Could Atlas Shrugged Become a Unique Asset in College Courses?

Book Review: Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus, by Edward Younkins, Lexington Books (July, 2021)

If Objectivism were offered on the college menu, it could change everything.

Ayn Rand insisted that the philosophy of Objectivism must penetrate the universities to have a chance of driving the philosophical revolution America desperately needed (now even more than when she wrote half-a-century ago). It is in college, or at college age, she said, that young men and women “shop” for a philosophy of life. Their openness to new ideas about fundamentals, is brief. If Objectivism were offered on the college menu, it could change everything.

In the decades since she wrote, American higher education’s philosophical decline has become a nosedive. Many universities offer little “philosophy” in the tradition of “know thyself.” For the cadres of postmodernism, philosophy is about ideas that sustain or oppose political “oppression” of some groups by others. The discipline no longer is about understanding where we are (the nature of reality), how we know it (epistemology), and what we should do (ethics). It is about indoctrination.

Just when Objectivism is most desperately needed on campus (young minds and lives are at stake!), Edward W. Younkins, on the faculty of Wheeling University, and director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality, has published what I think is the best resource to date for bringing Atlas Shrugged into the college curriculum.

Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus (Lexington Books, 2021) is a tribute to the greatness of Rand’s literary and philosophical achievement.

Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus (Lexington Books, 2021) is a tribute, like many other books, to the greatness of Rand’s literary and philosophical achievement. It is an impressive identification and elaboration of the intellectual integration that gives Atlas Shrugged its protean power to move and persuade.

“Her chief concern is with values and issues that can be expressed in action. The story’s plot action is based on the integration of values and action and mind and body. Rand thereby shows actions supporting wide abstract principles.” (p. 9)

Ayn Rand conceived fiction as “a selective recreation of reality” in the image of the author’s fundamental estimate of existence and man’s place in it. Not every novel creates a world of the comprehensive scope of Atlas Shrugged; Rand called it her “metaphysical” novel. That means the world of Atlas Shrugged can be approached and understood from every perspective that we bring to understanding the real world: philosophical (including moral), economic (including the nature of production and business), political, social, and more. In addition, of course, it can be approached as literature.

The reward of such a reading? We discover what one of the most original, informed, disciplined, and broadly integrated minds of our time conceives that man’s world “might and ought to be.” We can explore that new world from every perspective and in detail. Above all, we can grasp how the half-dozen or more perspectives are integrated with absolute consistency into a single vision of an ideal world. Our exploration is infinitely more dramatic, of course, because we learn it all from the epic story of a mighty clash—a struggle to the death—between our historical world and Rand’s rational utopian vision of a world.

Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn’s Rand’s Magnum Opus demonstrates how Atlas Shrugged can enrich the college curriculum. I confess, I hesitate to use the tepid term “enrich.” But Prof. Younkins, although he leaves no doubt of his view of the greatness of Atlas Shrugged, does not “hype.” He writes the best of what we think of as academic prose: clear, precise, painstakingly organized, and jargon-free. And so, he writes that Atlas Shrugged can “enrich” the curriculum, but his analysis, examples, and impressive assembling of insights make us think—“transform” or “revolutionize” the curriculum. And that, of course, is exactly what Atlas Shrugged could do.

The book had to be academic for it is directed, in the end, at faculties. Early on, Prof. Younkins says it is for the “general” reader as well as the learned Objectivist and the academic professional. But he has written a book to pass muster by academic standards. The measured prose is there, the didactic organization, the footnotes, the citation of other scholars, the extended index—but above all, the explicit, sharply imaginative outlines of possible courses. The business of the book is to illustrate the priceless asset that the novel would be for college courses in philosophy and literature, economics, business, and social change.

Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus begins with an extended introduction. As I read it, I wondered if I was reading sections of the book. I keep glancing up at the page count, and no, I was not. Ed Younkins has written a didactic book. This often is a negative descriptor, but not this time. You state what is to be presented. And then you present it. And then you summarize and interpret for the reader what has been presented.

In briefest essence, these are just a few of the resources that Atlas Shrugged can deliver to students:

1. Fictional re-creations of life’s pivotal philosophical decisions.
2. Re-creations of how different individuals profoundly shape different characters.
3. Re-creation of how complex principles and decisions set the course of an economy toward prosperity or poverty and collapse.
4. Re-creations of the destructive impact of different forms of government intervention in an economy.
5. Re-creations of how businessmen bring genius, innovation, persistence, and voluntary cooperation to great productive achievements.
6. Re-creations of how ideas drive social change.

