Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

6 Pages 1486 Words

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the twentieth-century controversial novelist Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its contribution to the world of economics. Central to this discussion, is the Laissez-faire capitalism component of her philosophy and it’s growing influence on economists.

Discussion
Background and Life
Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinoviena Rosenbaum, just before the Russian revolution in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905. While studying history and philosophy at the University of Petrograd (Lenigrad) from 1921 to 1924 she witnessed the social upheaval that took place in the tumultuous period following the revolution. After experiencing first hand the horrors of totalitarianism she fled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived in New York City, during the Roaring Twenties. Once in the United States she took a new surname based on the model of typewriter she used a Remington-Rand.
In the early 1930’s Rand made her way to Hollywood where she ended up writing screenplays for the major studios. During the 1940s and 1950’s she turned her efforts to writing novels, including the best sellers Anthem, The Fountainhead, and the magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, arguably one the most important works of fiction of the twentieth century. All these novels in some way dramatized the premise of individualism over collectivism, which would become the cornerstone of her Objectivism philosophy.
Ayn Rand spent 1960s and 1970s as a visiting lecturer at various Universities and a permanent guest on television talk shows, while also publishing her manifestoes in The Objectivist Newsletter. She died at her home in New York from heart failure on March 6, 1982, at the age of 78. An apt epithet that best sums up the central theme of Ayn Rand’s life work, writing and philosophy of Objectivism might be, “If a life can have a ‘theme song’ — and I believe that every worthwhile one has — mine is [best] e...