Project MUSE®: Journal of Ayn Rand Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 14 (2014) - Vol. 23 (2023)Latest Articles: Journal of Ayn Rand StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Ayn Rand Studies2169-71321526-1018Latest articles in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886282
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This special 2023 double issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies constitutes the final volume in our twenty-three-year history.In 2020, when JARS celebrated its twentieth anniversary, I provided an in-depth tribute to all those who had contributed to this project (Sciabarra 2020). Here, I will only repeat that this journal was the brainchild of the late Bill Bradford and that it is to him that we owe our creation. And it is to the hard work of all our editors, advisory board members, peer readers, and contributors that we have owed our continued success. Since 2013, we have been grateful for the remarkable support of the Pennsylvania State University Press family, which has led to our greater visibility as the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallIntroduction2023-04-07text/htmlen-USIntroduction2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®59712026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07What She Left Behind
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886283
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In recent years, several publications have appeared that uncover the biography of young Alissa Rosenbaum, specifically her Russian/Soviet period in 1905 to 1926. Among these are works by Nikiforova and Kizilov (2018, 2020), Sciabarra and Solovyev (2021), and Kravtsov and Kizilov (2022). But, as is often the case, as research continues, there is more that can be added to the picture. My own recent original research of archival sources in several countries, many of which are published for the first time, and my analysis of available literature has uncovered much more about the lives of Ayn Rand's closest relatives who were mentioned by the philosopher's biographers.Alissa's father, Zelman-Wolff Zorakhovich Rosenbaum
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallWhat She Left Behind2023-04-07text/htmlen-USWhat She Left Behind2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®3917122026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Ayn Rand's Years in the Stoyunin Gymnasium
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886284
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Documentation of the education of Ayn Rand in Russia was begun by Chris Matthew Sciabarra in his 1995 book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. His research was augmented by two further articles of his published initially in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (Sciabarra 1999; 2007), where he analyzed university records and matricula for the first time. With the 2021 JARS publication of Sciabarra and Pavel Solovyev's coauthored article, "The Rand Transcript Revealed," our understanding of Rand's university years was significantly deepened.Rand, who was born Alissa Rosenbaum, attended the Stoyunin gymnasium in Saint Petersburg when she was a child. There have been few scholarly studies of her years at that gymnasium. Based
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallAyn Rand's Years in the Stoyunin Gymnasium2023-04-07text/htmlen-USAyn Rand's Years in the Stoyunin Gymnasium2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®1061212026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Epistemology According to Rand and Hayek
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886285
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Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology has been criticized as conventional, unoriginal, derivative, and eclectic; however, these are not fair criticisms unless one considers most preceding Aristotelian and scholastic epistemology completely erroneous. Rand starts with percepts, bundles of sensory impulses received from unvarying physical objects. Percepts have intrinsic properties we can perceive and define, which, in Rand's words, "must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity." She proposes a scheme of concept formation, "entity-identity-unit." In Rand's construction, we first encounter percepts, enabling us to perceive that we have encountered some so far undefined or unrecognized
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallEpistemology According to Rand and Hayek2023-04-07text/htmlen-USEpistemology According to Rand and Hayek2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®1614392026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Check Your Presuppositions! A New Kind of Foundationalism in Objectivism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886286
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In general, foundationalism is the view that knowledge is held in a hierarchical structure, with some knowledge being more basic than other knowledge, the latter supported by some form of inference from the former, and the most basic knowledge known not indirectly by inference but directly by experience or insight of some kind.It is well established that Ayn Rand's philosophy is a kind of foundationalism, and that foundationalism is central in understanding how knowledge is justified in Objectivism, but it has not been explained what kind of foundationalism Objectivism is based on—or how that justification works. This article explores the differences and conflicts between two kinds of foundationalism that are
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallCheck Your Presuppositions! A New Kind of Foundationalism in Objectivism2023-04-07text/htmlen-USCheck Your Presuppositions! A New Kind of Foundationalism in Objectivism2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®2425952026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Life Is Not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life's Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886287
