Day at Night: Ayn Rand, author, "Atlas Shrugged"

Ayn Rand is a writer and philosopher. Her philosophy is most dramatically expressed through the heroic characters in her four novels, of which the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are the most famous. In addition to her novels and nonfiction works on aspects of her objectivist philosophy, Ayn Rand is the author of a Broadway play, night of January 16th, the screenwriter for the film version of her novel the Fountainhead, and at present is publishing a fortnightly journal, the Ayn Rand.

Letter, which deals with the application of.

Her philosophy to current events and cultural trends.

Miss Rand, you have said that your primary purpose in writing is to project the ideal man. For those who may not have read Atlas Shrugged and have not yet met Hank Reardon or John Galt, how would you describe the ideal man?

Well, it actually took me about 700,000 words I know it did in Atlas Shrugged to describe him, so it's impossible to give a description. But I could tell you only the essential characteristics above everything else. A rational man A rational man Rational man. A man guided exclusively by reason, an independent man, and a man of great self esteem. I would name these three as distinguishing characteristics. The essential ones are what I regard as an ideal man.

So a rational man, then would depend upon nothing except his own reason for determining his actions? Exactly no belief, or no belief in anything he couldn't see or touch.

That isn't exactly the definition of reason. Certainly no belief as faith. No faith in anything. But reason is the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by your senses so you don't smell or touch with your reason. That's the material which your reason integrates into concept. And certainly an ideal man would never permit himself to act on the guidance of emotions or to act without knowing exactly what he's doing. If he's guided by reason, this will be the first two consequences. He will always know what he's doing and why, and he will not act blindly. And he would not act because he felt like it. To my ideal man and to me, this is one of the worst, most immoral actions that anyone can permit himself to say. I did it because I felt like it. It's quite all right to feel. But feelings are not tools of cognition. They are not guides to reality. And you keep your feelings to yourself. Feelings are the consequence of thought and action, not the primary if I didn't.

Do it because I felt like it, why did I do it? I did it because.

Because you felt. Now you see how bad language is. Because you concluded consciously that this is the right thing to do, right for whichever goal you're undertaking. You decide what you want rationally and you choose rationally what steps you will take to pursue that goal. So that if you take a given action, you do it because you think it is right.

Does man have. Should he have any concern for other men? You say individual.

You say concern is a very loose term. What would you mean by it?

Well, certainly most of us are brought up on an ethic that says that we are our brother's keeper.

I would say we most certainly are not, could not be and should not attempt to be. The only concern men should have for other men is respect for their rights. A man should never expect another man to sacrifice for him, nor should he sacrifice himself for other men. He should respect the independence and the rights of others and never take part in any form of enslavement, political enslavement. But outside of that, he's not responsible for other men and should never permit them to assume the role of responsibility for him. He should not submit to force, nor exercise force. He should not ask others to leave for his sake, nor should he ever leave for the sake of others. He should treat others as traders. That is, if two men agree on a given deal or they want to cooperate, that's fine. They trade value for value voluntarily, without sacrifice on either part. They both serve their rational self interest if they deal with each other. If they don't want to deal with each other, it should not be forced to.

And you place the emphasis upon rational and their rational self interest.

Oh yes, certainly I place that emphasis on everything. Because that which is proper for you on a rational basis cannot be proper for you on any other basis. And therefore all your rights rest on your nature as a rational being. If you want to claim any kind of rights, you cannot claim them for your feelings, only for your mind. And the actions I regard as moral are only the ones based on rational goals and rational motives.

The others are immoral in your philosophy.

Totally immoral. You mean those actions that are not based upon reason? Yes.

So the charity in this sense based upon emotion would not be moral.

Charity is a very marginal issue. One of my main tenet is that charity should never be a duty. And when you want to help someone else, it is proper. It's not evil, provided you do it on the basis of his value. Because he's a good person who suffers through no fault of his own. Because he's a friend of yours, because he's a victim of injustice. Those are all helping values. But never if you grind a man charity on the ground of his flaws. He's not accidental misfortune, but a misfortune brought about by his own evil. Then that. That kind of help I do regard as evil.

