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Read Now: Prize-Winning Essays on Ayn Rand Novels

ayn rand essay scholarship

ARI has held worldwide essay contests for students on Ayn Rand’s fiction for thirty years. This year we will award over 750 prizes totaling more than $130,000. Last year’s contestants read and responded to essay prompts on Ayn Rand’s Anthem , The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged . You can read all three winning essays on our essay contest page . Here are excerpts from each of the three grand-prize-winning essays:

Atlas Shrugged essay contest

(responding to the prompt: Francisco d’Anconia says that the “words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.” What does he mean? What are today’s prevalent moral attitudes toward money? Do you agree with Francisco’s view? Explain why or why not. )

. . . When I am told that I am lucky for achieving something, I narrow my eyes and want to ask exactly what it is that I am lucky for? I am a first-generation American, first-generation college student, who received a full ride to a top-tier university. My scholarship was given to well-rounded first-generation college students, who not only excelled academically and demonstrated great leadership potential, but overcame dire socioeconomic hardship. To tell a student like myself that the sum of my achievements were based on luck is to scoff at every ounce of energy I have ever spent scrapping for what I have, and every drop of blood, sweat and tears I have ever shed working for my future—studying when my friends were out having fun, working extra hours to help support my family, etc. What am I lucky for? Am I lucky to have experienced hardship? “Luck” is a term people use in self-defense for their own lack of achievement. To say that one has luck is to imply that others do not, which is a way for those who do not achieve to undermine the achievements of those who do. What others call “luck” is what I call grit, what I call will-power, sacrifice, perseverance, and my own ability. It is what I call “earned.” . . . Christina Jeong, El Paso, TX – University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

*          *          *

The Fountainhead essay contest

(responding to the prompt: In his courtroom speech, Howard Roark explains the nature, motivation and importance of those who create values (such as new artworks, technological inventions and innovations, and advances in theoretical knowledge). Why does he think that value-creation and what it requires of the creators is crucially important from a moral perspective? In your answer, consider what a character from another Ayn Rand novel, Atlas Shrugged, has to say about the process of value-creation, in the speech “ The Nature of an Artist .” )

. . . The protagonist of the novel, Howard Roark, is a fictional representation of these convictions — he is a philosophical idea, turned into a physical character, the manifestation of the independent, purposeful individual, whose only goal in life is his happiness. He is the creator, whose concern is conquering nature. He is the one who realises that he is the maker of his own destiny, the one who does not require others to live for his sake, and does not live for the sake of others. He is every individual who has been shamed for his achievement and later had it taken away from him; every mind, which has ever been enslaved to the degrading idea of serving “the common good” at the expense of sacrificing his own truth. He is the breaker of chains. . . . Adelina Fendrina, Sliven, Bulgaria—High School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics “Dobri Chintulov,” Sliven, Bulgari

Anthem essay contest

(responding to the prompt: Equality knows that his invention will benefit mankind greatly. However, this was not his primary motivation in conducting his experiments, and it is not the primary source of the joy and the pride he experiences in his work. What is his primary motivation? Do you think that Equality is right to be motivated in this way? Explain the reasons for your answer. What do you think the world would be like if everyone were motivated in the same way? )

Unlike during the Unmentionable Times, when men created “towers [that] rose to the sky,” it is an affliction to be born with powerful intellectual capacity and ambition in Ayn Rand’s apocalyptic, nameless society in Anthem. Collectivism is ostensibly the moral guidepost for humanity, and any perceived threat to the inflexible, authoritarian regime is met with severe

punishment. The attack on mankind’s free will and reason is most evident in the cold marble engraving in the Palace of the World Council: “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever” (6). Societal norms force homogeneity and sacrifice among all people. Laws and rules are crafted to prevent advancement and preserve relentless uniformity under the guise of moral righteousness. Here we find Equality 7-2521 on the path to self-discovery, struggling to understand the internal conflict he faces — his desire to learn and create against government indoctrination to force stagnation and conformity. . . . Elisabeth Schlossel, New York, NY – The Spence School, New York, NY

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Ayn Rand Essay Scholarships: Atlas Shrugged novel Essay Contest

Website: AYN RAND Essay Contest

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Eligibility.

Open to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students worldwide

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Please visit the website to apply: https://aynrand.org/students/essay-contests/atlas-shrugged/

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If you do not find the answers to your questions in our  FAQ , you may submit a question to us via email:  [email protected]

Award Details

Number of Awards: 84

Award Amount: $25 - $10,000

  • November: National Deadline

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College Scholarship: Ayn Rand “The Fountainhead” Essay Contest

ayn rand essay scholarship

College costs are on the rise, and many families find it challenging to keep up with the increasing expenses. With 85% of college students on financial aid and 70% graduating with significant student debt, it’s no surprise that college funding is a growing concern for many families. The good news is that scholarships can significantly help to fund a college education, and there are more options out there than most families are aware of. In this series, we outline some great scholarship opportunities for college bound teens. To learn more about the Ayn Rand “The Fountainhead” Essay Contest, and how you can win up to $10,000 towards your college education, keep reading.

About the Ayn Rand “The Fountainhead” Essay Contest

Ayn Rand’s first novel, “The Fountainhead” is widely recognized for its philosophical themes reflecting on the economics of selfishness, and Ayn Rand’s own objectivism. While the characters and themes may at first seem one-dimensional, the novel has become known for its unusual philosophy that places value in both capitalism and individualism.

Over the years, Ayn Rand has amassed an extensive following, one that is now nurtured by the Ayn Rand Institute . For over 30 years, the Ayn Rand Institute has been host to worldwide essay contests for students based on the fiction of Ayn Rand. In 2019, they will award over 230 prizes, totaling more than $70,000.

