While reading Ayn Rand’s work I often come across references where I wish there were an explanatory footnote or a full citation so that I could see the original source in context. I often find myself involved in mini research projects to investigate these sources. In order to help me better keep track of my findings, I have started documenting them on this page in case others find them useful as well.
This page is not intended to be a comprehensive annotation of Rand’s work. It will be updated ad hoc as I come across things I wish to look up. If you have any suggestions for additions, feel free to e-mail me: .
The Fountainhead (1943)
p. iv, Author’s Introduction to the 1968 Edition, “It [Romanticism] is concerned—in the words of Aristotle—not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be.”
Various translations of Aristotle render the corresponding passage as things that “may happen,” “could occur,” etc., but “ought to be” seems to have been added by Rand. At first glance, this addition significantly changes the meaning of the text and invalidates Rand’s attribution of the “what might be and ought to be” principle to Aristotle. However, Tore Boeckmann explains, “In going from ‘could occur’ to ‘might be and ought to be,’ did Ayn Rand misquote Aristotle? Perhaps in the most literalistic sense. But she is exactly right on the implications of Aristotle’s ‘could occur’—and of his central argument in the Poetics.” See Aristotle’s Poetics, Book I. [ix] 3.2.3 (link). Essays on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Chapter 7 (link).
The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
The Web and the Rock, excerpt, “That hour, that moment, and that place struck with a peerless co-incision…. but had yet produced no beauty that could equal this.”
See Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock, Book 5, Chapter 30 (link).
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
pp. 51-52 The Comprachicos
The term “Comprachicos” was coined by Victor Hugo in the passage Rand quotes from The Man Who Laughs, in her own translation. There appears to have been no actual historical group that it refers to, but much of what Hugo describes may may have authentic roots in common practices of the seventeenth century. One common creation was supposedly artificial dwarves made using knotgrass and other substances. The conception was known to Shakespeare. “Get you gone, dwarf; You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;” A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See Wikipedia, Comprachicos (link).
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979)
pp. 62-63 The crow epistemology experiment
Likely not an actual experiment, but a compilation of anecdotal accounts from a group of everyday people who had the common desire to eradicate their local egg-eating magpie population. Popularized by Levi Conant’s The Number Concept which was influential in the study of the anthropological development of mathematics. Conant himself references a paper by Sir John Lubbock, which ultimately references a letter by Charles-George Leroy, lieutenant of hunting fields in the administration of the forests and parks of Versailles and Marly. This letter was published anonymously as the entry “instinct” in Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie, a work most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. See Richard Shedenhelm, “Reply to Campbell: Where Were the Counting Crows?” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2000, pp. 189–195. JSTOR (link). Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, Instinct [French] (link).
pp. 92-93 (The most uncompromising advocates of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy continue: “You cannot even be certain of the direct evidence of your senses—for instance, that you now see a patch of red before you. In classifying what you see as ‘red,’ you are implicitly declaring that it is similar in color to certain of your past experiences—and how do you know that you have remembered these latter correctly? That man’s memory is reliable, is not a tautology; the opposite is conceivable.”)
Likely a reference to John Hospers. Cf. John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (4th Edition), pp. 93-94.
Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)
p. 13 “There is an old fable which I read in Russian (I do not know whether it exists in English). A pig comes upon an oak tree, devours the acorns strewn on the ground and, when his belly is full, starts digging the soil to undercut the oak tree’s roots. A bird perched on a high branch upbraids him, saying: ‘If you could lift your snoot, you would discover that the acorns grow on this tree.'”
Poem by Ivan Krylov, likely inspired by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s fable of “The Oak Tree and the Swine,” a satirical reworking of Aesop’s “The Walnut Tree.” See Ivan Krylov, A Pig Under an Oak Tree (link). Wikipedia, Ivan Krylov (link).
The Art of Fiction (2000)
p. 86 “Then, one day, some acquaintances invited me to a lecture by a liberal at the New School for Social Research. I felt that it would be immoral to go; but they insisted that the lecturer was not leftist, that he was a brilliant speaker, and that they had already bought the tickets, so I went. And there was Toohey in the flesh, in personal appearance and manner. [The speaker was the British Labour Party politician Harold Laski.]”
It inspires a great deal of curiosity to see the person who Rand thought embodied Toohey “in the flesh, in personal appearance and manner.” A short, but unfortunately silent, surviving clip of Harold Laski (1893-1950) gives a sense and feel of Laski in the flesh. See Professor Harold Laski and Wife in Czechoslovakia (1947) [clip] (link).
The Art of Non-Fiction (2001)
p. 13 “Noteworthy here is a cover from an early issue of The New Yorker. It pictured the wall of a museum, upon which hung a large painting of a very savage caveman. He is running through the jungle carrying a naked woman, who is screaming. He is leering ferociously, and obviously intends to rape her. As he runs through the jungle, he is breaking the branches he encounters, and doves fly off to avoid him. In the museum, in front of this painting, sits a little old lady with an easel, copying the painting. But out of all of this violent subject matter, she chooses to copy only the flight of doves. This is a good visual example of selecting a theme too small for the subject.”
See The New Yorker – Saturday, February 11, 1933 – Issue # 417 – Vol. 8 – N° 52 – Cover by : Constantin Alajalov (link).
Miscellaneous
Ayn Rand’s favorite painting, Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) by Salvador Dali (link).
The Christian iconography is surprising, but what appealed to her was the portrayal of hero worship central to her view of femininity and the goal of her writing.