Edward Younkins

This article presents a skeleton of a potential paradigm of human flourishing and happiness in a free society. It is an exploratory attempt to construct an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into a clear, consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. Holding that there are essential interconnections among objective ideas, the article specifically emphasizes the compatibility of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, Positive Psychology, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism arguing that particular ideas from these areas can be integrated into a paradigm of human flourishing and happiness based on the nature of man and the world. Such a paradigm will help people to understand the world and to survive and flourish in it. It is hoped that the paradigm will grow and evolve as scholars engage, question, critique, interpret, and extend its ideas. Our goal is to have a paradigm that accords with reality and there is always more to learn from reality

This article contends that Ayn Rand 's version of virtue ethics can supply a powerful foundation for operating a successful business. Rand 's Objectivist virtues can provide an underpinning for a firm's long-term sustainable success, as well as for the flourishing and happiness of its employees. In order to attain a company's goals, values, and purpose, these virtues need to be integrated with the firm's culture and climate. The Objectivist virtues can supply an integrated framework for employees' decisions and actions. Leaders are encouraged to link these virtues to the survival and success of both the firm and its employees.

By combining and synthesizing elements found in Austrian economics, Ayn Rand 's philosophy of Objectivism, and the closely related philosophy of human flourishing that originated with Aristotle, we have the potential to reframe the argument for a free society into a consistent reality-based whole whose integrated sum of knowledge and explanatory power is greater than that of its parts. The Austrian value-free praxeological defense of capitalism and the moral arguments of Rand, Aristotle, and the neo-Aristotelians can be brought together, resulting in a powerful, emergent libertarian synthesis of great promise.

This essay presents a skeleton of a potential conceptual framework for human flourishing in a free society. Its aim is to present a diagram that illustrates the ways in which its topics relate to one another and why they do. It argues for a plan of conceptualization rather than for the topics themselves. It emphasizes the interconnections among the components of the schema presented. It sees an essential interconnection between objective concepts, arguing that all of the disciplines of human action can be integrated into a paradigm of human flourishing based on the nature of man and the world

This article makes an argument for Atlas Shrugged as a highly unified and integrated novel. All of the sections of the paper explain how integration and unity are embodied in Atlas Shrugged. Part one discusses the philosophical and literary structure of Rand’s masterpiece. The next section is concerned with issues of political economy. Section three then examines Rand’s techniques of characterization and character development as demonstrated in Atlas Shrugged. The following part analyzes the philosophical speeches. The final major part considers Atlas Shrugged as a means for social change. The conclusion then discusses Atlas Shrugged as the manifestation of a fully-integrated philosophical novel

Atlas Shrugged is a novel about business and the people who create businesses. This article describes Ayn Rand’s treatment of business and entrepreneurs in the novel. It begins with an explanation of how Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that wealth and profit are creations of the human mind. The next section compares the worldviews of the novel’s business heroes and villains. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the novel’s main business protagonists—Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. The next part provides summaries of other business characters. The last section examines how the novel is used in college-level business courses.

The author of this article maintains that Ayn Rand’s version of virtue ethics can provide a powerful basis for operating a successful business organization. An argument is made that Ayn Rand’s Objectivist virtues can serve as an underpinning for a firm’s long-term sustainable success as well as for the flourishing and happiness of its employees. In order to attain a company’s goals, values, and purpose, these virtues must be integrated with the firm’s vision, culture, and climate. The Objectivist virtues are said to provide an integrated framework for employees’ decisions and actions. Leaders must link these virtues to the survival and success of both the firm and its employees. Toward the end of the paper a diagram is presented to aid the reader in visualizing the linkages among the ideas presented therein

This expository essay relies on the views of scholars writing about Atlas Shrugged to make a case that it is a highly integrated work of imaginative literature. The article focuses on the ways in which integration is manifested in Atlas Shrugged. Part 1 examines the philosophical structure of the novel. Part 2 addresses literary structure. This is followed by a discussion of Rand's techniques of characterization. An analysis of the speeches and the theme of mind-body integration concludes the discussion.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the several ways in which Atlas Shrugged is related to social change. It explains both how characters such as entrepreneurs and strikers introduce change in the novel as well as how Atlas Shrugged itself can be employed as a tool for bringing about change in the real world. The potential effects of the novel on readers are examined, as are the efforts of social movements that have embraced and incorporated the ideas found therein into their own philosophy.

This article provides a summary of economic issues found in Atlas Shrugged. It discusses the role of individual initiative, creativity, and productivity in economic progress as illustrated in this novel. It also shows the novel's depiction of the benefits of trade—and the destruction of exchange relationships and production that results from government intervention in the economy. Rand included a great many valuable insights about money in the novel's famous “money speech.” In addition, the book analyzes Galt's Gulch as a free market economy. The novel is, in part, a treatise on economics providing a literary treatment of proper economic principles.

Since its publication in 1957 Atlas Shrugged, the philosophical and artistic climax of Ayn Rand's novels, has never been out of print and has received enormous critical attention becoming one of the most influential books ever published, impacting on a variety of disciplines including philosophy, literature, economics, business, and political science among others. More than a great novel, Atlas Shrugged is an abstract conceptual, and symbolic work that expounds a radical philosophy, presenting a view of man and man's relationship to existence and manifesting the essentials of an entire philosophical system - metaphysics, epistemology, politics and ethics. Celebrating the fiftieth year of Atlas Shrugged's publication, this companion is an exploration of this monumental work of literature. Contributions have been specially commissioned from a diversity of eminent scholars who admire and have been influenced by the book, the included essays analyzing the novel's integrating elements of theme, plot and characterization from many perspectives and from various levels of meaning.