Books by Ayn Rand

While I don't agree with everything that Ayn Rand has written, I have found her a very challenging thinker. Many followers of Rand, who call themselves objectivists, have an attitude of "take it all or leave it all." I would, instead, suggest that she has performed a service to the world and to philosophy by challenging the foundations of altruistic ethics and popularizing the phrase "rational self interest." When I first heard about her book, The Virtue of Selfishness I was turned off. I was, after all, an undergraduate religion student at the time. But once I read the book, a couple of years after that introduction, I changed my view a bit. While I would still object to rampant selfishness, when self interest is combined with the word "rational" we have something very different.

Another significant service she has performed is in presenting these ethical and artistic ideas in the form of novels. For many, her novels make for slow reading, but for me, reading The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged is a life-building experience. The characters may annoy me from time to time, but they are somebody. I leave the books with the feeling of having met people worth knowing. The ideas flow from the art.

Energion.com Ayn Rand Author Page
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