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Some prophetic essays, 18. Juli 2004
These 31 pieces include magazine articles and lectures spanning twenty years, from 1961 to 1981. Four of the chapters are by Leonard Peikoff and one each by John Herman Randall and Peter Schwartz, and the book concludes with an epilogue by Peikoff. Part One: Philosophy, consists of chapters elaborating on Rand's Objectivist philosophy. These include a discussion of the ideas of Aristotle, discussions on ethics, psychology, the ethics of altruism and a criticism of religion. Part Two: Culture, investigates intellectuals, the culture vacuum, the flaws of liberal pragmatists, conservatives and businessmen. The death of Marilyn Monroe and the flight of Apollo 11 are discussed here. This section ends with a look at anti-Americanism in academia and the anti-conceptual methodology in the education system. Part Three: Politics, explores various political issues like antitrust legislation, foreign aid, socialized medicine, women in politics and includes a scathing attack on the political movement called Libertarianism. The epilogue is the editor's memoirs of his 30 year association with Ayn Rand. Each chapter begins with information indicating the original source of the article or lecture. In some instances there are references in brackets within the text itself or otherwise they appear as numbered footnotes at the end. In my opinion, the best pieces are The Sanction Of The Victim (Chapter 15), Apollo 11 (Chapter 17), Assault From the Ivory Tower: The Professors' War Against America (Chapter 19), Medicine: The Death Of A Profession (Chapter 30), while the worst is About A Woman President (Chapter 26) in which Rand claims that the office is no place for a woman. Perhaps Ayn Rand would have changed her mind had she lived long enough to witness the achievements of Margaret Thatcher. Whether one agrees with her philosophy or nor, Rand was a brilliant writer and prescient and original thinker. All her work remains stimulating today and much of it now seems prophetic. Not all of these pieces are great but they are all worth reading.
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Classic Rand despite contributions of Peikoff and Schwartz, 27. Dezember 1998
This collection of Ayn Rand's essays includes some hard-to-find classics ("Global Balkanization," "The Sanction of the Victims," and "Apollo 11," for example) and a couple of duds (notably "About a Woman President"). The biggest duds, however, are the additional essays provided by Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz, who apparently couldn't leave well enough alone. Peikoff's essays aren't terrible, but his placing them next to Rand's simply makes obvious what a pretentious and derivative thinker he really is. And Schwartz's ill-considered ravings against "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty" (particularly his attacks on the late great Murray Rothbard, compared to whom Schwartz is a gnat), far from meriting description as the "voice of reason," do not deserve to be published here or anywhere else. Buy this book for Rand's essays, but read around the extras thrown in by a couple of mediocre hangers-on.
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Interesting essays ruined by wrong-headed analysis, 22. Februar 2000
In some ways, this is the best collection of essays by Rand and her colleagues. It contains two of Rand's best essays (her "Apollo 11" and her somewhat prophetic "Global Balkanization") and some thought provoking essays by Leonard Peikoff on education and medicine. The rest of the essays are a bit of a mixed bag, and all of them suffer from that sort of bad mode of interpretation that afflicts nearly all Objectivist writings. The real problem is that, time and time again, Rand and her disciples derive conclusions about matters of fact through logical reasonings alone rather than through research and experimentation. Thus we find Rand blaming the phenomenon of "racism" on the mixed economy. On what basis does she make such an assertion? Purely on the basis of her own philosophical speculations. Never mind the fact that, during the nineteenth century, when the economy was far less "mixed" than it is today, racism was considerably worse. Another example is Rand's contention that suicides among the young are caused by the dismal state of contemporary culture. Again, no evidence is offered in support of this assertion. Not a single case study is examined or even referred to. For someone who, like Rand, claims to be a realist, this is inexcusable.But perhaps the principle objection to this book has to be Rand's inexorable tendency to exaggerate and distort. I am certainly no admirer of contemporary culture, but Rand's analysis of what she calls the "culture value deprivation" simply goes too far. She gathers a number of horrendous examples and then presents as if they were fully representative of contemporary culture as a whole. "If you wonder what is wrong with people today, consider the fact that no laboratory experiment could ever reproduce so thorough a state of value-deprivation [as does contemporary culture]," she concludes smugly. But is this really a fair and balanced assessment of the effect of culture on people today? Is the effect of culture really equivalent to the sort of sensory-deprivation experiments that Rand mentions earlier in her essay? No, of course not: this is stating matters way to strongly. What is wrong with people is not so much the culture, but the fact that people are human and therefore fail to meet Rand's impossible standards of what she believes they "ought" to be like. She would be dissatisfied with them no matter what age she lived in. And why? Because the overwhelming majority of them would never accept her philosophy--a philosophy which knows so little of the human heart.
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