AynRandCon-Europe 2026, held in Porto, Portugal, attracted students and fans from Poland, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and 24 other countries, filling the lecture hall to capacity. The student-focused conference aimed to deepen attendees’ understanding of central Objectivist ideas and inspire students to consider an intellectual career. By the close of the three-day event, attendees reported an enriched understanding of Objectivism, and a significant number of students opted to continue studying with us, some of whom are considering an intellectual career.

Dr. Yaron Brook kicked off the first day with a talk clarifying Objectivism's distinctive understanding and defense of capitalism, highlighting the values of reason and freedom —  and the morality of self-interest. Dr. Onkar Ghate followed with a deep philosophic analysis of why people abandon reason for faith — and what it does to them and to societies at large — using Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a former Muslim and outspoken atheist who converted to Christianity — as a case study and drawing on a range of historical examples. Ghate argued that the battle between reason and faith, or science and religion, should be understood as a battle between philosophy and religion. What is at stake is whether one’s most fundamental starting points and justifications rest on a rational, scientific, philosophic foundation — or a mystical one.

The second day focused on morality and why ambitious thinkers should consider an intellectual career. Ghate explored Rand’s rational egoism, and Tal Tsfany delivered a lecture on self-discovery, passion, and the power of ideas to change the world. Finally, a panel featuring Brook, Ghate, Tsfany, and Elan Journo explored what it takes to pursue an intellectual career.

Our outreach extended well beyond the conference itself. In the weeks before, Dr. Aaron Smith led a series of online discussions to prepare students and give them a preview of what studying with us can offer. After the conference, high-potential students were invited to follow-up discussions with Smith, deepening their development while giving us the opportunity to stay in touch before the new academic year begins.

In addition to its intellectual and aspirational values, AynRandCon-Europe met a social need for many of its attendees. During the lengthy breaks between lectures and our organized social events, attendees had plenty of time to forge connections with one another. Many reported joy and excitement at meeting so many new people who share their values, and the atmosphere was lively and vibrant throughout.

Between the caliber of the speakers, the quality of the attendees, and the beautiful Renaissance Hotel venue, AynRandCon-Europe 2026 set a new bar — and left us already looking forward to the next one.

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Ayn Rand thought this view deserved a closer look. In “The Anatomy of Compromise,” now available online for the first time, she examines what happens when two sides holding opposing principles attempt to collaborate, and why the consequences are devastating.

Rand identifies three rules governing the outcome of such collaboration. The first: in any conflict between two parties who share the same basic principles, the more consistent one wins. As an example, she points to the Republicans and Democrats, both driven by their shared commitment to altruism toward ever-greater statism. The Republican advocacy of different means to the same ends is powerless to stop the Democrats.

Rand’s other rules explain why only the evil and irrational side benefits from such compromises. Her dissection of how the United Nations lends moral sanction to dictatorships is striking. So is her argument for the urgent need for the rational side of any conflict to define its principles openly, lest it cede the advantage to its opponent. Readers wondering why decades of attempts to negotiate with Iran keep failing — and why the latest round will likely fare no better — will find her argument illuminating.

You can now read “The Anatomy of Compromise” here, or find it in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

A major symptom of a man’s — or a culture’s — intellectual and moral disintegration is the shrinking of vision and goals to the concrete-bound range of the immediate moment. This means: the progressive disappearance of abstractions from a man’s mental processes or from a society’s concerns. The manifestation of a disintegrating consciousness is the inability to think and act in terms of principles.

A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.” Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

You can read her full essay here, or in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

The first micro course concluded earlier this month. David Bakker, a graduate student in mathematics and philosophy of science, taught Joseph Fourier’s The Analytical Theory of Heat, using the French mathematician’s work as a case study in the process of scientific discovery.

Over the course of five weeks, Bakker guided students through Fourier’s intellectual journey: how his experimental observations led to the formulation of mathematical laws, how those laws were developed into the heat equation, and how the solution provides genuine physical insight.

Students engaged directly with both the technical and conceptual dimensions of mathematical physics, working through the material inductively. Rather than beginning with finished equations, they started from Fourier’s own observations and gradually reconstructed his reasoning, allowing them to grasp how the theory emerges from the concretes.

In May and June, the Incubator will offer two new micro courses on the intellectual history of the United States, a timely topic on the eve of America’s 250th anniversary. The courses are open to current and former ARI students.

In Political Philosophy of the Founding, Dr. Tristen Fleig, who also attends law school, will guide students through key documents and debates of early American history. Conventional university courses cover the figures and timeline of the Founding, Dr. Fleig says, but they rarely “help students grasp what animated these figures or events. I’ve designed my course so that students can get that experience of just what ideas and principles inspired these men to embark on the radical mission to create a wholly unique nation.”

The Republic of Producers: Natural Rights and the Rise of Capitalism in America, taught by Mohamed Ali, a graduate student in philosophy, will offer a complementary perspective on the philosophical currents that defined America’s creation. “My course follows natural rights theory from Locke through Paine and Jefferson and uncovers the specific legal and social changes it produced in the first half-century of the American republic,” says Mr. Ali. “For anyone who has wondered how philosophy produces real consequences in the world,” says Mr. Ali, “the early American republic offers the clearest possible answer.”

“Core to the design of the Incubator is the recognition that doing intellectual work — writing, editing, teaching, lecturing — is essential to catalyzing growth,” says Elan Journo, a senior vice president at ARI, overseeing the Incubator. “Crucially, micro courses are not simulations or classroom exercises. We hired David, Tristen, and Mohamed as instructors, and we expect them to produce new knowledge and effectively impart it to students. I believe micro courses hold great promise, and I’m eager to see more Incubator members teach them in future.”

Learn more about these courses and sign up here.

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The answer to this question turns on evaluating the relationship between science and ethics. Ayn Rand examined it decades ago in her essay “To Young Scientists,” originally delivered as an address to MIT students and now published online for the first time.

Rand’s essay targets the doctrine that reason can discover facts but not judge questions of value. By accepting this doctrine, she argues, scientists come to treat ethical questions as subjective, often leaving the applications of their work to be determined by statist authorities. Rand insists that ethics is subject to rational, objective judgment. Scientists, she contends, need such judgment most urgently precisely because of the power their work unleashes.

