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Bibliography of Ayn Rand and Objectivism

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Ayn Rand and Objectivism have been the subject of a wealth of literature, both in favor of Objectivist ideals and against it. What follows is a general bibliography of major works dealing with Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

Works by Ayn Rand

Fiction and drama

Non-fiction

  • For the New Intellectual (1961)
  • The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
  • Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
  • Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967)
  • The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
  • Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)
  • The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1989)
  • The Ayn Rand Column (1991)
  • Ayn Rand?s Marginalia Robert Mayhew, ed. (1995)
  • Letters of Ayn Rand Michael S. Berliner, ed. (1995)
  • Journals of Ayn Rand David Harriman, ed. (1997)
  • Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution Peter Schwartz, ed. (1998)
  • Russian Writings on Hollywood (1998)
  • The Ayn Rand Reader Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff, eds. (1998)
  • Why Businessmen Need Philosophy Richard E. Ralston, ed. (1998)
  • The Art of Fiction Tore Boeckmann, ed. (2000)
  • The Art of Non-Fiction Robert Mayhew, ed. (2001)

Works by other Objectivist writers

  • Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991)
  • Peikoff, Leonard. The Ominous Parallels (1982)

Critiques published during Rand's lifetime

Few critiques of Objectivism were published during Rand's lifetime. John Hospers, later a Libertarian Party presidential candidate, devoted some positive critical attention to Rand's ethic of rational egoism in his Human Conduct: An Introduction to the Problems of Ethics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1961). But his discussion occupied only a few pages, and not many other philosophers offered any response to Rand either positively or negatively.

The major pre-1982 critiques were these (alphabetically by author):

  • Childs, Roy. ""Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand". [1] In this short open letter, Roy Childs argues that Objectivism is fundamentally contradictory because initiation of force, which is prohibited by Objectivism, is necessary to maintain the monopolistic form of government that Objectivism mandates.
  • Ellis, Albert. Is Objectivism a Religion? (New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1968). Ellis's answer to his titular question is Yes. In effect he regards Objectivism as a sort of Puritanism without God, on the grounds that it is a "dogmatic, fanatical, absolutist, anti-empirical, people-condemning creed".
  • O'Neill, William. With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of Ayn Rand's Philosophy (Totowa: Littlefield, Adams & Company, 1971). This work is an academic discussion of Objectivism and its shortcomings according to the author's own outlook, which seems to be a sort of analytic pragmatism.
  • Robbins, John. Answer to Ayn Rand: A Critique of the Philosophy of Objectivism (Washington: Mount Vernon, 1974). Robbins is a Calvinist Christian (a phrase he would regard as redundant) and a philosophical follower of theologian Gordon Haddon Clark. A revised and much expanded version of this work was published in 1997 under the title Without A Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System and is discussed below.

Other works, both pro and con, published after Rand's death

The secondary literature on Rand and Objectivism underwent a veritable explosion after Rand's death in 1982. First, and perhaps most obviously, there are the two biographical accounts by Nathaniel and Barbara Branden:

  • Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York: Doubleday, 1986). Ms. Branden's biography of Rand burst onto the Objectivist scene in 1986 to both accolades and denunciations. In it, she revealed a great deal of hitherto unknown biographical trivia about Rand (including her birth name, which Branden gives as "Alice Rosenbaum") and presented her as a great but deeply flawed human being. When it was first published, its primary appeal was arguably that it presented the Brandens' side of their famous excommunication from the Objectivist movement - notably that Nathaniel Branden had been having an affair with Rand and had angered her by wanting to break it off.
  • Branden, Nathaniel. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand (Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), and My Years with Ayn Rand (Hoboken: Jossey-Bass, 1999). The second of these is a revised edition of the first. Unlike his ex-wife's account, Branden's biography focuses more on his own role in the history of Objectivism and retells many of the same events from his own point of view. Naturally it includes a very full account of the reported affair between Branden and Rand.

