Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 — A Movie Review

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 — A Movie Review

Rand is a bit disappointed. She wants to testify on the communist undertones of “The Best Years of Our Lives” – a popular, Oscar-winning piece of cinema – but HUAC only allows her to testify about “Song of Russia,” a propaganda piece released to assuage Americans’ suspicions about temporarily allying with the Soviet Union in the latter days of World War II. Rand is a firecracker, an acolyte of untainted capitalism, and a scathing critic of “Song of Russia.” She posits that the film, a false portrayal of a happy Soviet Russia, dupes the American public.

A Footnote in Hume

A Footnote in Hume

David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1748) advanced the idea that Benevolence is at the core of ethics. While this is well known, he also claimed that empathetic emotions had in human affairs, the force that gravity played in the physical world. He also denied that self-love was a major motivator in ethics. This is contrasted with the views of Ayn Rand, with a suggestion that in the present time, when empathy is receiving new attention among scholars and philosophers, new attention to Hume’s theory is warranted.