Objectivist movement
The Objectivist movement is a movement of individuals who seek to study and advance Objectivism, the philosophy expounded by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. The group, ironically named "The Collective" due to their actual advocacy of individualism, in part consisted of Leonard Peikoff, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Allan Blumenthal. Nathaniel Branden, a young Canadian student who had been greatly inspired by The Fountainhead, became a close confidant and encouraged Rand to expand her philosophy into a formal movement. From this informal beginning in Rand's living room, the movement expanded into a collection of think tanks, academic organizations, and periodicals.
This article is about adherents to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. For the modernist literary movement, see objectivist poets.Rand described Objectivism as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".[1] Objectivism's main tenets are: that reality exists independently of consciousness; direct realism, that human beings have direct and inerrant cognitive contact with reality through sense perception; that one can attain objective conceptual knowledge based on perception by using the process of concept formation and inductive logic; rational egoism, that the moral purpose of one's life is the achievement of one's own happiness through productive work; that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism; and that art is "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments."
Influence[edit]
There are a number of writers who cannot be classified as Objectivist but who still exhibit a significant influence of Objectivism in their own work. Prominent among these is John Hospers, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, who credited Rand's political ideas as helping to shape his own,[93] while in other areas sharp differences remained. Another is Murray Rothbard, who, like Rand, advocated volition, Aristotle and natural rights,[94] but who also advocated anarchism, which was anathema to Rand. Also in this category are journalist Edith Efron, scientist Petr Beckmann, and author Charles Murray.
Criticisms and responses[edit]
Criticisms[edit]
Over the years, some critics have accused the Objectivist movement of being a cult or cult-like, and Rand of being a cult figure. The term 'Randroid' (a portmanteau of 'Rand' and 'android') has been used to evoke the image of "the Galt-imitating robots produced by the cult".[95]
Suggestions of cult-like behavior by Objectivists began during the NBI days. With growing media coverage, articles began appearing that referred to the "Cult of Ayn Rand" and compared her to various religious leaders.[96] Terry Teachout described NBI as "a quasi-cult which revolved around the adoration of Ayn Rand and her fictional heroes", one that "disintegrated" when Rand split with Nathaniel Branden.[97] In 1968, psychologist Albert Ellis, in the wake of a public debate with Nathaniel Branden, published a book arguing that Objectivism was a religion, whose practices included "sexual Puritanism", "absolutism", "damning and condemning", and "deification" of Ayn Rand and her fictional heroes.[98] In his memoirs, Nathaniel Branden said of The Collective and NBI that "there was a cultish aspect to our world [...] We were a group organized around a charismatic leader, whose members judged one another's character chiefly by loyalty to that leader and her ideas."[99]
In 1972, libertarian author Murray Rothbard began privately circulating an essay on "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult", in which he wrote: