Ayn Rand
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Observe the proliferation of grotesque herds or gangs—hippies, yippies, beatniks, peaceniks, Women's Libs, Gay Libs, Jesus Freaks, Earth Children—which are not tribes, but shifting aggregates of people desperately seeking tribal "protection"."--Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982) by Ayn Rand |
Related e |
Featured: |
Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.
Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational egoism and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of most other philosophers and philosophical traditions.
The reception for Rand's fiction from literary critics was largely negative, and most academics have ignored or rejected her philosophy. Nonetheless she continues to have a popular following, and her political ideas have been influential among libertarians and conservatives. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.
Selected works
Novels:
- 1936 We the Living
- 1943 The Fountainhead
- 1957 Atlas Shrugged
Other fiction:
- 1934 Night of January 16th
- 1938 Anthem
- 2015 Ideal
Non-fiction:
- 1961 For the New Intellectual
- 1964 The Virtue of Selfishness
- 1966 Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
- 1969 The Romantic Manifesto
- 1971 The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
- 1979 Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
- 1982 Philosophy: Who Needs It