Product Description

A non-theist asks, "What is the value of religion?" He discovers that religion serves real human needs. Religion and philosophy teach us how to live. Reason-based philosophy and faith-based religion, though, teach different lessons. This book shows how, guided by reason, human beings should live.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3718208 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 204 pages

About the Author
Martin L. Cowen III was born in 1951. He read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in 1971. After law school, he practiced family and criminal law for twenty years. A student of Objectivism for thirty years, Martin wondered why this brilliant philosophy had so little cultural impact, while religion remained a powerful cultural force. Martin asked, "What is the value of religion?" He discovered the answer and invented the Fellowship of Reason. This book, published in 2001, describes the world's first rational moral community and the philosophy of reason upon which it is based. The book answers the question, "How should I live in order to achieve happiness on earth?"

Customer Reviews

Potentially Sound Concept Mired by Moral Tolerance and Other Misfit Ideas
Since 1988, I have studied and practiced Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. This book's author draws heavily on that philosophy to advance a modern version of Eudaimonism, an ancient Greek philosophy of human flourishing. I read this book years ago and found it intriguing enough to pursue opening a local chapter of the Fellowship of Reason® (FOR®) in my area. To my dismay, I learned that most of the Executive Board of FOR® did not subscribe to Objectivism and in fact several showed outright hostility to it.

I judge ideas based not just on whether they "sound good" on paper, but also on the "good" or "bad" results they produce. The core ethics of Objectivism -- reason, purpose, self-esteem -- remain sound and fully life enhancing in theory and practice based on my observations. The attempt in this book to graft moral tolerance, mythology, and other foggy notions outside the tightly integrated, reality oriented ideas of Objectivism has produced the messy, life diminishing kludge known as FOR®.

I quit my long distance membership in FOR® after learning of these shortcomings. To their credit, the FOR® leaders have decided to do an intensive study via surveys of current and former members to improve the organization. Do a Google search for my online article "Learning Lessons from the Fellowship of Reason" to read my complete, detailed responses to that survey.

For the real deal, get OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND by Leonard Peikoff.

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (The Ayn Rand Library, Volume 6)

Solid, life enhancing advice good for any century!
I don't ordinarily like self-help books: this one is different.
Most self-help books amount to little more than a simple series of thematically related formulas designed to address such human problems as how to get more confidence, how to find a better job, how to marry the right person, how to bring up successful children...Cowen offers advice in these areas and more, but the main focus of his work is to reach, for the reader, the often unvoiced philosophical angst that hovers behind the seeming inability to put it all together and then do something about it!

In a clear, well-plotted ten chapters, Cowen divides the psyche into its public and its private spheres. He talks about what it is "to be" and how to develop a public self that is consistent with the private self. He suggests exercises to discover the authentic self and more exercises to help the authentic self emerge.

The theme of the book is to 1)know who you are and 2)become who you are. Cowen demonstrates that the willingness to introspect truthfully coupled with the confidence to act on the self's unmistakeable clues about what it yearns to be, leads to a life of fulfilled contentment. In case the reader is already derailed, there are exercises to get back on track by acknowledging previous mistakes and correcting them in order to get " past the past ".

Learn to live "pro" rather than "anti"
This book is an eye-opener. It's okay to want the affirming aspects of "church culture" by consciously celebrating the good things about life from a rational point of view. The Fellowship of Reason will inspire you to live a "pro" life; i.e. pro-happiness, pro-success, pro-friends, pro-excellence; and to drop the "anti" obsession that taints so many atheist groups; i.e. anti-God, anti-religion, anti-believer. The Fellowship of Reason doesn't have time to be "anti".