“By including only that which is essential, Rand illustrates the connection between metaphysical abstractions and concrete expressions. Atlas Shrugged is a feat of complex structural integration.” (p. 10)

Chapter 1 is a synopsis of the novel. Having recently written a synopsis of The Fountainhead, I admire that Prof. Younkins keeps his synopsis relatively brief, but not by sticking to generalizations and headlines only. The scenes, symbols, and turning points of the epic pop out of the narrative. Readers will notice in this chapter, as others, a lot of language from the introduction. It might be momentarily disorienting until you realize that when Prof. Younkins has formulated a point, it’s part of a formulation. If the point is repeated, it is to get at the formulation.

By bringing in all perspectives stated in essential terms, the synopsis casts into high relief Rand’s tour-de-force of integration. For example, Prof. Younkins focuses on the relationships between Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and Francisco D’Anconia. From one perspective, he points out, the entire novel is about mind-body integration and the disastrous error represented by the mind-body dichotomy. That is true of the conflict that characterizes Dagny’s and Rearden’s affair; and it is true of a view of production and wealth as unrelated to the individual’s reason and character. Dagny rejects the mind-body dichotomy in love and sex, but only later identifies the same dichotomy at work in letting the looters control and benefit from her work. It is her mind and code of morality that they exploit. Hank Rearden makes the same error, but he also applies the mind-body dichotomy to his love affair with Dagny. Francisco entirely rejects any version or tinge of the mind-dichotomy and mentors Rearden, including in the famous “money speech.”

Chapter 2 is about philosophy and literature, which cannot be separated in Atlas Shrugged, because motivation and character, causation in human affairs, and conflicts driven by ideas, arise in both. Prof. Younkins insists that nothing in the 1,200 pages of the novel is arbitrary; if it is in the novel, it has philosophical import. Also, the plot moves forward when characters perform successive inductions and formulate abstractions. Teachers need not direct students to attend to what has philosophical implications: everything does!

An example of the analysis of Atlas Shrugged as literary art is Rand’s use of narrative and other techniques to create meaning, including characterization. Most of the critical events in the novel are dramatized. The reader perceives the event as though present to view it. In addition, there are these techniques of characterization: symbolism, irony, recasting of Greek myths in Objectivist terms, and juxtaposition of philosophical opposite. “Ayn Rand’s use and recasting of Ancient Greek myths adds to the epic scope of Atlas Shrugged. By changing them, she challenges their traditional meaning and endows them with new meaning reflecting a revolutionary worldview complete with a new moral philosophy.” (p. 62)

Of particular interest is Prof. Younkins’s point that the entire novel is ironic. The characters in the outside world speak of the unbearable tragedy of the country’s breakdown; but the characters in Galt’s Gulch are working to “stop the motor” of the world as the only way to defeat the looters and to deliver the world from irreversible destruction. Thus when Dagny and others speak of the “destroyer” it has a meaning the opposite of what she intends.

Chapter 3 is about economics and about what Atlas Shrugged can teach. Those who have discovered the novel know its impact on their economic thinking. For many, its lasting significance is that it describes a world that perishes when unregulated capitalism is strangled. I do not know of another novel—and doubt there is one—that dramatizes the working of economic principles starting with root premises about the role man’s free mind in his survival, the causal priority of production over consumption, and wealth proceeding from character. And dramatizes every key principle of economics and its consequences (when operating or subverted) for individual human lives.

Some of these principles rarely appear in textbooks: for example, how the pyramid of human ability results in the greatest relative reward to the least able. Or the principle of economic justice exemplified by the trader.

For each essential economic point, Prof. Younkins piles up the examples available in Atlas Shrugged.  I had never quite realized how many regulatory laws and directives we are shown throughout the course of the novel—and the true moral mindset, motivations, and processes bringing them about. A full three-dimensional profile of the crony capitalist businessman is one of the gems in Atlas Shrugged—and crucial for understanding and redeeming the great producers who build our world.

The issues that Ayn Rand puts on the table in Atlas Shrugged now dominate the libertarian and economic liberal critique of the interventionist-welfare state. And have dominated it for half a century. For example, Atlas Shrugged dramatizes the fatal impossibility of commanding the knowledge required for central planning of the economy. “In Atlas Shrugged, the reader witnesses the process of a statist economy imploding. Atlas Shrugged illustrates that the type and amount of knowledge needed to direct a whole economy are far different from what is required to run a business.” (p. 88)

Chapter 4 is about business and businessmen in Atlas Shrugged. One of Rand’s noblest contributions to the world is her redemption of the moral stature of businessmen. If you think back to before she wrote the novel, it was incredible (literally) that she set out to make big businessmen fiery rebels, romantic figures, and crusaders for morality. Young readers love defiant, nonconformist outsiders. Rand decided that in Atlas Shrugged they should be railroad executives, oil drillers, steel magnates, and bankers.