Students who wish to participate in “The Fountainhead” essay contest must submit an essay that addresses one of three prompts based on “The Fountainhead”. The prompts for 2019 are:

  • In his climactic courtroom speech, Howard Roark states: “The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.” Explain how this quote relates to the theme as dramatized through the characters of Howard Roark, Peter Keating and Ellsworth Toohey.
  • When Toohey first meets his niece Catherine, he is described as seeing a particular look on her face. What is the significance of his reaction to her look? How does his treatment of Catherine through the rest of the novel encapsulate his overall strategy for dealing with the world? For your essay, consider also what Ayn Rand says in the essay “ Through Your Most Grievous Fault .”
  • Choose the scene in The Fountainhead that is most meaningful to you. Analyze that scene in terms of the wider themes in the book. In your essay, consider also what Ayn Rand has to say about what art, including literature, can do for us, in this excerpt from “ The Goal of My Writing .”

Essays are judged on a student’s skillful use of evidence to justify his or her viewpoint, and not on whether or not the student’s perspective agrees with the judges’ viewpoints. Judges look for writing that is “clear, articulate and logically organized [and] winning essays must demonstrate an outstanding grasp of the philosophic meaning of ‘The Fountainhead’.”

The first place winner receives $10,000. Three second place winners will receive $2,500 each, while five third place winners will receive $500 each. A pool of 50 finalists will each receive $50.

“The Fountainhead” Essay Contest Requirements

Entries are open to students around the world, but all essays submitted must be written in English. Entrants must be in 11th or 12th grade for any part of the school year in which the contest is held.

Essays should be between 800 and 1600 words, and errors in spelling or grammar will result in point deductions during the scoring process. Essays can be submitted through the mail or online.

All submissions must be submitted online or postmarked by April 25, 2019, no later than 11:59 p.m., Pacific Standard Time. Winners will be notified in July 2019. Be sure to read the complete Contest Details for a list of all rules and requirements.

Tips on Submitting an Essay for Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” Essay Contest

Read and Follow All Directions. We know that juggling the various deadlines and rules of multiple scholarship contests at once can require a lot of organization, but missing a deadline or overlooking a rule will usually result in quick disqualification. Consider for a minute that most scholarship programs have hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Those who fail to abide by the official rules provide an easy and reasonable excuse for thinning them out of the applicant pool. Ensure that you don’t go down so easily by carefully adhering to all requirements.

Proofread Your Work. In any scholarship contest, the way that you present yourself on paper is especially important, but in an essay contest it becomes essential. In “The Fountainhead” contest, any grammatical or spelling errors are cause for the judges to deduct points from your final score. With big prizes on the line and many entrants vying for them, proofread your work closely so that you don’t lose any points to careless typos.  

Use the Resources Provided. In many essay contests or scholarship programs, there is very little guidance provided about the direction to take your work. While you’ll ultimately have to come up with your own unique point-of-view to be successful in this contest, there are many resources provided by the Ayn Rand Institute, and you’d be silly not to take advantage of them. Start with the example essays from past winners to see the level of work expected. Then, move on to the Resources tab to find a list of readings and lectures recommended to improve your essay content. Carefully review the available resources before you begin your essay.

Create a Scholarship Team. While it goes without saying that any work you submit needs to be yours and yours alone, there are no rules to stop you from using teachers, mentors, and friends as a sounding board for your ideas. Discuss your essay ahead of time and take feedback seriously, using it to shape the direction of your work. Then, once you’ve written your essay, gather more feedback and enlist some outside help for editing and proofreading your work. You never know when another set of eyes will find a typo or syntax error that blended in before.

Curious about your chances of acceptance to your dream school? Our free chancing engine takes into account your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and other data to predict your odds of acceptance at over 500 colleges across the U.S. We’ll also let you know how you stack up against other applicants and how you can improve your profile. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to get started!

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The Question of Scholarships

ayn rand essay scholarship

This essay was originally published in the June 1966 issue of The Objectivist and later anthologized in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1989).

Many students of Objectivism are troubled by a certain kind of moral dilemma confronting them in today’s society. [I am] frequently asked the questions: “Is it morally proper to accept scholarships, private or public?” and: “Is it morally proper for an advocate of capitalism to accept a government research grant or a government job?”

I shall hasten to answer: “ Yes ” — then proceed to explain and qualify it. There are many confusions on these issues, created by the influence and implications of the altruist morality.

1. There is nothing wrong in accepting private scholarships. The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.

It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others — a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal. A man of self-esteem can neither offer help nor accept it on such terms.

As a consequence, when people need help, the best of them (those who need it through no fault of their own) often prefer to starve rather than accept assistance — while the worst of them (the professional parasites) run riot and cash in on it to the full. (For instance, the student “activists’’ who, not satisfied with free education, demand ownership of the university as well.)

To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism’s terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste — then take a fresh look at human relationships. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver’s virtues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses, or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such.

Scholarships are one of the clearest categories of this proper kind of help. They are offered to assist ability , to reward intelligence, to encourage the pursuit of knowledge, to further achievement — not to support incompetence.

If a brilliant child’s parents cannot send him through college (or if he has no parents), it is not a moral default on their part or his. It is not the fault of “society,” of course, and he cannot demand the right to be educated at someone else’s expense; he must be prepared to work his way through school, if necessary. But this is the proper area for voluntary assistance. If some private person or organization offers to help him, in recognition of his ability, and thus to save him years of struggle — he has the moral right to accept.

The value of scholarships is that they offer an ambitious youth a gift of time when he needs it most: at the beginning.

(The fact that in today’s moral atmosphere, those who give or distribute scholarships are often guilty of injustices and of altruistic motives, does not alter the principle involved. It represents their failure to live up to the principle; their integrity is not the recipient’s responsibility and does not affect his right to accept the scholarship in good faith.)

2. A different principle and different considerations are involved in the case of public (i.e., governmental) scholarships. The right to accept them rests on the right of the victims to the property (or some part of it) which was taken from them by force.

The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism . Those who advocate public scholarships have no right to them; those who oppose them have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.

Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others — the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it .

