AYN RAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100010091-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 91
• Content Type: MISC

Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000100010091-4
Ayn Rand
by Leonard Peikoff
A statement once made about a great philosopher is applicable to Ayn
Rand: her works "exhibit, not `cold thought,' but the passionate search for pas-
sionless truth."
Most men regard philosophy as an intellectual chess game of no conse-
quence to their lives; they regard their own characters, their emotions, their values
as unrelated to their ideas. One central key to Ayn Rand's achievement is her
total rejection of these views. Ayn Rand holds that philosophy is the most cru-
cially important subject, because it is philosophy that ultimately shapes men's
characters, determines their values and thus moves the world. She holds that what
man needs above all else is a philosophy for living on_earth. She has defined one. It is called Objectivism.
Cutting through the dilemmas, the contradictions, the dead ends that have
dominated most of Western philosophy, Ayn Rand has formulated a comprehen-
sive philosophic system, providing answers to the major problems of philosophy.
In briefest essence, Objectivism upholds the supremacy of reason (as man's only
means of acquiring knowledge and his only guide to action)-a new ethics of ra-
tional selfishness (which holds that each man should live for his own sake, neither
sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself)-and individualism (with its
political expression and consequence, the only moral social system: laissez-faire
capitalism).
Today, drug-intoxicated intellectuals, in an orgy of irrationalism, stri-
dently demand universal self-sacrifice, and vie with one another in producing
schemes for its practical implementation, i.e., for the enslavement of man by the
community, the collective, the state.
Many of these men are called radicals because they question some insig-
nificant detail of conventional thinking or because they carry the basic premises
of today's society to their ultimate conclusion. But Ayn Rand is a radical-a phil-
osophic radical : she challenges the basic ideas of our collapsing world and provides
the alternative.
Ayn Rand is a novelist. She performed one of the greatest intellectual
revolutions of our time as part of her career. Her magnificent novels represent a
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union of philosophic originality and artistic power without parallel in our century.
The Ayn Rand hero, plot and style have become internationally known : the hero-
the man of independence, of purpose, of intransigent integrity; the plot-a brilliant-
ly ingenious strucLire of unexpected yet ruthlessly logical events; the style-that
union of luminous clarity, intellectual rigor and passionate beauty which is pos-
sible only to the great artist who is also it great philosopher.
To create a philosophic revolution is an extraordinarily rare achievement.
To create it great work of art is almost as rare. To do both in the same work is a
feat without precedent, yet that is what Ayn Rand has done in Atlas Shrugged.
Ayn Rand's career was made possible by her power of integration: her
ability to see the logical relationships between ideas in the most diverse fields, and
between ideas and men's actual life. Her mind grasps crucial connections between
metaphysics and education, between epistemology and "ecology," between econom-
ics and the theory of sex. While most of today's intellectuals spread confusion by
treating events as single, inexplicable concretes, Ayn Rand observes current events
and identifies their deepest philosophic roots, or hears abstract philosophic theories
and identifies what they would mean in actual practice-and thus is able to make
an intelligible unity even of today's chaos.
Her works -ranging from plays and novels through historical essays and
cultural commentaries to philosophic treatises-reflect the scope of her mind. Who
but Ayn Rand could write it philosophical melodrama /Night of January 16th)-
and a technical treatise on concept-formation that is studied by professors of
philosophy around the country 'introdu.rlion to Objectivist Epistetnologyi?
We live in an age of synthetic celebrities manufactured by press agents
and pressure groups. Ayn Rand has had no such assistance; she has achieved world
fame in the face of the concerted opposition of today's entrenched ideological
pressure groups.
Some intellectuals do not know what to think of Ayn Rand: they recognize
that she does not fit into any of their standard categories, that she is saying
something nett-and they wait for others to tell them how to judge it.
The three most powerful ideological groups in today's world, however, do
know what they think: the Church, the Communist Party and the Liberal Estab-
lishment are united in their frantic opposition to Ayn Rand; they recognize that
her philosophy is the gravest threat to their power. They have fought against Ayn
Rand all her life; they have fought by smear, by distortion, by misrepresentation,
by attempting-when everything else failed-to smother her work in a blanket of
silence.
Yet Ayn Rand has broken through. On her own, on the strength of her
achievements, she has become an intellectual power in today's world, a fact which
theorists of every stripe now recognize. Her works are used as texts in colleges
around the country. Her admirers are progressively entering the graduate schools
and the professions. Her lectures at college campuses are invariably attended by
overflowing audiences. Her books have sold more than 8 million copies. Defying
every fundamental premise of today's culture. Ayn Rand has succeeded in launch-
ing a nationwide philosophic movement.
Project what this requires. Project the courage, the integrity, the passion
for thought and truth that make such an achievement possible. If you do, you will
not have to ask: What is Ayn Rand like in person'. You will know it.
(Leonard Peikoff is Associate Professor of Philosophy
at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn,
and Associate Editor of The Objectivist.)
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