A Love Letter from Ayn Rand

Well, really a letter about love… self-love… because that’s all she could manage.

May 22, 1948

Dear Ms. Rondeau:

You asked me to explain the meaning of my sentence in The Fountainhead: “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.”

The meaning of that sentence is contained in the whole of The Fountainhead. And it is stated right in the speech on page 400 from which you took the sentence. The meaning of the “I” is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person.

A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.

The usual (and very vicious) nonsense preached on the subject of love claims that love is self-sacrifice. A man’s self is his spirit. If one sacrifices his spirit, who or what is left to feel the love? True love is profoundly selfish, in the noblest meaning of the word — it is an expression of one’s highest values. When a person is in love, he seeks his own happiness — and not his sacrifice to the loved one. And the loved one would be a monster if she wanted or expected such sacrifice.

Any person who wants to live for others — for one sweetheart or for the whole of mankind — is a selfless nonentity. An independent “I” is a person who exists for his own sake. Such a person does not make any vicious pretense of self-sacrifice and does not demand it from the person he loves. Which is the only way to be in love and the only form of a self-respecting relationship between two people.

Ayn Rand

What a sad, pathetic little person she was.

Share:

Related Articles

24 thoughts on “A Love Letter from Ayn Rand

  1. Because they have a choice, I find the people that worship her and her novels even more pathetic. To think we have a Congress with a growing minority of these anti-social mutants peddling her self-absorbed nonsense as their foundational guide for life should scare the hell out of almost everyone.

  2. Rand and her inner circle of followers were pretty harsh about non-compliance. She’s spinning in her grave. If she were alive, she’d be issuing more pronouncements like this about each and every politician who claimed to be one of her followers. They’d be castigated in a fashion that would be quite familiar to any Republican who didn’t tow the party line. The analogy? Today’s Rand poseurs are quite similar to “cafeteria Catholics”. They want to pick and choose which phrases they admire.

  3. I think her blatant hypocrisy in turning to public assistance anonymously at the end of her life while continuing to preach against it as Ayn Rand means she would slot quite nicely into the republican party of today. It also shows why paulie ryan is such a big fan.

    I have no doubt that if she were alive today she would be a cult leader like Sarah palin and Dr. Tim Nerenz who preachs hard against the government with their right hand while grabbing every government dollar she could get with her left!

    1. In both those situations, I hear a common rationalization. After years of believing that the government has taken your taxes “at the point of a gun” (as Rand was fond of saying), it’s easy to slide into the belief that the return of funds from the government is somehow a justified refund on your tax payments. No actual calculation is necessary. There’s no need to try to account for the many goods and services your taxes supported over the years. Any refund is justified if you’ve paid something. That was Rand’s justification for payments from Social Security and Medicare.

      She made similar arguments for students receiving government subsidy or scholarships. She didn’t like the system, but in some circumstances, she didn’t see anything wrong with taking advantage of what they were offering when it was going to her or an acolyte. If the benefit was going to an amorphous “They”, they became moochers and grifters and parasites. Ever heard talk like that from a Republican?

      It’s easy to fantasize about “going Galt“. It’s difficult to avoid the government. And of course, it’s not uncommon to hear the “go Galt” fantasy from well-fed Republicans who’ve always worked for the government… or who work for a business dependent on Medicare… or who have a spouse working for the government.

  4. John,

    I am not sure if your giving her too much credit or if I am just too cynical. I dont see Rand that way at all.. The way i saw her getting SS and medicare at the end of her life was because her philosophy and policies were not working and she didnt want to die penniless without healthcare.

    I find it the same thing when people like Cantor run home and pose with the big checks and campaign on creating jobs via the stimulus then run to fox news and tell everyone what a failure the stimulus is. They are not willing to live by their own philosophy only get use it when they see fit.

    1. It’s not clear how much money she had at the end. I’m just relating the way that she explained it to her followers. For many years she had a newsletter for her fans. She’d answer letters from readers. In one, a student asked about receiving Federal scholarships or subsidies.

