Abstract

This chapter traces a significant strand in Ayn Rand's intellectual development, showing how an idea that figures prominently in her early vision of a hero develops into the central concept for which she named her mature philosophy. It provides a brief sketch on objectivity. Rand's earliest surviving reference to valuing as an activity occurs in notes she made in 1928 for a novel that she intended to call The Little Street. Both The Little Street and We the Living are set in nightmare environments where the valuers are sacrificed to placate the petty resentments and short‐range desires of those who do not know how to value. The Fountainhead shows that the spiritual activity that Rand sees as the essence of human life is incompatible with a primary orientation toward other people. Atlas Shrugged contains Rand's presentation of her mature philosophy. This includes her moral theory and her view of character.