Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Objectivist philosophy
Main interests	Objectivist metaphysics, Objectivist epistemology, Objectivist ethics, Objectivist politics

Ayn Rand (IPA: [ajn ɹænd], February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6 1982), born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, was a Russian-American author and philosopher best known for developing the philosophy of Objectivism and for writing the novels We the Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged.

Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, the concepts of individualism, rational egoism ("rational self-interest"), and capitalism, which she believed should be implemented fully via laissez-faire capitalism. She believed that man must choose his values and actions by reason; that the individual has a right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self; and that no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force, or impose ideas on others by physical force. Her politics have been described as minarchism and libertarianism, though she never used the first term and detested the second.

The express goal of Rand's fiction was to showcase the idealized Randian hero, a man whose ability and independence causes conflict with society, who nevertheless perseveres to achieve his goals.

Early Life

Childhood & education

Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was the eldest of three daughters (Alissa, Natasha, and Nora) of a Jewish family. Her parents, Zinovny Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, were agnostic and largely non-observant. From an early age, she displayed an interest in literature and films. She started writing screenplays and novels at the age of seven.

Her mother taught her French and subscribed to a magazine featuring stories for boys, where Rand found her first childhood hero: Cyrus Paltons, an Indian army officer in a Rudyard Kipling-style story by Maurice Champagne, called "The Mysterious Valley".Throughout her youth, she read the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas and other Romantic writers, and expressed a passionate enthusiasm toward the Romantic movement as a whole. She discovered Victor Hugo at the age of thirteen, and fell deeply in love with his novels. Later, she cited him as her favorite novelist and the greatest novelist of world literature.

St. Petersburg University occupies a group of early 18th-century buildings on the Neva embankment of Vasilievsky Island.

Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and her family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik regime. Her father's pharmacy was confiscated by the Soviets, and the family fled to Crimea to recover financially. When Crimea fell to the Bolsheviks in 1921, Rand burned her diary, which contained vitriolic anti-Soviet writings. Rand then returned to St. Petersburg ("Petrograd") to attend university. She studied philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd. Her major literary discoveries were the works of Edmond Rostand, Friedrich Schiller, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She admired Rostand for his richly romantic imagination and Schiller for his grand, heroic scale. She admired Dostoevsky for his sense of drama and his intense moral judgments, but was deeply against his philosophy and his sense of life. She completed a three-year program in the Department of Social Pedagogy that included history, philology, and law, and received Certificate of Graduation (Diploma No. 1552) on 13 October 1924. She also encountered the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche, and loved his exaltation of the heroic and independent individual who embraced egoism and rejected altruism in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Rand continued to write short stories and screenplays. She entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screenwriting; in late 1925, however, she was granted a visa to visit American relatives.

Immigration and marriage

In February 1926, she arrived in the United States at the age of twenty-one, entering by ship through New York City, which would ultimately become her home. She was profoundly moved by the city's skyline, later describing it in one of her novels, The Fountainhead: "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline, the sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."

After a brief stay with her relatives in Chicago, she resolved never to return to the Soviet Union, and set out for Hollywood to become a screenwriter. She then changed her name to "Ayn Rand". There is a story told that she named herself after the Remington Rand typewriter, but she began using the name Ayn Rand before the typewriter was first sold. Rand stated her new name was derived from the Cyrillic spelling of her family's name, and the Ayn Rand Institute noted a similarity between the name Rand and the spelling of "Rosenbaum" in Cyrillic on her college diploma. She stated that her first name, 'Ayn', was an adaptation of the name of a Finnish writer. This may have been the Finnish-Estonian author Aino Kallas, but variations of this name are common in Finnish-speaking regions.

Initially, Rand struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living expenses. A chance face-to-face meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to a job as an extra in his film King of Kings, and subsequent work as a script reader. She also worked as the head of the costume department at RKO Studios.

While working on the film, she intentionally bumped into an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor, who caught her eye. The two married on April 15, 1929, and remained married for fifty years, until O'Connor's death in 1979 at the age of 82. In 1931, Rand became a naturalized citizen of the United States; she was fiercely proud of the United States, and in later years said to the graduating class at West Point, "I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world."

Fiction

Rand viewed herself primarily as a novelist, not a philosopher, but has sometimes been disparaged by academic philosophers for presenting her philosophy in fiction and non-fiction books aimed at a general audience rather than publications in peer-reviewed journals. Rand's defenders note that she is part of a long tradition of authors who wrote philosophically rich fiction — including Dante, John Milton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Albert Camus, and that other philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre presented their philosophies in both fictional and non-fictional forms.

