Den Uyl is a resident scholar at Liberty Fund, and Rasmussen is a professor emeritus in philosophy at St. John’s University and senior affiliated scholar at the Center for Economic Inquiry at Creighton University. Together, they have written extensively on the subject, including editing a collection called The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand. They’ve written a lot on the topic at the Journal for Ayn Rand Studies. Den Uyl has a book on the subject, titled The Fountainhead: An American Novel.



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Juliette Sellgren

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliet Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www.AdamSmithWorks.org. Welcome back. We've talked about objectivism before on this podcast, but it was fairly introductory and we didn't get into the weeds about its values and limitations, what it did well and what it kind of misses out on. Go check that episode out. But today, on March 21st, 2025, I am excited to welcome Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen to the podcast to talk about objectivism individualistic perfection and the differences between the two, where one goes wrong, where one doesn't, all that sort of stuff. They have written so much on this topic and so many others. Denial is a resident scholar at Liberty Fund and Rasmussen is a professor emeritus in philosophy from St. John's University, and he's a senior affiliated scholar at the Center for Economic Inquiry at Creighton University. Together they've written a lot on the subject, including editing a collection called The Philosophic thought of Ayn Rand. They've written a lot both together and individually at the journal for Ayn Rand studies. Denial has even written a book on the subject titled The Fountain Head and American Novel. This is the first time we're going to have two people on the podcast with me at the same time. So hold on to your hats, your horses, whatever you're going to hold onto. Welcome to the podcast, both of you. I'm excited to have you.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

So first question, what is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't

For some reason, the thing that occurred to me and then Doug and I talked about it was manners. And it's not that your generation doesn't is unmanly. It's just a subject that's never taught, never discussed, and never given a reason for thinking about. And in this day and age, it seemed to us to be an important subject given all the alon that goes among all of us these days. And I don't know. So if both of us, this might be one thing that people have ignored, it might be value, you might want to add something.

Yeah, well, I just give examples, showing up on time for meetings, for dinners, dressing appropriately for the context. I know a lot of that can be viewed as just someone being an old fuddy duddy I suppose. But I think there are all sorts of things that we do that show respect for one another and understanding one another that helps to make conversation, go make social life much more amenable to amenable. And again, this was a part of the educational system at one time and it would be nice to see that emphasized again.

It's funny because I grew up in a time where we wore sweatpants to school and pajamas. No one would change. And even I did that and I say that because now I get dressed. I take great pride in getting dressed for the occasion and maybe even going above and beyond.

Yeah, I'm going to probably get myself in trouble. But I remember showing on Facebook pictures of a professors and hobos and one was asked to choose which was the professor and which was the hobo. And unless you happen to know the particular people in advance, it was a very difficult thing to do. But again, that doesn't, I suppose necessarily mean that you don't have manners, but it is I think a suggestive of one of the things that's lacking in our culture.

Yeah, little things like people walk in front of you don't say, excuse me, just simple little things like that seem to become Also, I suppose a failure.

And this will get us into other themes to understand that one has to be responsible not only for one's life in terms of making it something worthwhile, but for how one deals with others and making that process something that is conducive to yourself and the others' wellbeing. It's minimal respect, minimal recognition of moral responsibility.

Well, so that perfect segue, could you both, or one of you, whoever, lay out for us just very simply just to get into it, what is Objectivism and what is it that that philosophy teaches, I guess is the way to put it?

Well, objectivism is the title Ayn Rand has given to her philosophy and that's what her followers also use to describe what's the nature of her philosophy. She is, as you know, a philosopher, novelist. She has many of her ideas are posited through her literature, but she's also written a number of nonfiction articles and mainly collections of her articles that have turned into books that are nonfiction. I give the basic doctrine of the objective, but it is a capital O objective that she has entitled her philosophy. The word is used in philosophy, small o to describe a certain orientation, philosophical orientation, which is not outside of what she wants to. Go ahead, mention some element to the document.

Yeah, I suppose I would just add that this is sort of a list that you get and is taken really from looking at rand. So this is what we'll call the basic tenets of objectivism. The first is that reality exists and is what it is independent and apart from what one may know, and that one can know both the existence and nature of reality. This is her metaphysical and epistemological view. There's nothing unique about this view. This view could be called metaphysical realism and it's a view that you could find an Aristotle or Aquinas, but she certainly has those tenets. The next thing you could say is that she looks at human beings as rational animals. There's more to being human than being a rational animal. But that would be the definition I think, of what she would say human beings are. And the crucial starting point for her thinking about human action in terms of ethics.

Objectivism would hold that we ought to pursue our rational self-interest, and that is the primary aim of morality. And from there she has written by book called The Virtue of Selfishness and other things that has essays on that issue. And the topic when we get to political philosophy, objectivism holds that liberty as defined and justified by individual rights is the paramount aim of the political legal order. And accordingly, she holds that laissez-faire. Capitalism has the expression of these rights and that system is morally superior to other economic systems. So that's I think as brief as I can probably put the basic tenets of objectivism.

What led you both together and individually to embark on this journey of dealing with her thought? I mean, you've mentioned she writes nonfiction, but to the world, she's primarily known as a novelist. And so how do you two in dealing with what I might say is more formalized philosophy? Why were you motivated to and how did you end up engaging with her thought and kind of folding it into the discipline of philosophy and kind of dealing with it?

Well, she invites that by calling herself a philosopher and telling us that philosophy's important. So once you sort of get into being interested in her, it's only natural that you pay some attention to philosophy. I mean, there's different biography between Doug and I on how we got there, but the two of us ended up in graduate school together having had an interesting brand and tried to make it more academic, shall we say. I don't know if you want the biographies, but that's how we first got together was in grad school and wrote a piece called Nozick on the Randian Argument, I think was the first thing we cooperated on. Since then, we've been been together, right?

Yeah, there's probably, we could both tell some interesting histories about how we got initially acquainted with Rand's thought. But going back to the first thing that Doug and I did together Nozick on the Randian Argument, that was for a journal published by the University of Southern California Department of Philosophy. And Robert Nozick, the Harvard professor, had written a very interesting and powerful argument criticizing Rand's ethics. And we thought it was a very good article, but we also thought there were misinterpretations of Rand. And really more importantly, I think from our perspective, the criticism that Nozick was advancing failed to consider what we would later call a neo-Aristotelian view of ethics. And so we started looking at that and one thing led to another, and we came to the conclusion that Rand wasn't always as polite and as respectful of other philosophers as she should have been. In accordingly, that also meant that others didn't treat her that way, but we were concerned that there was a serious intellectual position there, but it needed to be considered calmly, carefully, and scholarly. And this led us to embark on the Nozick big project together, which was getting the University of Illinois press to publish a book of essays that we edited called The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where to begin. I mean, where do you see the values of her thought? Kind of along the lines of if there is a serious academic, philosophical, intellectual position, what parts of that, I guess what parts of that are born out either in what you believe as being a logical, valid and at carrying water type of argument versus where do her arguments kind of fall short? And we can get more into it into each, but just to begin, I guess, what about her thought ends up remaining after your analysis and what parts of it kind of fall short?