A Companion to Ayn Rand E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1569

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The first volume to offer a comprehensive scholarly treatment of Rand’s entire corpus (including her novels, her philosophical essays, and her analysis of the events of her times), this Companion provides vital orientation and context for scholars and educated readers grappling with a controversial and understudied thinker whose enduring influence on American (and world) culture is increasingly recognized.

• The first publication to provide an in-depth scholarly treatment ranging over the whole of Rand’s corpus
• Provides informed contextual analysis for scholars in a variety of disciplines
• Presents original research on unpublished material and drafts from the Rand archives in California
• Features insightful and fair-minded interpretations of Rand’s controversial positions

Leseprobe

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A Companion to Ayn Rand

Edited by Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri

A Companion to Ayn Rand

Edited by

Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri

This edition first published 2016 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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Cover image: Photo of Ayn Rand, 1957. © Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

In the pages that follow, you will read a great deal about a heroism that consists in loving one's life and living it fully. This book is dedicated to the memory of two of its authors who were such heroes – men who, throughout their lives, projected a profound benevolence and love of this world; and who, during their battles with cancer, often served as a comfort and an inspiration to the friends who sought to comfort them.

To John David Lewis (1955–2012), a consummate fighter for his values.

And to Allan Gotthelf (1942–2013), whose spirit and wisdom have informed every page of this Companion, both through his own editorial work and through his influence on those of us who live on – his coeditor, especially.

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

A Note on Abbreviations and References

Part I Context

1 An Introduction to the Study of Ayn Rand

Taking Rand Seriously

Some Challenging Features of Rand’s Ideas and Writings

Rand’s Works and Related Sources

Organization of the

Companion

Notes

References

2 The Life of Ayn Rand: Writing, Reading, and Related Life Events

Leaving Russia (1905–1926)

Early Career as an American Writer (1926–1936)

The Fountainhead

: The Creation of Her First Ideal Man (1936–1943)

Atlas Shrugged: The Mind on Strike (1943–1957)

Objectivism: A Philosophy for Living on Earth (1957–1982)

Appendix: Concerning Biographical Sources

Notes

References

Part II Ethics and Human Nature

3 The Act of Valuing (and the Objectivity of Values)

Living and Valuing in

The Little Street

and

We the Living

The Fountainhead

on the Activity of Valuing

The Fountainhead

on Work as the Meaning of Life

The Choice to Live and the Objectivity of Values in

Atlas Shrugged

and Later Works

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

4 The Morality of Life

A New Concept of Morality

Why Man Needs a Code of Values

Man’s Life as the Standard of Value

The Value of Reason and the Virtue of Rationality

Purpose and Productiveness

Self-Esteem and Pride

The Range of Life-Sustaining Values

The Selfishness of Virtue

Independence, Integrity, Honesty, and Justice as Aspects of Rationality

Morality and Heroism

Notes

References

5 A Being of Self-Made Soul

Free Will

The Primary Choice and an Individual’s Social Environment

Reason and Emotion

Self-Esteem

Sense of Life

Psycho-Epistemology

Conclusion

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

6 Egoism and Altruism

Situating Rand’s Egoism

Altruism: The Morality of Self-Sacrifice

Rand’s Objections to Altruism

Rand’s Reclamation of “Selfishness”

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

Part III Society

7 “A

Human

Society”

Man as an End in Himself

The Question of Conflicts of Interest

Individual Rights

A “Society of Traders”

Notes

References

8 Political Theory

The Nature and Need of Government

Proper Functions of Government

Capitalism and Property

Intellectual Property

Conclusion

Notes

References

9 Objective Law

Rand’s Condemnation of Non-Objective Law

The Nature and Need of Objective Law

Rand

vis-à-vis

Traditional Debates

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

10 “A Free Mind and a Free Market Are Corollaries”

Preliminaries: Knowledge, Values, and Man’s Life

The Free Market: Rule by Producers

Statist Economies: The Destruction of Producers

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Part IV The Foundations of Objectivism

11 Objectivist Metaphysics

The Axioms of Existence and Identity

The Epistemological Basis and Function of the Axioms

Entities

Causality

Consciousness

The Primacy of Existence

Free Will

The Distinction Between the Metaphysically Given and the Man-Made

Objectivity as Respect for the Primacy of Existence

Notes

References

12 The Objectivist Epistemology

The Earlier Advocates of Reason: Rand and the Enlightenment

Consciousness and Sense Perception

The Process of Concept-Formation

The Objectivity of Conceptual Knowledge

Definitions and the Objectivity of Essences

Standards of Conceptualization

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Part V Philosophers and Their Effects

13 “Who Sets the Tone for a Culture?”

