Ayn Rand - Definition and Overview

Publicity photo of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905–March 6, 1982; first name pronounced [aɪn] (see IPA)), born Alissa "Alice" Zinovievna Rosenbaum, was a popular and controversial American novelist and philosopher, best known for her philosophy of Objectivism, and her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, her concept of individualism, egoism, "rational self-interest," and capitalism. Her novels were based upon the archetype of the "Randian hero," a man whose ability and independence leads others to reject him, but who perseveres nevertheless to achieve his values. Rand viewed this hero as the "ideal man" and made it the express goal of her literature to showcase such men.

Contents

1 Biography

1.1 Philosophical influences

Biography

Ayn Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She studied philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd. In late 1925, she was granted a visa to visit American relatives. She arrived in the United States in February 1926, at the age of 21. After a brief stay with them in Chicago, she resolved never to return to the Soviet Union and set out for Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. She then changed her name to "Ayn Rand," partly to avoid Soviet retaliation against her family for her political views (she assumed her name would appear in the credits of films with an anti-Communist message, attracting the attention of Soviet officials). There is a story told that she named herself after the Remington Rand typewriter, but recent evidence suggests this is not the case. [1] (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_ayn_rand_faq_index2#ar_q3b)

Initially, Rand struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living-expenses. While working as an extra on Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings, she intentionally bumped into an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor, who caught her eye. The two were married in 1929. Her first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios. Rand then wrote the play, The Night of January 16th in 1934 and published two novels, We The Living (1936), and Anthem (1938).

Without Rand's permission, We The Living was made into a pair of films, Noi viva and Addio, Kira in 1942 by Scalara Films, Rome, despite resistance from the Italian government under Benito Mussolini. These films were re-edited into a new version which was approved by Rand and re-released as We the Living in 1986.

Rand's first major professional success came with her best-selling novel The Fountainhead (1943). The novel was rejected by many publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house. Despite these initial struggles The Fountainhead was successful, bringing Rand fame, notoriety, and financial security.

In 1947, during the infamous Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. [2] (http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.html). Rand's testimony involved analysis of the 1943 film Song of Russia. Rand argued that the movie grossly misrepresented the socioeconomic conditions in the Soviet Union. She told the committee that the film presented life in the USSR as being much better than it actually was. Apparently this 1943 film was intentional wartime propaganda by U.S. patriots, trying to put their Soviet allies in World War II under the best possible light. After the HUAC hearings, when Ayn Rand was asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of their investigations, she described the process as "futile."

Rand's political views were radically anti-communist, anti-statist, and pro-capitalist. Her writings praised above all the human individual and the creative genius of which he is capable. 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, flourishment, and success.

In 1950 Rand moved to New York City, where in 1951 she met the young psychology student Nathaniel Branden [3] (http://www.nathanielbranden.com), who had read her book The Fountainhead at the age of 14. Branden, then 19, enjoyed discussing Rand's emerging Objectivist philosophy with her. After several years, Rand and Branden's friendly relationship blossomed into a romantic affair (despite the fact that both were married at the time).

Rand published the book described as her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged in 1957. This book, just as The Fountainhead had, became a bestseller. Atlas Shrugged is often seen as Rand's most complete statement of Objectivist philosophy in any of her works of fiction. Along with Nathaniel, his wife Barbara Branden as well as a handful of others including Alan Greenspan and Leonard Peikoff (jokingly designated "The Collective"), Rand launched the Objectivist movement to promote her philosophy, which she termed Objectivism.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through both her fiction [4] (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_fiction) and non-fiction [5] (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_nonfiction) works, and by giving talks at several east coast Universities, largely through the Nathaniel Branden Institute ("the NBI") which Branden had established to promote her philosophy.

After a convoluted series of separations and additional affairs, Rand abruptly ended her relationship with both Nathaniel Branden and his wife Barbara Branden in 1968 when she learned of Nathaniel Branden's affair with Patrecia Scott (this later affair did not overlap chronologically with the earlier Branden/Rand affair). Rand refused to have any further dealings with the NBI. Rand 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.

1999 U.S. postage stamp honoring Rand.

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 70's her activities within the formal Objectivist movement began to decline, a situation which increased after the death of her husband in 1979. One of her final projects was work on a television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.

