Behind the Scenes: Ayn Rand’s West Point Lecture (1974–2024)

On March 6, 1974, Ayn Rand traveled to West Point, New York, to speak in the largest auditorium at the United States Military Academy. By the 1970s, she had limited her public engagements, almost entirely, to her annual talks at the Ford Hall Forum. The peak of her public speaking had been between 1960 and 1964 during which she spoke not only at the Ford Hall Forum but at several universities, including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, Princeton, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and MIT.

Her speeches were remarkable not only in philosophical content but in the moment-by-moment excitement they evoked. Hosts of her appearances were prepared not only for challenge and controversy but for unparalleled enthusiasm, as the crowd stood and cheered. Once, after Ayn Rand gave a lecture at Ford Hall Forum in Boston, she spoke on the phone to a friend, a friend who had not been able to be present for her talk, and who asked how the lecture had gone. She answered: “Standard triumph.”

March 6, 1974, was also a standard Ayn Rand triumph, which she described as “the most interesting and enjoyable of my lecture appearances.”¹ But the West Point lecture — delivered and later published under the title “Philosophy: Who Needs It” — was in fact a non-standard triumph, an unusual opportunity, an unusual pleasure, an unusual experience. How were the circumstances unusual, or, to put it another way: how was that speech different from all other speeches? The question can be answered in multiple ways.

It was unusual in the way the invitation came about. It was unusual in the way the invitation was presented to Ayn Rand. It was unusual (and unusually meaningful) in the specific academic context of the event. It was unusual in her preparation. The content of the speech she delivered, the experience of day and night in West Point, the composition of the audience, and the aftermath were similarly unusual and in keeping with the circumstances that led up to “Philosophy: Who Needs It.”

Why Ayn Rand was invited to speak at West Point

How did the story of “Philosophy: Who Needs It” begin? It started with two people. One of them was Herman Van Ivey, an instructor in English at West Point.² During the years when he was teaching at West Point, he was, as he said when he was interviewed in 2000, between two tours of duty in Vietnam where he had a distinguished career as a tank unit commander and a helicopter unit commander.³

Lieutenant Colonel Ivey was teaching English 402, a core course required for graduation, and ordinarily taken in the final year of undergraduate studies. In 1972–73, the title of the course was “Readings in Philosophy: Inquiries into Ethical, Aesthetic, and Spiritual Values.”⁴

The other person involved in the beginning of the story was Kelly Weems, also an instructor in English at West Point.⁵ Ivey, in his interview in 2000, had mentioned Weems as the one who first suggested the prospect of inviting Ayn Rand.⁶ Given the possibility that Weems was the prime mover for West Point’s invitation of Ayn Rand, I hoped that his memories would provide information not mentioned by others. I contacted him through the publisher of a book he had recently written.⁷ When I interviewed him on September 20, 2023, his memories were vivid, pertinent, and to the point.

Setting the scene: the story begins in a car. Weems and Ivey were driving to New York, on their way to a dance performance. Dance, both ballet and modern, was the basis for their friendship, even though, as Weems told me, “Lieutenant Colonel Ivey outranked Major Weems in ‘both military rank and intellect.’”⁸

Weems and Ivey talked about Ayn Rand. Kelly Weems mentioned that she lived in New York, and he thought she might be a good speaker for their students. Ivey was in a position to select an affordable guest speaker not far from West Point, and he agreed that inviting her was a good idea: “I’d read her work and knew she could provide the kind of generalized overview of philosophy that we needed, and besides, she was a very well-known person, and it would be great to have someone like that come to my program.”⁹

As Kelly Weems remembers, however, they thought there were potential problems with Ayn Rand as a West Point speaker.

Problem One: they knew she was an advocate of rational egoism. Even though Ayn Rand’s morality of egoism was rational egoism, the word “egoism” had negative associations and connotations, with the implication of immorality or amorality. Egoism, in the 1970s, was the morality of anything goes. They were concerned that egoism had led to the hippie mentality of lack of discipline, lack of restraint, or “letting it all hang out.” They did not think it would be prudent for West Point to issue an invitation to a proponent of any sort of egoism.

