A Companion to Ayn Rand (eBook)

Allan Gotthelf, Gregory Salmieri (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-32491-2 (ISBN)

Infos

The first volume to offer a comprehensive scholarly treatment of Rand's entire corpus (including her novels, her philosophical essays, and her analysis of the events of her times), this Companion provides vital orientation and context for scholars and educated readers grappling with a controversial and understudied thinker whose enduring influence on American (and world) culture is increasingly recognized.

• The first publication to provide an in-depth scholarly treatment ranging over the whole of Rand's corpus
• Provides informed contextual analysis for scholars in a variety of disciplines
• Presents original research on unpublished material and drafts from the Rand archives in California
• Features insightful and fair-minded interpretations of Rand's controversial positions

Allan Gotthelf (1942-2013) was Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow at Rutgers University, USA, emeritus Professor of Philosophy at The College of New Jersey, Secretary of the Ayn Rand Society (a professional group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association), and the primary editor of its Philosophical Studies series. Between 2003 and 2012, he was visiting professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His influential papers on Aristotle are collected in Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology (2012).

Gregory Salmieri teaches at Rutgers University, is a philosophy fellow at the Anthem Foundation, and has held teaching and research positions at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2008-12) and Boston University (2012-14). He is co-secretary of the Ayn Rand Society and co-editor of its Philosophical Studies series. In addition to his work on Rand, he has published on various issues in Aristotle's philosophy and is editor of the forthcoming Knowing and Coming to Know: Essays on Aristotle's Epistemology.

Inhalt

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xii

A Note on Abbreviations and References xiv

Part I Context 1

1 An Introduction to the Study of Ayn Rand 3
Gregory Salmieri

2 The Life of Ayn Rand: Writing, Reading, and Related Life Events 22
Shoshana Milgram

Part II Ethics and Human Nature 47

3 The Act of Valuing (and the Objectivity of Values) 49
Gregory Salmieri

4 The Morality of Life 73
Allan Gotthelf (completed by Gregory Salmieri)

5 A Being of Self-Made Soul 105
Onkar Ghate

6 Egoism and Altruism: Selfishness and Sacrifice 130
Gregory Salmieri

Part III Society 157

7 "A Human Society": Rand's Social Philosophy 159
Darryl Wright

8 Political Theory: A Radical for Capitalism 187
Fred D. Miller, Jr. and Adam Mossoff

9 Objective Law 209
Tara Smith

10 "A Free Mind and a Free Market are Corollaries": Rand's Philosophical Perspective on Capitalism 222
Onkar Ghate

Part IV The Foundations of Objectivism 243

11 Objectivist Metaphysics: The Primacy of Existence 245
Jason G. Rheins

12 The Objectivist Epistemology 272
Gregory Salmieri

Part V Philosophers and Their Effects 319

13 "Who Sets the Tone for a Culture?": Ayn Rand's Approach to the History of Philosophy 321
James G. Lennox

14 Ayn Rand's Evolving View of Friedrich Nietzsche 34
Lester H. Hunt

15 A Philosopher on Her Times: Ayn Rand's Political and Cultural Commentary 351
John David Lewis and Gregory Salmieri

Part VI Art 403

16 The Objectivist Esthetics: Art and the Needs of a Conceptual Consciousness 405
Harry Binswanger

17 Rand's Literary Romanticism 426
Tore Boeckmann

Coda 451

18 Hallmarks of Objectivism: The Benevolent Universe Premise and the Heroic View of Man 453
Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri

Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Quasi-Primary Sources 463

Index 471

Textauszug

Notes on Contributors

Harry Binswanger, who was an associate of Ayn Rand in her final years, teaches philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center of the Ayn Rand Institute. He has taught, and lectured on, esthetics at Pratt Institute and elsewhere and has taught philosophy at Hunter College (City University of New York) and the University of Texas at Austin. He edited The Ayn Rand Lexicon (Penguin, 1986) and coedited (with Leonard Peikoff) the expanded second edition of Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Penguin, 1990). He is the author of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (ARI Press, 1990) and How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (TOF Publications, 2014).

Tore Boeckmann is an independent scholar of Romanticism in art. He has lectured and written extensively on Ayn Rand’s novels and literary esthetics, and he edited for publication her guide to literature, The Art of Fiction (Plume, 2000). His most significant recent work includes an essay on the painter Caspar David Friedrich; his most delightful work includes an essay on the literary origins of Rand’s flamboyant playboy hero Francisco d’Anconia in Robert Mayhew (ed.), Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Lexington Books, 2009). He is currently writing a book on Romanticism from Victor Hugo to Ayn Rand.

Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, where he specializes in philosophy. He teaches in the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center and serves as a writer, media spokesman, and senior editor for the Institute. He publishes both scholarly and popular articles on Rand’s fiction and philosophy. Recent essays include “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence,” in Debi Ghate and Richard E. Ralston (eds.), Why Businessmen Need Philosophy (New American Library, 2nd edition, 2011) and “The Plight of Leo Kovalensky,” in Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living (Lexington Books, 2nd edition, 2012). His current research focuses on religion and morality and the separation of church and state.

Allan Gotthelf (1942–2013) was, at the time of his death, Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow for Research and Teaching in Philosophy at Rutgers University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at The College of New Jersey. From 2003 to 2012 he was Visiting Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he held an Anthem Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism. He was a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society and served as chair of its steering committee (from 1990 until his death) and as the primary editor of the Society’s Philosophical Studies series. He is the author of On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth, 2000), and of many articles on Aristotle, 15 of which are collected in his Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Lester H. Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Nietzsche and the Origins of Virtue (Routledge, 1990), Character and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), and Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and is editor of two books of original essays: Grade Inflation: Academic Standards in Higher Education (SUNY, 2008) and (with Noel Carroll) Philosophy in the Twilight Zone (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). He has also written several dozen scholarly articles on ethics, social and political philosophy, the presentation of philosophical ideas in literature and film, and problems in the history of philosophy.

John David Lewis (1955–2012), after a 25-year career in business, changed direction and earned a PhD in Classics at the University of Cambridge in 2001. At the time of his death, in 2012, he was Visiting Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He published three books, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Bristol Classics, 2006), Early Greek Lawgivers (Bloomsbury Academic, 2007), and Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010), and many articles and reviews in academic journals and the public press.

James G. Lennox is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He was one of the founding members of the Ayn Rand Society, and is currently co-chair of the Society’s steering committee and coeditor of its Philosophical Studies series. He is author of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Aristotle on the Parts of Animals I–IV (Oxford University Press, 2001), and coeditor of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987), Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995) and Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Currently he is working on a book on Aristotle’s norms of inquiry and collaborating on a translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Meteorology IV.

Shoshana Milgram is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since earning her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. She has published articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers in French, Russian, and English/American literatures, including Victor Hugo, George Sand, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Victoria Cross, George Eliot, John Fowles, W.S. Gilbert, Ursula K. LeGuin, Nabokov, Herbert Spencer, Steinbeck, E.L. Voynich, and Ayn Rand. She has also published articles on “Capitalism,” “Cinema,” and “Leader” in J.C. Seigneuret’s Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, as well as introductions to editions of Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea and The Man Who Laughs and Nevil Shute’s The Seafarers. She is at work on a book-length study of Ayn Rand’s life from birth to 1957.

Fred D. Miller, Jr. is Research Professor at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford University Press, 1995) and coeditor of A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics (Blackwell, 1995), Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics (Springer, 2007), and Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Springer, 2012). He is also Executive Editor of Social Philosophy & Policy. He is currently preparing a translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva Naturalia for Oxford University Press.

Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and a co-founder of and Director of Academic Programs at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at Mason Law. He has published numerous book chapters, essays, and journal articles on topics in patent law, property law, legal history, and legal philosophy, including “Saving Locke from Marx: The Labor Theory of Value in Intellectual Property Theory” (Social Philosophy and Policy, 29(2), 2012). He has testified before the Senate and House on patent legislation, and he is a frequent speaker at professional and academic conferences, as well as at the PTO, the DOJ, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Smithsonian Institution, on topics in intellectual property policy.

Jason G. Rheins is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and has held teaching positions at St. John’s University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD in Philosophy in 2010 with a dissertation on Plato’s theology and its place within his ontology and natural philosophy. He has published articles on topics in the philosophy of science and Ancient Greek philosophy. His current research focuses on metaphysical issues related to the cosmology and theology of Plato, Aristotle, and their successors.

Gregory Salmieri holds a fellowship in philosophy at the Anthem Foundation and teaches at Rutgers University. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008, and subsequently held teaching and research positions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2008–2012) and at Boston University (2012–2014). He has published on issues in Aristotle’s epistemology and ethics and on Rand’s philosophy and novels. He is co-chair of the Ayn Rand Society’s Steering Committee, and coeditor of its Philosophical Studies series. He is also the editor of a forthcoming multi-author volume on Aristotle’s...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.12.2015
• Reihe/Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Reihe/Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Reihe/Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Geschichte der Philosophie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
• Schlagworte: Atlas shrugged • Ayn Rand • Economic Theory • Ethical Egoism • Ethical Theory • ethics • Ethik • Free Market • Literary & Cultural Theory • Literature • Literatur- u. Kulturtheorie • Literaturwissenschaft • moral psychology • objectivism • Philosophie • Philosophy • Political Philosophy & Theory • Political Science • political theory • Politikwissenschaft • Politische Philosophie u. Politiktheorie • Rand, Ayn • Romantic realism • the fountainhead
• ISBN-10: 1-118-32491-9 / 1118324919
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-32491-2 / 9781118324912