Ayn Rand’s Approach to the History of Philosophy

Lessons from History

Ayn Rand on Kant and Aristotle

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

14 Ayn Rand’s Evolving View of Friedrich Nietzsche

Notes

References

15 A Philosopher on Her Times

1

Early Individualist and Anti-Communist Writing and Activism (1936–1946)

“An Age of Moral Crisis”: 1959–1961 Pieces on the State of the Culture

“Choose Your Issues”: The Menaces of Antitrust and Censorship

“The Last Ideological Administration”: Kennedy’s Presidency and the 1964 Election

Pragmatist Politics: The Johnson and Nixon Administrations and the Mixed Economy

Foreign Policy: The “Cold War,” Vietnam, and the Draft

Racism, Sexism, and The Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation Movements

Civil Disobedience and the Rise of Political Violence

The Intellectual Establishment and its Products

The Envious New Left: Environmentalism, Egalitarianism, and the 1972 Election

The Libertarian Movement

The Religious Right and the Right to Abortion

The American Sense of Life

Notes

References

Part VI Art

16 The Objectivist Esthetics

Art as the Voice of Philosophy

Art’s Function

The Definition of Art

Two Special Cases: Architecture and Music

The Esthetic Response

Esthetic Judgment

Romanticism

Notes

References

17 Rand’s Literary Romanticism

Romanticism, Classicism, and Naturalism

Plot and the Projection of Values

Romantic Characterization

Plot and Theme

The Projection of a Self-Made Soul

Romantic Art as a Product of Imagination

The Objectivity of the Romantic Method

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

Coda

18 Hallmarks of Objectivism

Notes

References

Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Quasi-Primary Sources

I. Rand’s Works and the Objectivist Corpus

II. Posthumously Published Materials

III. Unpublished Archival Materials

IV. Works Based on Courses Authorized by Rand

Index

EULA

Guide

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Notes on Contributors

Harry Binswanger, who was an associate of Ayn Rand in her final years, teaches philosophy at the Objectivist Academic Center of the Ayn Rand Institute. He has taught, and lectured on, esthetics at Pratt Institute and elsewhere and has taught philosophy at Hunter College (City University of New York) and the University of Texas at Austin. He edited The Ayn Rand Lexicon (Penguin, 1986) and coedited (with Leonard Peikoff) the expanded second edition of Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Penguin, 1990). He is the author of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (ARI Press, 1990) and How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (TOF Publications, 2014).

Tore Boeckmann is an independent scholar of Romanticism in art. He has lectured and written extensively on Ayn Rand’s novels and literary esthetics, and he edited for publication her guide to literature, The Art of Fiction (Plume, 2000). His most significant recent work includes an essay on the painter Caspar David Friedrich; his most delightful work includes an essay on the literary origins of Rand’s flamboyant playboy hero Francisco d’Anconia in Robert Mayhew (ed.), Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Lexington Books, 2009). He is currently writing a book on Romanticism from Victor Hugo to Ayn Rand.

Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, where he specializes in philosophy. He teaches in the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center and serves as a writer, media spokesman, and senior editor for the Institute. He publishes both scholarly and popular articles on Rand’s fiction and philosophy. Recent essays include “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence,” in Debi Ghate and Richard E. Ralston (eds.), Why Businessmen Need Philosophy (New American Library, 2nd edition, 2011) and “The Plight of Leo Kovalensky,” in Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living (Lexington Books, 2nd edition, 2012). His current research focuses on religion and morality and the separation of church and state.

Allan Gotthelf (1942–2013) was, at the time of his death, Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow for Research and Teaching in Philosophy at Rutgers University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at The College of New Jersey. From 2003 to 2012 he was Visiting Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he held an Anthem Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism. He was a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society and served as chair of its steering committee (from 1990 until his death) and as the primary editor of the Society’s Philosophical Studies series. He is the author of On Ayn Rand(Wadsworth, 2000), and of many articles on Aristotle, 15 of which are collected in his Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Lester H. Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Nietzsche and the Origins of Virtue (Routledge, 1990), Character and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), and Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and is editor of two books of original essays: Grade Inflation: Academic Standards in Higher Education (SUNY, 2008) and (with Noel Carroll) Philosophy in the Twilight Zone (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). He has also written several dozen scholarly articles on ethics, social and political philosophy, the presentation of philosophical ideas in literature and film, and problems in the history of philosophy.

