Trudy Schuett -- an equal rights activist and a lady whom I respect -- has asked me what the "thing with Ayn Rand" is on the ifeminists.com site that I own/edit; specifically, the left-hand column of that site is devoted to "Ayn Rand, The Woman." The short answer to Trudy's question: Rand was the pivotal philosophical influence in my life. When I was 15, I read "We The Living" and, then, I gulped down every other piece of Rand or Objectivist material I could find. By my early twenties, when I met Murray Rothbard, I had already drifted from those Objectivist moorings, especially with regard to Rand's views on sexuality and aesthetics. After Murray, I became an outright individualist anarchist and, so, a heretic vis-a-vis a philosophy for which I still have incredible respect. Heresy aside, Rand was and always will be the first philosopher through whom I glimpsed the tradition of individualism with which I fell intellectually in love.

My respect is based on far more than sentimentality or a past debt, however. Rand and Objectivism (even now) receive nothing close to their due regard from philosophers who, at the very least, should recognize the originality of her shortest nonfiction book "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology." Instead, I have heard repeatedly, "there is nothing original about Rand, the philosopher." Despite Rand's protestation that she had drawn upon no one (except, perhaps, Aristotle) -- indeed, sometimes because of the protestation -- critics have slammed her claim to being an original thinker.

I think the truth is in between. In certain respects, Rand is exquisitely original but she also functions within a philosophical and historical framework. Indeed, Rand is something of a traditionalist if you judge philosophical tradition by the last two thousand years as opposed to the last century. (Note: I am not saying that Rand read or otherwise consciously drew upon earlier philosophers; I am merely saying that many of her positions are typical of classical philosophy and not original to it.) Even Rand's methodology harkens back; that is to say, Rand is a system-builder in the tradition of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer. She integrates various fields of intellectual endeavor -- from ethics to aesthetics, from epistemology to psychology -- in order to present a unified, consistent whole. An intellectual worldview. She is also a traditionalist (or rationalist) in terms of the ends to which she puts philosophy. Rand asks fundamental questions such as "What is the nature of man? What is the nature of knowledge?" This use of philosophy stands in sharp contrast to some 20th century schools such as linguistic analysis.

So within this framework of tradition, what of originality? I've mentioned my high regard for Rand's path-breaking epistemological work. But I think there is an aspect of Rand that people overlook. Originality is not confined to the first instance of stating an idea; it is also found in how ideas are combined. I mentioned that Rand was a system-builder. She combined ideas, she integrated fields of knowledge in a manner that had not been seen previously. She joined atheism to ethics, economics to morality, aesthetics to psychology -- and wove them all together -- in a way that was unique under the sun. I don't agree with every brick in the wall but, Lord!, it is a structure at which to marvel.