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Saturday
May 22, 2004

"Atlas Shrugged" in the Business School by Edward W. Younkins

Rand’s 1957 masterpiece dramatizes the positive qualities of the businessman by showing the triumph of individualism over collectivism, depicting business heroes as noble, appealing, and larger than life, and by characterizing business careers as at least, if not more, honorable as careers in medicine, law, or education. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (15 messages)

Post 0

Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 10:36am

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Great stuff Ed!! I'd never have believed Atlas Shrugged was so widely used in universities.

Out of interest do you have any trouble regarding the atheistic implications of the novel given that you are at a Jesuit university?

MH

Post 1

Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 6:39pm

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Ed,

I heartily agree with Matthew, "great stuff."

What a wonderfully positive article, especially this, Encouragingly, "Atlas Shrugged" is beginning to be taught in colleges and universities, with all the examples you provided.

Ii reminded me of this from my Autonomist article, " Objectivism Characterized:"

In Chris Matthew Sciabarra's excellent article, "The Cultural Ascendancy of Ayn Rand," [The Atlasphere, 12/31/03] he concluded, "When Rand has become so much a part of the vernacular that her ideas are filtered through cartoons and comics, fiction and film, I think it is safe to assume that she has not only survived culturally, but flourished. And for those who are enamored of Rand’s philosophy, the cultural apex will be reached when her ideas are so embedded in both academia and in the American psyche that they will have brought about a veritable intellectual revolution."

You have certaintly added more ammunition to support Dr. Sciabarra's thesis. I hope you are both right.

Regi

Post 2

Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 1:49pm

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Mises scholar, Bill Peterson, sent me the following email and asked me to post it for him:

"Three cheers for John Allison and Ed Younkins, two men joining Ayn Rand who saw that business theory is hardly as exciting as good fiction, that more often than not politics today is perverted on behalf of special interests--far from one remaining dedicated to the Founding Fathers' mission of maintenance of the rule of law and of limited government, of "life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."The greatness of Ayn Rand is her sensing the logic and truth of Acton's Law that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The tragedy of modern man lies in state secularization of morality into conscious amorality, of anything goes (recall Columbine) if not into outright immorality as suggested in the photos out of Iraq showing members of the U.S. military inflicting sexually bizarre torture to Iraqi prisoners of war."

Post 3

Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 5:40pm

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Wonderful article, Ed.

Ed is probably too modest to tell all of you that he is editing what promises to be a wonderful anthology to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged, and I'm honored to be among its contributors.

Ed is also contributing an essay to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies in next year's fabulous symposium (which will coincide with the Ayn Rand Centenary): "Ayn Rand Among the Austrians." Quite a few Austrian theorists will be participating in that forum, the second of our two-issue symposium tributes to honor the centennnial of Rand's birth.

Post 4

Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 6:30pm

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Great article Ed!

Reading it reminded me of something I've always thought - that simply reading "Atlas Shrugged" is enough.

I'm so glad I was introduced to Ayn Rand's ideas via "Atlas" - and not Rand's non-fiction works. The power of her novel is unsurpassed in getting the "stuff" of freedom and individualism under your skin - so to speak.

In many ways, all the subsequent discussion about Rand's ideas is largely superfluous. "Atlas" answers all the essential questions. And more importantly, it provides the life-context and inspiration rarely found in a work of non-fiction - the inspiration to actually live the ideas.

I have always felt that if only more people could actually be exposed to the story - then more lives would be changed.

And I cannot fathom why, after all this time, "Atlas" has still not made it to film.

Post 5

Monday, May 24, 2004 - 11:12am

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Ed, I'm glad you've had such success using Atlas Shrugged in class. More power to you. You wanted to know how others had fared -- I haven't used any of Rand's novels in classes, but I have on 3 or 4 occasions used the 1949 movie version of The Fountainhead in ethics classes. The biggest negative pertaining to that wasn't the "radical" ideals it portrays, but the fact that it's in Black and White! Not to sound overly curmudgeonly, but it's getting harder and harder to get kids these days to watch a B&W movie, no matter what it's about. Having said that, though, the film generally gets across the points I intend. Next semester, I'll be using Anthem in an honors class on social philosophy in utopian and dystopian fiction. That should be interesting.