It does not matter, in this context, whether a given individual has or has not paid an amount of taxes equal to the amount of the scholarship he accepts. First, the sum of his individual losses cannot be computed; this is part of the welfare-state philosophy, which treats everyone’s income as public property. Second, if he has reached college age, he has undoubtedly paid — in hidden taxes — much more than the amount of the scholarship. Or, if his parents cannot afford to pay for his education, consider what taxes they have paid, directly or indirectly, during the twenty years of his life — and you will see that a scholarship is too pitifully small even to be called a restitution.

Third — and most important — the young people of today are not responsible for the immoral state of the world into which they were born. Those who accept the welfare-statist ideology assume their share of the guilt when they do so. But the anti-collectivists are innocent victims who face an impossible situation: it is welfare statism that has almost destroyed the possibility of working one’s way through college. It was difficult but possible some decades ago; today, it has become a process of close-to-inhuman torture. There are virtually no part-time jobs that pay enough to support oneself while going to school; the alternative is to hold a full-time job and to attend classes at night — which takes eight years of unrelenting twelve-to-sixteen-hour days, for a four-year college course. If those responsible for such conditions offer the victim a scholarship, his right to take it is incontestable — and it is too pitifully small an amount even to register on the scales of justice, when one considers all the other, the nonmaterial, nonamendable injuries he has suffered.

The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of accepting social security, unemployment insurance, or other payments of that kind. It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling coworkers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money — and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.

3. The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of government research grants.

The growth of the welfare state is approaching the stage where virtually the only money available for scientific research will be government money. (The disastrous effects of this situation and the disgraceful state of government-sponsored science are apparent already, but that is a different subject. We are concerned here only with the moral dilemma of scientists.) Taxation is destroying private resources, while government money is flooding and taking over the field of research.

In these conditions, a scientist is morally justified in accepting government grants — so long as he opposes all forms of welfare statism . As in the case of scholarship recipients, a scientist does not have to add self-martyrdom to the injustices he suffers. And he does not have to surrender science to the Dr. Floyd Ferrises [this refers to a villain in Atlas Shrugged who is a government scientist].

Government research grants, for the most part, have no strings attached, i.e., no controls over the scientist’s intellectual and professional freedom (at least, not yet). When and if the government attempts to control the scientific and/or political views of the recipients of grants, that will be the time for men of integrity to quit. At present, they are still free to work — but, more than any other professional group, they should be on guard against the gradual, insidious growth of pressures to conform and of tacit control-by-intimidation, which are implicit in such conditions.

4. The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of taking government jobs.

The growth of government institutions has destroyed an incalculable number of private jobs and opportunities for private employment. This is more apparent in some professions (as, for instance, teaching) than in others, but the octopus of the “public sector” is choking and draining the “private sector” in virtually every line of work. Since men have to work for a living, the opponents of the welfare state do not have to condemn themselves to the self-martyrdom of a self-restricted labor market — particularly when so many private employers are in the vanguard of the advocates and profiteers of welfare statism.

There is, of course, a limitation on the moral right to take a government job: one must not accept any job that demands ideological services, i.e., any job that requires the use of one’s mind to compose propaganda material in support of welfare statism — or any job in a regulatory administrative agency enforcing improper, non-objective laws. The principle here is as follows: it is proper to take the kind of work which is not wrong per se, except that the government should not be doing it, such as medical services; it is improper to take the kind of work that nobody should be doing, such as is done by the F.T.C., the F.C.C., etc.

But the same limitation applies to a man’s choice of private employment: a man is not responsible for the moral or political views of his employers, but he cannot accept a job in an undertaking which he considers immoral, or in which his work consists specifically of violating his own convictions, i.e., of propagating ideas he regards as false or evil.

5. The moral principle involved in all the above issues consists, in essence, of defining as clearly as possible the nature and limits of one’s own responsibility, i.e., the nature of what is or is not in one’s power.

The issue is primarily ideological , not financial. Minimizing the financial injury inflicted on you by the welfare-state laws, does not constitute support of welfare statism (since the purpose of such laws is to injure you) and is not morally reprehensible. Initiating, advocating, or expanding such laws is.

In a free society, it is immoral to denounce or oppose that from which one derives benefits — since one’s associations are voluntary. In a controlled or mixed economy, opposition becomes obligatory — since one is acting under force, and the offer of benefits is intended as a bribe.

So long as financial considerations do not alter or affect your convictions, so long as you fight against welfare statism (and only so long as you fight it) and are prepared to give up any of its momentary benefits in exchange for repeal and freedom — so long as you do not sell your soul (or your vote) — you are morally in the clear. The essence of the issue lies in your own mind and attitude.

It is a hard problem, and there are many situations so ambiguous and so complex that no one can determine what is the right course of action. That is one of the evils of welfare statism: its fundamental irrationality and immorality force men into contradictions where no course of action is right.

The ultimate danger in all these issues is psychological: the danger of letting yourself be bribed, the danger of a gradual, imperceptible, subconscious deterioration leading to compromise, evasion, resignation, submission. In today’s circumstances, a man is morally in the clear only so long as he remains intellectually incorruptible. Ultimately, these problems are a test — a hard test — of your own integrity. You are its only guardian. Act accordingly.

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Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel “Atlas Shrugged” covers a wide range of philosophical topics, from objectivism to capitalism and individualism.

Students must prepare an essay on one of the three topics based on “Atlas Shrugged” provided and all essays must be between 800-1600 words in length:

Applicants are required to submit their essays online via the official website. The prize money to be won ranges from the $50 semi-finalist prize to the $10,000 first-place prize.

Scholarship Summary

Eligibility requirements.

  • Eligible Grade: High School Senior – Graduate
  • Maximum Age: Any
  • Required GPA : Any
  • Geographic Eligibility: Any
  • Gender: Any
  • Race/Ethnicity: Any

Key Information of Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Study details, area of study, country of study, specific schools, application requirements.

Here’s what you need to submit besides your application.

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Timeline

Application Opening Date

The essay contest opens up in early May.

