Ayn Rand
_Philosopher |
region = Western Philosophy |
era =
Contemporary philosophy |
color = #B0C4DE
image_name = Ayn_Rand1.jpg|
image_caption = Ayn Rand: novelist and philosopher
name = Ayn Rand |
birth =
February 2,
1905 in
St. Petersburg, Russia | death =
March 6,
1982 in
New York City | school_tradition =
Objectivism | main_interests =
Objectivist metaphysics,
Objectivist epistemology,
Objectivist ethics,
Objectivist politics,
Objectivist aesthetics| influences =
Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas,
Nietzsche,
Isabel Paterson| influenced =
Leonard Peikoff,
Harry Binswanger,
John Ridpath,
Gary Hull,
Tara Smith,
David Kelley,
Frank R. Wallace,
Anton LaVey,
[Lewis, James R. "Who Serves Satan? A Demographic and Ideological Profile". Marburg Journal of Religion. June 2001.] Nathaniel Branden,
Barbara Branden notable_ideas = |
Rational self-interest}}
Ayn Rand (,
Ayn rhyming with
Rhine; –
March 6 1982), born
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (), was a
Russian-born
American author best known for developing the
philosophy of
Objectivism and for writing the novels
The Fountainhead,
Atlas Shrugged,
We the Living, and
Anthem.
Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, the
concepts of
reason,
individualism,
rational egoism ("
rational self-interest"), and
laissez-faire capitalism. She believed that people must choose their values and actions by reason; that the individual has a right to exist for his or her own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self; and that no one has the right to take what belongs to others by physical force or fraud, or impose their moral code 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.
[ at the Ayn Rand Institute. Rand stated in 1980, "I've read nothing by a Libertarian...that wasn't my ideas badly mishandledâ€"i.e., had the teeth pulled out of themâ€"with no credit given."]The express goal of Rand's fiction was to showcase the idealized Randian
hero,
[ Lewis, John. The Literary Encyclopedia 20 October 2001.] a man whose ability and independence causes conflict with society, but who nevertheless perseveres to achieve his goals.
Childhood and education
Rand was born in
Saint Petersburg,
Russia, and was the eldest of three daughters (Alisa, Natasha, and Nora)
[ website of the documentary film about Rand's life.] 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.
[ Rand wrote the ideal educational curriculum would be "Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in literature." Long, Roderick: ]Rand was twelve at the time of the
Russian Revolution of 1917, and her family life was disrupted by the rise of the
Bolshevik party. 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.
[ at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] 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.
[ Roger Donway, Donway writes that Rand's objectivism "brought full circle the three-way argument that Chernyshevsky and Pisarev; the Underground Man and Nietzsche ; and Dostoevsky the Christian philosopher conducted in Russia after 1860."] 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.
[Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. ] 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, but later rejected his philosophical center of "might is right" when she discovered more of his writings.
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."
[Miller, Eric ]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.
[ . This answer refers to the June 2000 edition of Impact, the Ayn Rand Institute newsletter.][ Ayn Rand biographical information at the IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0709446/bio] 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.
[ at AynRand.org ] She also worked as the head of the costume department at
RKO Studios.
[ Leiendecker, Harold. ]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."
[ Rand, Ayn. Address to the Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974. ]Rand viewed herself primarily as a novelist, not a philosopher (but was somewhat bothered by the question because it implied that they contradict) but has sometimes been disparaged by academic philosophers for perceived lapses in quality and originality. It has been suggested that Rand's practice of presenting her philosophy in fiction and non-fiction books aimed at a general audience rather than publications in
peer-reviewed journals have encouraged this negative view. Rand's defenders note that she is part of a long tradition of authors who wrote philosophically rich fiction â€" 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.
In an article about Rand, that appeared in
The Economist in 1991, it is stated that "Rand's novels sell some 300,000 copies a year, exhorting readers to think big about themselves, build big and earn big. New editions of all her books carry postcards for readers who might be inclined to learn more about "objectivism", the author's credo, a blending of free markets, cold reason and guiltless Nietzschean self-assertion."
