Unity and Integration in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
LIBERTARIAN PAPERS VOL. 3, ART. NO. 5 (2011) UNITY AND INTEGRATION IN AYN RAND’S ATLAS SHRUGGED EDWARD W. YOUNKINS* IN ATLAS SHRUGGED (1957), AYN RAND PRESENTS her original, brilliant, and controversial philosophy of Objectivism in dramatized form.1 More than a great novel, it expounds a radically new philosophy with amazing clarity. Atlas Shrugged presents an integrated and all-embracing perspective of man and man’s relationship to the world and manifests the essentials of an entire philosophical system—metaphysics, epistemology, politics, and ethics. Atlas Shrugged embodies Objectivism in the actions of the story’s heroes. Leonard Peikoff (2004) explains that the most extraordinary quality of Atlas Shrugged is its integration. Ayn Rand understood that everything that is included in a novel affects that novel. The unity of a novel depends upon the necessary causal and logical connections among its many aspects. It follows *Edward W. Younkins (younkins@wju.edu) is Professor of Accountancy and Business Administration in the Department of Business at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia. Acknowledgments: Several people have contributed importantly to this article by reading and commenting on it. I am grateful to the following individuals for their useful observations and suggestions: Roger Bissell, Walter Block, Douglas J. Den Uyl, Mimi Gladstein, Steven Horowitz, Spencer MacCallum, Russell Madden, Douglas B. Rasmussen, Jeff Riggenbach, Peter Saint-Andre, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Larry Sechrest, and Gennady Stolyarov. CITE THIS ARTICLE AS: Edward W. Younkins, “Unity and Integration in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged,” Libertarian Papers 3, 5 (2011). ONLINE AT: libertarianpapers.org. THIS ARTICLE IS subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses).
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