Post 6

Monday, May 24, 2004 - 6:21pm

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Ed,

A wonderful article that conveys a great tool to be used in business schools. As a current business student working full time, I found that having read "Atlas Shrugged" in class enlightened me to a great novel about the concepts of capitalism and business I never knew existed. Ed, you are right when you say that "novels tend to have a greater teaching power". With a good novel you retain more of what is being said and you find it more interesting reading. "Atlas Shrugged" should be a required book on the reading list of business students.

Tammy H.

Post 7

Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 5:12am

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Thanks Matt, Regi, Chris, David, Aeon, and Tammy!!!!!

I appreciate your good words about my essay.

I hope to see some postings from some professors who have used Atlas Shrugged or some other novels in their classes.

Cheers!!!!

Ed

Post 8

Thursday, May 27, 2004 - 2:48pm

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Ed,
Thanks for mentioning my name in connection with teaching Atlas Shrugged as a text in Business Ethics. I am going to speak at length on this topic at the TOC summer seminar in Vancouver, BC in July. So, and just to whet the appetites of those who will be attending, let me briefly say a few things.
1. Atlas is the only text that I have had students name as ‘What they liked best about the course.’ Many students also write “I just loved Dagny” I taught it for four semesters.
2. I found that try as I might, I just couldn’t avoid examining the sex scenes, mainly because of the manner in which they integrate mind and body.
3. And that leads point three. As a business ethics text, the key to Atlas is the whole mind-body problem. The heroes have resolved it and the villains haven’t.
4. And Matt, you asked about the problems of teaching Atlas in a Jesuit school. Well, I was teaching Atlas in a Catholic school; a Franciscian school, and they fired me over Atlas. I thought it was the atheism, but found out from a tenured philosophy professor on the inside that the real reason was that the department chair was a Marxist and well, you can finish the sentence.

Fred Seddon

Post 9

Friday, May 28, 2004 - 5:21am

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Mises scholar Bettina Greaves asked me to post this email for her:

Yes, you are right. ATLAS SHRUGGED is a good way to teach entrepreneurship. Also to explain how the refusal of entrepreneurs to cooperate and the interventions of bureaucrats disrupt production and lead to a breakdown of the productive system.

But what ATLAS SHRUGGED doesn't teach is the complexity of interpersonal cooperation, division of labor, specialization, savings and capital required to produce even a simple thing like a pencil. Surely you are familiar with Leonard Read's "I, Pencil." Simplistic, perhaps, but it makes an important point. Rand's portrayal of Galt's Gulch is very naive. If I remember correctly, the entrepreneurs in self-exile in Galt's Gulch enjoyed a very high living standard and many modern technological conveniences. Any such sophisticated society could not exist in isolation. It would have to have the help, support, and cooperation of countless persons outside the Gulch. If I remember correctly--after MANY years--the Gulch residents benefited from a technologically advanced system of communications and of transportation with a miniature railroad. Who built them? And where did the materials come from?

I wish I could recommend a novel to supplement ATLAS...that describes how the economic system of production is built up over long periods of time, thanks to the ingenuity of countless entrepreneurs, with the help of countless persons who cooperated, exchanged, saved and invested, bit I can't. Biographies of businesses, businessmen, and inventors might help. Also, one book that might help--not a novel--is HOW THE WEST GREW RICH by Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr.

Rand shows how free markets can be broken down, but she doesn't show how they are built.

Thanks for sharing with me your exciting teaching plan.