Early works

Her first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios: "Von Sternberg later considered it for Dietrich, but Russian scenarios were out of favour and it was ditched." Rand then wrote the play The Night of January 16th in 1934, which was produced on Broadway. The play was a courtroom drama in which a jury chosen from the audience decided the verdict, leading to one of two possible endings.

Rand then published two novels, We the Living (1936), and Anthem (1938): "Rand described We the Living as the most autobiographical of her novels, its theme being the brutality of life under communist rule in Russia." Its harsh anti-communist tone met with mixed reviews in the U.S., where the period of The Great Depression was sometimes known as "The Red Decade" in reference to the highwater mark of sympathy for socialist ideals. Stephen Cox, at The Objectivist Center, observed that We The Living "was published at the height of Russian socialism's popularity among leaders of American opinion. It failed to attract an audience."

Frank O'Connor and Ayn Rand spent the summer of 1937 in Stony Creek, Connecticut, while Frank worked in summer stock, and Ayn planned Anthem, a dystopian vision of a futuristic society where collectivism has triumphed. Anthem did not find a publisher in the United States and was first published in England.

The Fountainhead

See also: The Fountainhead

Rand's first major professional success came with her best-selling novel The Fountainhead (1943), which she wrote over a period of seven years. The novel was rejected by twelve publishers, who thought it was too intellectual and opposed to the mainstream of American thought. It was finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house, thanks mainly to a member of the editorial board, Archibald Ogden, who praised the book in the highest terms ("If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.") and finally prevailed. Eventually, The Fountainhead was a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. In the sixty years since it was published, Rand's novel has sold six million copies, and continues to sell about 100,000 copies per year.

According to Rand, the theme of The Fountainhead is "individualism and collectivism in man's soul." The hero, Howard Roark, is Rand's ideal, a noble soul par excellence, an architect who is firmly and serenely devoted to his own ideals and believes that no man should copy the style of another in any field, especially architecture. Many of the other characters in the novel demand that Roark renounce his values, but he maintains his integrity with almost contemptuous laconism.

Atlas Shrugged

See also: Atlas Shrugged

File:2005-12-22 - United States - New York - City of New York - Atlas Building - Black and White.jpg

"Atlas," the largest sculptural work at Rockefeller Center in New York City, by Lee Lawrie and Rene Chambellan, in the Art Deco style. (1936)

Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. Due to the success of The Fountainhead, the initial printing was 100,000 copies, and the book went on to become an international bestseller. (The frequent claim that Atlas Shrugged was later found to be the "second most influential book in America, after The Bible," appears to be an exaggeration of the findings of one 1991 survey.)

Atlas Shrugged is often seen as Rand's most extensive statement of the Objectivist philosophy in any of her works of fiction. In its appendix, she offered this summary:

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

The theme of Atlas Shrugged is "The role of man's mind in society". Rand upheld the industrialist as one of the most admirable members of any society and fiercely opposed the popular resentment accorded to industrialists. This led her to envision a novel wherein the industrialists of America go on strike and retreat to a mountainous hideaway. The American economy and its society in general slowly start to collapse. The government responds by increasing the already stifling controls on industrial concerns. The novel deals with issues as divergent as sex, music, medicine, politics, and human ability.

Ouray, Colorado celebrates (silently) the completion of the novel "Atlas Shrugged", every year.

Philosophy and the Objectivist movement

Main article: Objectivist philosophy

Rand's Objectivism encompasses positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. In brief, Objectivism holds that there is a mind-independent reality, that individuals are in contact with this reality through sensory perception, that they gain knowledge by processing the data of perception using reason or "non-contradictory identification", that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or "rational self-interest", and that the only social system consistent with such a morality is laissez-faire capitalism.(Listen to Rand explaining Objectivism) Along with Nathaniel Branden, his wife Barbara, and others including Alan Greenspan and Leonard Peikoff, (jokingly designated "The Collective"), Rand launched the Objectivist movement to promote her philosophy.

Philosophical influences

She was greatly influenced by Aristotle. Some have observed parallels with Nietzsche, and she was vociferously opposed to some of the views of Kant. Rand also claimed to share intellectual lineage with John Locke, who conceptualized the ideas that individuals "own themselves," have a right to the products of their own labor, and have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and more generally with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. She occasionally remarked with approval on specific philosophical positions of, e.g., Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Aquinas, She seems also to have respected the 20th Century American rationalist Brand Blanshard, who, like Rand, believed that "there has been no period in the past two thousand years when [Both reason and rationality] have undergone a bombardment so varied, so competent, so massive and sustained as in the last half-century."

Aristotle

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), in the Raphael fresco The School of Athens. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience.

