Loving Life

For all you procrastinators out there still trying to figure out what to get that special someone for christmas, allow me to make a suggestion: Craig Biddle's introduction to Objectivist ethics, Loving Life.

This book is the definitive answer to Dostoyevsky's claim: "Without God, everything is permissible".

From the inside flap:

If you want to live your life to the fullest, if you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible, this book is for you. It is about the essential means to that end: a proper code of values - a proper morality.

Contrary to popular myth, morality does not come from God; it is not a matter of divine revelation. Nor is it a matter of social convention or personal opinion. Being moral does not consist in obeying commandments, or in doing whatever is culturally accepted, or in doing whatever one wants to do. The rabbis, the priests, the relativists, and the subjectivists are wrong. Morality is not a matter of faith or conformity or feelings.

True morality is a matter of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. It is a matter of reason, logic, and the law of cause and effect. As such, it is an indispensable guide to living well and loving life. This is demonstrated in the pages ahead.

By the way, I won't mind if that special someone is me.