Monday, June 18, 2007
Who is John Galt?
This is the pseudonym used by one of the Kumustahan participants, taken from the novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. I have read the novel itself a few years back, though I skipped the speech by Galt towards the end of the story. I plan to re-read that portion only but I already shipped that book to Paete. I have in my shelf now Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology which I find really boring probably due to my lack of basic foundation on the subject of philosophy. I do not call myself an Objectivist though my work - computers - have a lot of things in common with it since it demands a lot of rational thought process in a day to day basis. Rand's ideas make one think and re-think the foundation of morality as handed down to us by our very religious society. In the end, I pick up what I think is good and I discard what I can't accept. Did I like the novel? I think the novel's plot is convoluted. What is important though is understanding the Objectivist ideas that Rand advocates and I think having it in novel form helps (at least for me) in getting those ideas across.
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4 comments:
Wow. I read that very thick novel as a breather when I was still in college while working on my philosophy of science thesis. Someone had lent it to me. Due to lack of enough time and considering the book did not have anything to do with my papers, I wasn't able to read between the lines. Yet because maybe I took the book as an escape from pressure, for some connections I was surprised to have seen the X-Men when I encountered the characters. I heard a movie of the same title starring Angelina Jolie is in the making.
I also have a copy of the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. It's an old edition that one classmate in college slipped into my bag in a library a few years before my Atlas experience. It's indeed a bore but I still have the interest to read it again in the future, only if I chance a long freetime.
For critical assessment of these books that promote selfishness, I should say...it's all of my own business.
Hi Ted,
Have you also read The Fountainhead? I think it was made into a movie with Gary Cooper as the architect Howard Roark. I am searching for that DVD so I can watch it. Also, she has this noveletta Anthem which I ale read; very light and less philosophical but prose is good. She has this other early novel We The Living which is on my shelf. I only managed to read a page or two. I am not so keen on reading it very soon.
cheers!
Tony
Yes, have I read The Fountainhead, even before the Atlas. A copy, owner of which I didn't know, was in a shelf in a boarding house in Manila way back in college. I read it and the some of my boardmates (all from Paete) followed suit. Much later, I learned one of them had named his child Gail Wynand, a character in the story. I lost track with the series of readers so I wonder whom/where the copy with/is. Have a feeling it's already in Paete.
Anthem and We the Living. I have one book the dimension of that of the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. It's in a box stored in a messy room in our house in Taguig. Another one of the same size someone a friend from Paete borrowed from me some years ago. It traveled from one hand to another. The last reader I know was Omar Asido. Maybe it's still with him. As to the titles, I just couldn't remember exactly which is which.
Ted
Haha, I checked with my memory and found out that I don't have We the Living. It is the Anthem which is no longer with me. The Virtue of Selfishness and Romantic Manifesto are those that are in the box.
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