It is the most revolutionary concept in modern fiction. And it succeeded so well that generations since have spawned champions of the view of  businessmen as heroes and antitrust regulators as dreary, benighted, and morally corrupt.

Here, Prof. Younkins returns to the themes of the mind-body dichotomy. He shows how it plays out on a vast stage in Atlas Shrugged: the base material realm versus the noble mental and spiritual realm, the superiority of “pure” over applied science, earned versus appropriated money, sex versus love, but, above all, the businessman versus the idealist.

“Atlas Shrugged depicts the businessperson’s role as potentially heroic. Atlas Shrugged shows the business hero as a determined, creative, and independent thinker who follows an idea to its accomplishment.”  (p. 117)

Every version of the dichotomy is dramatized—as when Dr. Robert Stadler, believing the crass public will not voluntarily support theoretical (“pure”) science, becomes a creature of the looters because they will use government to seize the money from the public. Atlas Shrugged presents the successful businessman like Hank Rearden as the greatest victim of the mind-body dichotomy and the most in need of restoration of his moral confidence, self-esteem, and self-image. That is what Francisco sets out to do.

Chapter 5 addresses social change. Its issues are less often discussed than the novel’s perspectives on the philosophy, literature, economics, and business. And yet, if what is projected in Atlas Shrugged were achieved in America, it would be ranked among history’s greatest social upheavals.

The chapter begins with social change theory, discusses capitalism and entrepreneurs as inherently change agents, then turns to the role of Atlas Shrugged itself  in social change—already achieved and potential.

The pivotal social change to see, Prof. Younkins argues, is laissez faire capitalism. As a social innovation, it has traditional characteristics required for success. For example, it is demonstrably superior to what it replaces, can be tried before being fully implemented, and at its core is easy to understand (not initiating force against others).

Prof. Younkins argues that the novel itself will be a prime mover of social change for several reasons:

1. Attempting to advocate and defend capitalism without reference to its foundations in philosophy, such as rejection of altruism, always has failed and must fail.
2. The novel has proved again and again that it is enjoyable and exciting to read while leaving readers with sustained inspiration to change the world.
3. Change of the extent sought requires understanding and acting on the personal, social, and structural levels, for which Atlas Shrugged is the perfect guide.

Just as earlier in the book Younkins referred in the same paragraph to the achievements of both The Atlas Society and the Ayn Rand Institute, in this chapter he uses an extended quotation from David Kelley and immediately beneath it one from Yaron Brook. He clearly distinguishes the two organizations, noting the policy of “open Objectivism” of the Atlas Society. He takes note of the willingness of the Atlas Society to work with other groups such as Students for Liberty. (p. 143)

Prof. Younkins turns to the complex obstacles to bringing about substantial movement toward capitalism. Many readers will be familiar with those obstacles that have turned the enormous optimism and energy that followed publication of Atlas Shrugged into a multi-front struggle that often is conducted as though trying were morally and psychologically necessary, but victory too remote to take seriously.

Prof. Younkins reviews such issues as the need for a cultural renaissance to undergird a philosophy of freedom, the need for private institutions and individuals to act, the need for change agents in every area of culture, and a focus on persuasion and conversion. “In addition to being an agent of economic change, the entrepreneur is also an agent of social and cultural change….The actions of entrepreneurs are open-ended and can be imagined and realized independently of existing social arrangement.” (p. 134)

It is clear to me, and, I think, to Prof. Younkins, that success in these (and many more) actions requires that more and more individuals discover Atlas Shrugged and that it influence their studies, their ambitions, and their plans while of college age. That of course brings us right back to why Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus was written. And why we must recommend—in some cases, demand—that it be recognized by colleges and universities.

Prof. Younkins has laid out the kind of courses that could be built on Atlas Shrugged. He has given details, examples, perspectives, and a structure for such courses.

It is the definitive discussion to date of the asset that Atlas Shrugged could be across the college curriculum. Prof. Younkins has mounted an inspiring, illuminating, and reasoned argument for using it. But he also has laid out the kind of courses that could be built on Atlas Shrugged. He has given details, examples, perspectives, and a structure for such courses. But what should arrest any genuine educator exploring the book is the potential for integrating the entire curriculum in a way faculties have advocated for decades—integrating it philosophically, across disciplines, with real-life experiences and concerns, with concerns both for knowledge and for thinking skills, and for learning and intelligent activism.

