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

Watch Now: Ayn Rand Experts Discuss Ivo Van Hove Staging of The Fountainhead

Following the recent Ivo Van Hove international production of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gilman Opera House, a panel discussion appeared on Facebook Live. The panelists were Gregory Salmieri, philosophy fellow at the Anthem Foundation; Shoshana Milgram, associate professor of English at Virginia Tech; and Ann Ciccolella, artistic director at Austin Shakespeare.
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

ARI Essay Contest Changes a Life

In 1997, Lisa Kostova, a high school student in Bulgaria, submitted an essay on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Thanks to the prize she won, she was able to travel to the United States to further her education and establish a promising career. Lisa recently wrote to ARI to tell us her story.
Government And Business

New York Times Quotes Yaron Brook on Businessmen Inspired by Ayn Rand

In today’s New York Times, author and columnist James B. Stewart quotes Yaron Brook, the Ayn Rand Institute’s executive chairman, at length in an article titled “As a Guru, Ayn Rand May Have Limits. Ask Travis Kalanick.” The article discusses Rand’s influence on a growing number of businessmen and entrepreneurs, including Kalanick, the recently departed chief executive of Uber. Kalanick, the article points out, was a fan who even used cover art from her novel The Fountainhead as his avatar on Twitter.

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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