Welcome to my blog. My name is Steve Giardina. I consider myself to be a student of the philosophy of Objectivism, and these are my many thoughts. Feel free to leave comments, as well as your opinions.
"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life." Ayn Rand
12/12/2003
Since I will be going on winter break soon, and since I recently ordered a large list of great books, I figured I’d list the books that I have ordered and those that I have requested for Xmas.
1. James Madison: Writings
2. Debate on The Consitution edited by Bernard Bailyn
3. Thomas Jefferson: Writings
4. Benjamin Franklin: Writings
5. Thomas Paine: Writings
6. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories
7. Newton’s Philosophy of Nature by Newton
8. The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams by C. Bradley Thompson
9. The Birth of a New Physics by I. Bernard Cohen
10. The Killing of History by Keith Windschuttle
11. The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses by Alan Charles Kors
12. The Enemies of Christopher Columbus by Thomas A. Bowden
13. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: Including the Starry Messenger
14. The Classical Mind by W.T. Jones
15. Virtue Ethics: An Introduction by Richard Taylor
16. An Introduction to Logic by H.W. B. Joseph
17. The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto
18. Grow Up America! by Dr. Michael J. Hurd
19. The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb
20. A History of the United States and Its People by Edward Eggleston
21. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
22. John Adams and the Spirit Liberty by C. Bradley Thompson
23. On Ayn Rand by Allan Gotthelf
24. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Knowlton K. Zinsse
25. Heart of a Pagan: The Story of Swoop by Andrew Bernstein
26. History of Philosophy by Wilhelm Windelband
If anyone is interested in buying any of these books, or any books in general, please contact me. While I do not believe that I will be able to set it up in time for the holiday season, I will soon be creating a marketplace of links to books you can get at amazon.com. For every book that is bought from the result of a link on my site, I get a little bit of money. Yeah capitalism!
7/30/2003
I highly suggest reading The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff.
In this book, Leonard Peikoff demonstrates the “ominous parallels” between the philosophy in pre-Hitler Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power and the dominant philosophical trends of America today. The following is an excerpt from the book:
The mind cannot know truth, said the new philosophy. The mind dare not know itself, said the new psychology. The mind cannot understand nature, said the new physics. The mind cannot reach God, said the new theology. The mind is unspiritual and unfeeling, said the new literature. The mind stifles self-expression, said the new education. The mind is banal, said the new art.
The mind is dead, said the new culture. It cannot know reality, it cannot grasp the good, it does not move man.
Man, said the new vision, is guilty, disoriented, futile. He is a being frozen by terror, a cipher, a monster, a filthy little psychopath. The appropriate response to such a being, said
the vision’s spreaders, is pity or revulsion or an ironic yawn.
This is part of the fundamental philosophical trends which permeated pre-Hitler Germany and allowed Hitler to obtain power. Many of these very same philosophical trends are now present in dominant American philosophy and the world of academia in America.
I highly suggest reading this book. However, before reading this book, I suggest reading at leastThe Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Philosophy: Who Needs It, The Virtue of Selfishness, and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, in order to fully understand and appreciate The Ominous Parallels.
6/29/2003
I’d like to suggest the following works of fiction and non-fiction for serious study. The following are written by Ayn Rand unless otherwise noted:
1. The Fountainhead
2. Atlas Shrugged
3. We the Living
4. Anthem
5. Night of January 16th
6. The Early Ayn Rand
7. The Virtue of Selfishness (with additional articles by Nathaniel Branden)
8. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (with additional articles by Alan Greenspan, Nathaniel Branden, and Robert Hessen)
9. Philosophy: Who Needs It
10. For the New Intellectual
11. The Romantic Manifesto
12. The Voice of Reason (with additional articles by Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz)
13. Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (with additional articles by Peter Schwartz)
14. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Expanded Second Edition (edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff)
15. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff
16. The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff
17. Loving Life by Craig Biddle
18. Viable Values by Tara Smith
19. The Prime Movers by Edwin A. Locke
20. The Ayn Rand Reader edited by Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff
21. The Letters of Ayn Rand
22. Journals of Ayn Rand
23. The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts by Harry Binswanger
24. Study Methods and Motivation by Edwin A. Locke
25. The Art of Nonfiction
26. The Art of Fiction
27. Why Businessmen Need Philosophy
28. The Ayn Rand Letter
I have read (and sometimes re-read) the majority of these books, and the ones that I have not read I am in the process of reading. This list is by no means exhaustive, and is in no particular order of importance. For those of you who are interested in learning more about Objectivism and want to know where to start, I offer the following resources:
The Ayn Rand Institute
The Ayn Rand Bookstore
Essentials of Objectivism
or you can contact me through either the AIM or e-mail links on the right hand side of this page.
I will add any books and/or resources as I become aware of them.
