By Ayn Rand
From 1962-1966, Ayn Rand conducted a series of radio interviews at Columbia University’s student run radio station, WKCR. The series, entitled “Ayn Rand on Campus,” featured Rand and her associates lecturing and answering questions on a wide array of subjects.
In this recorded interview, Rand responds to questions about her philosophy of Objectivism.
Subjects addressed include:
- The equal application of philosophy to men of differing abilities
- The role of philosophy in Rand’s novels
- The purpose of morality
- How a society’s dominant philosophy influences social structure
- The process of gradual philosophical change
- The dominant philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- The inability of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Mill, Bentham and Spencer to defend capitalism
- The influence on capitalism and socialism of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Fichte, Locke and Aristotle
- Rand’s assessment of contemporary society
- Sacrifice and altruism through the ages
- The intellectual developments behind the founding of the United States
- The need to discover what actions are in one’s self-interest, and the reasons why not all desired actions necessarily fall into that category
- How interested individuals can help move a culture in a more rational direction.
(MP3 download; 28 min., 15.24 MB)
The description of this product was written and/or edited by ARI staff.
