Rand, Ayn

One of the twentieth century's best known novelists and philosophers, Ayn Rand (1905–1982), who was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia on February 2, and died in New York City on March 6, celebrated the individual in dramatic stories with unconventional characters and plots. The heroes of her four novels are engineers, scientists, architects, and industrialists. Her philosophy, which she called Objectivism, champions the rational productive individual.

In 1936, ten years after her arrival in the United States, Rand published her first novel, We the Living. Set in Russia shortly after the communist revolution of 1917, it tells the story of Kira Argounova, a young woman who wants to become an engineer and build bridges, and her struggle to live in a collectivist society at war with the individual.

Rand's second major publication, the novelette Anthem, published in 1938, is set in a bleak future in which freedom and individualism have been eliminated in the name of the common good. The achievements of the Industrial Revolution have been lost; people have been reduced to using candles. Against this background of decay one man defies society and rediscoversindividual thought, science, and technology, along with the importance of the self.

Rand's third novel, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943. Her first major commercial success, The Fountainhead is the story of Howard Roark, an innovative young architect who thinks and lives for himself and refuses to copy the designs of the past, and of the opposition he faces from a society that worships tradition and mindless conformity.

Rand's last novel, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. Its focus is the heroic individuals who, like the titan of Greek mythology, carry the world on their shoulders: the scientists, inventors, and businesspersons who create the knowledge and technology that sustain human life. Atlas Shrugged describes how those "men of the mind," as Rand calls them, liberate themselves from a society that denounces them as evil.

In presenting her vision of the hero, Rand created a new philosophy, Objectivism, on which she elaborated in her later, nonfiction writings. She argued that the subject of philosophy is not a realm of nonsense or mysteries but a science whose purpose is to teach people how to think and live, a science as capable of certainty and proof as is physics or mathematics.

The central idea of Rand's philosophy is that reason is human being's means of survival. Only through a process of reasoning—cold, hard, scientific, logical thought—can an individual understand the world and thus survive and prosper in it. This is why the heroes in her novels are scientists, engineers, and businesspersons; they are rational thinkers.

Rand accordingly defended the power of reason: She argued that the testimony of the senses is unquestionably valid, that human concepts and language con connect one to the facts of reality, and that logic is the only method for reaching truth. She rejected all forms of mysticism and supernaturalism on the grounds that such doctrines defy reason and contradict the fundamental laws of reality.

In regard to ethics Rand advocated rational self-interest. The task of ethics, she argued, is to teach one the principles—the virtues—that one must practice to realize the values that sustain one's life. No outside power, whether society or an alleged god, has the right to demand that one sacrifice one's values and live for its sake. The good is to live one's own life and attain happiness. This is accomplished through a resolute commitment to the virtue of rationality. For Rand the moral and the practical are one.

In regard to political philosophy Rand argued that a proper social system must accord with the individual's nature as a rational being. Individuals in society must be free to live, think, produce and keep the results of their work, and pursue their own goals. They must have the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The social system that results from the protection of individual rights, Rand taught, is laissez-faire capitalism. That system was approached in the freest countries in the nineteenth century, and Rand argued that the thought and productivity that capitalism unleashed made possible the ensuing unprecedented prosperity in those countries.

Rand was one of the twentieth century's champions of science and technology and the rational mind that creates them. She therefore was an opponent of ideological movements that praise more primitive lifestyles, such as the New Left and environmentalism. An increasingly industrialized society, Rand held, is the proper environment for a rational being. Although her thought, which challenged contemporary views, was largely ignored in academic circles during her lifetime, it is receiving growing attention from scholars in the early twenty-first century.

Freedom.

Mayhew, Robert, ed. (2004). Essays on Ayn Rand's We The Living. Oxford: Lexington Books. This is a collection of sixteen essays by thirteen different contributors on the history as well as literary and philosophical content of Rand's first novel. For the sake of disclosure, please note that I contributed one essay.

Peikoff, Leonard. (1993). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian. Presents the essentials of Rand's system of philosophy; written by her foremost student.

Rand, Ayn. (1943). The Fountainhead. New York: Signet.

Rand Ayn. (1957). Atlas Shrugged. New York: Signet.

Rand, Ayn. (1959). We the Living. New York: Signet.

Rand, Ayn. (1961). For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Signet. This collection contains the key philosophical passages from Rand's novels as well as a lead essay written by her explaining how philosophy has shaped the course of Western history and why new thinkers are needed.

Rand, Ayn. (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet. A collection of essays, by Rand and a colleague, on her ethics of rational self-interest.

Rand, Ayn. (1995). Anthem. New York: Signet.

Rand, Ayn. (1999). Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, ed. Peter Schwartz. New York: Meridian. A collection of essays, by Rand and editor Peter Schwartz, on cultural trends in politics and education.

Smith, Tara. (2000). Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Lanham, Maryland: Roman and Littlefield. A critical study of the foundations of Rand's ethics, written by a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas.

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