“To Young Scientists” calls on scientists to recognize that the integrity of science depends not only on technical rigor but on the conscious exercise of moral responsibility. Read Rand’s essay to explore the full argument and to judge its relevance for yourself.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

We are living in an age when every social group is struggling frantically to destroy itself — and doing it faster than any of its rivals or enemies could hope for — when every man is his own most dangerous enemy, and the whole of mankind is rolling, at a supersonic speed, back to the Dark Ages, with a nuclear bomb in one hand and a rabbit’s foot in the other.

The most terrible paradox of our age is the fact that the destruction of man’s mind, of reason, of logic, of knowledge, of civilization, is being accomplished in the name and with the sanction of science.

It took centuries and volumes of writing to bring our culture to its present state of bankruptcy — and volumes would have to be written to expose, counteract, and avert the disaster of a total intellectual collapse. But of all the deadly theories by means of which you are now being destroyed, I would like to warn you about one of the deadliest and most crucial: the alleged dichotomy of science and ethics.

You can read the full essay here, or in her book, The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought.

That was a question Rand herself was sometimes asked, and she confronts it head-on in her introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, now available online. She argues this is not merely a semantic dispute, but an issue with profound moral implications. For, as she sees it, “the attack on ‘selfishness’ is an attack on man’s self-esteem.”

Rand contends that the conventional use of “selfishness” rests on a destructive “package-deal” that lumps together fundamentally different types of people. It treats the ruthless thief and the principled, ambitious creator as moral equivalents, simply because both claim to benefit from their own actions.

Once this package-deal is accepted, the moral landscape collapses. Playing into the hands of altruism, it leaves us with the choice between sacrificing oneself and preying on others, leaving no room for a “concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man” who rationally seeks his own happiness. For Rand, reclaiming the concept of “selfishness” is therefore not a rhetorical stunt, but a necessity for defending the right to your own existence.

Read her introduction to understand why getting this concept right is an important step in reclaiming your own life.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: “Why do you use the word ‘selfishness’ to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?”

To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”

But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.

It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

You can read her full essay here, or in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.

Since its founding, the Ayn Rand Institute has been committed to identifying promising intellectuals and offering them world-class training in understanding and applying Objectivism. 

As a result, ARI has been instrumental in supporting the development and careers of intellectuals who have gone on to have an impressive impact — both at ARI and in the wider culture. 

Consider Onkar Ghate, who trained in the Objectivist Graduate Center (OGC) when Harry Binswanger, Peter Schwartz and Leonard Peikoff were leading it, and whose ongoing intellectual leadership at ARI, directly supporting the growth of each new generation of Objectivist intellectuals, cannot be overstated. Or consider Yaron Brook, who also studied in the OGC and then was ARI’s executive director for nearly twenty years and is today a world-renowned speaker and host of The Yaron Brook Show. Then there’s Alex Esptein, a past fellow at ARI, who has gone on to write two bestsellers in the field of energy policy, regularly speaks in front of Congress to affect policy change, and advises top business leaders on how to defend themselves against unjust attacks on their companies and industry. And there is Gena Gorlin, an influential therapist and academic in the field of psychology, who has built a thriving audience of entrepreneurs for her newsletter and forthcoming book.

Our aim has always been ambitious: to prepare promising thinkers to deepen their understanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy so they can apply that knowledge to advocate rational ideas. 

But we’ve been asking ourselves an important question: since the world desperately needs more Objectivist intellectuals, what would it take to train not just dozens, but hundreds? What would it take to elevate our already transformative and rigorous training program and radically scale it?

Our answer: an “intellectual incubator,” an ambitious new upgrade to our intellectual training, which combines the longstanding rigor of our training program with the entrepreneurial ethos of Silicon Valley.

Intellectual Incubator: A Startup for Intellectual Careers

At its core, the Intellectual Incubator builds on what ARI has always done best — rigorous, systematic training in Objectivism. For decades, we have refined our methods for teaching students how to think philosophically, how to use Objectivism to analyze cultural events and trends, and how to communicate ideas with clarity and impact. What differentiates the Intellectual Incubator is an enhanced focus on uniting ideas and action.

In the past, our intellectual training has provided years of intensive study before participants attempted to reach a public audience. The Incubator flips that script. Participants are expected to write, speak, and build platforms immediately, learning while doing and receiving expert guidance as they go.

For this reason, the Intellectual Incubator is designed for self-driven, early-career intellectuals who want to have a major impact on the culture. It is built for those who are motivated to chart their own paths rather than follow a prefabricated track, who want training tailored to their specific strengths and challenges, and who are eager to move fast, experiment, and put their ideas into practice from the start. For this reason, participants are encouraged to launch their own writing outlets, blogs, podcasts or events — to engage real audiences and test their ideas in the market.

The Intellectual Incubator is a strategic priority for ARI. Our leadership is investing time, energy and resources into making it the most successful intellectual training pipeline we have ever built, and our goal is to rapidly scale the program. We want the intellectuals we train to multiply their impact: we want each intellectual we train to be able to train five more, who in turn can train five more, and so on. 

New Offerings in the Intellectual Incubator 

The Incubator is designed to accelerate the growth of the Objectivist movement at an unprecedented rate. To make this possible, we’re leveraging everything we’ve learned over the decades to create an exciting suite of new offerings to support each participant’s intellectual development.

• Participation in ARI’s Atlas Circle Initiative

Members of the Incubator are invited to participate in ARI’s Atlas Circle Initiative. We encourage members to produce written and spoken content defending the morality of business and capitalism, while also offering them opportunities to collaborate and learn from business leaders. 

Members are receiving ongoing training from Yaron Brook and other senior intellectuals on how to speak and write persuasively in defense of business. The aim is for participants to iterate quickly, test ideas, receive feedback, refine arguments, and develop the resilience and creativity required of a public intellectual.

• Re-Release of Leonard Peikoff’s Course: Confusion Papers

As a part of the Incubator, ARI is reviving one of its most transformational educational experiences: Leonard Peikoff’s original “Confusion Papers” seminar. Long regarded by Objectivist intellectuals as intellectually transformational, the course is being re-released as a self-paced program for Incubator members, led by Ben Bayer and Alex Silverman. 

Members will have the opportunity to complete the original assignments, receive feedback from today’s leading Objectivist teachers, and participate in live discussion sessions devoted to each paper. 

• New Skills Workshops 

As part of fostering a startup ethos, we expect members to initiate seminars and workshops to help them level up in various skills and in their areas of expertise. Recently, Incubator members launched the Writing Lab, where they and others in the ARI community have the opportunity to submit essays and articles for feedback from our team of Objectivist intellectuals. The Writing Lab offers participants the opportunity to network within the ARI community and to share best practices for building a platform and growing an audience. 

Soon, a Speaking Lab will be launched to provide similar opportunities for practice and feedback in giving oral presentations. Also, those pursuing longer-form projects have the opportunity to participate in workshops to discuss and receive feedback on their ongoing work and research.

What Makes This Vision Possible

The Intellectual Incubator is only possible because of the vision and generosity of ARI’s supporters. Over the years, a number of donors have stepped forward to sponsor the careers of our most promising intellectuals, enabling them to focus on their training and intellectual work without compromise. Two such sponsors are Larry Berkelhammer and Ed Thompson, whose commitments have made it possible for Objectivist intellectuals to participate in full-time intellectual training. 

We are now inviting others to join them in this work of intellectual philanthropy. A sponsorship can underwrite a full year in the program for a young intellectual, giving him or her the resources to commit entirely to development and work. For those who want to have the deepest impact, a sponsorship can extend to cover multiple years, further equipping early-career intellectuals with the skills, confidence and momentum to make their mark.

Meet the New Generation

Already, the program is attracting promising intellectuals who represent the future of the Objectivist movement. Here are just a few of the new members and their personal missions as part of the Incubator.

Tristan de Liège writes and speaks about issues related to productive work and well-being. “My focus is on how we conceptualize the value of work, and how we should relate to others in the context of work and trade,” he comments. “I'm working to mount philosophic opposition against such misguided policy ideas as universal basic income and accompanying myths, for instance that it's self-destructive to shape one’s life around productive work. 

“I also aim to defend merit-based hiring practices and defuse DEI policies based in irrational, egalitarian philosophy. I’m interested in arguing against the idea that dedicating yourself to your work means or implies sacrificing yourself to duty or embracing suffering and pain. Instead, I want to showcase that work and achievement should be joyful, self-interested and rewarding.” 

Ibis Slade writes about issues in American history. “I work as an integrator writing about history and ideas, showing how the American Enlightenment’s vision of man as rational and self-made was carried forward by the ‘Founding Sons’ of the nineteenth century,” Ibis says. “My aim is to connect their cause for individual rights to the deeper values that make such progress possible. In the Incubator, I want to develop this account, sharpening my ability to tell the moral story of human progress.”

Samantha Watkins started her career as a public school teacher before working as a marketing writer for a Montessori startup. At ARI, she writes and speaks on issues in education. “My focus is on how different teaching methods impact a child’s developing character and how freedom would empower parents, teachers and children to pursue the best possible education,” she says.

“As a part of ARI’s Intellectual Incubator, my mission is to leverage Objectivism to radically increase demand in the culture for a rational approach to education — from defining the proper purpose of education, to analyzing the concrete methods that achieve that purpose, to advocating political freedom, which enables innovation.”

A BOLD STEP FORWARD

The Incubator is a bold upgrade to our intellectual training. Our aim is to create a multiplier effect.

Your single sponsorship can help cultivate a new voice for Objectivism and rational ideas. And because the Incubator is designed to scale, with each intellectual trained going on to mentor and multiply their impact, your sponsorship does more than launch one career. It helps to ignite a chain reaction of influence that will ripple outward into academia, education, journalism, business and beyond.

For those who share Ayn Rand’s conviction that ideas shape the world, there is no more leveraged investment than the sponsorship of a promising new intellectual. 

The Intellectual Incubator is ARI’s most enterprising investment in the future. Sponsorships are the fuel that enables that investment and helps multiply its dividends.

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This workshop will feature a panel discussion between three accomplished op-ed writers: Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security; Agustina Vergara Cid, associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute; and Elan Journo, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. Each brings years of real-world experience, crafting timely, persuasive commentary and placing it in major publications.

The panel is open to all and will take place on January 21 at 4:00 p.m. ET. To register and receive attendance information, please click here.

We encourage you to submit questions in advance using this Interest Form so the panelists can tailor the workshop to the writing challenges you most want to understand.

This event is hosted by ARI’s Writing Lab, a monthly workshop series for aspiring writers and emerging intellectuals in the Intellectual Incubator and in the broader ARI community. Writing Lab members gain access to feedback from ARI’s intellectual staff, opportunities to network with fellow writers, and special sessions like this one, focused on the practical skills needed to build a career as an intellectual.

If you’re interested in joining the Writing Lab or want to learn more about ARI’s Intellectual Incubator program, please contact us at incubator@aynrand.org.

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In Rand’s analysis, while Romantic art teaches man to associate morality with values, heroism, and pleasure, the culture — today as in her time —  teaches him to associate it with sacrifice, commandments, and pain. A child who admires fictional heroes is often met with cynicism and told that “life is not like that!” or urged to “come down to earth!” Modern culture suppresses his moral ambition.

The essay can help one recognize how one’s own idealism might have been blunted — and suggest how to begin re-nurturing it. It offers a powerful, positive account of the value of Romantic art, and in particular, it shows why morality cannot be learned solely from abstract discussions, without experiencing the concrete embodiment of a moral life in the form of a Romantic hero.

You can read the full essay here, or in Rand’s book The Romantic Manifesto.

Find a passage from the beginning of the essay below.    

When I saw Mr. X for the first time, I thought that he had the most tragic face I had ever seen: it was not the mark left by some specific tragedy, not the look of a great sorrow, but a look of desolate hopelessness, weariness and resignation that seemed left by the chronic pain of many lifetimes. He was twenty-six years old.

