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304 NOTES TO PAGES 41–44
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she experienced only a brief “Nietzsche phase.” According to Leonard Peikoff, “By her
early thirties, AR had thought herself out of every Nietzschian element.” Quoted in
Journals of Ayn Rand, ed. David Harriman (New York: Penguin, 1997), ix. Similar arguments
about Nietzsche’s transient infl uence are found in essays by Merrill, Mayhew,
and Milgram in Robert J. Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2004), and Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ayn Rand: The Russian
Radical (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 103. These scholars
share Rand’s understanding of Nietzschean ethics as solely a call for the strong to
dominate the weak. What is attributed to Nietzsche in this formulation may in fact
stem from other writers Rand read during this time, including Ortega y Gasset, Oswald
Spengler, Albert Jay Nock, and H. L. Mencken, Nietzsche’s fi rst American interpreter
and a particular Rand favorite. I agree that there are many differences between Rand
and Nietzsche, most strikingly her absolutism as opposed to his antifoundationalism.
Yet I approach the question of infl uence from a different angle, focusing primarily on
Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values and his call for a new morality. From this perspective,
though Rand’s reliance on Nietzsche lessened over time, her entire career might be
considered a “Nietzsche phase.”
5. Journals, 77, 84, 87. Rand identifi ed the aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil she
intended to use in her introduction to the twenty-fi fth anniversary edition of the novel:
“It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of
rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—
it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which
is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The noble soul
has reverence for itself.” Quoted in Rand, The Fountainhead, 50th anniversary ed. (1943;
New York: Penguin, 1993), x.
6. Journals, 78.
7. Journals, 79, 80.
8. Journals, 78.
9. Journals, 93, 187.
10. Second-Hand Lives notebook, ARP 167. An edited and revised version of this
quotation can be found in Journals, 80. It is notable that Rand spoke openly here about
Christianity as an exemplar of the ideals she opposed, rather than altruism.
11. Journals, 81; AR to Newman Flower, April 12, 1938, ARP 078–14x.
12. Biographical Interview 11.
13. Rand’s comments on Spengler have been excised from her published Journals but
can be found in First Philosophical Journal, ARP 166–02X. Skepticism about democracy
was common among intellectuals across the political spectrum. See Edward Purcell, The
Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientifi c Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1973).
14. This reference is deleted from page 81 of Rand’s published Journals but can be
found in notebook “Second-Hand Lives,” December 4, 1935, 13, ARP 167–01B. Her reference
to racial determinism was not unusual for her time and place, although it is sharply
at odds with her later rejection of race as a collectivist concept.
15. Journals, 84, 80.
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