John David Lewis (1955–2012), after a 25-year career in business, changed direction and earned a PhD in Classics at the University of Cambridge in 2001. At the time of his death, in 2012, he was Visiting Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He published three books, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Bristol Classics, 2006), Early Greek Lawgivers (Bloomsbury Academic, 2007), and Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010), and many articles and reviews in academic journals and the public press.

James G. Lennox is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He was one of the founding members of the Ayn Rand Society, and is currently co-chair of the Society’s steering committee and coeditor of its Philosophical Studies series. He is author of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Aristotle on the Parts of Animals I–IV (Oxford University Press, 2001), and coeditor of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987), Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995) and Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Currently he is working on a book on Aristotle’s norms of inquiry and collaborating on a translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Meteorology IV.

Shoshana Milgram is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since earning her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. She has published articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers in French, Russian, and English/American literatures, including Victor Hugo, George Sand, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Victoria Cross, George Eliot, John Fowles, W.S. Gilbert, Ursula K. LeGuin, Nabokov, Herbert Spencer, Steinbeck, E.L. Voynich, and Ayn Rand. She has also published articles on “Capitalism,” “Cinema,” and “Leader” in J.C. Seigneuret’s Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, as well as introductions to editions of Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea and The Man Who Laughs and Nevil Shute’s The Seafarers. She is at work on a book-length study of Ayn Rand’s life from birth to 1957.

Fred D. Miller, Jr. is Research Professor at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford University Press, 1995) and coeditor of A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics (Blackwell, 1995), Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics (Springer, 2007), and Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Springer, 2012). He is also Executive Editor of Social Philosophy & Policy. He is currently preparing a translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva Naturalia for Oxford University Press.

Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and a co-founder of and Director of Academic Programs at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at Mason Law. He has published numerous book chapters, essays, and journal articles on topics in patent law, property law, legal history, and legal philosophy, including “Saving Locke from Marx: The Labor Theory of Value in Intellectual Property Theory” (Social Philosophy and Policy, 29(2), 2012). He has testified before the Senate and House on patent legislation, and he is a frequent speaker at professional and academic conferences, as well as at the PTO, the DOJ, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Smithsonian Institution, on topics in intellectual property policy.

Jason G. Rheins is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and has held teaching positions at St. John’s University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD in Philosophy in 2010 with a dissertation on Plato’s theology and its place within his ontology and natural philosophy. He has published articles on topics in the philosophy of science and Ancient Greek philosophy. His current research focuses on metaphysical issues related to the cosmology and theology of Plato, Aristotle, and their successors.

Gregory Salmieri holds a fellowship in philosophy at the Anthem Foundation and teaches at Rutgers University. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008, and subsequently held teaching and research positions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2008–2012) and at Boston University (2012–2014). He has published on issues in Aristotle’s epistemology and ethics and on Rand’s philosophy and novels. He is co-chair of the Ayn Rand Society’s Steering Committee, and coeditor of its Philosophical Studies series. He is also the editor of a forthcoming multi-author volume on Aristotle’s epistemology.

Tara Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism and is the Anthem Foundation Fellow. She is the author of Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), and Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), as well as numerous articles in moral, legal, and political philosophy.

Darryl Wright is Professor of Philosophy at Harvey Mudd College (The Claremont Colleges). He works in the areas of moral and political philosophy and has published several articles on Ayn Rand’s ethical thought as well as articles on G.E. Moore and F.H. Bradley. Recent publications include “Evaluative Concepts and Objective Values: Rand on Moral Objectivity” (Social Philosophy and Policy, 25(1), 2008) and “Reasoning About Ends: Life as a Value in Ayn Rand’s Ethics,” in A. Gotthelf and J.G. Lennox (eds.), Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). He is currently writing a book on Ayn Rand’s ethics and its relation to contemporary (meta)ethical theories.

Acknowledgments

Work on this book began in December of 2006 when Allan Gotthelf and I first discussed the possibility of a companion-style volume on Ayn Rand. He was my teacher and dear friend, and his death in 2013, after a 15-year battle with prostate cancer, was a loss to the philosophy profession and a profound loss to me personally. Our collaboration on this project was one of the great joys of my life, and I wish he could have lived to see its completion. Now that the work is finished, I can find no better way to express my gratitude to Allan than by repeating the words of a friend to whom he introduced me 17 years ago: (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1164b2–6).

There are many others who deserve thanks for their role in making this book possible. First, I trust that I speak for all the contributors to this Companion when I acknowledge the great debt we owe to Leonard Peikoff, who has been a teacher to all of us (whether in person or through his books and recorded courses). The many citations to him throughout this book are testament to this debt. Moreover, as the executor of Rand’s estate he is responsible for making available the many posthumously published and archival materials that have enriched all of our understanding of Rand’s thought and life.