Rand's greatest influence was Aristotle, especially Organon ("Logic"); she considered Aristotle the greatest philosopher. In particular, her philosophy reflects an Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics — both Aristotle and Rand argued that "there exists an objective reality that is independent of mind and that is capable of being known." Although Rand was ultimately critical of Aristotle's ethics, others have noted her egoistic ethics "is of the eudemonistic type, close to Aristotle's own...a system of guidelines required by human beings to live their lives successfully, to flourish, to survive as "man qua man." Rand herself argued "that her philosophy diverges from Aristotle’s by considering essences as epistemological and contextual instead of as metaphysical. She envisions Aristotle as a philosophical intuitivist who declared the existence of essences within concretes."

Nietzsche

In her early life, Rand admired the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, and did share "Nietzsche's reverence for human potential and his loathing of Christianity and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant," but eventually became critical, seeing his philosophy as emphasizing emotion over reason and subjective interpretation of reality over actual reality. There is debate about the extent of the relationship between Rand's views and Nietzsche's, and over what seemed to be an evolution of Rand's view of Nietzsche. Allan Gotthelf, in On Ayn Rand, describes the first edition of We The Living as very sympathetic to Nietzschean ideas. Bjorn Faulkner and Karen Andre, characters from The Night of January 16th, exemplify certain aspects of Nietzsche's views. Ronald Merrill, author of The Ideas of Ayn Rand identified a passage in We the Living that Rand had omitted from the 1959 reprint: "In it, the heroine entertains (though finally rejects) sentiments explicitly attributed to Nietzche about the justice of sacrificing the weak for the strong." Rand herself denied a close intellectual relationship with Nietzsche and characterized changes in later editions of We the Living as stylistic and grammatical.

The destruction of Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead is an example of her later view, a rejection of Nietzsche, that the great cannot succeed by sacrificing the masses: "her [1934] journals suggest a rejection of traditional false-alternative ethics. Her May 15 entry, for example, identifies the error of Nietzscheans such as Gail Wynand: in trying to achieve power, they use the masses, but at the cost of their ideals and standards, and thus become "a slave to those masses." The independent man, therefore, will not make his success dependent upon the masses." In the end, Rand made peace with her changing views of Nietzsche and his influence, and the introduction to the 25th aniversary edition of The Fountainhead concludes with Nietzsche's statement, "The noble soul has reverence for itself."

Kant

See also: Critique of Pure Reason

Kant's view that the "noumenal" world (things-in-themselves) is unknowable to man led Rand to consider him a "monster."

Rand was deeply opposed to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Their divergence is greatest in metaphysics and epistemology rather than the ethics of Kant's well known Categorical imperative (her critique of Kant's ethics is directly rooted in Kant's metaphysics and epistomology, and there is debate over whether the Categorical Imperative is compatible with Objectivism). Rand and Kant had significantly different theories of concepts, identity and conciousness: In Objectivist epistemology reason is the highest virtue and reason and logic can be used to understand objective reality. This is diametrically opposed to Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy, as Kant believed that metaphysics cannot talk about what exists ("things-in themselves") since it is unknowable, but rather must focus on what is experienced and how it is experienced. In Rand's view, Kant's dichotomy severed rationality and reason from the real world — a betrayal of the very nature of man. In Rand's words,

"I have mentioned in many articles that Kant is the chief destroyer of the modern world...You will find that on every fundamental issue, Kant's philosophy is the exact opposite of Objectivism."

In the final issue of The Objectivist, she further wrote,

"Suppose you met a twisted, tormented young man and...discovered that he was brought up by a man-hating monster who worked systematically to paralyze his mind, destroy his self-confidence, obliterate his capacity for enjoyment and undercut his every attempt to escape... Western civilization is in that young man's position. The monster is Immanuel Kant."

Founds "The Collective"

Main article: Objectivist movement

In 1950 Rand moved to 120 East 34th Street in New York City, and formed a group with the deliberately ironic name "The Collective," which included future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden), who had been profoundly influenced by The Fountainhead. According to Branden, "I wrote Miss Rand a letter in 1949...[and] I was invited to her home for a personal meeting in March, 1950, a month before I turned twenty."

The group originally started out as informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy; later the Collective would proceed to play a larger, more formal role, helping edit Atlas Shrugged and promoting Rand's philosophy through the Nathaniel Branden Institute. Many Collective members gave lectures at the NBI in cities across the United States, while others wrote articles for its sister newsletter, The Objectivist.

After several years, Rand and Branden's friendly relationship blossomed into a romantic affair, despite the fact that both were married at the time. Their spouses were both convinced to accept this affair but it eventually led to Branden's separation from and then divorce of his wife.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through both her fiction and non-fiction works, and by giving talks at several east-coast universities, largely through the Nathaniel Branden Institute ("the NBI") which Branden established to promote her philosophy: "The Objectivist Newsletter, later expanded and renamed simply The Objectivist contained essays by Rand, Branden, and other associates...that analyzed current political events and applied the principles of Objectivism to everyday life." Rand later published these in book form.

