The American novelist Ayn Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation. She also defined a comprehensive philosophy, including a theory of esthetics in which she explained her literary values, techniques and objectives. In a 1963 speech she is explicit: “The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself – to which any didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means.” Her vision of the ideal man was a theme uniting her early life, her literary career and her later philosophical work.
Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, …
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