Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

Ayn Rand is perhaps most widely known as an uncompromising advocate of laissez‐faire capitalism. This chapter focuses on Rand's account of some of the crucial philosophical premises implicit in the operations of a free market. It covers briefly the basic approach to knowledge and values that Rand argues is implicitly embedded in the operations of a free market. The chapter then moves to a discussion of her view of how this approach plays out: that it is the producers of economic (...) values (not the consumers) who govern the operations of a free market. Next, it explores Rand idea that statist systems are not alternative forms of economic production but simply the destruction, partial or total, of producers. Finally, the chapter sketches Rand's views on the relation of philosophy to economics and discusses her evaluations of some free‐market economists. (shrink)

As a novelist who self‐consciously identified with the Romantic school of literature, Ayn Rand was intensely concerned with an individual's choices. For Rand man is a being of self‐made soul in two senses. By his specific choices, man necessarily creates the kind of person he becomes: the basic premises and values that move him. And man's faculty of volition gives him the power to (re)shape his soul in the image of his moral ideal. This chapter examines why, given the nature (...) of man's free will, Rand holds that an individual by his choices develops an implicit philosophy. To do this, the chapter considers three crucial issues in Rand's thought: her accounts of self‐esteem, of sense of life, and of psycho‐epistemology. Rand discusses the fact that the rationality or irrationality of an individual's social environment can encourage thought or encourage mental passivity and evasion. (shrink)

The essays in this collection treat historical, literary, and philosophical topics related to Ayn Rand's Anthem, an anti-utopia fantasy set in the future. The first book-length study on Anthem, this collection covers subjects such as free will, political freedom, and the connection between freedom and individual thought and privacy.

(2011). Theory in Health Promotion Research and Practice: Thinking outside the Box. Patricia Goodson. Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett. 2010. 245, pp. $78.95. Educational Studies: Vol. 47, No. 6, pp. 583-588.

This chapter contains sections titled: The “Grammaticalization of Experience” What is Exemplification? Exemplifying Feeling Poetry and the Resources of Grammar Example “Of ” and Example “As”.

Les écrits autobiographiques de Pietro Verri.