Was Ayn Rand Nothing More Than a Nihilist? A Review of Aaron Weinacht’s “Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America”
Journal
VoegelinView
Type
book review
Date Issued
2022-06-10
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
Research requires that one peruses all relevant secondary literature, at least to the extent possible—and if there is not that much secondary literature available, scholars must have a comprehensive overview of all publications on their subject. At least that’s the rule I adhered to until I discovered very good reasons to only skim some books: working on Ayn Rand, I often dug through articles and books whose authors had a clear agenda and were mostly interested in either hailing or damning their subject. In the latter manner, Lisa Duggan (2019) condemned Rand, as the title of her book said, as a Mean Girl, and journalist Gary Weiss (2013) blamed Rand’s thought for the financial crisis, fearing America to turn into an Ayn Rand Nation (Gary Weiss; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013). Consequently, when I came across How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis (2016), I had very little patience for Adam Weiner’s (admittedly compelling) argument that Rand drew heavily from Russian nihilist Nikolai Chernyshevskii’s (1828-1889) dystopian novel What Is to be Done? (1863). As I was still interested in a thorough analysis of Rand’s intellectual debt to Chernyshevskii, though, I was more excited to explore it anew through historian Aaron Weinacht’s lens.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Book title
Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
266505
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A Review of Aaron Weinacht's _Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand_ Russian Nihilism Travels to America_ - VoegelinView.pdf
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1.55 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
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