This brings me to the subject of the Ayn Rand Archives. Thank you to Mike Berliner, Jeff Britting, and Jenniffer Woodson for building and maintaining the Archives, for making it available to us, and for all of your help navigating it over the years. The Ayn Rand Institute, of which the Archives is a department, has been responsible for a host of programs and events over the past 30 years that contributed immeasurably to the work and intellectual development of many of the contributing authors (myself included).

The last decade of Allan’s life was a period of great productivity made possible by the support of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which has also supported my research since 2008. I would like to acknowledge three people at Anthem in particular. John McCaskey, who founded Anthem and was its first president, created the fellowship that brought Allan to the University of Pittsburgh in 2003 (when I was a graduate student there) and put him in a position to organize workshops and conferences that raised the scholarly level of work on Rand immeasurably. John was also instrumental in placing me in my first job in 2008, and he has been a source of professional advice in the years since. Debi Ghate, Anthem’s president 2009–2013, was a constant supporter of my and Allan’s careers and an able executive in difficult times. The same is true of Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, who also serves as the chairman of Anthem’s board of directors and who took over as president when Debi left.

Thank you also to Jim Lennox, for being an excellent doctoral advisor, for his role in bringing Allan to Pittsburgh, for being a vital part of the intellectual community there, and for his continuing support and advice in countless matters big and small.

Our editors at Wiley Blackwell, several of whom have come and gone while we were working on this book, have displayed supernatural patience. I am grateful to all, but I’d like to thank especially Nick Bellorini, with whom we signed our contract in 2008, and Deirdre Ilkson, who proposed incorporating the book into the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series. Thanks also to Fiona Screen, who shepherded this book through the production process, and to our two copyeditors, Michael Coultas and Anna Oxbury. All three have been a consistent pleasure to work with, despite my frustrating habit of introducing changes (and lengthening chapters) long after submission of the manuscript. Michael and I made most of the decisions concerning formatting and style together, and he copyedited more than half of the book before unexpectedly passing away. We did not meet in person, but his emails revealed him to be a kind and thoughtful man who loved his work and took pride in doing it well. Anna, working with remarkable speed, both maintained the high standard Michael had set and finished the copyediting in time to meet our production schedule.

I would like to acknowledge several friends and colleagues to whom Allan and I turned for advice either about individual chapters or the design of the book as a whole: Geoff Sayre-McCord, James Brazell, Mary Ann Sures, and Shoshana Milgram. Mike Mazza, in his capacity as a research assistant, checked most of the quotes in the book and made many helpful suggestions about the content of various chapters. Three other friends – Matt Bateman, Ben Bayer, and Onkar Ghate – took on significant editorial work, each on a different chapter, during a period when Allan’s health prevented him from working and I was overwhelmed. They have my deep gratitude both for their friendship and for their excellent work.

Thank you to all of the contributors to this volume both for bearing with our sometimes demanding editorial style, and for their patience with the many delays on the road to publication.

Finally, I’d like to thank my wife, Karen, both for her help with this project (which took many forms) and for everything she’s brought to my life. And I’d like to thank Cass Love and her husband Ron for all of their help with this project, for their friendship, and for the unique role they played in Allan’s life.

Gregory Salmieri

A Note on Abbreviations and References

Rand’s own works and certain others that we have identified as “quasi-primary sources” are listed in the annotated bibliography at the end of this volume and cited in the text by the abbreviations indicated below. The numbers after the abbreviations indicate where they can be found in the bibliography.

In some cases, where a passage exists in two sources, we cite it to both separated by a slash. In such cases, the quoted material (if any) is as it appears in the first of the two citations. This format is used (among other times) when quoting from the original archival sources of material by Rand that has been posthumously published in an edited form.

Citations to works by figures in the history of philosophy are given in the standard formats used by scholars of those figures: Bekker numbers for Aristotle, Academy numbers for Kant, and so on. Other works are cited in the author/date format; bibliographic information for these works can be found in the references at the end of each chapter. Multiple works by an author from the same calendar year are distinguished by letters, and these references are standardized throughout the volume; so, for example, Allan Gotthelf’s essay on “Dagny’s Final Choice” is referenced as Gotthelf 2009b even in chapters that do not also make reference to Gotthelf 2009a.

Answers

Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A.

#46.

Anthem

Revised edition of

Anthem.

#3.

Anthem38

1938 edition of

Anthem.

#3.

AOF

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers.

#44.

AON

The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers.

#45.

ARL

The Ayn Rand Letter.

#18.

Atlas

Atlas Shrugged.

#5.