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Ayn Rand maintains that her ethics is based on the choice between life and death, and the argument at the base of her metaethics depends upon the ideas that life is a goal-directed process and that human life is an end in itself. Her outlook here is biocentric, dependent on life having certain characteristics. But philosophy of biology is not a topic upon which she dwells. Despite the Darwinian/Existentialist sound of "the choice between life and death," at first glance her ideas about biology do not seem to comport perfectly with the typical philosophy of biology that one encounters in book after book today.Contemporary thought about biology has an odd squeamishness about life being goal-directed or an end in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallLife Is Not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life's Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning2023-04-07text/htmlen-USLife Is Not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life's Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®2624812026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07How We Live: A Dialectical Examination of Human Existence
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886288
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I've looked at life from both sides now.In the words of Ayn Rand's fictional hero, John Galt, life is "a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action" (Rand 1957, 1013).1 Since reason is "man's basic means of survival" (Rand 1961b, 23), human life is a process of sustaining one's existence by means of one's own reason-guided actions. But what is one's existence, beyond one's simply … existing? What, most fundamentally, is entailed by life as a rational—that is, always rationally empowered, if not always rationally behaving—human being?Much has been written on the various specific facets of human life and action: what basic needs people have, how to satisfy them, how to balance one's various needs and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallHow We Live: A Dialectical Examination of Human Existence2023-04-07text/htmlen-USHow We Live: A Dialectical Examination of Human Existence2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®1606922026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Ayn Rand's Novel Contribution: Aristotelian Liberalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886289
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Ayn Rand (1905–82) was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, polemicist, and founder of the philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." Both supporters and detractors too often remember Rand for her bellicose, and deeply illiberal, public engagement, such as her absurd comparison of businessmen in America to Jews in Nazi Germany (Rand 1966a, 45) or her bigoted defense of settler colonialism against "savage" Native Americans and Palestinians (Rand 1974). But Rand, for all these faults and more, put forth some thoughtful, interesting arguments that are worth examining in their own right. My goal here is not to defend all, or even most, of Rand's views, but to highlight, explore, and contextualize what I see as her central
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallAyn Rand's Novel Contribution: Aristotelian Liberalism2023-04-07text/htmlen-USAyn Rand's Novel Contribution: Aristotelian Liberalism2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®782592026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07On Grounding Ethical Values in the Human Life Form
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886290
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By his very nature, man is a metaphysical animal.To the readers of this journal, it certainly should come as no surprise that women can make, and have made, important philosophical claims and arguments. Indeed, their claims and arguments have changed the course of phi-losophy. We would say such about Ayn Rand. But she is not alone. We see this demonstrated by the women who are the subject in the two books reviewed here. The women discussed in these books, as well as Rand, can be regarded as belonging to the Aristotelian tradition and were instrumental in advancing that tradition. Because of this, it seems worthwhile to provide a summary of the basic ethical views of the women discussed in these two works, and then
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallOn Grounding Ethical Values in the Human Life Form2023-04-07text/htmlen-USOn Grounding Ethical Values in the Human Life Form2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®568412026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Freedom's Three Furies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886291
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The year 1943 represented a watershed in the history of libertarianism, bringing the publication of three books by three remarkable women: The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson, The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. William F. Buckley Jr. aptly dubbed the authors as the "Three Furies of Modern Libertarianism" (Sandefur 2022, 1). Paterson, Lane, and Rand were instrumental in reviving pro-liberty and free market ideas, which at the time they entered the scene had seemed near death. In this well-written and meticulously documented overview, Timothy Sandefur brings to life the stories of each woman and uncovers their unique ideological contributions. Even the strongest