He had a brilliant mind, an outstanding scholastic record in the field of engineering, a promising start in his career — and no energy to move farther. He was paralyzed by so extreme a state of indecision that any sort of choice filled him with anxiety — even the question of moving out of an inconvenient apartment. He was stagnating in a job which he had outgrown and which had become a dull, uninspiring routine. He was so lonely that he had lost the capacity to know it, he had no concept of friendship, and his few attempts at a romantic relationship had ended disastrously — he could not tell why.

At the time I met him, he was undergoing psychotherapy, struggling desperately to discover the causes of his state. There seemed to be no existential cause for it. His childhood had not been happy, but no worse and, in some respects, better than the average childhood. There were no traumatic events in his past, no major shocks, disappointments or frustrations. Yet his frozen impersonality suggested a man who neither felt nor wanted anything any longer. He was like a gray spread of ashes that had never been on fire.

You can read the full essay here, or in Rand’s book The Romantic Manifesto.

Objectivism through Ayn Rand’s Fiction, Part 1 is designed for readers who want to understand Rand’s novels — and her philosophy — at a deeper level. Many students of Objectivism turn quickly to Rand’s nonfiction, leaving her fiction behind. That’s a mistake. Her fiction is where her philosophy took form, and it contains a rich treatment of many of Objectivism’s central principles. In this course, students will explore Rand’s treatment of individualism, values, work and purpose, emotions, physical force, and the benevolent universe premise. The course features recorded lectures by Onkar Ghate, with live instruction by Ben Bayer.

The Philosophy of Objectivism, Part 2 builds on the foundation laid in Part 1, continuing a systematic study of Objectivism as an integrated philosophy. Its goal is to help students learn how to better understand various principles of Objectivism and philosophical issues more generally, so that they can better apply the philosophy in their thinking and life. The course features recorded lectures by Onkar Ghate and live discussions led by Mike Mazza.

Introduction to the Objectivist Ethics, based on recorded lectures by Tara Smith, examines the foundations of Ayn Rand’s moral theory and the central questions it raises. Topics include the objectivity of value, the causal character of moral guidance, the nature of flourishing, the roles of values and virtues, and egoism. Live discussions will be led by Tristan de Liège.

Registration for courses is now open.

In the ARI Live winter 2026 course Reactionary Authoritarianism: From Mussolini to the ‘New Right,’ Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Elan Journo will examine the philosophical and historical origins of modern authoritarian movements. Tracing the path from anti-Enlightenment thought to fascism and Nazism, the course will show how reactionary ideas gained mass appeal, inspired collective sacrifice, and culminated in violence and war. Understanding these origins will help students place today’s authoritarian currents in their proper intellectual context.

Sotirakopoulos brings a distinctive perspective to the subject. In his youth, he was drawn to authoritarian ideologies himself, embracing communism before later discovering Ayn Rand’s philosophy. That experience informs his analysis of the appeal of collectivism across the political spectrum. As he now puts it, the “New Right” and Marxists are “both variants of collectivism,” united by their hostility to modern industrial society and freedom.

Sotirakopoulos’ personal perspective, together with Journo’s philosophical analysis, will equip students to cut through surface-level labels and grasp the deeper forces driving today’s political ideologies.

The course starts on January 12, 2026 and runs for eight weeks. Live classes meet on Mondays, 12-2:30 PM ET.  Registration is now open.

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We’re now making this exclusive webinar available to anyone who wants to benefit from Dr. Brook’s insights.

To get access to the webinar, please email the Incubator team at incubator@aynrand.org.

This webinar was part of ARI’s Writing Lab, a workshop series open to members of the ARI Incubator and the broader ARI community. The Writing Lab provides a space to network, build writing skills, and share works-in-progress for feedback. If you’re interested in joining the Writing Lab or the Incubator, reach out to incubator@aynrand.org.

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The conference will feature Elan Journo, Aaron Smith, Nikos Sotirakopoulos, Tal Tsfany, and Boaz Arad. Together, they will explore how Rand’s philosophy of reason and individualism can empower individuals to live a purposeful, fulfilling life, secure from the threat of barbarism.

A major highlight of the event will be a livestream interview with Mosab Hassan Yousef. Born the son of a Hamas cofounder, Yousef risked his life to renounce the totalitarian organization and defend the values of freedom and human life. The interview — conducted by Elan Journo — will be streamed live on ARI’s YouTube channel on December 19 at 3:55 a.m. PT / 6:55 a.m. ET.

This conference builds on ARI’s longstanding support for Israel and its moral right to exist. From Elan Journo’s What Justice Demands to our extensive commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ARI has consistently argued that defending freedom and civilization against those who seek their destruction requires unwavering moral clarity rooted in rational principles.

Join us in Tel Aviv, as we continue to champion the ideas that make freedom and human flourishing possible.

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Rand’s point was not that altruism offered a weak defense of capitalism. She thought that altruism was actively hostile to capitalism and individual freedom, because altruism was motivated by hatred for the free mind and human achievement. Her essay “Requiem for Man” provides the evidence. There she pointed to overt expressions of these motives in Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio. Now available online, the essay remains one of her most penetrating critiques of the culture’s worship of sacrifice.

The encyclical, presented as a plea for justice in a changing world, is laced with appeals to “humanism,” “dignity,” and “rights.” Rand cuts through this rhetoric with her characteristic clarity. For example, when the Pope calls on governments to set economic goals that subordinate individual rights to the needs of the poor, Rand exposes the result for what it is: totalitarianism. And when he calls on people to shun greed, Rand exposes it for a denunciation of ambitious work.

As Rand explains, the encyclical’s prescriptions would plunge all nations into subhuman conditions. What then is its goal? She argues that its aim is not to alleviate poverty but to instill moral guilt. By holding up impossible standards of sacrifice, Populorum Progressio ensures that men never develop self-esteem, as every attempt to live for themselves becomes a source of shame. In this way, the encyclical embodies the psychological culmination of unadulterated altruism: a profound fear of the human mind and the desire to see it subdued.

