Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #625424 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 191 pages

Customer Reviews

Disappointingly superficial.
Given the publisher of this book, I had hoped to find a systematic presentation and evaluation of Ayn Rand's ideas. Unfortunately, both the presentation and evaluation were superficial. The author failed to motivate Rand's ideas by a central theme, and his evalutions were ad hoc and disintegrated.

The book's strongest potential virtue was to delineate Nietzsche's influence on Rand's philosophy. Yet while the author claims that Rand's writings were influenced by Nietzsche, he provides little documentation for any early influence and no evidence for any lasting influence. His claim that Rand derived her critique of Kant from Nietzsche, for example, was never documented. A substantial revision of this section of the book, particularly in light of recent publications, would be warranted--without such a revision, the book has little to recommend it.

Finally, the author's narration of recent scholarly interest in Rand--both inside and outside academia--was also disappo! intingly superficial. His treatment was marred by his conflation of these intellectual developments with much non-scholarly (and uninformative) interest in her personal life and the lives of her self-proclaimed admirers.

With the publication of "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand," "Letters of Ayn Rand," and "Journals of Ayn Rand," the current volume has been entirely superceded. Save your money.

An excellent overview
While the discussions of the influence of Nietzsche on Rand and the analyses of her novels are interesting, the real strength of this book is the clarification and extension of Rand's ethics. The unification of oughts, operational ought and normative ought are the same, the replacement of Man's Life as ultimate end with Man's Life as ultimate means, and his clarification of the goals of ethics (as making yourself the kind of person you should be, rational, productive, and self-improving) are more than worth the price of the book.

He points out the weaknesses and problems with Rand's esthetic theories.

Unfortunately, he does not do the same for Rand's epistemology, which has always been the weakest part of her work.

The last part of the book deals with her attempts to make a practical difference through politics and the continuing disagreements Objectivists have with libertarianism.

The book is also extremely readable and well organized.

Objective Book of Objectivism's founder
Free of the subjective rehashing that tainted the summations offered by Leonard Peikoff and the Brandens, this book is a fair, albeit much too brief, representation of Ayn Rand's history, ideas, and continuing legacy. Merril, a true student of Objectivism, is fair and balanced in his book. It is a mistake to rely solely on the admittedly worthy and remarkable works of Peikoff and/or the Brandens without using this book to reconcile the arguments put forth by the three of them in their own accounts. Read this work and make up your own mind.