This is a collection of 19 short essays which have appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter. 15 of the essays are by Ayn Rand, 4 by Nathaniel Brandon and they are devoted to explaining the "Objectivist" attitude towards such subjects as the nature of man, self-sacrifice, racism, mental health, the role of government, socialism and other questions of an ethical nature. According to Ayn Rand, the "Objectivist Ethics" "holds man's life as the standard of value and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man." It is thus advocates what she calls "rational selfishness" and opposes hedonist or altruist doctrines which maintain, she says, "that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another." In applying the hierarchical standards of "Objectivism" to politics and economics she eventually insists upon a laissez faire type of economy as being "the only system that can uphold individual rights." She would have the very financing of government (which she admits is a certain necessity) itself on a "voluntary" basis. Her theories lead her to incorporate a number of slogans embraced by the right-wing, such as, "without property rights no other rights are possible" and this no doubt endears her to conservatives. But she gives them the back of her hand too, particularly for their racist tendencies. Her style is a decidedly peremptory one anyway but perhaps this is the only stance she can take in view of the intractability of her material.
Pub Date: Nov. 29, 1965
ISBN: 0451163931
Page Count: 138
Publisher: New American Library
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1965
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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