Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand. A great philosopher and writer who developed the Objectivist school of thought

Ayn Rand ("Ayn" rhymes with "mine"), born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (1905-1982) was a Russian-born philosopher, screenwriter, atheist, and novelist, who began her career in Hollywood. She used her novels to promote her philosophy, known as Objectivism. Her best-known novels are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

She is a highly political author, with her novels often serving as political messages. She advocated minimal government interference (known by the name Minarchism) in business and strongly objected to socialism and nationalism. Combined, more than twelve million copies of her two best-known novels have been sold in the U.S. alone, whilst her opposition to state economic intervention has made her works and philosophy popular with the TEA Party movement.

Ayn Rand as an American

Though she grew up in Russia, Rand was a true American, and firm believer in the fundamental goodness of [America], it's place in the world, and the [American Dream].

"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." - Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money—and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being—the self-made man—the American industrialist." - Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual

"A European is disarmed in the face of a dictatorship: he may hate it, but he feels that he is wrong and, metaphysically, the State is right. An American would rebel to the bottom of his soul. . . . Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority." - Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase “to make money.” No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity—to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created." - Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual

Philosophy

For a more detailed treatment, see Objectivism.


Following the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, Rand immediately attract a strong following based on her opposition to collectivism, and reasoned support for freedom, liberty and the free market, and many of her followers today are avowed Libertarians. Rand often called herself a "radical for capitalism," by which she meant the pure, true laissez-faire variety, rather than Socialist "mixed economies".

Doubtless, Rand's most famous and influential follower is Alan Greenspan (b. 1926), the longer-serving head of the Federal Reserve from 1987-2006, as well as a great economic thinker.

Rand's objectivism is critical of religion, regarding it as existing in opposition to reason and objective thinking. Nonetheless, she acknowledged a huge debt to religious practice, and recognised religious thought as the forerunner of modern philosophy and science.

"You must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy." - Ayn Rand

Quotes

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: The stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission – which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

Works

• We the Living
• Anthem
• The Fountainhead
• Atlas Shrugged
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The Romantic Manifesto
• The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
• The Virtue of Selfishness

References

• Burns, Jennifer. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009), standard scholarly history, by a conservative historian. excerpt and text search
• Doherthy, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism a Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement. (2007), popular history.
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. The Ayn Rand Companion (1984) 130 pp. good starting point
• Heller, Ann C. Ayn Rand and the World She Made (2009)
• Kirsch, Adam. "Ayn Rand’s Revenge" New York Times Sunday Book review Nov. 1, 2009
• Uyl, Douglas J. Den, and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984) 235 pp.; dense essays by professional philosophers

External Links

• Ayn Rand Institute
• ARI Watch — argues that the above misrepresents Ayn Rand.
• The Atlas Society — home of The Objectivist Center
• Objectivism Wiki