Submission Deadline

The final deadline for applications for the current year is November 6.

Essay Grading

Essay's undergo several stages of grading – December is the second stage.

Winners Announced

After the final grading in January, winners will be announced in February after the webinar.

How to ace the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Brush up on your knowledge

To write the best essay effortlessly, make sure to read the “Atlas shrugged Novel” as the topics given for the essay are inspired by the novel. The novel holds the key to an effective and powerful essay.

Remember to be creative

Make sure your essay has a simple story with the judges and readers can relate to and is creatively written. Make sure it is related to the point that you want to convey.

Focus on the philosophical meaning

One of the important points to ace this essay is to understand and convey the philosophical meaning of “Atlas Shrugged” clearly and logically.

Be grammatically correct

Your essay needs to be grammatically correct and make sure there are no flow issues. The essay must not be inconsistent and make sure there aren’t any spelling mistakes too.

How the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest is Judged

Essays will be graded based on whether the student can argue for and justify his or her point of view, not whether the Institute agrees with the student's point of view. The essay writing that is clear, articulate, and logically organized will be desired by the judges. Winning essays must clearly show an exceptional understanding of “Atlas Shrugged”'s philosophical meaning.

Why We Love the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Wide range of prizes

The essay contest has so many cash prize winners for the participants ranging from $25 to $10,000 covering 84 scholarship winners.

Worldwide reach

The essay contest sees participants from all over the world entering the contest. It is an online competition, hence, it reaches a wide number of people across the globe.

No application fee

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Ayn Rand Institute Novel Essay Contest (Fountainhead)

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Are you a junior or senior in high school with a passion for literature and politics? You might consider applying for the Ayn Rand Institute Novel Essay Contest (Fountainhead)! Each year, the contest asks its applicants to write an 800 – 1,600 word essay in which they analyze and make an argument about an aspect or plot point of The Fountainhead . Eighty-four students are awarded for their efforts, earning between $25 and $5,000 each. If you’ve read The Fountainhead , can make a convincing argument, and want to make some cash, we encourage you to apply!

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Anthem Essay Contest

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Here you will be able to start a new application for the contest, view any of your existing saved or submitted entries, and even request a free copy of Anthem if you don’t already have access to the book. Questions? Simply write to us at [email protected] . We’re here to help!

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Ayn Rand once said that chapters XI and XII of  Anthem  contain the real anthem of the story. Consider several different definitions of the word “anthem” and then explain why you think Ayn Rand called the book “Anthem.” In what sense do you think chapters XI and XII (or the book as a whole) is an anthem? How does the book’s title relate to the themes and message of the story? Explain your answer.

For the following statement from  Anthem , explain its role in the story, its relation to the themes and message of the story, and its relevance to your own life: “Indeed you are happy,” they answered. “How else can men be when they live for their brothers?”

Equality 7-2521 has committed some of the worst crimes there are in his society. If those crimes are discovered, he faces the risk of terrible punishment. Yet in the face of this danger, and despite how much Equality has suffered at the hands of his society, he resolves to bring his invention (and admit his crimes) to the World Council of Scholars. What motivates him to come forward? What does he hope to achieve? If you were Equality’s friend (like International 4-8818) or the person who loves him (like Liberty 5-3000), what would you want him to do, and why? What do you think would be right for him to do, and why?

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Why Can’t Professional Philosophers Get Rand Right?

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Ayn Rand’s critics fail to interpret her objectively.

“Philosophy departments almost without exception boycott Ayn Rand disciples,” observed former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers in 2015. 1 In a 2009 informal poll of the profession on the blog of philosopher Brian Leiter, 75 percent of respondents voted Rand as the person philosophers “most wish the media would stop referring to as a ‘philosopher.’” 2 I once found this baffling. While working towards my Ph.D. in philosophy, I read most figures from the traditional canon. To me, it was clear that Rand made significant, original contributions to philosophy, and she deserves a place in the canon. At the very least, she deserves a fair hearing. But a boycott?

While there’s no “Why do you hate Rand?” survey of professional philosophers, we can make an educated guess as to how they would answer the question, based on anecdotes and the few published criticisms that exist: most find her political and moral views implausible, even repugnant. I think this explains a lot of the hatred, but it isn’t the only factor. To get a complete understanding of the hostility to Rand, we need to also consider the reason they would give for thinking she’s not a philosopher .

Philosophy is supposed to seek the truth no matter what. If a writer has interesting arguments for shocking philosophical conclusions, that’s even more reason to engage with her as a philosopher. The problem with Rand, they will tell you, is that her arguments are bad , if she even has arguments at all .

How do professional philosophers understand Rand’s arguments, and how good are their criticisms? When I read their analyses, my usual reaction is to wonder why their reconstructions of Rand’s arguments have little connection to her written texts. Though they often deny it, Rand’s critics show in professional journals and textbooks clear signs of contempt for their subject by failing to engage with her texts. They would downgrade a student paper which fails to engage key philosophical texts. Why do they make an exception for their own work?

My focus in this article is to show the main reason Rand’s critics consistently fail to interpret her accurately. It is not necessarily that they are intellectually dishonest (though this can be a contributing factor). It is primarily that their approach is parochial . That is, because they take for granted a philosophical framework that Rand is calling into question, they do not think of her as a real philosopher and therefore think she isn’t worth taking seriously. Their method is, in essence, a form of question-begging. In standard question-begging, an argument on one side of a dispute assumes a premise that is, in fact, the very thing in question. What I call philosophical parochialism begs questions concerning philosophy’s basic assumptions, standards, and methods.