As part of the same issue: the military, they believed, was based on a tradition of doing what one has to do, together. It is dangerous to fly, dangerous to fight, but soldiers embrace that danger without hesitation, as a band of brothers. West Point advocates the ideal of self-sacrifice. The spirit of a military “band of brothers” arguably does not comport with individualism. Ayn Rand, they thought, was an outspoken individualist, and hence a poor fit with West Point.

Problem Two: Ayn Rand was well-known as a defender of capitalism, an advocate for capitalism. But capitalism, they believed, had deteriorated by becoming involved with government. Capitalism, hand in hand with government, appeared to be destroying America. They certainly did not intend to support communism. They understood, to be sure, that Ayn Rand had had a direct and miserable experience with communism in Soviet Russia, and they, too, condemned it. But, they wondered, did they really want to have a speaker coming to campus in outspoken support of capitalism, which had become corrupted by its involvement with the state?

Solving Problem One: Ayn Rand’s rational egoism was, and is, a moral code regarding living one’s life for one’s own sake in accordance with man’s nature as a being capable of reason. The morality of rational self-interest is not hedonism, it’s not taking unfair advantage, it’s not about surrendering to whims. It’s not about being a hippie. Nor, for that matter, is her moral code inconsistent with the code of the armed services, given that the military is one of the proper functions of the government — to protect men from foreign invaders. She would make this very point in her speech:

The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest — as the armies of other countries have done in their histories — only as an instrument of a free nation’s self-defense, which means: the defense of a man’s individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right.¹⁰

Defending a free nation is an act of rational self-interest, not an act of self-sacrifice. In speaking to the cadets, Ayn Rand made the point that, according to her moral code, to describe them as engaged in self-sacrifice would be an insult, and she had no intention of insulting them.

Solving Problem Two: As for the entanglement of business with government, which they viewed as a negative feature of capitalism, she opposed that entanglement. An advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, she favored the separation of state from economics.

A few days later after their drive to New York, as Weems remembers, Ivey came back to the idea with some pluses: “She was popular, the cadets loved her, and . . . she would make good publicity for the Academy. She would certainly be intellectually challenging.”¹¹

There were also, as Ivey remembers, the academic advantages to inviting her for his course. She met his high standards for guest lecturers: “I liked to go out and find a real artist, or a real scientist, or a real philosopher, somebody who really did those things that we were reading about in the classroom.”¹²

And Weems remembers one additional motivation for inviting her:

There was also the probability of a little ‘know your enemy.’ In a 24-year career, an officer would spend 3 years in schools; the Advanced Course, the Command and General College, and the “War College.” They all taught that the more you know about an opponent, the easier to defeat him. Knowing the range of his guns, the number of his tanks, the location of his reinforcements — all gave an advantage. Her ideas might be a good target to shoot down in class!¹³

They were, Weems said, expecting her to be tough, and, to a degree, confrontational. They expected Ayn Rand to be mean, tough, and cold. She was invited nonetheless.

Ivey reports that, when he approached the men he worked for, the men who had the authority to invite her, he “went to them, thinking that I was going to have to sell her, because a lot of academics won’t even discuss Ayn Rand, for some reason.”¹⁴ These two people, the men above him, were Colonel Jack Capps, the deputy head of the department and Colonel Edwin Sutherland, the department head.¹⁵ 

Their reaction astonished him. He did not have to make a case. He did not have to argue. Without any debate or hesitation, they said yes. As he reports: “This was not because they thought they knew and agreed with her philosophy, but because they never thought I had a chance of getting her to come to West Point.”¹⁶ He commented, in the full, unedited interview: “. . . the people who authorized me to invite her, actually, they signed the letter themselves and they just didn’t think that I was going to succeed.”¹⁷ They were wrong.