Philosophical influences

Rand rejected virtually all other philosophical schools. She acknowledged an intellectual debt to Aristotle and occasionally remarked with approval on specific philosophical positions of, e.g., Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Aquinas. She seems also to have respected the American rationalist Brand Blanshard. However, she regarded most philosophers as at best incompetent and at worst positively evil. She singled out Immanuel Kant as the most influential of the latter sort. Her rejection of other philosophers may have contributed to academia labeling her nonfiction work as pseudophilosophy.

Nonetheless, there are connections between Rand's views and those of other philosophers. She acknowledged that she had been influenced at an early age by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Though she later repudiated his thought, her own thought grew out of critical interaction with it. It has been suggested that she was also influenced by dialectical thinkers such as Karl Marx in this way. Strong similarities can be detected between her ethical views and the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoics, and between her views on government and those of John Locke. More generally, her political thought can be seen as fitting in the tradition of classical liberalism that includes William Graham Sumner, Herbert Spencer, Albert Jay Nock, Isabel Paterson, and Rose Wilder Lane. She expressed qualified enthusiasm for the economic thought of Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. In metaphysics and epistemology, she was (again like John Locke) an empiricist realist: she tried to navigate a way between the Humean and positivist empiricisms of her day (e.g., as developed by Rudolf Carnap) and Platonic rationalism (as exhibited in the writings of Gottlob Frege and G. E. Moore).

Legacy

In 1985, Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's heir, established "The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism". The Institute has since registered the name Ayn Rand as a trademark, despite Rand's desire that her name never be used to promote the philosophy she developed. Rand expressed her wish to keep her name and the philosophy of Objectivism separate to ensure the survival of her ideas.

Another schism in the movement occurred in 1989, when Objectivist David Kelley wrote an article called "A Question of Sanction," [6] (http://www.wetheliving.com/boston/sanction.html) in which he defended his choice to speak to non-Objectivist libertarian groups. Kelley wrote that Objectivism was not a "closed system" and should engage with other philosophies. Peikoff, in an article for The Intellectual Activist called "Fact and Value" [7] (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_f-v), argued that Objectivism is, indeed, a closed system, and that truth and moral goodness are intrinsically related. Peikoff expelled Kelley from his movement, whereupon Kelley founded The Institute for Objectivist Studies (now known as "The Objectivist Center").

Controversy

Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism have been the subject of a great deal of criticism from various groups. Many academic philosophers criticize Rand not only for her sweeping denouncements of academic philosophers, but also for her practice of explicating her philosophy in popular fiction, rather than publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Opinions on why she did this vary. Her supporters argue that Rand was so critical of modern philosophers that she was unwilling to pay attention to them. Her critics reply that Rand knew her work would not stand up to serious scrutiny by trained thinkers.

It has also been claimed that Rand's novels, in which she laid out Objectivism's heroic "Randian man", are made up of very two-dimensional characters. The Objectivist heroes are all intelligent and unencumbered by doubt. Some are very rich (although Howard Roark, Hank Rearden, and John Galt started out poor). Some of them seem to have no shortcomings at all, at least from an Objectivist view (Hank Rearden, however, is taken advantage of because of his social naïveté). The antagonists are usually weak, pathetic, full of uncertainty, and lacking in imagination and talent. In addition, the novels are alleged to contain errors or omissions in terms of the reality of social interactions, economics, technology, and history. Rand replied to such criticism (and in advance of much of it) with her essay "The Goal of My Writing" (1963). There, and in other essays collected in her book The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature (2nd rev. ed. 1975), Rand makes it clear that her goal is to project her vision of an ideal man, that is, not man as he is, but man as he might be and ought to be.

Michael Shermer has claimed that Objectivism resembles a cult [8] (http://www.skeptic.com/02.2.shermer-unlikely-cult.html), but many Objectivists deny any such suggestion. In any case, these accusations are based largely on Rand's circle of friends and their interactions during her life, and have arguably become less relevant.

Bibliography

Night of January 16th (1934)
We The Living (1936)
Anthem (1938)
The Fountainhead (1943)
Atlas Shrugged (1957)
For the New Intellectual (1961)
The Virtue of Selfishness (with Nathaniel Branden) (1964)
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (with Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen) (1966)
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967)
The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)

Posthumous Works:

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

References

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, 1943. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, ISBN 0451191153.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1957. New York: Random House, ISBN 0451191145.
The Unlikeliest Cult In History by Michael Shermer, The Skeptic Magazine vol 2, #2. [9] (http://www.skeptic.com/02.2.shermer-unlikely-cult.html)
The Ayn Rand Cult by Jeff Walker, 1998. Open Court Publishing Company.
The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics by James S. Valliant, 2005, ISBN 1930754671

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