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallFreedom's Three Furies2023-04-07text/htmlen-USFreedom's Three Furies2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®109102026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Restoring Reason and Tolerance at America's Universities
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886292
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It has become increasingly clear that a new intellectual intolerance has been brewing at colleges and universities across the United States, and across the world. A growing number of speakers or faculty members have been canceled and/or silenced after student outcries—often because their beliefs are not in line with the beliefs of faculty and students (Campus Disinvitation Database n.d.). Studies find that majorities or large minorities of students are self-censoring political views frequently, especially in classrooms (Examining student self-censorship on college campuses 2022). Majorities of students also believe in carving out large exceptions to free speech on campus (Paulson 2020). A small number of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallRestoring Reason and Tolerance at America's Universities2023-04-07text/htmlen-USRestoring Reason and Tolerance at America's Universities2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®200792026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Ayn Rand and Russian Nihilism Revisited
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886293
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Derek Offord argues that Ayn Rand's intellectual origins are solidly within the tradition of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian intelligentsia. This thesis should be of interest to a wide audience, and so Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia is a nice fit with the Russian Shorts series' editorial aim to reach a "broad range of readers." Historically, scholarly work on the Russian intelligentsia has comprised studies of particular individuals, focused on describing it as a class, or concerned with the relationship between the nineteenth-century intellectuals and the early twentieth-century revolutions. The question of where the nineteenth-century intelligentsia has been influential outside Russia
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallAyn Rand and Russian Nihilism Revisited2023-04-07text/htmlen-USAyn Rand and Russian Nihilism Revisited2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®111482026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Ayn Rand, Fascism, and Dystopia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886294
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Ayn Rand scholarship in Italy has reached a turning point with the publication of the book Ayn Rand e il fascismo eterno. Una narrazione distopica (Thermes 2021), which we could translate as Ayn Rand and Eternal Fascism: A Dystopian Account, by Diana Thermes. It is a turning point that is also a beginning—this being the first Italian-language work specifically devoted to Ayn Rand—the only exception being L'opera narrativa di Ayn Rand (1997), by Alessandro Laganà, a short, rare book focused on Rand's fiction.Thermes, a professor of the history of political thought at Università Roma Tre, has carried out this task in a remarkably original—one could even say "unorthodox"—way, setting the bar high for future Italian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallAyn Rand, Fascism, and Dystopia2023-04-07text/htmlen-USAyn Rand, Fascism, and Dystopia2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®245872026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Postmodern Rand, Transatlantic Rand
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886295
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Ayn Rand has often been treated, both by admirers and by detractors, in a kind of isolation—whether lofty pinnacle or outer darkness—from the wider context of other thinkers and cultural forces, so it is gratifying to see works such as Neil Cocks's collection Questioning Ayn Rand, whose contributors examine Rand's ideas from the standpoint of postmodernist and psychoanalytic thought, and Claudia Brühwiler's Out of a Gray Fog, which seeks to explore Rand's European roots and affiliations rather than viewing her in a purely American context.Of the two works under review, Questioning Ayn Rand: Subjectivity, Political Economy, and the Arts is the less successful—not because it is largely adversarial (there's plenty in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallPostmodern Rand, Transatlantic Rand2023-04-07text/htmlen-USPostmodern Rand, Transatlantic Rand2023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®935702026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07Master Author Index to Volumes 13–23
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/886297
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issues 25–46prepared by roger e. bissellFor the Master Author Index to Volumes 1–12, Issues 1–24, see The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 12, no. 2 (December 2012): 289–315. Revised online at: https://aynrandstudies.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/jars12_2masterindexrevised.pdf.This Index to Volumes 13–23 (Issues 25–46) is organized alphabetically by author in the following format:Volume. Number. Issue Number. (Date): Page Numbers.For example, an article published inVolume 1, Number 1, Issue 1, Fall 1999, pp. 1–26is rendered as: 1.1.1 (Fall 1999): 1–26.No references to abstracts or biographical entries are included.Multiple author references are organized chronologically.Symposia contributions are noted by symposium title
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/631/image/coversmallMaster Author Index to Volumes 13–232023-04-07text/htmlen-USMaster Author Index to Volumes 13–232023-04-072023TWOProject MUSE®557792026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002023-04-07