The Ayn Rand reader - By Ayn Rand & Gary Hull & Leonard Peikoff

INTRODUCTION

by Leonard Peikoff

AYN RAND’S body of work, including posthumous collections, now extends to twenty-two volumes. Her best-known and most philosophical novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, number respectively 727 and 1,168 pages (in hardcover). This abundance of material poses a problem for many time-pressed readers. They do not know where to plunge in or how to select a representative sample. The present book is designed to meet these needs.

The readers I have in mind probably read relatively little fiction or philosophy. But they have noticed that AR is known virtually everywhere—and that everyone seems to have an impassioned opinion about her. They have heard her books being extolled and denounced with equal intensity—often in quite unexpected quarters. Naturally enough, they are intrigued by the controversy.

Here is a chance for such individuals to explore her works briefly and reach a judgment of their own.

Although I hope it will be of value to previous readers of AR, this anthology is intended as an entrée for those who know little or nothing about her. Each of her four novels and every branch of philosophy are represented within its pages, even if only in brief excerpts. Whoever finishes the book, therefore, can say in all conscience that he knows the essence of AR—and that he knows it by means of actually having read her.

AR’s philosophic ideas permeate each of her novels. In broad tendency, however, her early novels are devoted to social-political issues; The Fountainhead to ethical issues; and Atlas Shrugged, her magnum opus, to the fundamental branches of philosophy. This progression is the key to the present book’s organization (see the Editor’s Preface below).

Although the material has been organized in a definite structure, browsers who wish merely to dip in at random can profit from doing so. Those who wish to explore further will find that the selections are not only representative; they have been picked deliberately from a wide range of primary sources, and thereby suggest a fairly complete range of options for future reading.

As a mini-orientation for new readers, let me offer here a thumb-nail sketch of AR’s Objectivist philosophy.

Metaphysics: The universe exists objectively, independent of consciousness. Its fundamental law is the law of identity, A is A.

Epistemology: Reason is man’s only means of knowledge, both of facts and of values. “Reason” is the faculty of identifying and integrating, in conceptual form, the material provided by man’s senses.

Ethics: The only scientific ethics is the ethics of rational self-interest, which holds that Man’s Life is the standard of moral value and that rationality is the primary virtue. Each man, therefore, should live by his own mind and for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself.

Politics: The only social system consistent with the requirements of Man’s Life is laissez-faire capitalism, the complete separation of state and economics. The proper function of government is to protect each individual’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Esthetics: “Art” is the re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments-and the greatest school in art history is Romanticism, whose art presents things not as they are, but as they might be and ought to be.

To put the above in negative terms, AR rejects, among many other kindred isms, every form of supernaturalism, subjectivism, mysticism, skepticism, altruism, relativism, collectivism, statism, and (in art) both Naturalism and “modernism.”

As you may be starting to see, AR cannot be identified by using the conventional categories. She is neither a liberal nor a conservative. She admires Aristotle, but denies that “moderation” is the definition of virtue. She regards Libertarians as worse than Communists. She is a moralist who rejects religion, an individualist who dismisses Spencer, an egoist who denounces Nietzsche—and a philosopher who writes thrillers. How is all this possible? Read on and find out for yourself.

The Ayn Rand Reader represents the work of two editors. Gary Hull, a longtime teacher of Objectivism, had the painful job of making the preliminary selections; he also devised the book’s structure and wrote the first draft of most of the editorial notes. As Executor of the Estate of AR, I myself then implemented a layer of suggestions, along with many editorial revisions.

Arnold Dolin, Associate Publisher of Dutton/Signet, had been urging me for years to prepare this kind of book. Unfortunately, the demands of other commitments always made it impossible. It is thanks to the labor of Dr. Hull that this anthology has finally become a reality. His work (which includes all the proofreading) was really the time-consuming