“Requiem for Man” is a masterful analysis of the philosophical and psychological roots behind the dominant morality of our age. Read it here, or find it in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

***

In advocating capitalism, I have said and stressed for years that capitalism is incompatible with altruism and mysticism. Those who chose to doubt that the issue is “either-or,” have now heard it from the highest authority of the opposite side: Pope Paul VI.

The encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“On the Development of Peoples”) is an unusual document: it reads as if a long-repressed emotion broke out into the open, past the barrier of carefully measured, cautiously calculated sentences, with the hissing pressure of centuries of silence. The sentences are full of contradictions; the emotion is consistent.

The encyclical is the manifesto of an impassioned hatred for capitalism; but its evil is much more profound and its target is more than mere politics. It is written in terms of a mystic-altruist “sense of life.” A sense of life is the subconscious equivalent of metaphysics: a pre-conceptual, emotionally integrated appraisal of man's nature and of his relationship to existence. To a mystic-altruist sense of life, words are mere approximations; hence the encyclical's tone of evasion. But what is eloquently revealing is the nature of that which is being evaded.

***

You can read her full essay here, or in her book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

“The Ethics of Emergencies,” originally published in The Virtue of Selfishness in 1964, challenges this focus and explains its philosophical and psychological roots. It has been published online by ARI for the first time.

The purpose of morality, Rand explains, is to guide a person in achieving his own values, not to adjudicate disaster after disaster. Her concern is with the choices that fill most of life, where moral guidance is most needed and acting long range is possible.

Rand shows how altruism corrupts our thinking about how to help others, leading to an obsession with helping strangers in emergency situations. Relationships with others can be a source of rational, selfish value, and fighting for others who matter to you selfishly is not a sacrifice, but an act of upholding your values. Because altruism forbids us from considering how others matter to us, it is incompatible with friendship, affection, and love. Nevertheless, Rand has an answer to how we should act in emergency situations, such as described in the Trolley Problem, and it is not one you will hear in philosophy courses. To learn Rand’s answer, read “The Ethics of Emergencies” here.

The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: “Should one risk one’s life to help a man who is: (a) drowning, (b) trapped in a fire, (c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, (d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?

Consider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):

1. Lack of self-esteem — since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.

2. Lack of respect for others — since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help.

3. A nightmare view of existence — since he believes that men are trapped in a “malevolent universe” where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.

4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality — since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.

Read the the full essay here.

In Ayn Rand’s last public lecture, delivered before an audience of businessmen in 1981, she answered: businessmen themselves are their own worst enemy. Previously available in print as an article in Ayn Rand’s anthology The Voice of Reason, “The Sanction of the Victims” has now been published online by ARI for the first time.

Rand calls businessmen out for their perpetual apology for their success and for the appeasement of their exploiters. Having accepted the morality of altruism, they are unwilling to say outright that they deserve to be rewarded for what they create. Instead, they try to justify themselves as humanitarians fulfilling their “corporate social responsibility.”

In a world where CEOs sign pledges to give away their fortunes, where energy companies bow to pressure to “go green” and tech companies agree to open more expensive onshore production facilities to create domestic jobs, the essay is as relevant as ever.

Rand shows how this posture of guilt is not a minor PR mistake but the root of capitalism’s vulnerability. The moment the productive concede that profit must be justified by service to others, they concede the premise their freedom depends on. Worst of all, they bankroll the very universities and programs that teach ideas that are hostile to capitalism.

The essay is required reading for anyone in the business world, or anyone seeking to defend it. Read the full speech here.

Since the subject of these seminars is investment, I must start by stating that I am not an economist and have no purely economic advice to give you. But what I am anxious to discuss with you are the preconditions that make it possible for you to gain and to keep the money which you can then invest.

I shall start by asking a question on a borrowed premise: What human occupation is the most useful socially?

The borrowed premise is the concept of social usefulness. It is not part of my philosophy to evaluate things by a social standard. But this is the predominant standard of value today. And sometimes it can be very enlightening to adopt the enemy’s standard.

Image Credit: Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)

The Ayn Rand Institute is pleased to announce that Rand’s seminal essay exploring the Romantic literary movement and defining its essence, “What Is Romanticism?,” is now available online for the first time, thanks to special arrangements with the publisher.

In the essay, Rand portrays Romanticism as a superlative achievement of the nineteenth century. In her view, it was the artistic expression of an era marked by “an atmosphere of men intoxicated by the discovery of freedom, with all the ancient strongholds of tyranny — of church, state, monarchy, feudalism — crumbling around them, with unlimited roads opening in all directions and no barriers set to their newly unleashed energy.”

In contrast to the Classicist authors who preceded them, the great Romanticists unleashed a world of larger-than-life characters and vividly creative stories, centered on man’s quest for profound moral values. Rand singles out Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Edmond Rostand as the most consistent exponents of this ideal, with Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as representative single novels.

Not all Romanticists were consistent exemplars of this approach. Many settled for tales of action devoid of spiritual depth, while others embraced the “Byronic” approach of the noble soul in vain struggle against an inexorable world. Rand surveys many examples of greater and lesser Romanticists, offering a treasure trove for readers to explore on their own.  

In Rand’s view, the essence of the Romantic spirit lay in their implicit recognition of man’s volition. As artists, they portrayed human beings as beings with free will, capable of shaping their lives through their own choices in the pursuit of meaningful values. Their approach stood in stark contrast to that of the Naturalist school of literature that followed, which, in its aim to portray “real-life” characters, operated on the premise that man is “determined by forces beyond his control.”

Unfortunately, like those other achievements of the century, Romanticism suffered from the philosophical confusion of its time. Lacking a clear, explicit foundation, it came to be misunderstood as an irrational, emotion-driven school of art. Thus, estranged from reason (which Rand saw as “the faculty of volition”), Romanticism was left vulnerable to misunderstanding, which led to its eventual decline.

Romanticism deserves a rebirth worthy of its heroic grandeur. Rand’s essay offers a provocative attempt to fill that void by defining it through its philosophical fundamentals. We invite you to explore it for yourself.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist re-creates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man and of existence. In forming a view of man’s nature, a fundamental question one must answer is whether man possesses the faculty of volition—because one’s conclusions and evaluations in regard to all the characteristics, requirements and actions of man depend on the answer.