Parochialism from Rand’s Hostile Critics

Nowhere is this parochialism more obvious than in philosophers’ commentary on Rand’s metaphysics. One semi-prominent philosopher who has written a lengthy criticism of Objectivism is Massimo Pigliucci, professor at City University of New York. His criticism begins with an especially crude parochialism. He quotes a passage from Atlas Shrugged in which Rand explains what she means by “axiom.” (In his essay, Pigliucci omits the sentence I’ve bracketed. I’ll return to that momentarily):

[An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not.] An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. 3

Pigliucci replies:

Wrong. An axiom is an assumption from which the discussion begins. It can (and should) be examined and/or challenged if the deductive consequences of the axiom(s) entail logical contradictions or any other rationally unacceptable conclusions. This is the way it works in math, logic, and philosophy. 4

Pigliucci must not own a dictionary, because Rand’s account is in line with ordinary English meanings of the term.

In Rand’s view, an axiom is a basic, self-evident principle on which all further knowledge depends. As a principle it primarily functions as a norm we should reason with, though it can be a premise we reason from. Her conception of an axiom has an impressive philosophical pedigree, going back to Aristotle. For Aristotle, an axiom is a basic starting point for knowledge. A feature of an axiom like the principle of non-contradiction is that it must be assumed to be denied ( Met. IV.3 (1004b20-1005a35)). 5 Rand agrees, and in the text from which Pigliucci quotes, Rand refers to Aristotle on this point.

In this case, the critic is being crudely parochial about the meaning of a key term. Maybe Rand’s account of an axiom is incorrect. But to show that, you’d have to respond to her reasons. In Rand’s view, to do philosophy well, you must state your primaries. A feature of a genuine philosophical primary is that it is assumed by all knowledge and therefore cannot be denied without being simultaneously affirmed. Following Aristotle and acceptable English usage, she calls such primaries “axioms.” 7 Thus, her understanding of axioms in the omitted sentence and the implication drawn out in the quoted sentence. Merely asserting a contrary view just begs the question against her. Observe that the omitted sentence directly addresses Pigliucci’s concern and ask yourself whether a philosophy professor with three PhDs is likely to have missed that out of mere error.

Parochialism about Rand’s view of axioms has a long history. The first member of the profession to make public criticisms of Rand’s philosophy was Sidney Hook, then head of the philosophy department at New York University, in a 1961 review of her book For the New Intellectual ( FTNI ):

The extraordinary virtues Miss Rand finds in the law that A is A suggests that she is unaware that logical principles by themselves can test only consistency. They cannot establish truth. Inconsistency is a sign of falsity, but, as the existence of consistent liars and paranoiacs indicates, non-consistency is never a sufficient condition of truth. Swearing fidelity to Aristotle, Miss Rand claims to deduce not only matters of fact from logic but, with as little warrant, ethical rules and economic truths as well. 8

Hook takes issue with (what he thinks is) Rand’s use of the Law of Identity (“A is A”). In Hook’s interpretation, “A is A” is a single premise from which Rand believes she can deduce ethical egoism, along with her other controversial views. Hook’s interpretation is puzzling, given that Rand’s argument for egoism in FTNI (133–38) does not take any logical principle as a premise.

Instead, Rand advocates the Law of Identity primarily as a principle you should reason with , not from . 9 For Rand, “A is A” is the most fundamental principle that should guide your reasoning. 10 For example, when you affirm to yourself that your friend is lying to you, despite your strong wish that the matter were a simple misunderstanding, you are reminding yourself that his action is what it is, that A is A, your feeling of betrayal notwithstanding.

Surely Hook and Pigliucci know the difference between assuming something as a premise and using it as a rule, know there’s an Aristotelian tradition in metaphysics, and know Rand aligns herself with Aristotle on just this issue (she explicitly says so in the very texts under consideration).

When a critic is so obtuse that he’s not considering well-known, textually grounded interpretations which would be immune to his criticism, the criticism is merely a pretense. He’s fishing around for something to object to and counting on his audience to share a similar parochialism and hostility to Rand to prevent them from seeing how weak his objections are. I could as easily object to John Rawls’s theory of “justice” as “fairness,” because in the philosophy I advocate “justice” is “getting what one deserves.” That’s not a great objection unless I also explain what’s flawed about Rawls’s conception.

Textbook Parochialism

It’s not just overtly hostile critics who lodge parochial criticism of Rand. Her most controversial and most discussed view is her ethical egoism, not her metaphysics. It’s a view often covered in undergraduate textbooks, where overt hostility would undermine an educator’s pedagogical goals.

In their criticism, Rachels and Rachels cite a passage from the end of Rand’s key text, “The Objectivist Ethics” (TOE), and a few lines from her essay, “Collectivized Ethics,” (an essay which presupposes TOE). 14 Their attempt at scholarship ineptly ignores the first sixty or so paragraphs of TOE, which contain Rand’s argument for egoism. Instead, they attribute to her the following line of reasoning:

  • A person has only one life to live. If we value the individual—that is, if the individual has moral worth—then we must agree that this life is of supreme importance. After all, it is all one has, and all one is.
  • The ethics of altruism regards the life of the individual as something one must be ready to sacrifice for the good of others. Therefore, the ethics of altruism does not take seriously the value of the human individual.
  • Ethical Egoism, which allows each person to view his or her own life as being of ultimate value, does take the human individual seriously—it is, in fact, the only philosophy that does so.
  • Thus, Ethical Egoism is the philosophy that we ought to accept.

Each of these points is formulated in such a philosophically imprecise way that it’s clear Rand would not endorse them. For instance, what does it mean to hold something as “of supreme importance?” “Supreme importance to whom ?” Rand would ask. In fact, she spends several paragraphs in TOE arguing that nothing is important independent of the agent to whom it is important and for what it is important. (That argument is an essential component of her argument for egoism.)

