ARI News

How Ayn Rand Built on the Ethical Ideas of The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand originally envisioned Atlas Shrugged as a socio-political novel that would build on the ethical ideas of The Fountainhead, but as she worked on Atlas, she developed and revised her ethical thought in unexpected ways. In his lecture course “Ayn Rand’s Ethics: From The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged,” available at ARI’s eStore, Darryl Wright explores how, and why, her ideas changed — as well as what did not change.
Culture And Society

On This Holiday, Give Thanks to the Producers

In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, there’s an unforgettable Thanksgiving scene at the mansion of Hank Rearden, a self-made millionaire industrialist whose achievements include the invention — after ten years of toil — of a revolutionary new metal, stronger, cheaper and more durable than steel. In addition to Rearden, seated at the table for Thanksgiving dinner are his mother, his wife Lillian, and his brother Philip, all of whom are wholly dependent on Rearden and his wealth.
ARI News

Read Now: Prize-Winning Essays on Ayn Rand Novels

ARI has held worldwide essay contests for students on Ayn Rand’s fiction for thirty years. This year we will award over 750 prizes totaling more than $130,000. Last year’s contestants read and responded to essay prompts on Ayn Rand’s Anthem, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. You can read all three winning essays on our essay contest page.
ARI News

The Atlas Project Update

Recently I was in New York with Greg Salmieri to broadcast the tenth regular episode of The Atlas Project, on the occasion of our completion of the first section of the novel, “Part I: Non-Contradiction.” In our New York City classroom in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, overlooking Central Park, we met with one of our largest groups of in-person attendees.
ARI News

Anniversary Chapters: Gregory Salmieri Discusses “Discovering Atlantis: Atlas Shrugged’s Demonstration of a New Moral Philosophy”

“In my chapter title, ‘Discovering Atlantis’ refers to a scene where Hank Rearden says he feels like he’s discovering a new continent, and there are some allusions that connect this to the Atlantis image that’s present elsewhere in the novel,” says Gregory Salmieri, talking about his essay “Discovering Atlantis: Atlas Shrugged’s Demonstration of a New Moral Philosophy.”
Culture And Society

Ayn Rand’s Handwritten Notes on Atlas Shrugged

October 10 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. To commemorate that event, we asked Jeff Britting, curator of the Ayn Rand Archives, to supply us with images and text from one of the many exhibits he has mounted over the years, this one devoted to Rand’s handwritten notes and drafts for the novel, which was published in 1957.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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