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THE REAL ROOT OF EVIL 127
whose letters might be read by government censors; her fears she would
be misunderstood; and her busy schedule. Paterson was not placated,
telling Rand in response, “A person is not an object or lamp post, to
be regarded as always ‘there’ for your convenience and having no other
existence.” 71 The rest of her letter was equally tart. Where before she had
overfl owed with effusive praise for Rand and her work, Paterson now
challenged Rand’s philosophical assumptions and her grasp of history.
Paterson was particularly harsh on Rand’s new venture into philosophy.
Responding to Rand’s critical comments on the philosophers she
had been reading, Paterson mused, “to be fair to them, one must envisage
the whole problem of systematic thinking as from scratch.” She then told
Rand, “the ‘frightening kind of rationality’ you fi nd in the philosophers
is precisely your own kind.” 72 Although she had once celebrated their
joint achievement in working out “the necessary axioms and deductions
of a free society,” Paterson now doubted the whole goal of syllogistic
reasoning. 73 The real problem was not creating a rational system, but
making sure the assumptions that underlay it were correct. And she was
not at all clear that Rand would do it right, observing, “in lesser matters,
you talk a lot of ‘reason,’ but frequently don’t use it, because you make
assumptions that are not valid.” She also had a few suggestions to make
about Rand’s behavior. It struck Paterson as rude that Rand constantly
talked about sales of The Fountainhead when Paterson’s book had failed
commercially: “it appears to me that one could be a copper riveted individualist
without being a solipsist.” 74 Paterson’s complaints about Rand
and her ideas were a dramatic switch from earlier letters. No doubt her
tone was partially inspired by her mood swings, but Rand’s failure to
carefully tend the relationship had also drawn forth this dyspeptic and
angry response.
Rand was scandalized by the letter. She accused Paterson of putting
words in her mouth and ignoring what she actually said. She rejected
Paterson’s comparison of her to other philosophers, insisting, “I have
not adopted any philosophy. I have created my own. I do not care to
be tagged with anyone else’s labels.” Though rigorously abstract, Rand’s
discourse was in many ways aggressively anti-intellectual. She was uninterested
in placing herself within the broader community of thinkers
and cared little about the intersections between different schools of
thought. “I see no point in discussing what some fools said in the past
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