Nor, after Rand's death, were critical discussions of Objectivism long in coming. The first major collection of such critiques was published by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in 1984, and other critiques have followed. They include the following (alphabetically by author):

  • Den Uyl, Douglas, and Douglas Rasmussen, eds. The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984). This volume is a collection of critical essays. It is also noteworthy as the first single volume of strictly philosophical criticism of Objectivism since O'Neill's With Charity Toward None.
  • Gladstein, Mimi Reisel, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra, eds. Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999). This volume is a wide-ranging collection of writings on Rand's relationship to feminism. Since Rand regarded herself as an opponent of feminism and indeed regarded "man-worship" ("man" decidedly meaning "male") as the very essence of femininity, it might be expected that feminists would regard Rand as an enemy. Some, unsurprisingly, do; Susan Brownmiller, in comments reproduced here (pp. 63-65), famously characterized Rand as a "traitor to her own sex". Others at least have more nuanced views. At any rate, this volume is an attempt to accord Rand some academic and scholarly consideration even while subjecting her to critical analysis.
  • Long, Roderick T. Reason and Value: Rand versus Aristotle (Poughkeepsie: The Objectivist Center, 2000). Long, a professor of philosophy at Auburn University, maintains that Rand was not as Aristotelian as she thought she was and that Objectivism shares certain features with the philosophies of Hume and Hobbes. The book also includes replies from Aristotle scholar Fred D. Miller, Jr., and (Kelleyite) Objectivist Eyal Mozes, and a reply in turn from Long.
  • Nyquist, Greg S. Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2001). Nyquist's primary philosophical guides appear to be Machiavelli, Santayana, and Lovejoy. His critique of Objectivism argues that Rand was a poor philosopher who did not subject her principles to empirical verification, and that when they are thus subjected, they are found wanting.
  • Plasil, Ellen. Therapist (New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1985). Plasil was affiliated with the Objectivist movement and came under the influence of "Objectivist psychotherapist" Lonnie Leonard. This autobiographical work details her relationship with Leonard and, whether rightly or wrongly, attributes at least some of the blame for his behavior to the principles of Objectivism itself.
  • Raimondo, Justin. Reclaiming the American Right (Burlingame: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), and An Enemy of the State (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2000). Each of these two works includes a section critiquing Rand and Objectivism. In Reclaiming the American Right, Raimondo uncovers what he believes to be the actual sources for Rand's novel ATLAS SHRUGGED - notably Garet Garrett's 1922 novel The Driver, which features a businessman-hero named Henry Galt. In An Enemy of the State, he provides an account of economist Murray Rothbard's period of affiliation with the Objectivist movement and defends Rothbard against the charge that he plagiarized Barbara Branden's master's dissertation for a paper of his own.
  • Robbins, John W. Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System (Trinity Foundation, 1997). This is a heavily revised and expanded version of Answer to Ayn Rand. As noted above, Robbins is a Calvinist Christian and a follower of Gordon Haddon Clark. His criticism may be confusing on several points to those who are not familiar with Clark's presuppositionalist/scripturalist philosophy. (Robbins claims, for example, that Objectivism and Christianity have no propositions in common. What he means by this is essentially that there is just one consistent system of propositions - namely, the system consisting of the propositions expressed in the Christian Bible together with those that can be deductively derived therefrom - and that Objectivism would not share any of these propositions if it were consistent.)
  • Ryan, Scott. Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of Ayn Rand's Epistemology (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2003). Ryan argues that Rand relied implicitly on a foundation of rationalistic objective idealism to create an explicit philosophy at odds with such idealism, and that in doing so she was primarily motivated by a desire to cleanse philosophy of anything smacking of religion/theism. Ryan claims that Rand's explicit philosophy contravenes its implicit presumptions at numerous points. He also criticizes Rand for what he takes to be her various philosophical shortcomings - e.g. her alleged misunderstanding of the problem of universals; her alleged failure to differentiate between sensation and sensory perception; her alleged failure to distinguish between the claim that sensory perception is reliable and the claim that sensory perception is our sole means of acquiring knowledge; her effective reduction of necessity to tautology. Though his primary focus is on epistemology, Ryan also devotes two chapters to criticism of the Objectivist ethics.
  • Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). Sciabarra contends that Rand was exposed to idealist philosophy in her youth, especially in her college days, notably through philosopher N.O. Lossky. He argues that she disliked dualities and that Objectivism is a "dialectical" philosophy intended to overcome such dualities. The book's main virtue, according to its defenders, is that it is a very scholarly effort that treats Rand with utmost seriousness as a philosophically important thinker and places her intelligibly within the history of philosophy; its main vice, according to its detractors, is that it makes Rand academically respectable by assimilating her to a philosophical tradition to which she does not belong. (Sciabarra also publishes the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and in its first issue presents evidence relevant to his claims about Lossky: the details of Rand's college transcript.)
  • Smith, George H. Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (Amherst: Prometheus, 1991) and Why Atheism? (Amherst: Prometheus, 2000). The first of these works includes several chapters on Rand and Objectivism, including critiques of quasi-religious Objectivism and comparisons of Rand's thought with (e.g.) that of Herbert Spencer. The second includes a chapter elaborating and critiquing the Objectivist theory of truth and knowledge. Here Smith reaches a conclusion to which Ryan (above) also comes independently: that whereas philosophers ordinarily understand knowledge to be "justified true belief," Rand's "contextualism" in effect redefines knowledge as justified belief and drops the requirement that it be true.
  • Walker, Jeff. The Ayn Rand Cult (La Salle: Open Court Publishing, 1999). This is an uneven work. Walker wants to claim that Objectivism is a "cult," and in order to make out his claim, he collects all the "dirt" on the Objectivist movement into one volume. His approach, though, seems to be to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks; for example, he devotes a chapter to his claim that Nathaniel Branden is not a reliable source for much of anything, and yet relies on him as a source of Objectivist history throughout the rest of the book. Some of its more extreme contentions appear to lack objective factual support: e.g. that Branden was in some way personally responsible for the death of his beloved second wife Patrecia, and that Alan Greenspan never wrote a doctoral dissertation. Unfortunately such examples tend to undermine Walker's credibility even with regard to his more plausible contentions.
  • Yang, Michael B. Reconsidering Ayn Rand (Enumclaw: WinePress Publishing, 2000). Yang is a Christian who used to be an Objectivist, and he is heavily indebted to Robbins's work. His book can be read on its own or as a supplement to Robbins.

