A Companion to Ayn Rand

This expansive Companion to Ayn Rand's work provides vital orientation and context for scholars and educated readers grappling with Rand's varied and controversial corpus. Rand's work has been often ignored and sometimes disdained in the academy, yet she continues to fascinate readers with her dramatic novels, wide-ranging essays, and Objectivism, her philosophy of reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism. After an informative introduction and a brief biography of the Russian émigrée who went on to celebrate and defend her vision of the American way of life, each chapter of this Companion focuses on a different area of the philosophy she developed, or on a selection of her writings. Several chapters tackle aspects of her views on ethics and the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of her philosophy. Others examine Rand's thoughts on political theory, her approach to literature (as both theorist and author), and her acute analysis of contemporary events. Taken together, the chapters provide an overview of Rand's distinctive worldview, relating the different aspects of her thought together, as well as relating each to philosophers and theorists in connected fields. This publication provides a thorough, scholarly grounding in Rand's varied and highly original work, offering the most wide-ranging and up-to-date survey available.