Their opposite answers to this question constitute the respective basic premises of two broad categories of art: Romanticism, which recognizes the existence of man’s volition—and Naturalism, which denies it.

In the field of literature, the logical consequences of these basic premises (whether held consciously or subconsciously) determine the form of the key elements of a literary work.

You can find her full essay here or in her book The Romantic Manifesto.

Contrary to conventional thinking, Ayn Rand argued that the explanation is not the intellectual’s sincere humanitarian love, or a conscious conviction that altruism is right, but a deadly psychological compromise. Intelligent young people, she observed, too often feel false guilt stemming from others’ resentment for their intelligence. To be left free to think, this kind of young intellectual attempts to appease those who resent his intelligence by claiming to work for their benefit, thereby abandoning both moral values and himself.

In her essay “Altruism as Appeasement,” now available online for the first time, Rand describes the tragic result of this kind of compromise — especially within the intellectual’s own soul.

In this essay, Rand also draws out the implications of such appeasement for society as a whole. She connects it to trends in politics — such as the widespread sympathy for dictatorships — as well as to trends in esthetics, such as the celebration of “depravity” in modern art and literature. More broadly, she explains how appeasement by intellectuals unleashes the minority of deliberately evil men on society, while abandoning average men to “accept what the culture offers them,” however irrational or anti-rational the culture may be.

Here, we republish a short excerpt from the essay. And thanks to the dedication of ARI collaborating with publishers, you may read the rest of this article online for free, here. You may also purchase the full book of incisive essays, The Voice of Reason, on Amazon today.

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In March 1962, on the occasion of giving a lecture at M.I.T., I met a young student who was earnestly, intelligently concerned with opposing the trend to collectivism. I asked him his views on why so many of today’s young intellectuals were becoming “liberals.” He could not give me a full answer. But a few weeks later, he wrote me a remarkable letter.

He explained that he had given a great deal of thought to my question and had reached certain conclusions. The majority of college students, he wrote, do not choose to think; they accept the status quo, conform to the prescribed code of values, and evade the responsibility of independent thought. “In adopting this attitude, they are encouraged by teachers who inspire imitation, rather than creation.”

But there are a few who are not willing to renounce their rational faculty. “They are the intellectuals — and they are the outsiders. Their willingness to think makes them shine forth as a threat to the stagnant security of the levelers in which they are immersed. They are teased and rejected by their schoolmates. An immense amount of faith in oneself and a rational philosophical basis are required to set oneself against all that society has ever taught. . . . The man who preaches individual integrity, pride, and self-esteem is today virtually nonexistent. Far more common is the man who, driven by the young adult’s driving need for acceptance, has compromised. And here is the key — [the result of] the compromise is the liberal.

“The man who sets himself against society by seeking to be rational is almost certain to succumb to the extent of accepting a strong guilt complex. He is declared ‘guilty’ by his rejection of the omnipresent ‘equality in mediocrity’ doctrine of today. . . . So the intellectual, to atone for a false guilt, becomes today’s liberal. He proclaims loudly the brotherhood of all men. He seeks to serve his escapist brothers by guaranteeing them their desire for social security. He sanctions their mediocrity, he works for their welfare, above all he essentially seeks their approval — to atone for the guilt that they have thrust upon him in the guise of an absolute moral system which is not open to question.”

This young man deserves credit for an extraordinary psychological perceptiveness. But the situation he describes is not new; it is as old as altruism; nor is it confined to “liberals.”

Continue reading the essay here, or find it in Rand’s book The Voice of Reason.

Based on Dr. Binswanger’s 1973 doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, the book explores an important issue in the philosophy of biology: how to understand the concept of “goal,” especially as it applies to the world of biological processes beyond conscious human purposes. In the mid-twentieth century, many philosophers of science despaired of trying to understand how we explain the action of living things by reference to goals (e.g., that plants turn their leaves in order to catch the sun). The work consciously builds on Ayn Rand’s philosophy (both her value theory and epistemology) and the author’s own study of biology to help solve a puzzle that had stymied philosophers of the day.

Dr. Binswanger, who retired from ARI’s board of directors in 2024, teaches philosophy in our education program, ARU. The following excerpt is taken from chapter 1.

The Origin of Teleological Concepts

Despite the technical nature of some teleological concepts, such as “goal-directed action,” the use of teleological terms to describe various natural processes is a commonplace. English has such common teleological concepts as “goal,” “purpose,” “end,” “aim,” etc., and besides these there are many teleological phrases as well. We say, for example: “He studied diligently in order to pass the examination”; “He placed the dictionary on the desk so that it would be within easy reach”; “He takes daily walks for the sake of his health.” (In each case the teleological phrase could be replaced by a teleological concept: “The goal of his diligent study was to pass the examination”; “His purpose in placing the dictionary on the desk was to have it within easy reach”; “The aim of his walks is to maintain his health.”)

In fact, it is only at a relatively advanced stage of knowledge that some natural processes are viewed from anything other than a teleological perspective. Both primitive man and young children adopt an animistic attitude toward nature. They view all natural processes — both living and inanimate (in our terms) — as the expression of some conscious purpose. When a river rises, the primitive man explains this event in terms of the will of the river or of the river-god; when a storm occurs, its cause is held to be the anger of the clouds or of the cloud-god; a rock falling down a hillside may be seen as striving to get closer to the valley where it will “feel more at home.”¹

This animism is a natural consequence of a primitive stage of knowledge. We are directly familiar with human behavior, and it is only natural to assume that everything else in the world operates according to the same type of causation. The primitive man is aware that when people are angry, they make loud noises, violent movements, and become menacing. When, at this rudimentary level of understanding, he witnesses a thunderstorm, he assumes that the storm expresses the anger of the clouds. At this stage, he simply does not know enough about the nature of clouds and of man to appreciate the vast differences in their forms of action.

Even before primitive men have grasped the concept of “purpose” explicitly, they project the purposeful character of their own behavior out into the world. It is only as their knowledge advances that men grasp the idea of a cause that is not psychological in origin — or, more precisely, that they draw the distinction between psychological and physical causation.

