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that dominated Russian culture during Rand’s formative years. Living in Russia during its celebrated Silver Age, she witnessed a burst of Nietzschean and neo-Hegelian thought: the Symbolist movement, Russian Religious Renaissance, and Russian Marxism each attempted the resolution of various forms of dualism. I focus in greater detail on the contributions of Nicholas Onufrievich Lossky, Rand’s philosophy teacher at Petrograd University. Lossky, who encapsulated many of the significant dialectical methods prevalent in Russian thought, was the most significant of Rand’s professors and perhaps the one who most influenced her early intellectual development. I explore the historical connection of Rand and Lossky. As the dean of contemporary, pre-Bolshevik, Russian philosophy,²¹ Lossky viewed the world as an organic totality in which each part is internally related to every other. This dialectical conception reappears in many forms in the writings of Lossky’s student, Ayn Rand. I conclude Part One, with a developmental study of Rand’s intellectual maturation from the moment of her arrival in the United States until her death in 1982. My focus here is not on Objectivism as an integrated system, but on Rand’s intellectual groping toward synthesis.

      Historically, Rand’s revolt against dualism animated her project.²² In Part Two, I switch from the historical to the synchronic. I reconstruct Rand’s system to show how it is an inherently dialectical and nondualistic formulation that differs considerably from conventional alternatives.

      Since the hierarchical structure of Objectivism cannot be ignored, I present the basic tenets of Rand’s perspective in a logically progressive manner to emphasize their more specific applications. It would be an error, for example, to begin with Rand’s politics and proceed to her ontology. Because each branch and principle depend on their antecedents, one must first enter the lofty domain of metaphysics and work methodically toward Rand’s epistemology, philosophical psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics.

      In Part Three, I show how Rand’s mode of analysis culminates in a radical assessment of the nature of power as manifested in all social practices and institutions. I scrutinize her attempt to trace the interrelationships of culture, education, sex, race, and the neofascist welfare-warfare state. I also examine her theory of history, her vision of the Objectivist society, and her communitarian impulse.

      In this book I also make explicit comparisons and distinctions between Rand and other social thinkers. This is often a difficult task, owing partly to Rand’s myopia concerning both her intellectual debts and her assessment of other philosophers. In bravura fashion, Rand once said that in the history of philosophy, she could only recommend the “3 A’s”—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand.²³ According to Barbara Branden’s biography, Rand’s formal study of philosophy was limited to just a few college courses. She studied Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche in some depth, but read only excerpts from—or summaries of—the work of other key figures. She often learned about different schools of thought in conversation with friends and colleagues who were themselves students of philosophy.²⁴ Though Rand recognized some positive elements in the thought of Nietzsche, Spinoza, the classical liberals (such as Locke), and the Founding Fathers, though she celebrated the work of such twentieth-century individualists as Ludwig von Mises, John T. Flynn, and Isabel Paterson, she failed to see that many of the philosophers whom she attacked shared a similarly integrated perspective.

      Nathaniel Branden (1982T) has observed that her wholesale rejection of other viewpoints was a by-product of her theatrical, emotional, and abrasive style. According to Branden, Rand did little to build bridges to those who operated in different intellectual contexts. As a polemicist, she often dismissed her opponents on moralistic or psychologistic grounds. Moreover, her broad generalizations often lacked the rigor of scholarly analysis.²⁵ Branden does not fault Rand for this; he argues that it was not Rand’s goal to work out the details of a full philosophical system. Rand offered important ideas in perception, epistemology, metaethics, politics, and aesthetics, but left it to her followers to defend Objectivism in the realm of technical philosophy (N. Branden 1989, 417–18).

      This is not to deny the sophistication or originality of Rand’s thought. But an enriched appreciation of her philosophy cannot emerge unless we compare her ideas to the ideas of the thinkers she celebrated or disparaged. Rand’s place in intellectual history will very much depend upon how effectively she responded to these other traditions and to the central problems with which they have grappled. These comparisons are essential. As Robert Hollinger suggests, we can utilize contrasting doctrines to enhance our understanding of Rand’s project, “even if they come from the pens of people whom Rand would consider anathema.”²⁶

      I do not make these comparisons either to challenge Rand’s originality or to bolster her credentials as a grand social theorist. Rand synthesized a number of elements in her philosophic system that have been explored previously by other thinkers. She is neither qualified nor disqualified as a serious thinker simply because what she says about any particular issue resembles what other thinkers have said about that issue in the past. The integrity and seriousness of her work cannot be established by merely pointing out its similarity to or difference from the works of more “respected” philosophers such as Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Lossky, Hayek, or Habermas.

      Comparison promotes confrontation and communication not merely between those who celebrate Rand and those who criticize her but also between the traditions that are being engaged. As Richard Bernstein (1971) puts it, “The provincialism that is so fashionable among ‘true believers’ of different philosophic orientations can blind us to a serious, sympathetic understanding of other philosophers who are working in different idioms” (4). The dialogue that may result can help us to comprehend not only the perspectives of those we oppose but the implications of our own beliefs as well.

      For many reasons, such a dialogue has been slow to develop with Objectivism. Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, and David Kelley all suggest that the Objectivist movement of the 1960s fostered a cult-like reverence toward Rand. Ironically, a movement dedicated to freedom and individual autonomy engendered disputes over ideological purity.²⁷ Some devout followers attempted to model themselves on Rand’s fictional characters. If John Galt, the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged, smoked cigarettes, this behavior was to be emulated. If Rand’s heroines had a penchant for rough and explosive sex, this was also to be admired.²⁸ Many of Rand’s disciples accepted each of her pronouncements as if they were intrinsic to the system of Objectivism. If Rand equated horror movies with depravity, or argued against electing a woman president on principle, or expressed distaste for the music of Beethoven, the works of Shakespeare, or the paintings of the Impressionists, or abhorred the practice of homosexuality, or disliked facial hair,²⁹ her personal, aesthetic, and sexual preferences were elevated to the status of dogma.

      Kelley (1990) writes that many of Rand’s followers failed to distinguish between the ideas essential to her philosophy and those that were not. For Kelley, Rand offers “the foundation and outline of a system” within which different interpretations are likely to develop (61).

      Nevertheless, one cannot simply dismiss the authoritarian, sometimes downright foolish, aspects of the organized Objectivist movement. That these aspects exposed Rand’s philosophy to ridicule and caricature cannot be denied. Of course, from the vantage point of intellectual history, Rand has no monopoly on folly. Of greater importance, however, is the charge that authoritarianism is inevitable in any grand system of philosophy. Since Rand posits a cultural revolution as necessary to the establishment of a genuinely free society, she seems to mimic the totalistic approach of the Marxists. In the twentieth century, Marxist ideology linked its organic, integrative methodology with its sanction of the total state. Hence, it is legitimate to examine the connection between what Karl Popper has called political and methodological totalitarianism. According to Popper ([1962] 1971), the totalistic attempts by Hegel and Marx to transcend the dualism of facts and standards underlies the inexorable totalitarianism of their worldviews. Popper argues that the fact-value distinction is a necessary one, for it bars people from attempting to enforce their own normative prescriptions on society as if these values were divinely dictated. Popper’s “open society” is liberal and capitalist; it opposes totalistic central

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