- Ayn Rand (plato.standford.edu)
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) was a novelist-philosopher who outlined a comprehensive philosophy, including an epistemology and a theory of art, in her novels and essays. Early in her career she also wrote short stories, plays, and screenplays. Rand’s first and most autobiographical novel, We the Living (1936), set in the Soviet Union, was published only after many rejections, owing to widespread sympathy for the Soviet “experiment” among the intellectuals of the day. We the Living was quickly followed by the dystopian novel, Anthem (1938), written as “a kind of rest” from work on her next major novel, The Fountainhead (1943). The Fountainhead, also published after many rejections because of its individualism, and largely panned by critics, soon became a best-seller by word of mouth. The Fountainhead brought Rand international fame, and Atlas Shrugged (1957) sealed this fame. By 1958, Rand’s novels, increasingly philosophical, had won her ideas a sufficiently devoted following for her to form, in association with psychologist Nathaniel Branden (with whom she later broke), an official “Objectivist” philosophical movement, complete with journals and lecture courses. For all her popularity, however, only a few professional philosophers have taken her work seriously. As a result, most of the serious philosophical work on Rand has appeared in non-academic, non-peer-reviewed journals, or in books, and the bibliography reflects this fact. We discuss the main reasons for her rejection by most professional philosophers in the first section. Our discussion of Rand’s philosophical views, especially her moral-political views, draws from both her non-fiction and her fiction, since her views cannot be accurately interpreted or evaluated without doing so.
- Madison Park, Seattle (Wikipedia)
Madison Park is a neighborhood in east central Seattle, Washington, USA, named after the city park at the foot of E. Madison Street on the Lake Washington shore. It is bounded on the east by Lake Washington; on the south by the intersection of Lake Washington Boulevard E. and 39th Avenue E., beyond which is Denny-Blaine; on the west by Lake Washington Boulevard E.; and on the north by Union Bay. Washington Park and the private Broadmoor community and golf course are subunits within Madison Park. The neighborhood’s main thoroughfares are E. Madison Street (northeast- and southwest-bound) and McGilvra Boulevard E. (north- and southbound).