      It’s an issue common to both libertarians and free-marketers like Rand. They can always argue for any incremental change if it seems to point in a free-market direction. Larger flaws can be ignored. There’s always an aspect of an institution that can be criticized for not being free-market. Any of its failures can be attributed to its lack of purity. Lots of “no true Scotsman” and “Look, over there” redirection, plus scorn for people you don’t know directly.

  5. Re Ayn Rand “dying penniless”: I knew Ayn Rand very well at the end of her life. During her last couple of years, I visited her about once a week in her apartment, to play Scrabble and talk philosophy. She was wealthy (not extremely so) as you can imagine, since her novels and nonfiction books were selling a combined total of over 100,000 copies year in and year out. She had sold a total of about 5 million books by the time she died. I saw the figures from her publisher (New American Library).

    On love: her views on love are liberating–unless you don’t want love at all, but forgiveness. What Fromm called agape (vs. eros)–blanket approval. “Brother-love.” I don’t want it.

    On taking crumbs from the government: As a wealthy individual (and the highest tax rate then was 70%), she paid 100-fold for whatever pittance she was able to get back from the state. Are we who oppose state intervention supposed to suffer only, and never take any of the goodies being “redistributed”? Should we not send mail through the Post Office, not drive on government roads?

    If you have some argument against Ayn Rand’s ideas, rather than ad Hominem attacks, I would be pleased to hear them. In my 40 years as a philosopher, I have only heard a couple of objections to Objectivism that even rise to the level of arguments. And none that held up.

    1. (Note to Blogging Blue Readers: Harry Binswanger is an Objectivist philosopher who has written extensively on the works of Ayn Rand. I’m responding here assuming it is him.)

      While I appreciate you dropping by our little blue blog here in Wisconsin, I think arguing with someone who considers Ayn Rand a “once in a millennium genius” would prove futile for me and for you.

      As Robert Heinlein once observed, “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” Nothing productive would come from an argument on the merits or deficits of Objectivism with someone who has dedicated his entire professional career (and apparently a sizable chunk of his ego) to advancing Rand-ian “philosophy.” There is no upside for your “objectivity” on the subject….

      As you say,

      If you have some argument against Ayn Rand’s ideas, rather than ad Hominem attacks, I would be pleased to hear them. In my 40 years as a philosopher, I have only heard a couple of objections to Objectivism that even rise to the level of arguments. And none that held up.

      the die is already cast in your mind…

      For me, Corey Robin is the last word on Ayn Rand…

    2. Harry you did not read my post very well. What i said was, like a typical right winger, they live off of what they so adamantly oppose because they understand how wrong their “philosophy” really is. I said that instead of taking no government help like she preached to her followers – including one who she was corresponding to at the time she was on the government dole, she took as much as she could get. the blatant hypocrisy of course disgusts me to no end.

      Are we who oppose state intervention supposed to suffer only, and never take any of the goodies being “redistributed”?

      Ummm she and you and paul ryan and every other rand cult follower, live daily with the benefits of government that you so ignorantly who work so hard to stop. You eat undiseased food, drink clean water, drive on roads that are cleanly plowed, play in parks that are mowed and free of dangerous animals and predators and are also able to walk out of your bedroom and walkinto your master bath and flush your fricken toilet. Everywhere you look and everything you do you are benefitting from the government. I could give a shit about any book you wrote, if it has to do with less government while soaking as much of it u as you possibly can.

      So to answer your question YES she should have turned down SS and medicare at the end of her life to not do so showed her to be the charlatan that she was. She sold snake oil pure and simple nothing more nothing less.

      And one final point, anyone whose hero is WIlliam Edward Hickman has no reason, nor credibility to ever be considered a serious “thinker” . As i stated before she cashed out on her cult followers, the difference between her and the sarah palins of the world she did not have fox news to promote her bullshit and get her ridiculous message out to people all over the country. Luckily for many americans at the time Alisa rosenbaum was not able to prey on them.

      That being said, thanks for visiting our blog! share it with your friends!