Political and social views

Rand's political views were stongly pro-capitalist, anti-statist, and anti-Communist. She exalted what she saw as the heroic American values of egoism and individualism. Rand also had a strong dislike for mysticism, religion, and compulsory charity, all of which she believed helped foster a crippling culture of resentment towards individual human happiness and success. Rand detested many prominent liberal and conservative politicians of her time, including prominent anti-Communists, such as Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan, Hubert H. Humphrey, and Joseph McCarthy. She opposed US involvement in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, although she also strongly denounced pacifism: "When a nation resorts to war, it has some purpose, rightly or wrongly, something to fight for – and the only justifiable purpose is self-defense." She opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, "If you want to see the ultimate, suicidal extreme of altruism, on an international scale, observe the war in Vietnam – a war in which American soldiers are dying for no purpose whatever," but also felt that unilateral American withdrawal would be a mistake of appeasement that would embolden communists and the Soviet Union.

Economics

Generally, her political thought is in the tradition of classical liberalism. She expressed qualified enthusiasm for the economic thought of Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. The Ludwig von Mises Institute says that "it was largely as a result of Ayn's efforts that the work of von Mises began to reach its potential audience." Though not mentioned as an influence by her specifically, parallels between her works and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" do exist (although Rand sharply criticized Emerson in her address to the graduates of West Point, calling him a "very little mind"). Later Objectivists, such as Richard Salsman, have claimed that Rand's economic theories are implicitly more supportive of the doctrines of Jean-Baptiste Say, though Rand herself was likely not acquainted with his work.

Gender, sex, and race

Rand's views on gender roles have led to some controversy. According to her, "For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man." (1968) Rand also stated that no woman can ever be qualified to be President and strongly opposed the modern feminist movement, despite supporting some of its goals. Feminist author Susan Brownmiller called Rand "a traitor to her own sex," while others, including Camille Paglia and the contributors to 1999's Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, have noted Rand's "fiercely independent--and unapologetically sexual" heroines who are unbound by "tradition's chains...[and] who had sex because they wanted to."

Some in the BDSM community see Rand's work as relevant and supportive because she endorsed strongly-defined sex roles combined with power difference fetishism in which "Men are metaphysically the dominant sex".

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand writes that the "band on the wrist of [Dagny's] naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained." This novel, along with Night of January 16th (1968) and The Fountainhead (1943), features sex scenes with stylized erotic combat that borders on rape. In a review of a biography of Rand, writer Jenny Turner opined,

"the sex in Rand’s novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic. In The Fountainhead, the first coupling of the heroes, heralded by whips and rock drills and horseback riding and cracks in marble, is ‘an act of scorn . . . not as love, but as defilement’ – in other words, a rape. (‘The act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted.’ In Atlas Shrugged, erotic tension is cleverly increased by having one heroine bound into a plot with lots of spectacularly cruel and handsome men.)

Another source of controversy is Rand's view of homosexuality. According to remarks at the Ford Hall forum at Northeastern University in 1971, Rand's personal view was that homosexuality is "immoral" and "disgusting." Specifically, she stated that "there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality" because "it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises." A number of noted current and former Objectivists have been highly critical of Rand for her views on homosexuality. Others, such as Kurt Keefner, have argued that "Rand’s views were in line with the views at the time of the general public and the psychiatric community", though he admits that "she never provided the slightest argument for her position, [...] because she regarded the matter as self-evident, like the woman president issue." In the same appearance, Rand noted, "I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit [homosexual behavior]. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it."

Rand defended the right of businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and race. Rand's defenders argue that her opposition to government intervention to end private discrimination was motivated by her valuing property rights above civil or "human rights" (due to a rejection of the validity of the distinction) and therefore her view did not constitute an endorsement of the morality of the prejudice per se. Rand argued that no one's rights are violated by a private individual's or organization's refusal to deal with them, even if the reason is irrational.

Rand did oppose some prejudices on moral grounds, in essays like "Racism" and "Global Balkanization," while still arguing for the right of individuals and businesses to act on such prejudice without government intervention. She wrote, "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism...[the notion] that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors," but also opposed governmental remedies for this problem: "Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue—and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism."