But the crucial issue is that, whether or not Rand would endorse some version of these points, the form of argument Rachels and Rachels attribute to Rand is not the form of her argument for egoism. Rachels and Rachels counter (1)–(4) by claiming that the choice between egoism and altruism “is hardly a fair picture of the choices.” Their reply works only if you interpret Rand as making an “argument by elimination.” Arguments by elimination are deductive arguments that assume an exhaustive set of alternatives, refute all but one, and conclude that the remaining alternative is true. In Rachels and Rachels’s reconstruction, (1) sets a standard to which morality must aspire: it must hold the life of the individual as “of supreme importance.” Both (2) and (3), though presented as single point, contain arguments within them. (2) argues that altruism fails to meet the standard, while (3) argues that egoism succeeds. But (3) also makes the further, unsupported claim that only egoism does. This additional conclusion, and the conclusion in (4), would follow only if altruism and egoism were the only options. Hence, Rachels and Rachels’s dismissive reply.

What’s going on here? To many twentieth-century philosophers, the gold standard for assessing philosophical merit was a concise deduction with informally defended premises. Especially in ethics, these informal defenses attempt to get the reader to accept that a premise is “intuitive” (or the implication of a deeper, intuitively true assumption). So, it’s understandable that philosophers educated in this tradition would attempt to interpret someone outside of it as making gold-standard arguments; it’s what they’re comfortable with and trained to look for. Notice that Rachels and Rachels’s first premise states a fact and then attempts to draw from it a common-sense or intuitively plausible implication: the individual is “of supreme importance.” But Rand does not argue like this at any point in her case for egoism.

Rand summarizes her argument for egoism in paragraph 21 of the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness : “The reasons why man needs a moral code will tell you that the purpose of morality is to define man’s proper values and interests, that concern with his own interests is the essence of a moral existence, and that man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions.” In fact, Rand says in the following paragraphs, the issue of egoism vs. altruism is something of an afterthought: “the choice of the beneficiary of moral values is . . . [not] a moral primary: it has to be derived from and validated by the fundamental premises of a moral system” [23]. 15 Obviously, her argument for egoism is unconvincing without a compelling argument for the proposed purpose of morality, an argument that the purpose rules out others as moral beneficiaries of one’s action, and that only an egoistic moral code fulfills the purpose of morality. This is why Rand spends more than sixty paragraphs on exactly those issues, the bulk of which is spent on argumentation aimed at establishing the purpose of morality.

Since egoism is a mere corollary of the purpose of morality, the only way to understand Rand’s argument for egoism is in the context of her argument that the purpose of a moral code is to guide a rational being’s pursuit of his life. The argument is in structure an explanatory argument . She announces this in paragraph 6 of TOE by stating that the first question of ethics is, “ Why does man need a code of values?” 16 (Rand argues for the fundamentality of the question in the following paragraphs).

Introductory philosophy courses commonly include instruction on “critical thinking,” the basics of textual interpretation and argumentation. One thing we teach our students about reading argumentative texts is to look for “indicator words” or “signposts” which reveal where and how an author is arguing. When Rand tells us that the primary question of ethics is a “why” question, that’s a giant neon sign indicating that explanatory argumentation will follow. And a series of explanatory arguments is just what we find in the subsequent paragraphs.

Explanatory arguments begin with a putative fact and argue that it is the effect of a postulated cause. Most of us are familiar with this form of reasoning from (good) detective fiction. A crime scene and all the evidence gathered from it constitute the facts in need of explanation. (Jones has been stabbed to death. Who did it?) In searching for the culprit, a detective is trying to demonstrate (to explain) that the facts are the effects of a particular person’s actions, that this person’s actions explain the effects. Often, the detective must first establish a general claim (only a skilled knife fighter could make these kinds of wounds) to demonstrate that a particular postulated cause/suspect (Smith, skilled with a blade) is the culprit. In other words, explanatory arguments often require sub-explanatory arguments. When the detective can show that all the evidence points to Smith (and the evidence rules out other suspects), he has the culprit. When we can show that a possible cause is the only one supported by the evidence, we have our explanation.

Explanatory arguments should be familiar to anyone trained in the history of philosophy. Plato wondered what explains the uniquely human power to hold general ideas. Perhaps, he hypothesized, we do this by cognizing a hidden element common to all things of a kind. 17 Early modern philosophers wondered how it is possible that we can have experiences which seem like perceptions of an external world but aren’t. Perhaps, Descartes answered, we are aware of an internal representation of the external world created by our minds. 18 And so on for most original thinkers in the history of philosophy. Even philosophers who extol the deductive rigor of mathematics (as both Plato and Descartes did) were concerned with what is the phenomenon and whether the concepts and principles they offered provide the correct explanation of it.

The explanatory argument is a familiar argument form in ordinary life, the sciences, and the history of philosophy. But Rachels and Rachels are blissfully unaware that this is how Rand is arguing, despite her telling the reader that this is how she is going to argue at the very beginning of her key ethical text. To shoehorn an unfamiliar argument into one’s preferred form is just more of the same parochialism we’ve been discussing, now about argumentation, not content.

Another widely reprinted textbook interpretation of Rand’s argument for egoism is Louis Pojman’s, which also attributes an eliminative argument to Rand. 19 Like Rachels and Rachels, Pojman accuses it of the fallacy of false dilemma, exhibiting the same parochialism about argumentation as Rachels and Rachels. Pojman elaborates on the case that egoism and altruism are not exhaustive options. He writes:

There are plenty of options between these two positions. Even a predominant egoism would admit that sometimes the best way to reach self-fulfillment is for us to forget about ourselves and strive to live for goals, causes, or other persons. Even if altruism is not required (as a duty), it may be permissible in many cases. Furthermore, self-interest may not be incompatible with other-regarding motivation. Even the Second Great Commandment set forth by Moses and Jesus states not that you must always sacrifice yourself for the other person, but that you ought to love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:19; Matt. 23). Self-interest and self-love are morally good things, but not at the expense of other people’s legitimate interests. When there is moral conflict of interests, a fair process of adjudication needs to take place. 20

What actions count as egoistic and what count as altruistic are substantive philosophical questions, as is the question of what actions are sacrificial. Pojman entertains only a conventional answer to these questions without acknowledging that Rand is bringing this very conventionalism into dispute. For example, Pojman writes that “self-interest and self-love are morally good things, but not at the expense of other people’s legitimate interests.” But, because of her unconventional view of self-interest and sacrifice, Rand disputes that another person’s legitimate interests will conflict with one’s own legitimate interests. 21 Furthermore, she adamantly rejects the claim that other-regarding generosity and benevolence is identical to altruism.