The idea of physical causality — of actions caused by the physical nature of an entity without the intervention of conscious purpose — was not given explicit statement until the Greeks. The significance of the statement attributed to Thales, “Everything is water,” lies partly in the fact that it is the earliest recorded expression of a naturalistic, non-animistic conception of the world.²

It seems, then, that teleological causation is the first form of causation to be understood. Teleological concepts originally derive from the experience of purposefulness which attends our own conscious, deliberate actions. These teleological concepts are then secondarily applied (correctly or incorrectly) to other kinds of processes. In applying teleological language to other entities, one is holding, by implication: these entities operate on essentially the same terms as man does. Thus, teleological concepts have as their original and paradigm case the purposeful behavior of man; it is a man’s knowledge of his own purposefulness that gives rise to the wider idea of teleological causation.

Living Action vs. Inanimate Processes

As man’s knowledge about nature grows, as he becomes increasingly aware of the differences between human purposeful action and other natural processes, the area to which he attributes teleological causation narrows. Historically, the first step in the movement away from animism probably came with the recognition that some entities in the world are alive and others are not. The distinction between the living and the non-living may have had its origin in the striking difference between the living and the dead, as Hans Jonas has suggested.³  The most conspicuous feature of living organisms which isolates them as a class from both the dead and the inanimate is their power of self-produced movement. The two vital processes of growth and reproduction each involve self-produced movement. Dead bodies and other inanimate objects do not move themselves in this sense. . . . 

Another readily observable distinguishing feature of life is its conditionality. By conditionality. I refer to the fact that the organism’s existence is conditional upon its actions: the possibility of death is always present, and survival is a positive achievement that must be continuously won and re-won by the organism. Accordingly, living organisms have needs — i.e., conditions which must be satisfied by positive action on the part of the organism, if the organism is to remain in existence. Inanimate objects do not, in this sense, have needs; the existence of inanimate objects is not in general dependent upon their performance of specific courses of action (apparent counterexamples to this generalization will be considered in later chapters). It is readily apparent that living organisms will perish if they fail in their self-sustaining actions, whereas inanimate objects can ordinarily remain in existence in a state of total, inert passivity. Living organisms maintain themselves by a ceaseless process of action to derive needed energy and materials from the environment and utilize them for self-maintenance.

These two features, self-produced movement and conditionality, ground the early distinction between the living and the non-living.

Vegetative vs. Conscious Action

Continuing the progression to a non-animistic worldview, a further distinction is made within the realm of the living between conscious and vegetative actions. This distinction must be discussed in some detail. By “conscious actions” I mean those actions of a living organism which are initiated and directed by the organism’s consciousness. In contrast, by “vegetative actions” I mean those actions of a living organism which are not initiated and directed by the organism’s consciousness. A clear example of a conscious action would be the action of a dog chasing a rabbit. The dog’s action is initiated and directed by its perception of the rabbit. If the dog had not seen or smelled the rabbit, the chase would not have been initiated; the dog, once losing sight and scent of the rabbit cannot continue to follow the rabbit’s path. A clear example of a vegetative action would be the healing of a wound in the human body. The process of wound-healing is clearly neither initiated nor directed by one’s consciousness — the process will occur just as readily when one is asleep or unconscious. . . .

Goal-Directed Action vs. Purposeful Action

Although primitive man regards all processes in nature as similar to his own purposeful actions, modern man distinguishes firstly all living actions from inanimate processes, and secondly conscious from vegetative living actions. How do these distinctions affect the area of behavior one considers to be teleological?

A conscious action can be, under certain circumstances, teleological: our own purposeful actions fall into this category. As we have seen, human purposeful actions are in fact the original source of our teleological concepts.

The precise features constituting the purposefulness of man’s conscious actions will be identified in chapter 3. At this point, it is necessary only to note that I take the term “purposeful” to be much narrower than some other teleological concepts, such as “goal-directed.” I am assuming that “purpose” and “purposeful” apply only in the case of conscious actions — that is, in the case of actions in which the agent has an “end-in-view.” According to this usage, a “non-conscious purpose” is a contradiction in terms. . . .⁴  

The teleological concepts derived from the case of our own purposeful action can be straightforwardly applied to some of the conscious actions of other animals. For instance, a dog eats in order to satisfy its hunger, or for other motives, such as to enjoy a food it happens to like. Of course, there are very important differences between the purposeful actions of man and those of the higher animals. When a man eats, he has an implicit or explicit conceptual awareness of what he is doing and of the end it is to serve.

Moreover, human ends, being abstract, are much more complex than those of a higher animal. One may eat in order to maintain his health, to please a host, to sample a new food, or as part of an experiment in nutrition. To say that a dog eats purposefully to satisfy its hunger, we need recognize only that the dog feels hungry (without having the conceptual identification of that state as hunger), sees or smells the food (without having the conceptual identification of it as food), associates the sight or the scent with the pleasure of satisfying hunger (again without having conceptualized knowledge of the relationships involved, but merely a perceptual association based on memory), and goes to eat the food.

Accordingly, even though the level of conscious direction and motivation differs profoundly in the action of the man and the dog, both actions qualify as “purposeful” in the sense of that term I am using. The differences in the types of conscious action involved warrants a distinction between conceptual purposes and perceptual purposes.

In other words, there is no objection to talking of teleological ends, goals, etc., where there are, in Dewey’s phrase, “ends-in-view” — whether this “view” is perceptual or conceptual. Again, the factual question of just which other organisms have conscious purposes is not the issue: if an organism acts toward an “end-in-view,” no special philosophic problem arises in describing that action as teleological.

At the other extreme are the inanimate processes occurring in nature. Once a natural process is recognized as inanimate, it is regarded as non-teleological. Once it is realized that the storm clouds, for example, are purely physical phenomena, governed neither by life nor mind, the teleological explanation of the thunderstorm is abandoned. To recognize a natural process as inanimate is to see it as so different from one’s own purposeful actions that the application of teleological concepts to it becomes absurd. . . .