Biographical Interviews

Biographical interviews of Ayn Rand conducted by Barbara and Nathaniel Branden in 1960–1961. #49.

Column

The Ayn Rand Column.

#14.

CUI

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

#8.

Early

The Early Ayn Rand.

#36.

Fountainhead

The Fountainhead.

#4.

FTNI

For The New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

#6.

HOP1

Leonard Peikoff.

Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume

. #32.

HOP2

Leonard Peikoff.

Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present

. #33.

Ideal

Ideal: The Novel and the Play

. #39.

ITOE

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

. #9.

Journals

Journals of Ayn Rand

. #42.

Letters

Letters of Ayn Rand

. #41.

Marginalia

Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over 20 Authors

. #40.

OPAR

Leonard Peikoff.

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

. #52.

Papers

The Ayn Rand Papers, a collection of the Ayn Rand Archives. #48.

Parallels

Leonard Peikoff.

The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America

. #35.

Playboy Interview

Ayn Rand’s interview in

Playboy Magazine

. #23.

Plays

Three Plays

. #37.

PWNI

Philosophy: Who Needs It

. #12.

RM

The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature

. #10.

ROTP

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

. #15.

Russian Writings

Russian Writings on Hollywood

. #43.

Speaking

Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed

. #47.

TIA

The Intellectual Activist

. #19.

TO

The Objectivist

. #17.

TOF

The Objectivist Forum

. #20.

TON

The Objectivist Newsletter

. #16.

TPO

Leonard Peikoff.

The Philosophy of Objectivism

. #34.

Unconquered

The Unconquered

with another, earlier adaptation of

We the Living

. #38.

VAR

Nathaniel Branden.

The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism

. #51.

VOR

The Voice of Reason

. #13.

VOS

The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism.

#7.

WIAR

Nathaniel Branden.

Who Is Ayn Rand?

#31.

Workshops

Transcript of the Objectivist Workshops. #50.

WTL

Revised edition of

We the Living

. #1.

WTL36

1936 edition of

We the Living

. #1.

Part IContext

1An Introduction to the Study of Ayn Rand

GREGORY SALMIERI

“Ayn Rand … is among the most outspoken – and important – intellectual voices in America today,” wrote Playboy Magazine in 1964. “She is the author of what is perhaps the most fiercely damned and admired best seller of the decade, Atlas Shrugged.” The magazine goes on to describe the novel’s impressive sales (“more than 1,200,000 copies since its publication six years ago”), the discussion groups and debate it spawned on college campuses, and the thousands of people who subscribed to Rand’s Objectivist Newsletter or attended lecture courses on her philosophy.

That any novel should set off such a chain reaction is unusual; that Atlas Shrugged has done so is astonishing. For the book, a panoramic novel about what happens when the “men of the mind” go on strike, is 1,168 pages long. It is filled with lengthy, sometimes complex philosophical passages; and it is brimming with as many explosively unpopular ideas as Ayn Rand herself. Despite this success, the literary establishment considers her an outsider. Almost to a man, critics have either ignored or denounced the book. She is an exile among philosophers, too, although Atlas is as much a work of philosophy as it is a novel. Liberals glower at the very mention of her name; but conservatives, too, swallow hard when she begins to speak. For Ayn Rand, whether anyone likes it or not, is sui generis: indubitably, irrevocably, intransigently individual. (Playboy Interview 35)

Over 50 years later, and 33 years after her death, Rand remains one of the most important intellectual voices in our culture. In the last six years alone (2009 through 2014) Atlas has sold 2.25 million copies – one million more than in the six years immediately after its publication. In total, more than 30 million copies of Rand’s books have been sold.1 Her ideas are as radical today as they were during her lifetime. And there remains a pronounced disconnect between the inspiration (both esthetic and intellectual) that so many readers take from her books and the dismissive or scornful response that these same books still often meet in academia.

In the political arena, liberals still despise and mock her, as do many leaders of the Christian right, neo-conservative, and libertarian movements. Yet Rand’s influence is always evident wherever one finds morally self-confident opposition to regulation, taxes, or entitlements, and wherever one sees celebrations of business and the free market. Thus, sales of Rand’s books soared to record levels in 2008 and 2009 as Americans struggled to make sense of the financial crisis, and slogans referencing John Galt (the hero of Atlas) were ubiquitous at the early “Tea Party” protests against the interventionist measures by which the Bush and Obama administrations responded to the crisis. Rand has been frequently referenced in American political discourse since, both by those who cite her as an inspiration and by commentators who attribute many of the nation’s ills to Rand’s influence.2 But references to Rand, on both sides, are usually superficial. They are attempts to evoke or to smear – but not to engage with – that strand in the American consciousness which resonates to Rand’s distinctive vision of what a human life can and should be.