See also:Objectivism and homosexuality

HUAC testimony

In 1947, during the Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.(transcript here) Her testimony regarded the disparity between her personal experiences in the Soviet Union and the fanciful portrayal of it in the 1943 film Song of Russia. Rand argued that the film grossly misrepresented the socioeconomic conditions in the Soviet Union and portrayed life in the USSR as being much better than it actually was. Furthermore, she believed that even if a temporary alliance with the USSR was necessary to defeat the Nazis, the case for this should not have been made by portraying what she believed were falsely positive images of Soviet life:

"If we had good reason, if that is what you believe, all right, then why not tell the truth? Say it is a dictatorship, but we want to be associated with it. Say it is worthwhile being associated with the devil, as Churchill said, in order to defeat another evil which is Hitler. There might be some good argument made for that. But why pretend that Russia was not what it was?"

After the hearings, when Rand was asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of their investigations, she described the process as "futile".

Later years

Grave marker of Frank O'Connor and Ayn Rand.

After a convoluted series of separations, Rand abruptly ended her relationship with both Nathaniel Branden and his wife, Barbara Branden, in 1968 when she learned of Nathaniel Branden's subsequent affair with Patrecia Scott, and refused to have any further dealings with the NBI. She then published a letter in "The Objectivist" announcing her repudiation of Branden for various reasons, including dishonesty, but did not mention their affair or her role in the schism. The two never reconciled, and Branden remained a persona non grata in the Objectivist movement. In her book The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden described the encounter between Nathaniel and Rand, saying that Rand slapped him numerous times and denounced him , saying "If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health — you'll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency, you'll know it's a sign of still worse moral degradation!"

Declining health and death

In 1973 she was briefly reunited with her youngest sister, Nora, who still lived in the Soviet Union. Although Rand had written 1,200 letters to her family in the Soviet Union, and had attempted to bring them to the United States, she had ceased contacting them in 1937 after reading a notice in the post office that letters from Americans might imperil Russians at risk from Stalinist repression. Rand received a letter from Nora in 1973 and invited her and her husband to America; her sister's views had changed and to Rand's disappointment Nora voluntarily returned to the USSR.

Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974, and conflicts continued in the wake of the break with Branden and the subsequent collapse of the NBI. Many of her closest "Collective" friends began to part ways, and during the late '70s, her activities within the formal Objectivist movement began to decline, a situation which increased after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979. One of her final projects was work on a television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. She had also planned to write another novel, To Lorne Dieterling but had only written "preliminary sketches."

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 at her 34th Street home in New York City, years after having successfully battled cancer, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. Kipling's poem "If" was read at the graveside.

Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket.

Legacy

File:Ayn rand stamp.jpg

1999 U.S. postage stamp honoring Rand. Art by Nick Gaetano.

Rand's novels continue to be widely sold and read. Following her death, continued conflict within the Objectivist movement led to a proliferation of independent organizations, a few of which claim to be her exclusive intellectual heirs. Rand and Objectivism are less well known outside North America, although there are pockets of interest in Europe. Her novels are reported to be popular in India and to be gaining an increasingly wider audience in Africa. Generally, her work has had little effect on academic philosophy; her followers are largely drawn from the non-academic world.

Ayn Rand Institute

In 1985, Leonard Peikoff, a surviving member of "The Collective" and Ayn Rand's designated heir, established "The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism" (ARI). The Institute has since registered the name "Ayn Rand." The Ayn Rand Institute's main goal is to spread Objectivism throughout academia, particularly in humanities departments; it also works to expose high school and college students to Ayn Rand's writings and ideas.

The Objectivist Center

Another schism in the movement occurred in 1989, when Objectivist philosopher David Kelley wrote "A Question of Sanction", in which he defended his choice to speak to non-Objectivist libertarian groups: "It was a response to an article by Peter Schwartz in The Intellectual Activist, demanding that those who speak to libertarians be ostracized from the movement...[I] observed that Objectivism is not a closed system of belief; and that we might actually learn something by talking to people we disagree with." Kelley's description of the reasons behind the break is disputed by the Ayn Rand Institute. Peikoff, in an article for The Intellectual Activist called "Fact and Value" argued that Objectivism is, indeed, a closed system, and that truth and moral goodness are directly related. Peikoff expelled Kelley from his movement, whereupon Kelley founded The Institute for Objectivist Studies (now known as "The Objectivist Center").

Popular interest

Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of the Canadian progressive rock band Rush, was influenced by Rand's philosophy, as evidenced by the track "Anthem" from the album Fly By Night (1975) and the title track from the album 2112 (1976).

"The Atlasphere," an online community devoted to admirers of Rand, maintains a blog citing Rand's influence on popular or newsworthy figures who cite the influence of Rand's works on their lives,, while "Randex" updates a list of recent media references to Rand or her work.

Philosophical legacy

Within analytic philosophy, the dominant philosophical movement in the English-speaking world, Rand's work has been mostly ignored. No leading research university in this tradition considers Rand or Objectivism to be an important philosophical specialty or research area. Many adherents and practitioners of continental philosophy criticize her celebration of self-interest, so there has similarly been little focus on her work in this movement.