Ayn Rand accepts

West Point did have a chance of getting her to come, and they did succeed. Ayn Rand astonished his superiors. She said yes almost immediately to the letter of invitation, dated May 24, 1973, from Colonel Edwin V. Sutherland, head of the Department of English:

Dear Miss Rand:

During their last year at West Point, graduating cadets undertake a course entitled “Readings in Philosophy,” which concentrates upon philosophical, religious and scientific values as they have evolved in man’s quest for a viable accommodation with life’s uncertainties. This course caps the education of these young men by encouraging them to reexamine their premises as they prepare to take their commissions and embark upon a military life.

Each year we engage a few distinguished speakers to stimulate our cadets to set their views in perspective. Your eminence as a critic of cultural values and your popularity among the cadets as an exciting author makes you exactly the kind of speaker we seek. I realize that the demands on your time and energy are great; nonetheless we hope that you can find time to come to West Point during the coming academic year to meet with the senior class and discuss some aspect of your philosophy which bears upon our course.

Although we are permitted to pay only a modest honorarium, we can offer you transportation to West Point, the hospitality of the Post, and a responsive audience of over four hundred young future leaders of our country.

We would look forward with pleasure to your coming.¹⁸

How was that letter different from almost all other letters? The letter identifies her as someone who would be a distinguished speaker.¹⁹ The department head’s letter is not only enthusiastic, but specifically pertinent to the merits of the speaker he is inviting.²⁰

The location of the invitation, moreover, was already different from that of all other invitations: West Point was a military school. I see no documentation of her being invited to speak at any other military schools. An audience of future soldiers was, most likely, a special draw for her.

She had received many fan letters about The Fountainhead from soldiers in the Second World War, and she had been glad to read them. She had written, in notes for an unpublished article:

During the war years, the largest number of letters came from men in the armed services. Contrary to another editorial fallacy, it was not the love story or the ‘sex angle’ in the novel that interested the readers. I did not receive a single letter mentioning the love story as the cause of the reader’s enthusiasm. All the letters, each in his own terms, spoke about the philosophical idea of THE FOUNTAINHEAD and all of them, no matter how naïve their style of expression, understood the idea correctly. Most of them said, in effect, that mine was the philosophy they believed and had waited to hear expressed. I have letters from army nurses telling me of cases where they gave the book to wounded veterans as a matter of mental therapy, and the book succeeded.^{21, 22}

Thirty years later, Ayn Rand was being invited to speak to future soldiers, hundreds of them, eager to listen. That was a draw. Another draw, I believe, is that it was a combination of a lecture for a single course and a lecture at a large-scale public event. She had spoken, previously, as a guest lecturer, for several university courses.²³ But judging from the reports and the letters of invitation, this was the only occasion on which she would be speaking, at the same time and in the same place, to a class, and to a large public as well.

She replied on June 1, saying that the invitation was “an honor” she was happy to accept. She asked about the format: was this a seminar-style class discussion, or a lecture followed by a Q&A? She asked about the approximate date.²⁴

Ayn Rand, of course, had a lot of experience as a public speaker.²⁵ But by the time of this invitation, she had limited her speaking engagements, almost exclusively, to the Ford Hall Forum, and, with rare exceptions, turned down invitations to speak at colleges.²⁶ Overwhelmingly, at this time, she was saying no. She told Herman Van Ivey that “she didn’t do that sort of thing very often.”²⁷ But when Edwin Sutherland, department head, invited her, she nonetheless said yes.

Preparing for the lecture

On July 3, Herman Van Ivey wrote to explain that the lecture could be followed by an informal give-and-take or by a formal Q&A for all. He also stated: “We sought you out because we think you can fire a young man’s inspiration as well as kindle his thoughts.”²⁸ She responded on July 16 by saying the format was agreeable; as it turned out, she did not choose either-or: she had both a formal Q&A and a less formal give-and-take. She did say: “Please give me ample notice of the specific date of my appearance, because I will need time to prepare a special lecture.”²⁹

She needed time to prepare a special lecture. Already she planned to customize her talk. After all, this was going to be a night different from all other nights.

It did not take long to arrive at a date. Eleven days later, her assistant, Barbara Weiss, heard from Captain John D. Bergen. Perhaps there had been a phone call or two in between. He said that it was his understanding that Ayn Rand wanted a lectern and a formal Q&A, with a post-lecture reception for “interested students and faculty.”³⁰

The next letter, dated September 27, came from Ivey. His letter stated that he was enclosing a course syllabus for 1973–74 and a course synopsis, along with the basic textbook and reprints and military texts. He told her that the course began with “problems of philosophical meaning and value in ethics, methodology and metaphysics,” then proceeded to “questions of cultural meaning and value in religion, art and science.” Her talk would take place midway through the philosophy course. She was, he said, welcome either to speak about material already covered or forward to material to be covered later. The goal of the course was “to encourage our cadets to think clearly, to speak concisely, and to write forcefully.”³¹

The 1973–74 syllabus and other materials, however, are not found in Ayn Rand’s papers. She did not, it appears, keep the textbook or any sort of detailed course schedule, although she had the opportunity at the time to examine them and to discuss them with Ivey. The West Point Redbook, however, provides relevant information. The course title in 1973–74 was “Readings in Philosophy: Inquiries into Ethical, Aesthetic, and Spiritual Values.” The reading list, from the West Point Redbook for 1973–74, included several of the texts from the 1972–73 course, i.e., Charles Monson’s Philosophy, Religion and Science, Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, and Huxley’s Brave New World.³² The philosophy text included selections from Descartes, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Darwin, Dewey, Comte, Huxley, Hume, and many others.³³ In her lecture, she referred to several of these very philosophers.

He also wrote that he would like to visit her in New York, and this indeed happened.

In addition to discussing the content of the course and the topic of her lecture, there was another reason for them to meet: Ayn Rand’s terms. She had said yes, and she intended to come, but she wanted something from West Point. Initially she wanted to require the students, all 250 of them in EN 402, to read Atlas Shrugged. This was a problem, and Ivey was worried about that requirement. He was busy at the time, but the invitation to Ayn Rand was a priority, and he took her terms seriously:

Ayn had told me, “I’ll come and lecture to your course, but as a prerequisite, you’ll have to have them all read Atlas Shrugged,” and so I thought, “Oh, my God, we’re not going to be able to get her,” because we couldn’t require them to read it, and we didn’t have the study time available for that. If we’d been able to program it a year in advance, it would have been different. So I negotiated with her. I think this is how my visits with her began. I called her up and said, “I need to come down and talk to you,” so I went down there and talked to her and said, “I’ve got to have you up at West Point, and I cannot require the reading of Atlas Shrugged, but I can make it voluntary.” She said, “Okay, that’s good enough.”³⁴

His pitch had succeeded, and he was relieved. Then eighty students opted in. How, he wondered, was he going to get eighty copies? The big bookstores in New York did not have enough copies on hand. He remembered that he had bought his own copy in a bus station. He sent around one of his “guys” out on a “requisition trip” to the shopping malls, and the books were acquired.

He cherished all their conversations. Judging from Ayn Rand’s day calendar, they met, several times, including November 27, 1973, and on February 6, 1974.³⁵ Ivey had a lot to say about the time they spent together.

He remembered some of her questions about the course:

She would ask me questions about how we used certain philosophical figures in the curriculum. For example, we had brief readings from Plato and Aristotle, and, of course, Aristotle she thought was fine, but as to Plato, she asked, “Why are you doing Plato? What is this for?” and so forth. And I said, “The allegory of the cave is useful, because it’s a springboard into arts, into literature,” and “Okay, so we do doubt,” and that brought us into esthetics, and this conversation would go on for hours. She would go into lengthy discourses, not only on her own ideas, but the interplay of her ideas with other philosophers.³⁶

He sometimes prepared questions to ask her:

Sometimes I’d frame questions beforehand. I’d be driving down to New York and I’d be thinking, “Well now, what am I going to ask her?” and the following is a question that occurred to me, because it’s something I’d recently been reading and thinking about. So I asked her, “What do you think about the proposition that ambiguity is the essence of art, that art feeds on ambiguity, can’t exist without ambiguity?” “Absolutely not!” she said. “Totally incorrect. There can be no ambiguity. There is an objectively correct solution to the problem of art, as there is with anything else, and ambiguity is out the window, because of the irrational aspect of it,” and she then went into discussion of the irrational.