BETTINA GREAVES

Post 10

Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 5:59am

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Fred,

And Matt, you asked about the problems of teaching Atlas in a Jesuit school. Well, I was teaching Atlas in a Catholic school; a Franciscian school, and they fired me over Atlas. I thought it was the atheism, but found out from a tenured philosophy professor on the inside that the real reason was that the department chair was a Marxist and well, you can finish the sentence.

Thanks, that's very interesting, and to me a touch surprising - I would have thought that both you and the Marxist would have been fired for contradicting RC doctrine or some such. Sorry you got fired though :-(

MH

Post 11

Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 12:25pm

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Hi Matt:

At Wheeling Jesuit University no one has ever tried to stop me from using Atlas Shrugged. I have had philosophy professors say that Atlas Shrugged is not philosophy and literature professors say that it is not literature. I have had several colleagues say they disagreed with its message but no one has ever said that I did not have the right to use it in class. I would like like to think that WJU's academic administrators and faculty members are true supporters of academic freedom! However, it may be that they just know that I will do what I want to do no matter what they might say! :)

Cheers!!!

Ed

Post 12

Monday, May 31, 2004 - 3:24pm

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Fred:

Will your TOC course in using Atlas Shrugged to teach Business Ethics be available on tape? It might be a good vehicle to popularize the use of Rand's great novel in such course!

Bettina:

It is too bad that Henry Hazlitt's novel, The Great Idea also called Time Will Run Back is not still in print.

To Anyone Interested:

I received a phone call asking about other novels or plays that I've used in class. I have taught a course called Business Through Literature numerous times and have used a variety of works in addition to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead including:

Cameron Hawley's Executive Suite and Cash McCall

Jerry Sterner's Other People's Money

Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt

John Updike's Rabbit is Rich

William Dean Howells' The Rise of Silas Lapham

Theodore Dreiser's The Financier

Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion

David Mamet's Glengary Glen Ross

F. Scott Fitzgerald"s The Great Gatsby

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

Walker Percy's The Moviegoer

Frank Norris' The Pit and The Octopus

Philip Roth's American Pastoral

Saul Bellow's Seize the Day

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward

and many more.........

I have used between 6 and 8 novels in each one-semester course and have also used occasional films.

Is it no wonder that the students invariably prefer whichever of Ayn Rand's novels I included in that particular course!?!?

Cheers!!!

Ed

(Edited by Ed Younkins on 5/31, 3:26pm)

Post 13

Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 1:21pm

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Having read "Atlas Shrugged" in one of Ed's classes, I can say that it was a great way to illustrate capitalism. It is certainly the most influential book that I've ever read. It really opened my eyes to the way things should be and showed me all the problems that exist in today's society that I was ignorant of up until that point. I think it's great that this book is starting to see more widespread use. It's imperative that more and more people come to understand the points made in this book. However, using it in college level business classes isn't enough. If you're taking business classes, chances are you already have an understanding of capitalism. I think it also needs to be taught in English classes (definitely college level, maybe even high school) so that more people can be exposed to it and understand how capitalism works and recognize that changes are needed. It's a great book, a great teaching tool, and I hope to see more widespread use of it in the future.

Post 14

Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 7:51pm

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I've had the pleasure of studying Atlas in a class entitled "Conceptual Foundations of Business" offered by Dr. Younkins. As a philosophy major, I hadn't much thought about business and such, but when Atlas is coupled with Younkins' own book "Capitalism and Commerce: Conceptual Foundations of Free Enterprise," one can come away with a profound appreciation for the thought behind entrepreneurship and business ethics. I'm currently in Younkins' course "Ethical Environments of Business" and we are once again using Atlas and the Capitalism and Commerce book. I got so much out of "Capitalism" that I decided to buy a hardback copy on Amazon so I didn't have to jeopardize my autographed copy. :)

I can't say enough about Dr. Younkins, his book, his ideas, and his use of Atlas to drive home the core issues of business. His approach is practical and his message is profound.

Ed, thanks for helping me "flourish" as a human being. :)

Jake