  6. “That being said, thanks for visiting our blog! share it with your friends! ”

    But . . . but . . . all my friends are Objectivists!

    Rather than going on about Ayn Rand as a person, we might have debated the Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, or even (gasp!) politics. But no one seems interested.

    Ironically, Corey Robin in the clip posted says the argument is really about how whether or not she was as brilliant a thinker as her followers claim. Uh, no. The argument is about things like, is reality objective? Can we rely on sensory evidence? How are concepts formed? What, if anything, validates a concept? Is man’s mind free to go by the evidence, or is some form of determinism true? What are the respective roles of induction and deduction in knowledge? Does morality have a factual basis–and if so what? Can there be proof of a code of ethics or is it all subjective? What are values and does man need to pursue values? Is there such a thing as human virtue, and if so, what does it consist in?

    1. How do we have a debate on ethics when the person we are discussing has none? When the circus rolls into town the local doctor does not go down and discuss healthcare with the person selling snake oil, they just let them sell to the few suckers and move on to the next town.

      I will let your me me me, mine mine mine debate be left to Liberty University and various 4k classrooms throughout the country where it is better suited.

      Perhaps a more fitting debate would be if someone thinks of a sick deranged human being whose claim to fame is dismmebering a 12 year old girl as being true freedom, does her teachings belong in a criminal psychology class or just a class on modern culture and cult following.

      While many people around looked to Wisconsin for our political uprising and pushing back against extremist politicians, I have no doubt that Rand would have looked at Wisconsin in admiration for turning out such freedom fighting celebrities as Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer!

      Finally, her famous admirer Paul Ryan would be doing the whole country a favor if he made his staff watch the ABC afterschool special “THE WAVE” instead of making them read the insipid, nonsensical Atlas Shrugged.

    2. The argument is about things like, is reality objective? Can we rely on sensory evidence? How are concepts formed? What, if anything, validates a concept? Is man’s mind free to go by the evidence, or is some form of determinism true? What are the respective roles of induction and deduction in knowledge? Does morality have a factual basis–and if so what? Can there be proof of a code of ethics or is it all subjective? What are values and does man need to pursue values? Is there such a thing as human virtue, and if so, what does it consist in?

      Certainly you aren’t claiming Rand made contributions to these core philosophical subjects, are you? Funny, I don’t recall seeing the word “phenomenology” in Atlas Shrugged.

    3. But . . . but . . . all my friends are Objectivists!

      I was so reminded of this exchange from Manhattan by Woody Allen

      [On her ex-husband]
      Mary Wilke: I was tired of submerging my identity to a very brilliant, dominating man. He’s a genius.
      Isaac Davis: Oh really, he was a genius, Helen’s a genius and Dennis is a genius. You know a lot of geniuses, y’know. You should meet some stupid people once in a while, y’know, you could learn something.

      Just sayin’… 😉

  7. Okay, I won’t bother you people any further. I have confirmed my suspicions about what the left has descended too.

    1. Are you suggesting some sort of devolution based on your experiences in the comment section of a small, midwestern blog?

      Or are you trying to pick a fight?

      1. Okay, Harry. Cool. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

        Oh, and thanks for “. . .confirm[ing] my suspicions about what the Rand-inspired Right [is all about, and what it] has descended too [sic]”.

        Now, play us out with “The Twilight Zone” theme music. Harry Binswanger deserves no less.

    2. Welcome, Harry. Flattered you’re here. Hope you can stay. Question your assumptions and check your premises. Don’t dismiss this discussion because it wasn’t prepopulated with acolytes.

      I’d be glad to hear what you have to say to justify your “100 fold” overpayment estimate. Should a good Objectivist perform any sort of calculation in this situation, or is it better to assume that all one’s taxes are overpayments, and take what you can get from the government?

  8. “Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge—and, therefore, the rejection of reason means that men should act regardless of and/or in contradiction to the facts of reality.” Who are the pathetic ones? Attila and the Witchdoctor is afraid. Why else would someone deem it necessary to spend energy fighting someone who is clearly so “pathetic”.

Comments are closed.