List of authors

Here is a partial list of academics who have written on Objectivism in academic journals (perhaps other Wikipedias can add specifics of their publications):

Lisa Dolling (head of the honors program in theology at St. John's University in New York), Tibor Machan (Chapman University, Emeritus of Auburn University, The Hoover Institution), Douglas Den Uyl (Bellarmine College, Louisville, Kentucky), Douglas Rasmussen (St. John's University, New York), Eric Mack (Tulane University), Aeon Skoble (Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts), Tara Smith (University of Texas at Austin), Lester Hunt (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Randall Dipert (C.S. Peirce Professor of American Philosophy, SUNY Buffalo), Roderick Long (Auburn University), R. Kevin Hill (previously Assistant Professor at Northwestern University), Slavoj Zizek (The European Graduate School), Michael Huemer (University of Colorado, Boulder), Jonathan Jacobs (Colgate University), Wayne Davis (Chair of the Philosophy Department, Georgetown University), Stephen Parrish (Concordia University, Ann Arbor, Michigan), Stephen R. C. Hicks (Rockford College, Illinois), Fred Seddon (adjunct professor at Duquesne University), J. G. Lennox (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh), Allan Gotthelf (Professor Emeritus of The College of New Jersey; Gotthelf is Secretary of the Ayn Rand Society, an official 'group' of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association), and Gary Hull (Business School, Duke University).

Critiques available online

General

Ethics and rights

Political theory (minarchism vs. anarchism)

Scholarship

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