Her supporters, however, are trying to bring Rand's work into the academic mainstream. For instance, the Ayn Rand Society, founded in 1987, is affiliated with the American Philosophical Association, and the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies promotes philosophical research related to Rand's views. In a 1999 interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra said, "I know they laugh at Rand", while also noting a growing interest in her work in the academic community. In 2006, Cambridge University Press published a volume on Rand's ethical theory written by ARI-affiliated scholar Tara Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Criticism

Philosophical criticism

A notable exception to the general lack of attention paid to Rand in philosophy is the essay "On the Randian Argument" by renowned Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick, which appears in his collection Socratic Puzzles. Nozick is sympathetic to Rand's libertarian political conclusions, but he does not think her arguments justify them. In particular, his essay criticizes her foundational argument in ethics, which claims that one's own life is, for each individual, the only ultimate value because it makes all other values possible. Nozick says that to make this argument sound Rand still needs to explain why someone could not rationally prefer eventually dying and having no values. Thus, he argues, her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is essentially an instance of begging the question and that her solution to David Hume's famous is-ought problem is unsatisfactory.

Literary criticism

Rand's novels, especially her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, met with mixed reviews. They were derided by critics as overly long and repetitive philosophical tracts interspersed with low-quality melodrama. Scholars of English and American literature have largely ignored her work.

Some critics have argued that Rand’s idealistic philosophy and her Romantic literary style are inconsistent with the nature and behavior of actual people. In particular, these critics claim that Rand's novels are populated by unrealistic one-dimensional caricatures of the types of people she wants to praise or condemn. The flawless Objectivist heroes, who are implausibly wealthy, intelligent, and free of doubt, are arrayed against antagonists who are weak, pathetic, full of uncertainty, and lacking in imagination and talent. Rand herself replied to these literary criticisms (in advance of many of them) with her 1963 essay "The Goal of My Writing," and in essays collected in The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature (2nd rev. ed. 1975), in which she states the goal of her fiction is to project her vision of an ideal man: not man as he is, but man as he might and ought to be.

Is Objectivism a cult?

Some of Rand's critics have drawn parallels between the Objectivist movement and cults, arguing that Rand's devoted followers created a cult of personality around her and that the purges and excommunications of Rand's colleagues reflected this lionization of the "supreme leader." Jeff Walker, in The Ayn Rand Cult, portrays the movement as "a substitute 'totalist set of beliefs'...not unlike Hubbard’s Dianetics or Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation'." Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, briefly an associate of Rand's, wrote the noted article "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult" (1972) on this subject, declaring,

"If the glaring inner contradictions of the Leninist cults make them intriguing objects of study, still more so is the Ayn Rand cult...[f]or not only was the Rand cult explicitly atheist, anti-religious, and an extoller of Reason; it also promoted slavish dependence on the guru in the name of independence; adoration and obedience to the leader in the name of every person’s individuality; and blind emotion and faith in the guru in the name of Reason."

Michael Shermer argued that the Objectivist movement displayed many of the characteristics of religious cults including "Veneration" and "Inerrancy" of the Leader, "Hidden Agendas," "Financial and/or Sexual Exploitation," and the beliefs that the movement provides "Absolute Truth" and "Absolute Morality."

In contrast, Leonard Peikoff argued that a complete rejection of alternative interpretations is a necessary part of Rand's Objectivism, and does not constitute dogmatism: "Kelley decries, as intolerant, any Objectivist's...'obsession with official or authorized doctrine,'...My answer is: Objectivism does have an 'official, authorized doctrine,' but it is not dogma. It is stated and validated objectively in Ayn Rand's works." Peikoff argued that total adherence to Rand's philosophical views is an inherent part of Objectivism: "if you grasp and accept the concept of 'objectivity,' in all its implications, then you accept Objectivism, you live by it and you revere Ayn Rand for defining it. If you fail fully to grasp and accept the concept, whether your failure is deliberate or otherwise, you eventually drift away from Ayn Rand's orbit, or rewrite her viewpoint or turn openly into her enemy."

