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Ayn Rand: Q & A on Objectivism

Ayn Rand

Presented at: Ayn Rand On Campus - Columbia WKCR Interviews

Date: Jan 01, 1962

From 1962-1966, Ayn Rand conducted a series of radio interviews at Columbia University's student run radio station, WKCR. The series, entitled "Ayn Rand on Campus," featured Rand and her associates lecturing and answering questions on a wide array of subjects. In this recorded interview, Rand responds to questions about her philosophy of Objectivism. 

Subjects addressed include:
  • The equal application of philosophy to men of differing abilities
  • The role of philosophy in Rand's novels
  • The purpose of morality 
  • How a society's dominant philosophy influences social structure 
  • The process of gradual philosophical change 
  • The dominant philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
  • The inability of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Mill, Bentham and Spencer to defend capitalism
  • The influence on capitalism and socialism of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Fichte, Locke and Aristotle 
  • Rand's assessment of contemporary society
  • Sacrifice and altruism through the ages
  • The intellectual developments behind the founding of the United States
  • The need to discover what actions are in one's self-interest, and the reasons why not all desired actions necessarily fall into that category
  • How interested individuals can help move a culture in a more rational direction.

philosophyethicsintellectual activism

Parts: 1

Handout: none

Publications: