to show what “the rule of brute force does to men and how it destroys the best.”
Is Ayn Rand a serious artist concretizing a timeless message or a writer of ideological sermons disguised as novels? Over at Objectivism: Who Needs It, my colleague Onkar Ghate explains why categorizing her as a “didactic fiction” writer is completely wrong.
On May 6, 2016, David Rubin on Ora.TV’s The Rubin Report interviewed ARI’s executive director, Yaron Brook. In this extensive interview Dr. Brook discusses topics such as the life, works and philosophy of Ayn Rand, the failure of our public education system, the meaning of rational selfishness, the value of free trade and labor-saving machines and the cause of cronyism and government controls.
Next month, Onkar Ghate and Harry Binswanger will be participants in the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This Sunday is Valentine’s Day, a holiday on which we celebrate romantic love. But, what exactly is romantic love? According to Ayn Rand, “Love is a response to values. . . . One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul — the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness.”
Today is Ayn Rand’s birthday. Although Rand is known for her best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and works of nonfiction like The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, the fact is that her views are still largely unknown (and often misunderstood).
