The Value of Atlas Shrugged

Originally published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most controversial novels in American fiction, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Annual sales have been growing for years, and may grow even faster if Hollywood talk of a film-adaptation proves accurate.

Atlas Shrugged is routinely included on ‘favorite books’ surveys. It is not uncommon to hear a businessman, a teacher, a truck driver, or a musician say, “Atlas changed my life.” How is it that a fifty-year-old, 1200-page novel about industrialists and inventors can have such an effect on so many people?

Written by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born philosopher who escaped communism early in the 20th century, Atlas is a compelling novel about a cast of business executives struggling to achieve their interests in an inimical world. Set in New York City, it tells the story of Dagny Taggart, an underappreciated railroad VP, who fights to save her company from the incompetence and envy of her brother, the company’s President; of Henry Rearden, creator of a new metal alloy, who defends his invention against government bureaucrats who first mistrust then covet the valuable metal; of Francisco D’Anconia, heir to a lucrative copper mining firm, who pursues his own mysterious agenda while seemingly wasting away his wealth on frivolities; and of several other protagonists, each struggling in their own way to achieve and articulate their personal values.

What makes Atlas different is its philosophic depth. Underneath the suspenseful action, the story is fundamentally an intellectual mystery. Why do characters make the choices they do? What ideas animate them? The answers penetrate to the very core of Western Civilization’s traditions and values: Is man his brother’s keeper? Is the love of money the root of all evil? Is sexual pleasure base? Is happiness possible? What does it mean to be moral?

Atlas Shrugged, like all classics of literature, dramatizes a particular worldview, a way of approaching life that readers can judge, learn from, and incorporate into their own perspective. Unlike other classics, however, Atlas dramatizes values that are normally opposed in our culture—the justice of unfettered capitalism, the morality of principled egoism, the absolute efficacy of human reason. The heroes of Atlas are idealized expressions of values normally attacked in America’s college classrooms, churches and political platforms: commercialism, selfishness, and rational certainty.

If college is a time to survey the intellectual landscape in order to discover one’s own identity, if it is a time to read the great works of literature and philosophy, then it is eminently a time to read Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a novel about what it means to be moral—and the answer, presented in an intense, page-turning, emotionally moving, intellectually challenging form, is one that will otherwise not be given a fair hearing. And it will be unlike anything you’ve ever encountered before.

All Plants are Created Equal?

Put down that salad! Have you considered the dignity of the vegetables you’re about to crush into easily-digestible pieces? Have you no concern for their inherent worth as living beings? Have you made sure to carefully justify the moral necessity of harming those plants for your own ends?

Those are the topics recently under serious consideration by a Swiss governmental ethics panel. Their conclusion? Plants do indeed possess “inherent worth” and must be protected “for their own sake” from human destruction. The report, replete with sympathy-evoking photos of beautiful, dignified flowers on every page, can be found (here).

The disastrous consequences of an idea like “plant rights” are easy to imagine. Put aside for now the human need to eat plants for sustenance, which would presumably be allowed by the panel given a proper application for an eating license citing an approved moral justification to feed oneself. Consider all the less-necessitated ways we use plants for our ends. How could you justify “decapitating” (the panel’s word) a beautiful rose for such a superficial human occasion as Valentines Day? Imagine the outrage of mowing one’s lawn, which amounts to severing the bodies of thousands of individuals for purely aesthetic reasons.

Clearly, this idea of respecting the “inherent worth” of plant life is utterly incompatible with human life. This raises an important question – how did a panel of Ph.D.’s, the most educated members of society, reach such an absurd conclusion after extensive and highly complex discussion?

The answer lies in the flawed view of morality accepted throughout modern academia. In their report, the panelists profess a “biocentric” view of morality which holds that ethical questions pertain to all living things. However, it is important to note that the only living things the panel is urging to exercise moral restraint are human beings – they aren’t demanding that bears consider the dignity of salmon before snatching them from the river, nor that mosquitoes observe the inherent worth of their fellow creatures before sucking their blood.

This double standard is a crucial clue to the mistake of the moral philosophy that underpins faulty ideas like animal “rights”, and now, plant “rights”. Any rational idea of morality necessarily applies only to things that have the capacity to conceive of and exercise moral choices. The reason it sounds strange to think of a rock, flower, or groundhog as moral or immoral is because such entities are incapable of thinking about or making the kinds of choices morality involves. Only one kind of being is – human beings.

Only in the works of Ayn Rand can one find a fully rational view of morality, one that shows why ideas like “plant rights” are as absurd as they sound.