She described this vision as “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” (Atlas 1070).3 Rand viewed “man” as a “heroic being” in the sense that she thought that human nature sets a demanding ideal that each individual can and should achieve in his own life and character (though few people do achieve it). This ideal is the fit object of the emotion of reverence, and Rand sometimes speaks of “worshiping” it or the people (real or fictional) who embody it. This ideal – the life proper to a human being – is egoistic in the sense that an individual leading such a life is dedicated as a matter of moral principle to his own happiness. Happiness, for Rand, is not mere pleasure or desire-satisfaction. It is that state of “non-contradictory joy” (Atlas 1022) that is the concomitant of achieving what one has rationally identified as objectively good. A heroic human being is committed to the fullest use of his reason; and he uses it to conceive ambitious, life-sustaining goals, and to achieve them via productive activity. All the aspects of this vision and Rand’s arguments for them are discussed in detail in later chapters. So are other aspects of her thought, including the view that, because such a life requires the political freedom to live by one’s own judgment, laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral social system. It is enough for now to note that this vision evokes intense reactions in many people: some are inspired; others, revolted; some find it profound; others, juvenile.

Rand used the phrase “sense of life” to designate the aspect of a person’s or a culture’s psychology that generates the differing emotional reactions we have to artworks and (especially) to the view of the world and of humanity that they project. A sense of life is an implicit worldview – a “pre-conceptual metaphysics” that is experienced as a “constant, basic emotion” and expressed in a person’s “widest goals or smallest gestures” (“Philosophy and Sense of Life” RM 8, 18, 22).4 Part of maturing, Rand held, is translating one’s sense of life into conscious convictions, which one can rationally evaluate; correct, if necessary; and then consistently implement. Adopting this terminology, then, we can say that, for better or for worse, Rand’s vision holds a deep and enduring appeal for something in “the American sense of life” – or, at least, for a sense of life that is shared by many Americans and that contributes to the character of the nation. If so, then engagement with her works and thought is a crucial means by which scholars can help America to understand itself, and by which they can help the many people, in every country, who find Rand inspiring or repugnant to understand one another.5

Taking Rand Seriously

The scholarly study of Rand’s works was postponed by two generations of academics who found her vision appalling and thought or hoped that she was a passing fad, and that their students’ attraction to her was a youthful indiscretion. These hopes have been dashed. Decades after her death, Rand’s appeal and influence cannot be denied; and very often something of her heroic vision of man remains even in the souls of readers who “outgrow” her and resign themselves (sadly or smugly) to a world in which they believe the kind of life she projects is impossible or vicious.

Happily, these facts are beginning to be recognized. Rand’s novels have, perhaps grudgingly, been admitted to the literary canon. They are seldom discussed in journals, but one increasingly finds Anthem and The Fountainhead taught in high school English courses or listed on summer reading lists, and Atlas Shrugged has begun to appear in university syllabi. Objectivism, as Rand called her philosophical system, may still be regarded as a curiosity by most philosophy professors, but her defense of egoism is now often covered in ethics textbooks, excerpts from her essays are widely anthologized, and there are entries on Rand in the two major encyclopedias of philosophy.6 Moreover, there is a small but growing number of scholars and advocates of Objectivism within the philosophy departments of America’s colleges and universities.7

Indeed, the last decade saw a boom in quality Rand scholarship. Among the highlights are Tara Smith’s (2006) Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, Robert Mayhew’s (2004, 2005a, 2007, 2009, 2012a) edited collections of essays on each of Rand’s novels, and the first two volumes of the Ayn Rand Society’s Philosophical Studies series: Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue (2011) and Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge (2013), both edited by Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox. Since its founding in 1987, the Society (of which I am co-secretary) holds sessions on Rand’s ideas at meetings of the American Philosophical Association. There have been 30 such meetings, collectively involving 48 panelists who represent 41 academic departments from institutions on three continents.8 Some of these panelists are advocates for Objectivism; many are not; but all are participating in the stimulating exchange of ideas that occurs whenever philosophers take Rand’s works seriously.