How does the concept of love, love for one another, fit into this philosophy?

Shall we start with romantic love? Because I don't quite understand love.

Romantic love certainly is a part of your novels.

It's very much romantic love I regard as the most properly selfish emotions there is. You fall in love with a person because you regard him or her as a value and because they contribute to your personal happiness. Now, you couldn't fall in love with a person by saying, you mean nothing to me. I don't care whether you live or die, but you need me and therefore I'm in love with you. If someone offered love of that kind, everyone would regard that as a deadly insult. That isn't love. Therefore, romantic love is a selfish emotion. It is the choice of a person as a great value. And what you fall in love with is the same values which you choose embodied in another person. That's romantic love. And that is profoundly, properly selfish. Now, any lesser form of love, such as friendship, affection, is the same thing. In effect, you grant a feeling of affection to those whom you have concluded are values. Your response to others is on the basis of values. And if they are no good, then you feel the appropriate emotion of contempt.

Are values absolute? Is it either good or evil? Is there any area in between? What you mean which value?

I would say values are contextual. They depend on the context of a given situation. Now, there are unfortunately too many people who are part good, part bad. Well, that's their problem. But what morality would demand of them is to struggle to the best of their ability to be good and never do evil consciously. If a man does that, I would regard him as completely good. If he never does evil consciously, deliberately. However, if he does just one action which he knows to be wrong, but permits it to himself, then he's evil absolutely. The rest is only a matter of time.

You've written that the concept of God is morally evil. Why?

I didn't say it's morally evil. Not in those words. I said it's false. False. I said it's a fantasy. It doesn't exist. I would say religion can be very dangerous psycho epistemologically in regard to the working of a man's mind. Faith is dangerous because a man who permits himself to exempt some aspect of reality from reason and to believe in a God even though he knows he has no reason to believe in a God, there is no Evidence of a God's existence. That is the danger psychologically that man is not going to be rational or will have a terrible conflict. He is wrong in that way. However, let me say I certainly recognize anyone's right to have any religion they want to. Their legal right, morally or philosophically that's a different issue.

For many people religion is a way of explaining the mysteries of life, the unknown things. Do you recognize no mysteries?

I don't believe that lack of knowledge is a license to start inventing fantasies. Man certainly is not omniscient and I believe he should stay within that which he knows, act on his knowledge and constantly try to expand his knowledge. It's not necessary to be omniscient. I don't think there are mysteries. It's a wrong term. There are a great many things which man doesn't know. And that's what the progress of science is. Knowledge is for to learn more and more, but not to invent explanation for what you do not know.

Ms. Rand, you're an atheist. Were you always an atheist? Did you grow up with religious training at all or No?

I had practically no religious training. My parents formally had a religion but fortunately didn't impose on me in any serious way. And I was about 13 when I decided I'm an atheist and that was it.

Was there any thing that brought you to this?

No, just simply thinking on the subject. And my main reason was that it is wrong to believe anything for which there is no evidence. And also the fact that I resent religious morality which tells man that he's an inferior being.

He's not.

He is not. As far as he knows he's the highest creation in civilization or the highest being. And the idea of accepting on face some ineffable being who is superior to you in every way even though you cannot aspire to that perfection. That is just a formula for psychological inferiority complex for self abasement. And I saw no reason for men to accept it. That's as early as 13. I still think so, but I know it much more clearly now.

What kind of education did you have as a young person? You grew up in what is now Leningrad, but then was St. Petersburg. Did you go to regular schools?

I had a regular equivalent of what here is called a high school. It was a gymnasium in Russia and graduated from the University of Leningrad.

What were your interests in those early years? Were they in literature? In writing?

I had decided that I would be a writer at the age of 9.

At 9.

At 9. And therefore that was my one overriding but I didn't major in literature in university. I knew that I would learn nothing in school.

So that you were determined. You knew that. That you would learn nothing?

Yes, from what I had gathered about the kind of literary courses that were being given. So I majored in history because I wanted to know the history of mankind as a sort of broad frame of reference for my novels, for my future novels.

Were there books or writers that influenced you in those formative years?