Walker also claims that there are several similarities between Objectivism and Hubbard's Scientology:

"Ayn Rand was not the first to propound an ethics for the masses based on survival as a rational being. That honor goes to fellow novelist and cult leader L Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), the science-fiction writer who founded Dianetics and the Church of Scientology. Dianetics preceded NBI's start-up by eight years and the Objectivist ethics by 11 years. Dianetics groups formed on campuses during the 1950's, much as Ayn Rand clubs would in the 1960's. Many who flocked to Objectivism in the 1960's had previously had some contact with Dianetics or Scientology. Dianetics used reasoning somewhat similar to Rand's about the brain as a machine. Hubbard's 'analytical' versus 'reactive' mind has its equivalent in Rand's system. Both have a higher mind reprogramming the rest of the mind. Hubbard and Rand were both extremely intelligence- and survival oriented, in the interest of a rational man. They counseled the uprooting of irrational premises (or 'engrams'). Both contended that the resulting enhanced rationality leads to greater capacity for healthy emotion. Perceptual data is immaculate for both. Both regard our often being unconscious of incoming data as the real problem. After many years of working at it, the student of Dianetics becomes a 'clear,' while the student of Objectivism becomes a full-fledged Objectivist...Both Dianetics and Objectivist psychology draw fire from the psychiatric establishment. The philosophy of each relates immorality to decreasing one's survival potential. Each claims to be science- and logic-based. Both share a benevolent universe premise...Hubbard and Rand are very much against all rule-by-force. Both assert that rational men have no real conflicts of interest. Each deplores social complexity being wielded as an excuse for introducing government regulations when it is the latter that generates the former in a vicious cycle...Each was lambasted by biographers for serious personality problems. And both figures have been denounced by former associates who claim that the leader had feet of clay and the doctrine is detrimental to its adherent's health."

In contrast, Jim Peron of the Objectivist Reference Center wrote an analysis of Objectivism that argues the philosophy is not a cult; Peron claims that similarities to cults are superficial at best and that charges of cultism directed at Objectivists are ad hominem smear terms used to discredit Objectivist ideas without refuting them. He specifically attacks all claims to parallels between Objectivism and Scientology. He also argues that many of Rand's most fervent critics (like Murray Rothbard) plagiarized her ideas; further, he argues that Shermer and Rothbard spread unsubstantiated rumors and falsehoods regarding Rand, in order to malign her unjustly. Finally, he says, that the lack of an organized Objectivist group and the fact that Rand did not attempt to recruit Objectivists refute any claims that Objectiivsm is cult-like:

"I cannot see how a disembodied philosophy can be a cult. I say Objectivism was disembodied because there was no Objectivist organization to join. The Nathaniel Branden Institute gave lectures but had no membership. You could subscribe to a newsletter but you couldn't join. Objectivism was, and is, structureless. And without a structure there cannot be cult. Cults spend a great deal of time recruiting members and persuading them to join a structure. A structure, or organization, is not optional. It is an essential trait of a cult. If the structure doesn't exist then there is no cult... Did Objectivism recruit members? It doesn't seem so. The obvious reason is that there was nothing to which members could be recruited. The vast majority of self-proclaimed Objectivists are people who read Rand's works and agreed with her. Most have never attended an Objectivist meeting nor subscribed to any Objectivist newsletter. All they did was buy Rand's books and like them."

Bibliography

Fiction

• Night of January 16th (1934) ISBN 0452264863
• We The Living (1936) ISBN 0451187849
• Anthem (1938) ISBN 0451191137
• The Fountainhead (1943) ISBN 0451191153
• Atlas Shrugged (1957) ISBN 0451191145

Nonfiction

• For the New Intellectual (1961)
• The Virtue of Selfishness (with Nathaniel Branden) (1964)
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (with Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen) (1966)
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967)
• The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
• The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
• Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)

Posthumous works

• The Early Ayn Rand (edited and with commentary by Leonard Peikoff) (1984)
• The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (edited by Leonard Peikoff; additional essays by Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz) (1989)
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology second edition (edited by Harry Binswanger; additional material by Leonard Peikoff) (1990)
• Letters of Ayn Rand (edited by Michael S. Berliner) (1995)
• Journals of Ayn Rand (edited by David Harriman) (1997)
• Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors (edited by Robert Mayhew) (1998)
• The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times (edited by Peter Schwartz) (1998)
• Russian Writings on Hollywood (edited by Michael S. Berliner) (1999)
• Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (expanded edition of The New Left; edited and with additional essays by Peter Schwartz) (1999)
• The Art of Fiction (edited by Tore Boeckmann) (2000)
• The Art of Nonfiction (edited by Robert Mayhew) (2001)
• The Objectivism Research CD-ROM (collection of most of Rand's works in CD-ROM format) (2001)
• Three Plays (2005)
• Ayn Rand Answers (2005)

Film adaptations

Without Rand's knowledge or permission, We The Living was made into a pair of films, Noi vivi and Addio, Kira in 1942 by Scalara Films, Rome. They were nearly censored by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but they were permitted because the novel upon which they were based was anti-Soviet. The films were successful and the public easily realized that they were as much against Fascism as Communism, and the government banned them quickly thereafter. These films were re-edited into a new version which was approved by Rand and re-released as We the Living in 1986.