Turning from scholarly to popular books, two biographies of Rand were published in 2009, by Jennifer Burns and Anne C. Heller. Burns’s book, especially, is less informative than one might hope about Rand’s ideas and intellectual development; and both authors, in what seem to be attempts to create what they regard as a satisfying narrative about Rand’s later life, emphasize the painful episodes and underplay the bright points; but each biography is a significant improvement over any previously available book-length treatment of Rand’s life.9 There is also Gary Weiss’s (2012) Ayn Rand Nation, which, though not very deep and rife with inaccuracies, clearly recognizes the need for sustained reflection by leftists about the nature of Rand’s ideas and the source of their appeal.10 Weiss is trying to combat Rand’s influence, but there have also been several recent books put out by major publishing houses that expound some of Rand’s ideas sympathetically for a popular audience: Donald Luskin and Andrew Greta’s (2011) I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It, Yaron Brook and Don Watkins’s (2012) Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, and Peter Schwartz’s (2015) In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Sacrifice Is Unjust and Destructive.

There are other books that could be named as well, but this list is sufficient to illustrate a growing recognition – both within academia and without, in several disciplines, and across the ideological spectrum – that Ayn Rand should be taken seriously.

To take an author seriously means to read her, not with an eye toward confirming one’s prejudices (whether favorable or unfavorable), but simply with an eye to understanding what she thinks and why. If one finds her approach unfamiliar and difficult, it means working to overcome that. If one finds what she says implausible or unmotivated, it means taking the time to consider why it seems otherwise to her and to the readers who find her convincing – and it means giving thought to the question of whether it is you or she who is mistaken. By the same token, if she strikes you as obviously correct with respect to an issue where you know many people find her views counterintuitive, it means working to identify the premises that you share with her and not with them, and then figuring out how to determine whether those premises are true.

This approach is especially important in the case of Rand, because she is (as Playboy put it) “brimming” with “explosively unpopular ideas.” In particular, she maintained that our society is unjust in deep and pervasive ways, and that at the heart of this corruption are the moral ideals by which we are taught to live our lives, and on which we are taught to base our self-esteem. Rand is thus a radical critic of society. In this respect she is analogous to other radical thinkers of various stripes – nineteenth-century abolitionists, twentieth-century Marxists, and those who inveigh against what they see as the inherent racism, sexism, or imperialism of Western culture.

As with many such thinkers, Rand’s writing often has a confrontational character. For example, she explains, in the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, that she gave the work the title she did “For the reason that makes you afraid of it” (VOS vii). The title is frightening. It challenges our fundamental moral beliefs – beliefs that are central to all of our goals, to our sense of self- esteem. It takes courage and a commitment to introspective honesty to consider challenges to such beliefs. When one’s sense of self-worth is threatened, there is always a temptation to seize upon any convenient rationalization for rejecting the challenge (and the challenger) rather than taking the time, and putting forth the effort, required to understand and evaluate it. On the other hand, if one feels alienated from or unappreciated by one’s fellow human beings, a radical criticism of one’s society can serve as a rationalization for these feelings and a weapon with which one can lash out against others. Whether one finds Rand appealing or repugnant, the sorts of issues that she raises are fraught with temptations for intellectual dishonesty, and one will find no shortage of facile reasons to dismiss or embrace her ideas too quickly.

Readers who resist these temptations, and approach Rand seriously, will, I think, find her to be a powerfully unconventional artist and a philosopher of great breadth and subtlety. They may also come to see her, as I do, as the discoverer of some profound and empowering truths. But it is not my aim here to argue for this evaluation of Rand, nor is that the purpose of any of the chapters in this book. All of the contributing authors are professional intellectuals who have made mastering Rand’s works and philosophy a significant part of their careers, despite working in fields where she is too seldom taken seriously and where a perceived interest in her can be a professional liability. It stands to reason that we would all be great admirers of her, and two of us (Allan Gotthelf and Harry Binswanger) counted her as a mentor and a personal friend. In other contexts, many of us have written as defenders of her philosophy, but our purpose throughout this book is to serve, not as advocates, but as guides. This is something that Allan Gotthelf and I, in our capacity as editors, stressed throughout the editorial process, from our initial invitations to the contributors, to our (often extensive) feedback on drafts.

The consistent aim of the book is to facilitate the study of Rand’s works and thought by identifying Rand’s key theses and methods and her reasons for them, by tracing the role that these theses and methods play in her thought, by showing the evidence in her texts for all of our interpretive conclusions, and by drawing illuminating comparisons between Rand and other thinkers. Of course, there are many occasions when the contributing authors (myself included) have found that this end is best served by raising and/or responding to objections to Rand’s positions, but such arguments are presented here only as means to clarification. We hope that the book will be useful to critics and admirers of Rand alike, and that it will thereby help to increase the intellectual sophistication and scholarly rigor of the discourse about her both within the academy and in the culture at large.