[''Still Spouting", The Economist, November 25, 1999]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."
[Turner, Jenny. Review of Jeff Briting's biography, Ayn Rand.] 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.
[ "A Sense of Life" homepage. ]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."
[ at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.] 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."
[Cox, Stephen. ]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
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.
[ Cato Institute, ] 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.
Following the success of
The Fountainhead, Rand wrote screenplays for two movies,
Love Letters and
You Came Along.
Atlas Shrugged
Rand's
magnum opus,
Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. Due to the success of
The Fountainhead, the initial printing was 100,000 copies,
[Chambers, Whittaker. Reprint of contemporary review of Atlas Shrugged from National Review.] 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,"
[ showing this widespread claim.] appears to be an exaggeration of the findings of one 1991 survey.)
[ Provides detail about the actual survey and findings.][Salmonson, Jessica Amanda. Although the author appears to have a strong dislike of Rand and her supporters, her conclusions about the "Book of the Month Club" survey appear to be supported.]Atlas Shrugged is often seen as Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism 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.
Rand's Objectivism encompasses positions on
metaphysics,
epistemology,
ethics,
politics, and
aesthetics. (
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, the pursuit of happiness and property,
[ . Refers to a Leonard Peikoff lecture describing the connection between Rand and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689).] 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
St. 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."
[ Branden, Nathaniel. A review of Blanshard's book, originally published in The Objectivist Newsletter, February 1963.]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.
[Long, Roderick T. : "Rand always firmly insisted that Aristotle was the greatest and that Thomas Aquinas was the second greatestâ€"her own atheism notwithstanding."] 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."
[ Sternberg, Elaine. ] 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."
[ Machan, Tibor. ] 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."
[ Younkins, Edward W. ]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,"
[ Hicks, Stephen. A review of Ronald E. Merrill's The Ideas of Ayn Rand.] 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 Nietzsche about the justice of sacrificing the weak for the strong."
[ McLemee, Scott. originally in Lingua Franca , September 1999. ] 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 anniversary edition of
The Fountainhead concludes with Nietzsche's statement, "The noble soul has reverence for itself."
Kant
 |
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 epistemology, and there is debate over whether the categorical imperative is compatible with Objectivism).
[ See: John Ku's which argues that Rand utilizes the Categorical Imperative, and William Thomas' for a counterargument.] Rand and Kant had significantly different theories of concepts, identity and consciousness: In
Objectivist epistemology reason is the highest virtue and reason and logic can be used to understand objective reality. Kant believed that we cannot have certain knowledge about the true nature of reality ("things-in themselves"), but only of the manner in which we perceive reality. For example, we can know for certain that we are unable to conceive of an object which is not extended, but it does not follow that no object which is not extended can exist. Rand believed that if an object has an effect upon the senses, then that effect upon the senses gives us knowledge about the object itself. At the most basic level, it informs us that that object is of a particular character such that when it interacts with one's sense organs it causes a particular sensation; and, that is knowledge about a quality of the object itself. It is not in fact clear that Kant would have disagreed with such a weak formulation of realism. 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."[ Hsieh, Diana. ]
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."[ Hsieh, Diana. ]
Founds "The Collective"
In 1950 Rand moved to 120 East 34th Street
[ Branden, Nathaniel. ] 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 ("the NBI.") 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 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.
Rand's political views were strongly 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.
[ NB that Rand also argued that McCarthyism was a myth used as an ad hominem accusation to discredit anti-Communists.] She opposed US involvement in
World War I,
World War II,
[ Excerpts from Rand's writing, cited at the ARI Watch website.] 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 â€" and the only justifiable purpose is self-defense."
[ at the ARI website.]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 â€" 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."
