Few people are neutral about Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She generated legions of fans—and detractors—through her bestselling books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and the philosophy she espoused. As the founder of Objectivism, Rand positioned herself as a defender of the individual and provided a philosophical base for the ideals of the Enlightenment and its greatest political achievement, the United States.
Why is Rand so controversial to this day? What widely accepted ideas about the nature of the world and of good and evil does she challenge in the name of individualism? Why does she argue that selfishness, properly conceived, is a virtue and capitalism an unknown ideal? Why does she reject altruism as evil?
Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, explores some of the central ideas of Rand’s worldview and why they continue to draw both devoted adherents and impassioned rejection.
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