Rachels and Rachels’s and Pojman’s parochialism is inexcusable. Though their style does not communicate hostility to Rand, their complete lack of concern with Rand’s text and the fabrication of a weak argument on her behalf reveals that their dispassionate style is a pretense. They should know better, and, since they are writing as educators for beginning students, they should care even more to do better.

Sympathetic Parochialism

Rand has also received criticism from sympathetic critics who also fall into the trap of parochialism. Robert Nozick, a significant figure in late twentieth-century academic philosophy, was politically sympathetic to Rand and a fan of Atlas Shrugged . Yet, he begins his analysis of Rand’s argument for egoism with this puzzling statement:

I would most like to set out [Rand’s] argument as a deductive argument and then examine the premises. Unfortunately, it is not clear (to me) exactly what the argument is. So we shall have to do some speculating about how steps might be filled in, and look at these ways. 22

Another sympathetic critic of Rand is University of Colorado professor Michael Huemer, whose essays criticizing Objectivism have been circulating online for twenty years. Unlike Nozick, Rachels and Rachels, or Pojman, Huemer’s critique of TOE tries to textually support its reconstruction. 26 His reconstructed premises are more plausible interpretations of Rand’s text than the interpretations so far considered, and he justifies his interpretations by citing paragraphs so the reader may check his work. In these respects, he treats his subject with genuine seriousness. But, like Rachels and Rachels, Pojman, and Nozick, Huemer insists on forcing Rand’s argument into a form alien to its actual structure. The result of Huemer’s approach is that he does not recognize essential parts of the text as argumentative and is left unable to correctly interpret the propositions he considers.

For example, Huemer gives as the argument’s first premise that “Value is agent-relative; things can only be valuable  for  particular entities.” He then criticizes this premise as a question-begging assertion that rules out the possibility of “absolute value” (the idea that some things are valuable independent of their being valued). But this reveals a deep misunderstanding of Rand’s argumentative strategy.

Explanatory argument must begin with some description of the phenomenon to be explained. Rand’s goal is to explain why we need (any) moral theory, and she begins to do this by first explaining the fact that we pursue values. In her argument, she first characterizes value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep” only to indicate the reference of the term. She then offers an explanation as to why we act goal-directedly. Based on this explanation, Rand only then does give an argument to support her conclusion that value could not be absolute, because the concept of “value” is grounded in the concept of “life.” The argument begins in paragraph 17 of TOE and concludes in 24: “To speak of ‘value’ as apart from ‘life’ is worse than a contradiction in terms. ‘It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible.’” 27 An absolute “value” would be cut off from this grounding and, therefore, would be a pseudo-value in conflict with the very thing that makes values necessary to begin with.

The argument that the concept “value” depends on the concept “life” is an essential component of her explanatory argument because it establishes that only life explains the fact of value-pursuit. But, since Huemer doesn’t entertain the possibility that Rand is engaged in explanatory reasoning, he doesn’t recognize these paragraphs as related to her argument against absolute value. Even though Rand indicates she’s offering a philosophical explanation, Huemer doesn’t consider reconstructing her reasoning that way. Again, we see that a critic’s misunderstanding of Rand’s argument is explained by a parochial view of philosophical argumentation.

Why Philosophers Can’t Get Rand Right

Philosophical parochialism is a theme running through Rand criticism, hostile, neutral, and sympathetic. What philosophy is as a subject and what methods it should use are themselves philosophical questions, and answers to them affect how we think about philosophies that do not share our answers to those questions. The critics I discussed in this piece take for granted the concerns and methods of twentieth-century “analytic” philosophy, which prizes what it regards as deductive rigor and is skeptical of system building. Rand rejects this conception of philosophy, and therefore any attempt to reconstruct her reasoning as if she does not will be a misinterpretation.

So why does this happen to Rand, while other philosophers outside of the analytic tradition are treated with more seriousness?

It takes additional work to identify the premises and methods of a figure who does not share ours. When we aren’t fully self-conscious of our own basic frameworks, and we encounter someone who rejects ours, they appear amateurish, stupid, or both. That might be a problem with their framework, but it could be a problem with ours. It takes work to sort out where the problem lies.

When we encounter a philosopher who doesn’t share our framework and defends views that we find morally repugnant, we have still a further obstacle to overcome. We must step outside of our initial repugnance to fully grasp where the philosopher is coming from and to fully evaluate the merits of their perspective. Professional philosophers are supposed to excel at this. As scholars and teachers, their value to us is that they help us to overcome our prejudices and to check our deepest premises and values. Unfortunately, critics of Rand have so far been unwilling to overcome their own prejudices and to live up to the standards their profession should aspire to.

Of course, there is a division of labor in philosophy. Not everyone can spend their time investigating every philosophical figure and tradition. Scholars do us a great service when they take figures like Plato and Descartes, whose assumptions and methods, as well as historical contexts, are alien to us and translate them to a more familiar context. When scholars do this, they make it easier for us to overcome our parochialism and to evaluate those philosophers objectively.

Canon figures who do not share mainstream, twentieth-century frameworks and values benefit from decades of scholarship aimed at making them intelligible to those who do, which is why parochial misinterpretations and criticisms of their philosophies are rightly called out and dismissed as unprofessional. But when a philosopher with radical new ideas comes onto the historical stage, the first scholars of their thought tend to be advocates or sympathizers. Therefore, the forces behind the profession’s rejection of a new figure also work against their scholars. Recall Larry Summers’s statement: it’s not only Rand who is under boycott but also her disciples . Rand’s most knowledgeable student, Leonard Peikoff, wrote the work that set the standard for subsequent scholarship on Rand, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand , yet it received no academic attention. Recently (2016), Wiley-Blackwell, a well-regarded academic press, published A Companion to Ayn Rand , which contains essays on Rand’s thought by leading Rand scholars. It has received no reviews in mainstream academic journals and the few, critical scholarly discussions of Rand since published have failed to cite it. If scholars ignore the best secondary literature on a controversial philosopher out of the same contempt for its subject, the few critical treatments she receives will also be poor.

