There are those thinkers who influence generations, and some, even, who influence many outside of philosophy to think and change their worldview. Among those, Nietzsche, Marx, and even Hegel and the Stoics come to mind, to some degree. But few (and definitely few women) philosophers have really influenced in such a way that people still salivate over their viewpoints. Not in the way Ayn Rand influenced a huge part of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Novelist and Theorist: A Randian Overview

Born in Russia, the revered and reviled figure we now know as Ayn Rand (1905-1982) started her life as Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, hailing from a Jewish bourgeois family. While she completed her education during the Russian Revolution, her family’s fortunes fell as the state turned red. 

In the mid-1920s, Rand moved to the United States with hopes of becoming a screenwriter, meeting actor and future husband, Frank O’Connor. Launching a career writing scripts, it was then that Rand turned to writing fiction of her own brand. With the publishing of The Fountainhead in 1943, her success as a novelist was undeniable. She took up her pen again, with her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged (1957), and they say the rest is history. Well, it’s more than history.

Within her fiction, Rand proposed a whole system of philosophy called Objectivism. Objectivism is often likened to libertarianism, and libertarian politicians like Rand Paul (actually not named after Rand!) definitely cite Rand as a defining inspiration. Rand herself would have poo-pooed the notion, saying that, like David S. Pumpkins, her Objectivism is “its own thang.”

But what thang is it? In her novels and later nonfiction, such as The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Rand advocated for what she would call “ethical egoism,” where we act in our own self-interest, in order to rationally strive for our own happiness. In this system, other ethical parties are irrelevant and self-sacrifice is just as ignoble as doing harm to others.

In the Randian system, Rand offers a few talking points:

1. Human beings have free will, and as such, should strive to assert that will in acting for the sake of their self-interests.
2. In acting in our self-interests, we act in a purely rational way, devoid of passions and emotions. By using reason to determine what we should do, we get good outcomes.
3. Economically, a laissez-faire style of capitalism is the most rational way to take care of self-interests. Other styles or theories of economics fall short or are altogether evil.
4. The finest minds in the world will take up this system of self-interests, because they know it is immoral to force innovators and movers and shakers to have to share their wealth and ideas with the grasping hands of the uninspired multitudes.
5.  Religion is not a thing. We should trust in ourselves, rather than any sort of metaphysical system. Self-reliance on reason.

Rand’s Objectivism, so-called because she wanted to emphasize how logical and rational her system is, obviously contains more points than these, but these are central for understanding Rand’s way of thinking and why it became so influential to so many.

Rand: A Philosopher for the Mainstream

Rand, who held no degrees in philosophy, and certainly no graduate degrees, enchanted the minds of an anti-Communist America with novels about hot, talented people proclaiming a disdain for the masses who attempt to steal their greatest achievements from them through the welfare state.

With monumental characters like Atlas Shrugged’s John Galt, these thick, thick bestsellers offered a different way to admirers of American rugged individualism, and gave those who cheered on McCarthyism and the US in the Cold War something to sink their teeth into. Here was a woman who had survived the Soviet regime in its infancy, who became an American citizen and denounced it all. And here were her super sexy novels, that showed how you could too!

To Rand’s credit, she had a way of promoting herself, and had even gathered a cult of personality around herself, including her long term affair Nathaniel Branden (who did change his last name after her). The story around their affair is so wild that it’s hard to believe it didn’t come out of one of her novels. Rand claimed she gave a rational argument to both of their spouses that neither could refute, so both accepted the affair.

It is this sort of polemical approach that makes Rand appealing to those of us who just read a philosophy book, those of us who feel we should be better than everyone else, and those of us who are 15-year-old edgelords. The argument for Objectivism goes thus: I am right about things. If you disagree with me, then you are wrong and therefore not as rational and intelligent as me. QED.

