Ayn Rand
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[c] February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (/aɪn/ INE), was a Russian-born American author and philosopher.[3] She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays.
Ayn Rand
Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
February 2, 1905
Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
March 6, 1982 (aged 77)
New York City, U.S.
Ayn Rand
- Author
- philosopher
- English
- Russian
- Russia (until 1931)[a]
- United States (from 1931)
1934–1982
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including private property rights. Although she opposed libertarianism, which she viewed as anarchism, Rand is often associated with the modern libertarian movement in the United States. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, with a few exceptions.
Rand's books have sold over 37 million copies. Her fiction received mixed reviews from literary critics, with reviews becoming more negative for her later work.[4] Although academic interest in her ideas has grown since her death,[5] academic philosophers have generally ignored or rejected Rand's philosophy, arguing that she has a polemical approach and that her work lacks methodological rigor.[3] Her writings have politically influenced some right-libertarians and conservatives. The Objectivist movement circulates her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.
Life[edit]
Early life[edit]
Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, into a Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg in what was then the Russian Empire.[6] She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan).[7] She was 12 when the October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted her family's lives. Her father's pharmacy was nationalized,[8] and the family fled to the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War.[9] After graduating high school there in June 1921,[10] she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then named),[d] where they faced desperate conditions, occasionally nearly starving.[12]