In the end, it is frustratingly difficult to capture the richness of what Prof. Younkins has written. He has dealt with philosophy, economics, politics, and social change, yes. But Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus is about characters that millions of readers have come to love. As Prof. Younkins reports: Atlas Shrugged is repeatedly identified in polls as one of the most life-transforming novels of all time.

That would not be possible without the characters that Rand created. The heroes like Dagny Taggart and the villains like Robert Stadler are understood as individuals, with all the choices, moral principles, economic behavior, political motives, and psychological traits that they exemplify. As human beings, they are defined by a rational faculty that they choose or refuse to exercise—with control of their destiny at stake. And this is the most profound teaching of Atlas Shrugged. It is a teaching that makes urgent the challenge of Prof. Younkins to put Objectivism on the curriculum in our colleges and universities.

For each new life and mind that arrives with hope and trust at the gates of the American university will expect to be dealt an honest hand. Expect in the great tradition of American higher education to be presented with an introduction to what mankind has done and learned throughout history, with challenging issues to be debated, with practical skills that different disciplines teach, and with repeated opportunities to master speaking and writing.

To be offered an education, not indoctrination.

Universities can steadfastly ignore it and pray that it will go away. Those faculty members in disciplines from philosophy to the sociology of change can have the courage to discuss its ideas—or can hope that it can be ignored.

The proposition is this simple: For more than half-a-century, Atlas Shrugged has compelled young readers to take an intense interest in philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, and business. That is a fact. Universities can steadfastly ignore it and pray that it will go away. Those faculty members in disciplines from philosophy to the sociology of change can have the courage to discuss its ideas—or can hope that it can be ignored.

Their excuses for refusing to deal with Atlas Shrugged have worn perilously thin, and, with Prof. Younkins’s book, now been obliterated. I would suggest that no honest academic can fault Prof. Younkins’s book for lack of analytical force, of telling specifics, of interdisciplinary integration, or of extended examples.

Who should read Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus? Teachers from the high school through graduate school (e.g., in business) who are open to improving education. The improvement can be increment (the book would enable that) but also radical (at root) by opening for intellectual examination the received dogmas of our time, by bringing ideas alive with dramatic examples, and by motivating intense admiration of reason, intelligence, productivity, and moral awareness.

They can give it a try by making Atlas Shrugged one choice among books on reading lists.

The intention of Prof. Younkins’s book is to excite teachers and guide them. Will others, already committed to Objectivism, want to read Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus?

Prof. Younkins is presenting Objectivism to the skeptical world of academia. He is meticulous in his formulations and interpretations. I found nothing that challenged the best understanding of Objectivism by its most experienced advocates.

What did seize my attention? First, how inclusion of Atlas Shrugged could catalyze a quantum advance in teaching many disciplines. Second, the explicit articulation of the perspectives that each, in a sense, “explains” the entire novel: philosophy, economics, literature, business, social change. Of course, I had sensed and appreciated what was in the novel. But Prof. Younkins shows how one scene, character, statement, symbol fits into every perspective. And finally (not really, but you must stop somewhere), there are the original observations of Prof. Younkins and other scholars. For example, check out the dozen and a half literary genres into which Atlas Shrugged can claim legitimately to fit: philosophical novel, literary novel, thriller, epic, utopian, dystopian, science fiction, mystery, political fiction, psychological thriller, futurist ….

For students still mastering the significance of Atlas Shrugged (of course, we all are), Prof. Younkins’s book is a resource of a kind I have not encountered. In the wake of publication of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand began to recommend to admirers books that would complement it (for example, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt). Prof. Younkins would not claim, I think, to replace those books. But in one volume, he illuminates and elaborates the implications of Atlas Shrugged for every field. The student of Objectivism sees in one book where the radiating force field of Atlas Shrugged will take him—and why. He will make connections that I made over decades.

Don’t worry. You still will want to read the other books—now a vast treasure trove as compared with years immediately after I read Ayn Rand. There is so much waiting for you that any efficiencies, and they abound in Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus, should be seized.

1. You never will exhaust the intellectual wealth of Atlas Shrugged.
2. “As a rational goal, Rand’s ideal of moral greatness is available to every human being.”

That is Prof. Younkins’s good news for students. And for us all.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.