The Ayn Rand Guide to Romance

Can Ayn Rand tell us some­thing about achiev­ing a deeply sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ship? It’s hard to imag­ine. She was noto­ri­ous­ly churl­ish, dumped friends and allies who did­n’t give her works pos­i­tive reviews, and cheat­ed on her hus­band with a man 24 years her junior, then even­tu­al­ly expelled the young Nathaniel Bran­den from her intel­lec­tu­al cir­cle. And heck, she even made her hus­band wear a bell on his shoe, to warn her about his com­ings and goings.

But, no mat­ter, you have to sep­a­rate the phi­los­o­phy from the per­son … or so many acolytes of flawed thinkers have argued. Right fans of John Edwards? All three of you? So here you have it, The Self­ish Path to Romance, a love man­u­al based on Ayn Rand’s Objec­tivist phi­los­o­phy. The video almost screams par­o­dy, but it’s appar­ent­ly not. You can snag a copy of the book on Ama­zon here…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Argues That Believ­ing in God Is an Insult to Rea­son on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)


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Comments (7)
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    • Raithwall says:

      You make me sick. I have the best rela­tion­ship in the world, and it’s com­plete­ly based on rea­son and self improve­ment. I’m hap­pi­ly mar­ried, with­out fuck­ing fol­low­ing my “heart.” nnMy brain has giv­en me supreme hap­pi­ness. So suck on that.

  • Phi­los­o­phy is about the truth. You can­not sep­a­rate the philoso­pher from the phi­los­o­phy, since the philoso­pher should embody the phi­los­o­phy espoused. Rand made enor­mous mis­takes, that’s true. And Objec­tivism has sev­er­al major flaws (out­lined in a num­ber of places). But she was bang-on in her crit­i­cism of “self­less­ness” and “sac­ri­fice” as virtues. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, the task is nei­ther to excuse Rand and accept Objec­tivist writ­ings uncrit­i­cal­ly, nor to con­demn Rand and reject Objec­tivist writ­ings out of hand. Rather, it’s to look at these works and judge them on their own mer­it — includ­ing the con­text of the philoso­pher’s *prac­tice* of what she preached, and the times in which she preached it, in our eval­u­a­tion.

  • Mark Wickens says:

    What about the video screams par­o­dy? Seems very rea­son­able to me.

  • Shannon says:

    Man, there’s just some­thing about Ellen Keller’s man­ner­isms and way of speak­ing that gives me the scream­ing hee­by­jee­bies.

  • Wendy says:

    This book has some very valid points, but some ideas work bet­ter for dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple.
    Rand’s prin­ci­ples of self-improve­ment and self-inter­est have worked very well for some peo­ple. If this book can help some­one have a healthy rela­tion­ship, then why not?

    It is true that many peo­ple make poor deci­sions out of their emo­tions and feel­ings. Peo­ple often sac­ri­fice far too much in rela­tion­ships. It is all about bal­ance.

  • Michael Morse says:

    The des­per­ate­ly schlocky music that chat­ters inces­sant­ly through­out is enough to show how lit­tle faith these authors put in rea­son, and how lit­tle clue they have about what it is in the first place.

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