Only one. One philosopher and one writer, as far as writers go. Victor Hugo, whom I discovered at 13. And that was the greatest literary experience I ever had, incomparable and incommunicable. I admired him enormously. The sense of lives that he communicated, the glamour, the grandeur of men, was so high above anything I had encountered in any other books, and certainly in another universe, as compared to the reality of Soviet Russia, that I to this day, owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Victor Hugo. And it's from him in the fact that I learned the art of the romantic novel, in a serious sense of the word, the integration of plot, of action with the theme and the philosophical meaning of a book. I don't agree with his philosophy, but I admire him as a writer tremendously. The other influence is, of course, Aristotle in philosophy, who is the only philosopher with whom I agree, at least in fundamentals, not in everything, but in that which is originally his, not in the Platonic element in him. And that had a great deal of influence on my subsequent thinking. But those are the only two.

Did you begin writing at the age of nine?

I began slightly earlier, at about eight and a half. I remember the first story I wrote was signed. It was my name, and eight and a half after it. But was it fiction? It was a movie scenario. I was very impressed with screen, and I started writing screen stories. I attempted my first novel at the age of 16, in my first year in college, and gave it up because it was just. I was growing too fast. It became dated by the time I was in my second year, so that I didn't start writing professionally until I was in this country.

When you began writing fiction, did you write within the framework of what you call romantic realism, the grandeur of man, what man could be always. Were you influenced at all by the Soviet. By the Russian Revolution in this respect and living in a Soviet society?

Not at all. Perhaps it might have helped me in the ideas I held long before, in realizing how evil, the opposite of individualism.

Collectivism.

Yes, in grasping how bad collectivism is in concrete practice. That might have Been a value, but it's a horrible kind of experience. And I would rather have arrived at the positive without encountering that negative. But I can proudly say it didn't affect me. It didn't change anything in my way of thinking. The kind of development I can now look back upon. I went to a Soviet university which, of course, apart from there were still at that time some good professors who were actually teaching subjects. But there was also a great deal of propaganda, and it did not affect me in the least. For that, I'm very grateful to myself.

You came to America when you were about 20 or 21 years old.

That's right.

And you went to Hollywood. Was this because of your interest in screenwriting?

Yes, but not ultimately. I could barely speak English. I certainly couldn't write it. And it was at that time the day of silent movies. So I had figured out that I could be able to write a scenario, but not yet dialogue. That's why I decided I would start with the screen. But my first ambition always was novels.

You did earn your living in the early years in Hollywood? In a variety of ways, I suppose.

Oh, I had a bad struggle, yes. I had to hold odd jobs and even wait on tables, and first day I tried it, I was fired right there. But the last job of that kind, I was there a whole week, so that I was learning. But it was the years of the Depression, you know, and was very difficult. I held all kind of jobs which were very, very boring. But I was able to write.

Was that good for one's character to have to suffer that way, to work as hard as you worked?

No, I don't think so. I think the only good is later. It gives you a certain self confidence if you can overcome it and rise above it. But as such, I don't think hardships are good for anyone.

Our research indicated that you worked without pay for an architect, out of which you first began to write the Fountainhead, which, of course, Dale is an architect. Is that the reason that you worked for the architect?

As research. As research as Fountainhead? Oh, yes. And I had asked him for the job for that reason, and he knew it was for a novel, but no one else in the office knew it.

This was not the first novel. This was the third novel by that time, was it not?

Yes. My first novel was with the Living, and Anthem was a novelette. And the Fountainhead came.

Did you have difficulty getting your novels published? I've read that you had some difficulty with publishers who didn't accept them readily.

Fountainhead. I had bad difficulties with. Yes, 12 publishers rejected it on the ground that it was too intellectual and non commercial and wouldn't sell. And of course, it's one of the great examples of a book made strictly by word of mouth. It was the readers that made this book. And it's still going on as strong as ever.

As strong as ever?

Yes.

How many years after publication?

It was published in 1943, so it's over 25 years. Can you calculate 30 years. Almost 30.

That's right, 30 years. Do you understand why? Do you understand why this is so with readers?