It is specifically with the class of vegetative actions that the problem of teleology comes into sharp focus. The other two kinds of process have been preliminarily classified: conscious action can be teleological; inanimate natural processes, being clearly different in their mode of causation, are classified as non-teleological. The classification of vegetative actions, however, is not easily settled. Are the vegetative actions of living organisms teleological? Are vegetative actions closer in their mode of causation to inanimate processes or to purposeful voluntary actions? This is the central issue, and its proper resolution will provide the basis for a new and deeper understanding of teleology.

To read further, you can purchase a copy of Dr. Binswanger's book here.

1. See H. and H.A. Frankfort, Before Philosophy (Baltimore, 1949), p. 24.

2. Aristotle reports Thales to have said also that everything is full of gods, but Thales may not have meant this in the animistic sense: “It seems likely, therefore, that in saying things are full of gods, Thales was not making a theological statement. Paradoxical as it may sound, he was tacitly denying divine causality. He meant that things, in order to be moved and to change, do not require force applied to them from the outside by the gods but move of themselves, by a natural [non-conscious?] force within them.” ((W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1952), p. 34.

3. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966), pp. 7–8.

4. I leave aside the issue of subconscious purposes in the psychologist’s sense.

The bound periodicals are invaluable as a means of understanding the historical context in which Rand wrote her nonfiction. Here we see her view of the American cultural-political scene unfolding in reaction to major milestones of the twentieth century: the Kennedy–Johnson administrations, the Vietnam War, the campus student rebellion, and the stagnation of the 1970s. Readers can see a high-level survey of the rich array of content in this earlier article in New Ideal. Rand not only comments on politics, but publishes theoretical articles on epistemology and esthetics, along with reviews of the art and literature of her day.

New Ideal is pleased to feature short excerpts from these bound periodicals. Each is from an article never anthologized, exclusively available in the bound periodicals, and now available for purchase from Amazon.

Here we republish a short excerpt from “Credibility and Polarization,” an essay in her third periodical, The Ayn Rand Letter, from October 11, 1971. Rand identifies the use of a specific “anti-concept,” a term devised to distort our understanding of important issues. “Polarization” is a term still used today to suppress debate about fundamental philosophic principles.

Intellectual confusion is the hallmark of the twentieth century, induced by those whose task is to provide enlightenment: by modern intellectuals.

One of their methods is the destruction of language – and, therefore, of thought and, therefore, of communication – by means of anti-concepts. An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate. If, loaded with too many approximations, you find yourself giving up the attempt to understand today’s world, check your premises and the words you are hearing. To understand what one hears and reads today requires a special translation.

Now to introduce myself, in this context. Philosophically, I am an advocate of reason. Practically, my task is to demonstrate that man needs philosophy in order to discover the proper way to live on earth. Journalistically, part of my task is to serve as a translator by identifying, whenever necessary, the meaning of the worst anti-concepts in our cultural smog. Colloquially, in this respect, call me a bromide-buster.

One of today’s fashionable anti-concepts is “polarization.” Its meaning is not very clear, except that it is something bad – undesirable, socially destructive, evil – something that would split the country into irreconcilable camps and conflicts. It is used mainly in political issues and serves as a kind of “argument from intimidation”: it replaces a discussion of the merits (the truth or falsehood) of a given idea by the menacing accusation that such an idea would “polarize” the country – which is supposed to make one’s opponents retreat, protesting that they didn’t mean it. Mean – what? . . .

To read the rest, order your copy of The Ayn Rand Letter from Amazon today.

Writing in 1960, Ayn Rand offered an explanation in her essay “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” — one that identifies the deeper corruption behind the persistence of tyranny.

In the essay, Rand contends that the West’s cycles of prosperity and destruction reflect the deeper philosophical conflict between reason and mysticism. Periods of stagnation and brutality, such as the Middle Ages and twentieth-century collectivism are, in her view, the result of mysticism. In contrast, the affluence and freedom achieved by capitalism in the United States stem from the rediscovery of reason since the Renaissance. As she argues, there is a logic to this historical pattern:

Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible.

Yet mysticism and the collectivist ideologies it gives rise to are culturally dead. As long as reason’s achievements remain visible in the modern world, she writes, “nobody will be able to arouse men’s hope, eagerness and joyous enthusiasm by telling them to ditch their mind and rely on mystic faith.”

Why, then, do irrational ideologies persist? Because, Rand argues, the West remains gripped by the morality of altruism, the idea that self-sacrifice is one’s highest moral duty and the only justification for one’s existence. Unless this moral code is intellectually challenged, men will continue to repeat the same historical disasters. They will be unable to fully grasp the achievements and promise of reason and individualism, which are sanctioned only by the morality of self-interest. “The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers — and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.”

“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” has never been available online — until now. You can read the full essay here. ARI is working with publishers to make online publication of Rand’s works like this possible.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

If you want me to name in one sentence what is wrong with the modern world, I will say that never before has the world been clamoring so desperately for answers to crucial problems—and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the belief that no answers are possible.

Observe the peculiar nature of this contradiction and the peculiar emotional atmosphere of our age. There have been periods in history when men failed to find answers because they evaded the existence of the problems, pretended that nothing threatened them and denounced anyone who spoke of approaching disaster. This is not the predominant attitude of our age. Today, the voices proclaiming disaster are so fashionable a bromide that people are battered into apathy by their monotonous insistence; but the anxiety under that apathy is real. Consciously or subconsciously, intellectually or emotionally, most people today know that the world is in a terrible state and that it cannot continue on its present course much longer.

The existence of the problems is acknowledged, yet we hear nothing but meaningless generalities and shameful evasions from our so-called intellectual leaders. Wherever you look—whether in philosophical publications, or intellectual magazines or newspaper editorials or political speeches of either party—you find the same mental attitude, made of two characteristics: staleness and superficiality. People seem to insist on talking—and on carefully saying nothing. The evasiveness, the dullness, the gray conformity of today’s intellectual expressions sound like the voices of men under censorship—where no censorship exists. Never before has there been an age characterized by such a grotesque combination of qualities as despair and boredom.

Continue reading the essay here, or find it in Rand’s book Philosophy: Who Needs It.