[Long, Roderick T. Long also cites Barbara Branden's The Passion of Ayn Rand as the source for this claim.] 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 created some controversy. While her books championed men and women as intellectual equals (for example, Dagny Taggart, the protagonist of
Atlas Shrugged was a hands-on railroad executive), she thought that the differences in the physiology of men and women led to fundamental psychological differences that were the source of gender roles. Rand denied endorsing any kind of power difference between men and women, stating that metaphysical dominance in sexual relations refers to the man's role as the prime mover in sex and the necessity of male arousal for sex to occur.
[Rand, Ayn. Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q and A, (2006) ISBN 045121665 ] According to Rand, "For a woman
qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship — the desire to look up to man." (1968)
Rand's theory of sex is implied by her broader ethical and psychological theories. Far from being a debasing animal instinct, she believed that sex is the highest celebration of our greatest values. Sex is a physical response to intellectual and spiritual valuesâ€"a mechanism for giving concrete expression to values that could otherwise only be experienced in the abstract. In Atlas Shrugged, she writes "Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself."
[Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged, p453]In a
Playboy interview, Rand stated that women are not psychologically suited to be President and strongly opposed the modern
feminist movement, despite supporting some of its goals.
[Rand, Ayn. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, (1993) ISBN 0452011256] 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 [
1] in which "Men are metaphysically the dominant sex".
[ Young, Cathy. Reason August/September 1999.]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' â€" 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."
[ Ford Hall forum remarks, cited in ] 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.
[Varnell, Paul. at the Indegay Forum, originally published in the Chicago Free Press Dec. 3, 2003. ] 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 asserts that "she never provided the slightest argument for her position, [...] because she regarded the matter as self-evident, like the woman president issue."
[ Keefner, Kurt. A review ofChris Matthew Sciabarra's Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation (2003, Leap Publishing)] 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,"
[ Rand, Ayn. "Racism," in Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution ISBN 0452011841, p. 179, at ] 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."
[ "Racism," in Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 182 ]See also: Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and homosexualityHUAC 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?"[Rand's HUAC testimony, cited at ]
After the hearings, when Rand was asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of their investigations, she described the process as "futile."
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 her husband 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 â€" you'll be
impotent for the next 20 years! And if you achieve any potency, you'll know it's a sign of still worse moral degradation!"
[ Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand (pp. 345-347), cited by Shermer, Michael. Originally published in Skeptic vol. 2, no. 2, 1993, pp. 74-81. ]Declining health and death
In 1973, she was briefly reunited with her youngest sister, Nora, who still lived in the Soviet Union.
[Daligga, Catherine. ] 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 1970s, her activities within the formal Objectivist movement began to decline, a situation which increased after the death of her husband on
November 9,
1979.
[ ARI, ] 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,
[ Saxon, Wolfgang. The New York Times, March 7, 1982.] 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 by
David Kelley.
[
2]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.
Rand's novels continue to be widely sold and read, with more than 22 million (as of 2005) books sold, and 500,000 more being sold each year.
[Cato: Ayn Rand at 100, ]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[The Atlas Society, ] and to be gaining an increasingly wider audience in
Africa. She also enjoyed some popularity in Israel, through the early work of
Moshe Kroy. 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 and The Atlas Society
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.
[Kelley, David. ] 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, Leonard. ] Peikoff expelled Kelley from his movement, whereupon Kelley founded The Institute for Objectivist Studies (now known as "
The Objectivist Center"). It has since created a division called
The Atlas Society, which has its own web site that is focused on attracting Ayn Rand fiction readers, and downplays her role as a philosopher. This division is used for most public outreach efforts, with The Objectivist Center itself used principally for more academic ventures.
Edward Hudgins, a veteran of the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, is now executive director, with Kelley taking the title of Founder and Senior Scholar. The Atlas Society/Objectivist Center also publishes
The New Individualist (formerly
Navigator) which comes out ten times a year. It has been given a major facelift by editor Robert Bidinotto and it was the first magazine in the U.S. to feature one of the infamous Mohammad cartoons on the cover.
