Ayn Rand

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

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was an atheistic novelist, screenwriter, and philosopher, 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 was 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. Despite her anti-Christian and liberal views on social issues, her opposition to state economic intervention has made her works and philosophy popular with the TEA Party movement.

Her first name "Ayn" rhymes with "mine", and she was born in Russia as Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum.

Philosophy

For a more detailed treatment, see Objectivism.

Ayn Rand attracted a following based on her opposition to collectivism, as articulated in her novels, particularly Atlas Shrugged. Her followers today tend to be libertarians and predominantly unmarried men, many of whom are drawn to a self-indulgent lifestyle consistent with Rand's philosophy. Rand often called herself a "radical for capitalism," by which she meant the pure, laissez-faire variety. Rand had very little in common with conservatives except for a mutual opposition to communism and socialism. Rand has also been accused of being a rape apologist for her rape scene in The Fountainhead.

Rand's most famous and powerful follower was Alan Greenspan (b. 1926), long-time head of the Federal Researve System (1987-2006).

Rand's philosophy was anti-Christian to the point of even declaring that "faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason." Such an anti-faith perspective necessarily led to the moral relativism seen among her followers. For example, the movement she founded supports an "absolute right" to abortion at any time during pregnancy, including partial-birth abortion. Ayn Rand's philosophy and followers also support a "right" to have same-sex marriage, and opposed California's Proposition 8 defining marriage as between one man and woman.

Rand was an atheist and opponent of traditional family values, who personally adhered more to Hollywood Values than conservative ones. She was a strident opponent of altruism. As far back as 1957, Whittaker Chambers denounced the “wickedness” of Atlas Shrugged in National Review, and Dr. Gabe Vertin derided her "senseless self-agrrandizement."

Psychological profile

The psychological underpinnings of Ayn Rand's socio-political and eco-political views are arguably related to her gender in the same way that Karl Marx’s views can be related to Marx’s gender. Namely, by the tendency of the genders to becoming overly sensitive in regard to their respective virtues. The male is most able in matters of individualism, the female in matters of the collective. Ayn Rand’s disfavoring of the female virtues, and her consequent exclusivism in favor of the male virtues, may have been caused (in a modern world in which all good things are turned into more-or-less exclusives by some group or nation) by a particular sensitivity on her part to the female virtues. While it is good to feel things for others, it is not good to have that feeling used, in effect, to make one feel that one has no personal rights and needs. It can be argued that Rand typically felt so used, as do many women, but that Rand, unlike them, found herself with an opportunity to so 'right the wrong' that, unknown to her atheism, she went much too far.

Like Marx, Rand's atheism saw only one way toward a global salvation, namely by the opposite of her natural virtues as a woman. Jesus never preached liberation of women from men, nor men from women, but most perfectly empathized with the plights of both in the face of the other. Adam was created without a penny to his name, but he owned the entire Earth. And, Adam never shrugged anything in order to possess it, which means it cannot be owned by a kind of individualism which denies a common culpability for a common plight of the suffering which results from the fact that differentiated individuals and genders cope differently to a given non-ideal situation.

Rand also grew up during the harshest years of communism in Russia which by her own admission had great effect on her personal beliefs. It is likely that the traumatizing effects of being a child at this time would have given her a great distaste for both the state and religion which was the object of intense propaganda under the Soviet regime. To a young and impressionable mind this may have had an effect on her thinking.

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