So, Rand has three marks against her. She defends views the profession finds repugnant, from a framework alien to it, and the few competent scholarly expositions of her thought aimed at the profession’s context go ignored. 29 This last point allows critics like Pigliucci and Pojman to engage in the pretense of having given her a fair and thorough hearing without fear of professional criticism and makes it possible that academic presses do not notice and are not called out for incompetent treatments in their textbooks. Until professional philosophers engage with Rand’s actual arguments, their pat dismissal of her philosophy remains an unprofessional prejudice.

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  • Lawrence H. Summers, “ Academic Freedom and Anti-Semitism .,” Remarks to the Columbia Center for Law and Liberty, 2015.
  • Brian Leiter, “ Now here’s a tough poll to answer! ” Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, March 7, 2009. Leiter is a philosopher and legal scholar at the University of Chicago School of Law. His blogging on the profession is widely read by philosophers. Leiter is the founder of the “Philosophical Gourmet Report,” the gold-standard ranking of philosophy departments.
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged , Centennial Edition (New York, NY: Dutton, 2005), 1040.
  • Massimo Pigliucci, “ About Objectivism, Part I: Metaphysics. ” Rationally Speaking, October 25, 2010.
  • Aristotle’s word is “ἀξιωμάτων” (“axiomaton”) (1005a20).
  • Pigliucci seems to be on a mission to get Rand wrong. See Aaron Smith’s piece on Pigliucci’s most recent criticism of Rand.
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged , 1015–16, 1040. Cf. Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York, NY: Dutton, 1991), 7–12.
  • Sidney Hook, “ Each Man for Himself ,” New York Times , April 9, 1961, BR3. Rand’s then-collaborator, Nathaniel Branden, took out an ad in the May 28, 1961, edition of the New York Times to reply to Hook. Branden’s reply elaborates on several of the points I make here.
  • Suppose you reason as follows: “If it’s raining out, it will be wet out; it’s raining out, so it must be wet out.” Your reasoning is valid because it follows the logical rule modus ponens : “If P, then Q. P, therefore Q.” Your reasoning assumes modus ponens , but that rule is not one of your premises. The point should be well-known to twentieth-century philosophers; it was famously made by Lewis Carroll in his 1895 essay “ What the Tortoise Said to Achilles .”
  • From the same passage in Atlas Shrugged “. . . the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A ” (1016) [emphasis added]. While the passage is clearly referring to Aristotle’s discussion of the Principle of non-Contradiction, James Lennox traces the formula “A is A” to Antonius Andreas. “Who Sets the Tone for a Culture? Ayn Rand’s Approach to the History of Philosophy” in A Companion to Ayn Rand (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) , edited by Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri (Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016, 341). See Lennox, 2016, 332–37 for discussion of Rand’s relationship to Aristotle.
  • For excellent discussion of these issues, see Jason Rheins’s chapter “Objectivist Metaphysics: The Primacy of Existence” in Gotthelf and Salmieri A Companion to Ayn Rand , 247–53.
  • The criticism was first published in James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1986), 70–71. Editions 5 through 10 were edited by Stuart Rachels. Here I cite James Rachels and Stuart Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 10th edition (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2023), 75–77. The 2023 Rachels and Rachels formulation differs from the original Rachels 1986 formulation but retains the original’s structure.
  • This pattern is extensively documented in Irfan Khawaja, Khawaja, “Randian Egoism: Time to Get High.” Reason Papers 36 (1), 2014, 211–23.
  • Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York, NY: NAL, 2005), 13–39; “Collectivized Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness , 93–99.
  • Ayn Rand, “Introduction” in The Virtue of Selfishness , x.
  • Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 15–16.
  • Phaedo , 72c-82e.
  • Meditations on First Philosophy , II.
  • Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong , 8th ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2016), 86–88.
  • Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong , 87.
  • Ayn Rand, “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests” in The Virtue of Selfishness , 57–65.
  • Robert Nozick, “On the Randian Argument” in Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 249–64.
  • According to Shoshana Milgram (p.c.), friend of Nozick and author of a forthcoming biography of Rand, Nozick was personal friends with several Objectivists, whose views he disagreed with respectfully.
  • Nozick’s paper on Rand was originally published in 1971. Ten years later, Nozick would argue against philosophers’ overreliance on “knock down” deductive arguments. Philosophers, he notes, also give explanations, which are far more valuable than “knock down” arguments. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 4–18.
  • For a contemporaneous response to Nozick, including a documentation of his misreading of the primary texts, see Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, “Nozick on the Randian Argument” in The Personalist, 59, 1978, 184-205. Rand’s friend and student, Harry Binswanger, wrote a letter to Nozick which raised some of the same methodological issues I discuss in this article.
  • Michael Huemer, “ Critique of ‘The Objectivist Ethics.’ ” Huemer repeats some of these criticisms in his article “Defending Liberty: The Commonsense Approach” in Foundations of a Free Society , edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 237–60. Readers are encouraged to look at the original article for Huemer’s full reconstruction.
  • Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 16–18.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 153–61.
  • Among recent Rand scholarship and criticism that does not fall into the trap of parochialism are the Ayn Rand Society’s book series, Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies , the series of volumes on Rand’s novels edited by Robert Mayhew, and the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy edition on Ayn Rand (edited by Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri). The Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies books contain critical essays which are often laudable exceptions to the parochial norm. Unfortunately, these volumes, too, have been ignored by the profession. Note that the scholarship on Rand in these books is authored by contributors who, with few exceptions, either work outside the profession, work without stable academic employment, or only began producing Rand scholarship late in their careers.

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