Popular interest
The column "Book Notes" of the New York Times, reported in 1991 that in a survey by the
Library of Congress and the
Book-of-the-Month Club, Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, was listed selected as the second most influential book after the
Bible.
, 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).
In season four of
The Simpsons (the episode "A Streetcar Named Marge"),
Maggie is placed in the "Ayn Rand School for Tots," where bottles and pacifiers are banned to encourage developing "the bottle within" and the school's proprietor reads from
The Fountainhead Diet.
"
The Atlasphere[
3]," 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.
The forthcoming PC and Xbox 360 game
Bioshock takes place in the ruins of a city described as the ultimate capitalistic and individualist paradise. Founded in 1946 by a Soviet expatriate named "Andrew Ryan" (clearly a wordplay on "Ayn Rand"), the city is an embodiment of the Randian ideal, although one that has fallen into ruin.
The 2003 novel
Old School by famed author
Tobias Wolff contains an episode in which Rand appears as a guest lecturer at the elite New England prep school attended by the main character. The character reads
The Fountainhead, analyzes Rand in person, and compares her to the other two writers invited to the schooland ultimately discards her philosophy in favor of the more empathetic Hemingway.
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. However, there are fellowships for the study of Ayn Rand's ideas at top-rated
academic institutions such as the University of Texas at Austin,
Ashland University in Ohio, and the University of Pittsburgh. Courses of the Ayn Rand Institute's
Objectivist Academic Center are accredited, so students can get university credits for studying Objectivism.
Her supporters 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.
[Sharlet, Jeff. ] 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.
Student activism
One of the reasons for the prominence of Ayn Rand and Objectivism in the news and popular culture relative to other philosophical theories
may be related to the dozens of student groups dedicated to promoting and studying the philosophy of Objectivism
spread across the U.S., Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Norway.
These clubs often present controversial speakers on topics such as abortion, religion, and foreign policy, often allying with controversial conservative (and sometimes liberal) organizations to organize their events. For example the NYU Objectivism Club hosted a joint panel
on the
Muhammad cartoons that received nationwide coverage for NYU's censorship of the cartoons
. There are several dozen speakers sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute
and other organizations, who give nationwide tours each year speaking about Objectivism.
The
Ayn Rand Institute has spent more than $5M on educational programs advancing Objectivism, including scholarships and clubs. These clubs often obtain educational materials and speakers from the ARI. The
Objectivist Club Association and
ObjectivismOnline provide free hosting and organizational resources for Ayn Rand clubs. There are also several conferences organized by various organizations, such as the
Objectivist Conferences, which are attended by several hundred "new intellectuals" each summer for two weeks and feature dozens of philosophy courses and presentations of new publications and research.
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, when they were first published, "received almost unanimously terrible reviews"
and were derided by some critics as overly long and repetitive philosophical tracts interspersed with low-quality melodrama
[Chapman, Steve The Washington Times, February 2, 2005.]. Many of these, including her
magnum opus,
Atlas Shrugged, became bestsellers due largely to word of mouth
. Scholars of English and American
literature, with a few exceptions, have largely ignored her work. Rand did, however, receive some positive reviews even from the literary establishment. For example, Lorine Pruette, a
New York Times reviewer, wrote that Rand "has written a hymn in praise of the individual," stating that "you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our times."
[Berliner, Michael S., Letters of Ayn Rand (New York: Plume, 1995), pp. 74.]The most famous review of Atlas Shrugged from a conservative author was written by
Whittaker Chambers and appeared in
National Review in 1957. It was unrelentingly scathing. Chambers call the book "sophomoric"; and "remarkably silly," and said it "can be called a novel only by devaluing the term." The tone of the book was described as "shrillness without reprieve" and Chambers implied that Rand might advocate genocide in the most controversial part of the review, where he wrote
From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To the gas chambers-- go!" Mimi Gladstein argues Rand's characters are flat and uninteresting, and her heroes implausibly wealthy, intelligent, physically attractive
[ p. 140: "Most of Rand's protagonists are 'physically' beautiful, but that physicality is metaphorically symbolic of harmony between outer form and inner purpose;" p. 99, "The awkward age is the worst age to read Ayn Rand. She liked people to be tall, slim, and beautiful, and I was now slouched, dumpy, and pustular, but I took up Objectivism anyway."] and free of doubt while 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. Further, defenders of Rand's novels have noted that many of her heroes are far from flawless, and that not all are wealthy. They note that Rearden, the Wet Nurse, and Fred Kinnan suffer due to either moral flaws or errors in reasoning [
4]; further, they point out that not all of the villains in Rand's novels are weak and pathetic: Ellsworth Toohey is portrayed as a masterful communicator, critic, and manipulator, while Robert Stadler is a brilliant scientist.
