Summary
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) garnered extensive admiration and
contempt even through death. Her dream was to be a writer, but more than that,
a revolutionary. She realized her dream of becoming a writer, but it is
controversial as to whether or not to call her a philosopher . Rand was born
Alice Rosenbaum on 2 February 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia to a chemist
father and a domineering mother. From a young age, she was a bright child who
learned to read before beginning school and early on saw problems with
Communism. Rand believed living with the state and for the state were troubling
and wrong.
Rand stated that her method of thinking changed at the age of 12 to “thinking
in principles.” It was noted that Ayn Rand could break down complex ideas into
easily comprehensible parts. She discovered Victor Hugo’s works at this time
and became fascinated with his sense of life. During her last two years of high
school, Rand took classes about the American government and the Declaration of
Independence. Attending the University of Petrograd, Rand obtained a degree in
history and was introduced to the philosophy of Nietzsche. She admired his
reverence of the heroic man, individualism, and contempt of altruism, but she
was bothered with his defense of psychological determinism, ambiguous use of
the issue of power, and position of anti-reason.
After
her studies in university, the Rosenbaum family immigrated to America in 1926.
In America, Rand changed her name from Alice to Ayn (rhyming with “mine”) after
a Finnish writer whom she had not read. (She liked the name.) Interestingly
enough, Rand set off to Hollywood for a career in screenwriting in mid 1926. In
1929, she married Frank O’Connor who shared the same values. When they had only
$700 to their names, Rand decided to work on the presidential campaign of Wendell
Wilkie, whom she saw as a candidate who embraced her philosophy. During these
political activities, Rand met many conservatives, including Isabel “Pat”
Paterson, with whom she came to form her first and last important friendship
with a contemporary. Paterson and Rand shared a teacher/student relationship
despite their many differences such as opposing views on religion; Paterson
used an element of religion in her writings while Rand saw religion as the
first enemy to the ability to think. At this time, Rand’s individualistic
thought became apparent in her personality traits of self-responsibility,
contempt at humor and reliance on others, and ego.
In 1950, a young man named Nathan Blumenthal wrote a letter
to Ayn Rand with questions about her novel, The Fountainhead. He was to
be responsible for the dispersion of her philosophy. Blumenthal influenced her
writing and introduced Rand to Barbara Weidman, who will become her closest
confidante. Blumenthal, Weidman, and other young intellectuals would become
known as “The Collective,” chosen for their antithetical nature to Rand’s
philosophy and whom Ayn Rand herself affectionately called “the children” or “
the class of ’43.” The group would popularize Rand’s Objectivist philosophy.
Like with most relationships between men and women, attraction occurs, so it
was not unlikely for Rand and Blumenthal (who was known as Branden), to conduct
an affair with each other. When they both confronted their spouses for consent
to the affair, Rand argued that given her own nature and that of Branden, logically
they had to love each other; rationality and logic made it acceptable
for Frank and Barbara to accept the relationship and not be shocked. Blumenthal
was the epitome of her heroic characters in looks, epistemology, and ethics.
The relationship however, did not last; when Blumenthal refused to continue
their sexual relationship, Rand cut all ties with him. Rand gave the position
of her intellectual heir to Leonard Peikoff, further driving the separation
between Blumenthal and herself.
Rand’s final public talk was held in 1981 at the convention
of the National Committee for Monetary Reform in New Orleans. The following
year in March, Rand died after never recovering from a respiratory illness she
contracted in New Orleans during her last public talk.
