AP+Literature

Ayn Rand Yesterday I gave you the novel, //The Fountainhead//, and we read the pages near the end of the text entitled “About Ayn Rand.” Most important to getting the most out of the novel is an understanding of Rand’s philosophy, “Objectivism.” As with anything new, the first few investigations are confusing. For example, we read that the metaphysical tenet of objectivism is objective reality. What many of you pulled from that, I’m sure is “Blah-blah blah the blah of blah-blah reality.” We could go through defining the individual words but that, sadly, will lead only to more words with which you have limited familiarity. For example, “metaphysical” is the combination of Greek morphemes //meta//, which means “beyond,” and //physical//, which means “science concerning the natural world.” Metaphysics is, then, looking “beyond science concerning the natural world.” Isn’t that helpful? Or…you can watch Ayn Rand do her best to defend herself in an interview from Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes. That’s what I’d do. At least to start….

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(I can't remember if Mike Wallace died from lung cancer or not but something makes me say "probably.")

=Ayn Rand: Conservatives' Abortion-Rights, Anti-Religion Inspiration= Excellent NPR summary of Ayn Rand's philosophy by Frank James from November, 2011.

Connecting Joseph Conrad's //Heart of Darkness//, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and "Hollow Men", and Francis Ford Coppola's //Apocalypse Now.//