Cult accusations
See Objectivist movement.Several authors, such as
Murray Rothbard who helped define modern
libertarianism and
anarcho-capitalism,
[Rothbard, Murray. ] Jeff Walker, author of
The Ayn Rand Cult,
[Walker, Jeff (1999). The Ayn Rand Cult. Chicago: Open Court. ISBN 0812693906] and
Michael Shermer, founder of
The Skeptics Society,
[Shermer, Michael. Originally published in Skeptic vol. 2, no. 2, 1993, pp. 74-81.] have accused Objectivism of being a cult.
The Biographical FAQ of the Objectivism Reference Center website discusses these allegations and offer a letter in which Rand replies to a fan who wrote her offering cult-like allegiance by declaring "A blind follower is precisely what my philosophy condemns and what I reject. Objectivism is not a mystic cult".
[Rand, Ayn Letters, p. 592 Letter dated December 10, 1961, Plume (1997), ISBN 0452274044, as cited in ]*
Nikolai LosskyFiction
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Night of January 16th (1934) ISBN 0452264863
*
We the Living (1936) ISBN 0451187849
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Anthem (1938) ISBN 0451191137
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The Fountainhead (1943) ISBN 0451191153
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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 posthumously edited by Leonard Peikoff (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 (edited by Robert Mayhew)(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.
[ A biographical article at the Cato Institute suggests the story about the ban may be apocryphal, , although other sources provide details of the suppression: ] 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.
[ Skousen, after Barbara Branden The Passion of Ayn Rand ISBN 0-385-19171-5 ]An adaptation of
Atlas Shrugged is currently in pre-production.
[ ] As of April 2006, Lionsgate Film reports that it is moving forward with their plans for the movie, with Howard and Karen Baldwin as producers and screen stars
Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie reported to be interested in playing the parts of John Galt and Dagny Taggart.
[ ] The movie may be created in multiple parts to allow a fuller presentation of the novel's plot.
[ ]
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General information
*
Ayn Rand FAQ*
Frequently Asked Questions on Ayn Rand*
"Ayn Rand" entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy*
American Writers: Ayn Rand C-SPAN 2002
RTSP videos.
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
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We The Living — Book outline
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"Philosophy: Who Needs It?" — Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974
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Rand's HUAC testimony — Transcript
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We the Living — Video outline
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Free ebook of Ayn Rand at
Project Gutenberg*
Rand's papers at The Library of CongressFilms
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Organizations promoting Ayn Rand's philosophy
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The Atlasphere — Worldwide directory of admirers of Ayn Rand's novels, with feature columns and Rand-related news.
*
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.
*
Dollars & Crosses — Commentary from a pro-capitalist perspective.
*
The Objectivism Reference Center*
The Objectivist Center*
ObjectivismOnline.Net — Contains
forums, blogs, essays, chat room, and a
wiki on Objectivism*
The Forum for Ayn Rand Fans*
SOLO Passion: Sense of Life Objectivists*
TIA Daily — Daily news and commentary from the Objectivist perspective by e-mail
Rand's associates
*
Leonard Peikoff's website*
George Reisman's website*
Robert Hessen's websiteCritical views
*
The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by
Murray N. Rothbard at LewRockwell.com blog
