Ayn Rand: A Woman Objectified

Ayn Rand: A Woman Objectified

Early Life and Experiences Under Oppressive Regimes:

Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. A self-taught reader, she aspired to become a fiction writer at a very early age and always modeled herself after European writers like Victor Hugo rather than Russian writers

(Rand, Branden, Greenspan, et al., 1986). Rand experienced two Revolutions in Russia

while still in high school and her family moved to the Crimea to escape the violence associated with it. Ultimately, her family was left nearly destitute by the confiscation of her father's pharmacy by the Communists after the success of the 1917 Bolshevist

Revolution. When she began reading about American history in her final year of high school, she was instantly taken by the benefits of a free society and began aspiring to emigrate to escape Communism in Russia (Rand, Branden, Greenspan, et al., 1986).

Rand continued her studies at the University of Petrograd where she studied philosophy and history in the three-year Social Pedagogy program and graduated in 1924.

By that time, she had also witnessed the suppression of free speech and critical thinking because the institution succumbed to Communist enforcers and censors. Partly to escape the oppression of living under Communist rule, she became more interested in Western

cinema and she enrolled at the State Institute for Cinema Arts to study screenwriting.

She produced her first two published works in 1925 and 1926, both of which were about the acting profession and the American movie industry in Hollywood (Branden, 1987).

Shortly thereafter, Rand applied for and received authorization to travel the United States to visit relatives in Chicago, but she arrived in New York City in 1926 with no intentions of returning to Russia and after spending some time with her relatives, she moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. She experienced some lucky breaks in Hollywood, such as meeting director Cecil B. DeMille the second day she was in town

and being given a role as an extra in his move The King of Kings. The following week,

Rand met Frank O'Connor, an actor, whom she married a few years later and remained with him until his death fifty years later (Branden, 1987).

Subsequently, Rand worked in various capacities in the movie industry, starting as a script reader for Cecil B. DeMille. After an early period in which her original literary work was rejected by publishers, she began a prolific career as a screenplay and fiction writer. Her most successful works of fiction were The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), both of which featured prominent themes relating to individualism, civil liberties, free expression, and laissez-faire capitalism, no doubt inspired by her earliest experiences with communism and state collectivism, which she abhorred (Merrill, 1998; Rand, Branden, Greenspan, et al., 1986).

Much later, Rand would write extensively about her beliefs that the only legitimate role of organized government in human societies is the protection of individuals from one another, the maintenance of police forces to do so domestically and armies to do so internationally, and the establishment of procedural mechanism (i.e. civil courts and administrative agencies) to settle disputes arising among individuals, and criminal procedures for adjudicating penal laws fairly (Rand, 1964; Rand, Branden,

Greenspan, et al., 1986). Though fictional, her novels introduced Rand's philosophical and political perspectives and laid the foundation for the presentation of one her most lasting intellectual contributions, the ethical point-of-view of Objectivism.

Major Philosophical Contributions:

The success of her two greatest literary works financed Rand's later life and The

Fountainhead marked her transition from fiction writer to philosopher (Merrill, 1998).

Thereafter, she published her own work and lectured on the Objectivist moral ethic to which she often referred to as "a philosophy for living on earth" based on rational self-interest and the balance between the needs of the individual and moral principles based on a commitment to objective situational perception and analysis (Merrill, 1998).

In principle, Objectivism maintains that self-interest or rational egoism is a valid perspective but that the individual's perceptions must always be guided by an objective

(vs. subjectively biased) understanding of one's rights and obligations with respect to others and to society. While the main purpose of life according to Rand is self-

fulfillment, it is rational objectivity that both distinguishes appropriate from inappropriate moral actions and that establishes the role of the individual in society. Like other moral philosophers of her time, including the infamous physicist Albert Einstein and the philosopher and historian Bertrand Russell, Rand suggested that while the individual's primary obligation was to seek his own happiness, a moral imperative precluded exploiting other to achieve personal goals (Merril, 1998; Peikhoff, 1993).

Similarly, Rand shared the belief of Einstein and Russell that the most fulfilling life is that which focuses on benefiting other members of society. Finally, in that regard,

Rand also mirrored Einstein and Russell's belief that organized religion inspired more social harm and human cruelty in human societies than any purported benefit and that the psychological orientation of theism undermined the development of both independent rational perspective and a genuine self-esteem and psychological sufficiency in the individual (Peikhoff, 1993; Rand, 1964).

That point-of-view in particular inspired one of her students, Nathaniel Branden to devote his later career as a psychologist and prolific author of psychology self-help books on understanding the origin and importance of self-esteem as well the environmental causes and consequences of low self-esteem. Branden's work also prominently featured