Anthem: Foreward by Christopher M. Langan

The history of philosophy and culture is a grand, recursively-scaled dialectic. A person or school, a group or generation, espouses a thesis; the other side responds with its antithesis; the two extremes are then combined in a synthesis imbued with both perspectives. Ayn Rand can be best understood as a philosophical reactionary in this well-established tradition, the creator and champion of a dual antithesis directed against what she regarded as two devastating assaults on human individuality.The first of these assaults was religion; at the age of thirteen, she decided with certainty that she was an atheist. The second was communism, long the bane of her Russian homeland and still a geopolitical threat.<br/>Rand’s dual antithesis consists of a mixture of atheism, materialism and extreme individualism, recast as “logic and objectivity” and aggressively presented as an affirmation of human freedom and self-interest. Critics sometimes dismiss this philosophy, called objectivism, as a mere capitalistic twist on communism, an oversimplistic and logically insupportable brand of egoism cloaked in empty protestations of rationality. Others point to the cult-like atmosphere of various Ayn Rand organizations and study groups; while such groups ostensibly exist to promote earnest philosophical consideration of Rand’s writings, a few of them are reputed to enforce cult-like obedience to her every stated opinion, forbidding critical appraisal and discouraging exposure to alternative viewpoints. But even if these criticisms are factual, they should not dissuade us from looking for strands of truth in her message.