Some Challenging Features of Rand’s Ideas and Writings

Reading Rand seriously, as opposed to merely reacting passively to her writings, is demanding intellectual work. This is true to some extent of all authors, but there are several features of Rand’s corpus and of her position in the culture that make it particularly difficult in her case.

Scholars and students of philosophy trained in analytic departments (as were most of the contributors to this volume) may find that Rand’s philosophical essays read as though they come from an alien tradition. She addresses recognizable philosophical issues, but they are framed differently; the context and values she assumes are unfamiliar, as are her methods of argument and analysis. In all these respects, reading Rand is like reading a figure from a different philosophical school (or a different period in the history of philosophy). However, she is not only an outsider to the specific tradition of analytic philosophy; she is (as Playboy put it) sui generis. Rather than working within an established school of thought, Rand’s essays are addressed either to a general audience or (more often) to the audience that she herself created. Most of her non-fiction was written for her own periodicals, and it sometimes presumes familiarity with her novels and with the ideas expounded in earlier issues.

When Rand does engage with the intellectual traditions of her time, she does so as an outsider – often a hostile one. In this respect, she is like such early modern intellectuals as Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Spinoza. The comparison I am making is not to the intellectual stature of these thinkers, but to their relation to the intellectual establishment of their day. When they wrote, the universities were dominated by Scholasticism, an entrenched intellectual tradition with an established vocabulary, shared assumptions, an institutional structure, conventions of discourse, and a credentialing method. Rather than developing and presenting their ideas within this structure, the early modern intellectuals struck out on their own. They found their own audience and often explained their ideas in ways that made little reference to the establishment. When they did discuss Scholasticism it was in broadsides that the scholastics must have thought missed the nuances of their arguments and trivialized the differences between their positions (e.g., the differences between Scotists and Thomists). Likewise, Rand’s often contemptuous remarks about the academic philosophy of the mid-twentieth century did not win her many friends in the philosophy departments of the time. However, 50 years later, most academic philosophers do not have much more regard for the positions Rand dismissed (e.g., logical positivism and flagrant subjectivism about ethical principles) than she did in the 1960s.11

The philosophers with reference to whom Rand situates herself are not her contemporaries in the academy, but world historical figures – chiefly, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. And, rather than engaging in minute scholarship of these thinkers, she speaks of them as they most often spoke of one another – in essentialized sketches. (See James Lennox’s discussion of Rand’s take on the history of philosophy, Chapter 13, below.)

Like these world historical philosophers, Rand aimed to be systematic. Objectivism (as she called her philosophy) comprises five branches: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and esthetics. It also includes theses that we might describe as belonging to philosophical psychology, the philosophy of economics, and the philosophy of history. In many essays, Rand used this system as a framework within which to interpret the events of her time, and to recommend courses of political action and cultural activism.

There is a definite hierarchical structure to her thinking. At the base of this system is the metaphysical conviction that Rand called “The Primacy of Existence” – the thesis “that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists” (“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made” PWNI 32). (See Jason Rheins’s discussion in Chapter 11, below.) The distinctively human form of consciousness is reason, which enables us to understand the world and to guide our actions by means of a system of concepts that are formed, ultimately, on the basis of sense-perception. Unlike sense-perception, which Rand regarded as a direct, inerrant, and automatic awareness of external objects, reason is volitional and (consequently) fallible. Because of this, human beings need epistemology, the “science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge” (ITOE 36). The centerpiece of Rand’s epistemology is her theory of concept-formation. In Chapter 12, I examine this theory, and explain the role that Rand thought her theory (and epistemology as a whole) played in enabling human beings to achieve objectivity in their thinking. This thinking includes, importantly, the reasoning by which we validate moral principles and by which each of us conceives and pursues personal values. Thus Rand’s ethics rests on her epistemology and metaphysics.

In ethics, Rand articulates the essential values that constitute “man’s life” (the moral ideal we discussed earlier); she argues that these values are based in the requirements of human survival, and she shows how they form a standard by reference to which an individual can form and pursue rational goals. These issues are the subjects of the chapters that make up Part II of this volume. Part III concerns her social theory – especially her endorsement of capitalism as the ideal social system. I indicated earlier how this endorsement follows from her ethics.

In esthetics, Rand’s aim is to identify the essence of art and the human need that it serves. Doing so makes possible objective standards by which art can be evaluated. The function of art, she maintains, is to enable a human being to experience concretely his (or another’s) sense of life. Rand explores the epistemological function of a sense of life, and its nature as a psychological phenomenon. A sense of life is a body of implicit metaphysical convictions, and Rand defines the school of art to which she belongs by identifying its core metaphysical conviction: “Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition” (“What Is Romanticism?” RM 91).