The Fountainhead was a Hollywood film (1949, Warner Bros.) starring Gary Cooper, for which Rand wrote the screen-play. Rand initially insisted that Frank Lloyd Wright design the architectural models used in the film, but relented when his fee was too high.

An adaptation of Atlas Shrugged is currently in pre-production.

Further reading

• Baker, James T. (1987). Ayn Rand. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 0-8057-7497-1.
• Branden, Barbara (1986). The Passion of Ayn Rand. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-19171-5.
• Branden, Nathaniel (1998). My Years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. ISBN 0-7879-4513-7.
• Branden, Nathaniel (1962). Who Is Ayn Rand?. New York: Random House. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Britting, Jeff (2005). Ayn Rand. New York: Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 1-58567-406-0.
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30321-5.
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel and Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (editors) (1999). Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01830-5. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Mayhew, Robert (2004). Ayn Rand and Song of Russia. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8108-5276-4.
• Mayhew, Robert (2005). Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7391-1031-4.
• Mayhew, Robert (2004). Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7391-0698-8.
• Paxton, Michael (1998). Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (The Companion Book). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0-87905-845-5.
• Peikoff, Leonard (1987). "My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir". The Objectivist Forum. 8 (3): 1–16.
• Peikoff, Leonard (1991). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Plume. ISBN 0-4520110-1-9.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (1987). The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult. Port Townsend, Washington: Liberty.
• Sures, Mary Ann (2001). Facets of Ayn Rand. Los Angeles: Ayn Rand Institute Press. ISBN 0-9625336-5-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01440-7.
• Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1999). "The Rand Transcript". The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 1 (1): 1–26.
• Shermer, Michael (1993). "The Unlikeliest Cult In History". Skeptic. 2 (2): 74–81.
• Valliant, James S. (2005). The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. Dallas: Durban House. ISBN 1-930654-67-1.
• Thomas, William (editor) (2005). The Literary Art of Ayn Rand. Poughkeepsie, New York: The Objectivist Center. ISBN 1-577240-70-7. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Walker, Jeff (1999). The Ayn Rand Cult. Chicago: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9390-6.

External links

General information

• Ayn Rand FAQ
• Frequently Asked Questions on Ayn Rand
• "Ayn Rand" entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Rand's writing and speeches

• Anthem — The complete text of the novel, which has fallen into the public domain
• Atlas Shrugged — Book outline
• The Fountainhead — Book outline
• We The Living — Book outline
• "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" — Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974
• Rand's HUAC testimony — Transcript
• We the Living — Video outline
• Works by Ayn Rand at Project Gutenberg
• Rand's papers at The Library of Congress
• C-SPAN program "American Writers" featuring RealVideo discussions of Rand's writing.

Films

• Ayn Rand at IMDb

Organizations promoting Ayn Rand's philosophy

• The Ayn Rand Institute — The authoritative source for information on Ayn Rand and her philosophy. Founded by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s legal and intellectual heir.
• The Objectivist Center
• The Ayn Rand Society
• The Objectivism Reference Center
• The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
• The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies — Contains abstracts of articles, author bios, links to several articles, and submission guidelines.

Rand's associates

• Leonard Peikoff's website
• George Reisman's website
• Robert Hessen's website

Objectivism, online groups, and blogs

• ARI Watch argues that some positions of the Ayn Rand Institute differ from those of Ayn Rand.
• The Atlasphere — Dating service, networking directory, columns, and news blog for admirers of Ayn Rand's novels.
• The Ayn Rand Forum — Online forum for discussion of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
• Ayn Rand LiveJournal Community
• Criticisms of Objectivism — from the Objectivism Reference Center site.
• Criticisms of Objectivism (or Ayn Rand)
• Dollars & Crosses — Commentary from a pro-capitalist perspective.
• False Objectivism — Argues that some positions of The Objectivist Center differ from those of Ayn Rand.
• The Forum for Ayn Rand Fans
• Harry Binswanger List — E-mail-based discussion group.
• Dr. Michael J. Hurd, psychologist — comments on cultural/political topics from an Objectivist perspective.
• Objectivism.net — Ayn Rand on CD-ROM, and links.
• ObjectivismOnline.Net — forums, blogs, essays, chat room, and wiki on Objectivism.
• Objectivist Blogs — A list of Rand-influenced bloggers.
• Pro-Reason Quote Database — 600+ user-contributed quotes by Ayn Rand and authors with similar views available for syndication.
• Randex — Index of online media references to Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
• TIA Daily — Daily news and commentary from the Objectivist perspective by e-mail.
• [1]Ayn Rand popular quotes.

Imagery

• Portrait of Ayn Rand