It’s much easier to agree with a system in which you are the victor, the main character in your own novel, and you can just talk down (as Rand oh so famously did) to anyone who raises criticism. And let’s not talk about the criticisms and dismissals of philosophers working in academia…

At the end of the day, Rand’s work is accessible through novels like Atlas Shrugged, and appealing to people who were pre-prepped with a distaste for Russian Communism, a delight for American individualism, and a desire to be their own hero in a novel where everyone is hot and rich.

A photograph of Ayn Rand by Phyllis Cerf, 1957, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Everyone Is Hot and Rich: Rand’s Continued Influence and Academic Dismissal

While long laughed off as a mainstream joke by academic philosophers, Rand’s philosophy has made some very powerful allies. Big names like Elon Musk have cited Rand as an influence, not to mention the Tea Party of the early 2000s, and the other scary tech billionaires that think they own the planet. Rand’s hyperindividualist stories of people who take no crap and take what is theirs tend to reinforce the self-congratulatory arrogance of those who do just that.

Libertarianism in the United States has gone from fringe to nearly mainstream in the past 20 or so years. Rand is credited by many for this influx, her own novels up for essay scholarships in public schools, even to this day. Rand’s name holds a certain caché and her lengthy novels continue to hold sway over pseudo-intellectual teenagers. Who doesn’t want to be hot and rich?

Until recently, it is difficult to describe Rand’s detractors in academic philosophy, as she was seen as something of a comical personality rather than a serious philosopher. A woman who wrote some very moralistic novels with heavy allegorical elements, who developed a very odd cult following and had no academic training in philosophy is a hard sell. Especially when Rand herself denounced pretty much any philosopher she came across.

Academic interest in Rand has grown since the turn of the 21st century, and while the mindset seems to still be for dismissal (I remember my mentor in undergrad making biting commentary about Rand), since there is a mainstream pull for Rand’s philosophical system, it’s important to be able to engage with it in an honest, thoughtful manner, rather than blowing a raspberry at it because you think it’s dumb. That never helped anyone.

Rand and I have a wee bit of a history, as I had the pleasure of reading The Virtue of Selfishness in a class on ethics or political philosophy some 20 years ago. The professor, we were led to believe, did this to troll us, as neither he nor my mentor took her seriously as a thinker. After the class, I relegated that book to my fiction section, as I loathed the idea of hoarding wealth and talent for yourself and leaving others to starve or otherwise suffer.

Before I went to college for philosophy, one of my high school teachers encouraged me to write for one of the Rand essays. She kind of shrugged, as they put up posters for the contest each year, and said, “You don’t have to agree with it or not, but it could give you some money for college.” My disdain for The Fountainhead even then was heady, and I decided against reading the lengthy novel because of the page number, and because I didn’t think they’d like what I’d have to say.

I cannot entirely dismiss Rand, however, as she has fueled many of the policies that removed money for welfare programs such as SNAP (food stamps) or housing assistance in my state. Those I’ve encountered who follow her and libertarianism with any depth are difficult to talk to, and I usually decide not to waste my time. Is that bad? Maybe. Does it save me heartache? Absolutely.

Rand herself died of heart failure at the age of 77. As she aged, she received welfare from government programs, and fought hard to do so. Her legacy is complicated, her mainstream appeal irrefutable, and her life story strange.

It’s difficult to develop any humility when you believe you are a character from one of your books, and this hard-headedness unfortunately defines many who ascribe to Objectivism and the twist of selfishness into a virtue. To me, Rand’s appeal is simultaneously mystifying and relatable, as I’ve encountered her followers in my real life more times than I can count.

Others do matter, and you do benefit when they are helped, and definitely when you are the one doing the helping. Living a solitary Übermensch-style existence, looking out for “number one” can only lead to loneliness and a bit of paranoia. 

You can learn so much from novels, but if we all tried living those fantasies in our reality, we would end up very strange. I can’t turn back the clock and become a governess running around a creepy old house, making sure someone with mental health problems doesn’t burn my love interest’s bed. And I frankly wouldn’t want to.