Ayn Rand wrote literary works that were immersed with her
philosophy. Some of her earlier works had literary themes that foreshadowed her
philosophy, such as the intelligent woman worshipping the man who brings out
the best in her, or the individual who does not look back. Her later works,
including The Fountainhead (1943), We The Living (1936), Atlas
Shrugged (1957), The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), For the New
Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1961), and countless others,
would bring forth her Objectivist philosophy. Atlas Shrugged (1957) was
seen by Rand’s followers and Rand herself as her true masterpiece. It was
dubbed the Objectivist “bible.” The book was philosophy and literature, the
culmination of Rand’s philosophical theory. The heroes are men of self-interest
while the villains are enemies of individualism and free enterprise. The world
destroys itself of its socialist society in order to rebuild itself. In her
philosophy, Rand sees man as a heroic being whose own happiness is the moral
purpose of his life. Productive achievements are man’s noblest activities and
reason is his only absolute. She credited Aristotle for his logic and
development of metaphysics of objective reality. Yet, she condemned Kant for
the return of mysticism and physical force and indicts Descartes for denying
the existence of an objective reality.
She saw the return of the Witch Doctor and Attila as the
moral bankruptcy of culture. The Witch Doctor, relying on faith, and Attila,
relying on physical force, oppressed people’s ability to reason. An
intellectual’s job, according to Rand, was to provide a rational morality for
the businessmen. She repudiated collectivism, finding Russian communism disturbing
and troubling for the individual, while she praised and looked to a radical
idea of capitalism, the merging of the intellectual and the businessman as “a
free man and a free market are corollaries.” She favored selfishness to
altruism, the former being a virtue because it complies with the primary goal
of an organism to maintain its life, its self-interest. Rand said a new
intellectual needs to rise, one who is guided by reason alone, values “self”
above all else, and refuses to give in to faith or to force.
In the literary academic world, Ayn Rand was seen as a
philosopher but in academic philosophers rejected her Objectivist philosophy.
In the end, there is no denying that she created great stir in the public world,
but also among intellectuals and despite the reluctance of many to call her a
philosopher.
Personal Response
I first came across Ayn Rand when the principal of my high school said her favorite book, and the one she lives by, was The Fountainhead. Curious, I sought out the book and quickly became immersed in the life and works of Ayn Rand. Reading the whole book at least two times, I found it troubling that this was the book by which she lived her life . More troubling was trying to understand whether my principal saw the main character as the protagonist or antagonist because her way of thinking lent towards the altruistic thought Rand denied and put down. Rand makes it known that being selfless is a vice, something that will cause great harm to an individual. But if we were to only care for our own feelings, own wants, and own needs, and ourselves, how could we live in a social society? I could see where people are taken aback with Rand’s philosophy; they could not really exist in a world where people are social creatures and could not truly be individualistic. I do not entirely agree with her ethics about selfishness as a virtue because it makes humans devoid of connection and emotion. My worry is if every person were acting out of own personal self-interest, how would the world function, if at all? Things might become stagnant as people will not care about others and the world might fall apart as desires/wants grow tremendously. It is a very radical theory and the characters she created are so unbelievable so her philosophy seems unreasonable to people.
Whether she was a philosopher or not, Ayn Rand was a woman intellectual,
strong, and unafraid to voice her thoughts to the public. However, her views on
women were often questioned, as they did not really portray women as equal with
men. For Rand, the ideal woman finds pleasure in surrendering to the heroic man
she worshipped. I do not think that is a strong image of a woman; it’s
submissive. If Rand places such emphasis on self-interest and the individual, why
differentiate between male and female? Why could not a woman be heroic like the
heroic man? I see how her views on women were questioned as they are not
consistent with her other set of views. The woman’s surrender is submissive and
it’s almost like she is on a lower level than the man. But is that Rand’s true
thought? I am not sure because she does not have any extensive work on the role
and status of women in society.
What is the most fascinating is the fact that despite Ayn
Rand not really seen as a philosopher, there were many people who followed and
believed in her Objectivist philosophy. She garnered extensive discussion,
debate, and controversy with her thought that even if her philosophy was
rejected, it was as influential as other philosophers. I had not seen her as a
philosopher when I first read her work, but more of a literary writer. Yet, her
philosophy was deeply embedded in her characters, plot, and the whole story.
How can one area of academia see her as a philosopher while another denies that
title? That bodes the question how are we defining philosophy? What, if there
is one, a collective agreement to defining philosophers as Aristotle and
Descartes were one?
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