Oh, yes. Because I was presenting them with a philosophy which is desperately needed today and which doesn't exist anywhere else because. Absolute desert in literature. Both literally, both in regard to Romantic realism. There were no such novels. Practically everything that was serious was naturalism in those years. And more importantly, it's the philosophy of individualism.

Why do you object to or why do you not like novels, which are close to life as it really is naturalism?

Because I don't think it's art.

It's not art.

It's partly art. In other words, a naturalistic novel is an incomplete work of art. It has certain elements of art, such as characterization or some of them have a good style. All that is artistic, but art primarily, and that I can prove philosophically, is a recreation of reality and not a photograph. Art is not journalism. It is a recreation of reality according to an author's metaphysical value judgments. Metaphysical?

Does that mean that you write only about what ought to be, not what is?

Yes, but let me finish. I use the big words. I want to be sure that the audience does understand me. By metaphysical I mean the nature of reality as such, the nature of existence. It's his view of man and of the nature of existence that a writer or any artist really expresses in art. And Romantic art presents to man what he might be and ought to be. That is, it presents an ideal and tells man. This is the essential nature of man. And you as a human being can become that if you wish. So that art, in that sense, romantic art, is a model building. Not, however, and I emphasize that not for the purpose of improving or teaching something to your readers.

Not teaching.

Oh, not teaching. Art should never be didactic. That's a secondary issue. That's pure gravy. The primary purpose of art is contemplation for its own sake. So that the purpose here is for the reader to see what greatness man is capable of and to be inspired by that.

So as I read Atlas Shrugged then, and any one of the heroic characters. Hank Reardon or John Galt or Francisco. These give me a model of the kind of person I might be.

If you wish. But that isn't my purpose in writing.

I see.

My purpose is for you to look at those people and to enjoy the spectacle. As a secondary consequence, you might find yourself inspired. That's fine. But I want to give you that experience. And that's what I want to give myself. I write for the purpose of creating an ideal man in actions which you can respect and admire and which you don't find too often in life.

And you've said yes, that ideal man would be productive and that to be productive is most favorable environment. Is a laissez faire capitalism without restraint upon him.

Of course.

So that you would oppose antitrust laws, income tax, all the restraints that are normally imposed?

Oh, yes. Certainly not normally. They're imposed abnormally.

Abnormally? I see.

But yes, I would oppose all that. I believe in incomplete laissez faire full, unregulated capitalism, not mixed economy. What you have today is certainly not capitalism. But you have to leave man free to function.

From what you say about art, I would judge you do not regard photography as art, since it records precisely what is there. How do you feel about abstract art?

Do you mean non objective?

Non objective.

I think it's less art than photography. I think it is an enormous fraud.

Fraud?

Yes. I don't think there's. It's impossible to discuss it seriously. It means nothing. It is nothing. The perpetrators claim that they don't know what they're doing. And I think they're right. I'm willing to take them at their word. They don't know what they're doing and neither do we. And the ashcan is the proper place for it. But I mean it seriously.

Yes, I know you mean it seriously. I suspect many of those who've read your novels will wonder if you plan to write any more novels.

Oh, yes. Yes. I'm under contract to write one. But I can't promise you when I will have it done.

How many years did it take you to write Atlas Shrugged, which is an enormous volume?

13 years. But my next novel won't be that long.

It won't?

Oh, no. Atlas is just once in a lifetime.

I should think so. I want to return for just one moment to religion and to the ethic in which so many of us were raised. Of course, religion is used by some people as a way of facing the idea of the inevitability of death. How do you feel about that? As an Objectivist, that is. How do you feel about death? Is it?

It doesn't concern me in the least because I won't be here to know it. Don't you see that? Death. The worst thing about death, and what I regard as the worst human tragedy is to lose someone you love. That is terribly hard. But your own death. If you're finished, you're finished. My purpose is not to worry about death, but to live life here on Earth.

Now, do you find joy in that life?

Oh, yes, very much so.

What are the sources of joy? Achievement.

Achievement and romantic love, my husband. Those are the two great values in life. Career and romantic love.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.