Product Description

This brief text assists students in understanding Ayn Rand's philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series," (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON AYN RAND is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher better enabling students to engage the reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1109026 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 104 pages

Review
"Gotthelf joins scholarly rigor with firsthand knowledge of Rand’s thought to provide a systematic introduction to Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism. The result is absorbing . . . rich with provocative ideas. . . . The book serves as an excellent introduction to Rand’s thought precisely because it is intellectually serious and incorporates substantial portions of Rand’s reasoning."

"Gotthelf’s illuminating account of Rand’s epis-temology offers an intriguing point of entry . . . as well as an object lesson on the relationship between epistemology and ethics. . . . On Ayn Rand is a remarkable success. . . . I can’t think of a piece of writing that better conveys both the systematicity and the grandeur of Rand’s thought than the last four pages of Gotthelf’s book."

Customer Reviews

An excellent introduction to Ayn Rand's thought
It is no mean feat to compress the essential elements of Ayn Rand's system of thought into one hundred pages, but this professor Allan Gottelf of The College of New Jersey does extraordinarily well in his book On Ayn Rand. This work is part of a series of books from Wadsworth publishing, each of which is meant to encapsulate the thought of a seminal philosopher. It is promising to see a work on Rand's thought appear in a series of works containing the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Kant, and professor Gotthelf makes good on the judgment to place Rand alongside such thinkers in this short but rich work. Ayn Rand is without a doubt one of the most underrated and neglected thinkers and Gotthelf's book goes a long way toward redressing this grievance, letting readers know what is there in Rand's works to help set the stage for further discussion and for fruitful criticism, and doing so in an objective and scholarly manner.

Gotthelf's book opens with a fascinating account of Rand's life and intellectual development that helps to situate in the reader's mind the influences on and evolution of her thought. One of the things largely missing from the Randian literature is an analysis of the philosophers to whom Rand owes debts or borrows or modifies ideas (for instance, Rand claims that the only philosopher to whom she owes a debt is Aristotle, but she doesn't really go into this herself to any satisfactory length). While the work is a short exposition and not an exegesis of Rand's thought, it is threaded through with tantalizing acknowledgements of debts owed by Rand to other philosophers (mainly those owed to Aristotle). This is the sort of treatment that is needed to stimulate scholarly debate on Rand's ideas.

Most of Gotthelf's book covers Rand's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, the areas that Rand judged to be the fundamental areas of philosophy and from which the other branches of philosophy are derived. Gotthelf's coverage of these areas, especially of her metaphysics and theory of concept formation, is exemplary and evidences a deep understanding of Rand's ideas. Given the constraints under which professor Gotthelf was working (a one-hundred page limit) it reflects sound judgment that he chose to concentrate on the areas that Rand judged to be fundamental and cover these areas well (relative to the book's size constraints). But her political theory is such an important and radical aspect of her thought (about as much could be said of her aesthetics) that it seems cheating to end the work with just a couple of pages on it. One gets a sense of the axiomatic structure of her thought from the book and can hypothesize how she arrives at the positions that she takes in the other branches of philosophy (politics, aesthetics), but Gotthelf doesn't show how she arrives at them (although he sketches out how she does) and it couldn't be obvious to one not acquainted with her thought how she arrives at them and how successful her defense of these positions is.

On Ayn Rand is a must read for any student of Rand's thought and for anyone interested in studying philosophy. The other books in this Wadsworth philosophers series would be fortunate to do as well as this one.

BEST SHORT BOOK ON AYN RAND
A plus. It doesn't get any better than this. In 100 pages, Dr. Gotthelf draws on everything known about Ayn Rand, from her novels, books, articles, journals, even spoken lectures and interviews, and gives the correct essentials. The emphasis is on her underlying philosophy, Objectivism, 'the philosophy for living on earth.' The politics of capitalism are only briefly sketched in. He clearly explains Ayn Rand's most complex innovation, her theory of concepts. Under ethics, he covers the 6 most important virtues. He opens and closes with Ayn Rand's benevolent universe premise and heroic view of mankind. He concludes with a passage from John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged. 'Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride.... Fight with the radiant certainty and absolute of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.'

Short is Sweet
Allan Gotthelf's short book allows you to hold Ayn Rand's philosophy and sense of life in one breath which makes her philosophy very real to any reader. He starts with what attracts people to Ayn Rand-her benevolent universe premise and her heroic view of man-and establishes that hers is not a universally held view, and even the cause of hostility towards Ayn Rand. He then asks which is true? Is life inherently tragic or can we understand ourselves and the world, establish values, and ultimately succeed? That is what Ayn Rand's philosophy establishes: the supreme power of reason, the supreme power of the individual, the supreme power of capitalism, the supreme power of man to achieve values and happiness-if he fights for reason, individualism, and freedom.

The view that life is inherently miserable and tragic has no philosophic basis. Expressing Ayn Rand's view, he says "the greatest amount of suffering in mankind's history has not been due to anything about the nature of the universe. It has been due to the philosophies men have accepted." That is a powerful message for anyone who wants to improve their life or change the world. That accounts for Ayn Rand's appeal. Ideas matter. Good ideas are vital to human happiness.

His last chapter is like a work of art, in that, you see on one page that each core Objectivist principle is necessary for man to have confidence in himself and the world.

Given the limitations inherent in any introduction, Gotthelf briefly indicates Ayn Rand's revolutionary understanding of the senses. A major epistemological point of Ayn Rand's is that the form of perception (color, flavor, tones, texture) does not negate the fact of perception (sight, taste & smell, hearing, touch.) Form is the *direct* experience of the interaction of our sense organs with the external world-which establishes the fact of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. This truth may seem obvious to most people, but most philosophers have fought against this view (if they know of it at all) which in the end undermines all knowledge, values, moral certainty, and happiness.

This book weaves together the core themes of Ayn Rand's philosophy and is an excellent introduction, worth including in every introductory philosophy course.