From our discussions, I realized something I later said when I introduced her at the lecture: no matter where you go in your reading in philosophy, you will usually find that she’s already been there. The ideas of these philosophers, she has visited these ideas.³⁷

He was gratified by her attention:

But I think one of the reasons she spent so much time with me was that I think she saw me as somebody who might be worth her while, inasmuch as she had seen a syllabus of the course that I had organized and presented to the cadets, and she knew that if I could do that, that I probably might be worth talking to. I was flattered and honored that I got to spend a great deal of time, maybe altogether ten, fifteen, twenty hours in discussion with her; it was a wonderful experience for me.³⁸

He found their conversations stimulating, inspiring, and informative:

I got a chance to observe a first-class mind operate. And I could listen to her talk about Kant, or someone like that, and listen to her criticisms of Kant, and play them against my own conclusions. It was a wonderful educational experience for me, and that’s why I did not try to talk very much, but encouraged her to talk while I listened avidly.³⁹

He respected her, and he believed she respected him. Nearly thirty years later, he remembered their conversations.

Devoting this sort of time and energy to conversation in advance of a lecture was unusual for her, and is one indication of the significance she attributed to the event. He thought that, in their meetings, she was preparing to speak to the faculty and students of West Point.

I think her purpose was to come to understand more fully and exactly what she was dealing with at my end. I think that she did her homework that way; I think she prepared herself very well for the audience, and I think that’s one of the reasons her appearance was so successful.⁴⁰

She was, to some extent, using their discussions as a way to prepare for the talk, a talk directed in part to the immediate audience. She typically customized some aspect of her lectures. When she delivered a lecture titled “The Objectivist Ethics” to MIT students on March 14, 1962, she spoke also about their responsibilities as scientists.⁴¹ But the customization of the lecture at West Point was different from that of the MIT lecture. She planned to write not a new introduction to an existing lecture, but a whole new special lecture.

On February 14, she was sent an itinerary of her visit: a tour of the campus, visits to faculty and administration, time scheduled for cocktails and dinner, the lecture itself (with Q&A), and the after-show reception.⁴²

With her itinerary in hand, she knew that the deadline was approaching. Judging from her dates on the holograph manuscript, she started writing on February 20, 1974, and finished on March 4, two days before the lecture.⁴³ The markings on the holograph manuscript indicate revisions, but no cuts, i.e., there are no paragraphs or points in the holograph that do not appear in the typed version, which she had with her on the day of the lecture.

In the margin she wrote, as she often did, the number of the minute she expected to reach when she read that page.⁴⁴ Comparing the typed manuscript with the recording, I see that she would have hit those marks precisely — if it were not for the laughter and the applause.

West Point, in the meantime, was also getting ready. There was a two-page public announcement from the Department of English. The announcement included a list of a selection of her university appearances, a full list of her novels, her nonfiction, her plays and her screenplay, and the publications she edited. There was a summary of her philosophy, and there were words of tribute and admiration.⁴⁵

Miss Rand stresses that Objectivism is not merely theoretical; it is rather a practical philosophy which she herself lives and with which she confronts her audience. One cannot read or hear Ayn Rand without facing her challenge to live up to one’s highest potential and thereby experience the exhilaration of being fully alive.

Miss Rand brings an original perspective to modern philosophy, and she deserves to be heard.

The announcement indicated that there would be a Q&A after the lecture. It was usual, at West Point, to allow the cadets, the students, to ask questions first. On the day, it was indeed announced that cadets would be given the first opportunity to ask questions. But others would not be left out. There would be a reception in the Main Foyer of the West Point Army Mess for “those who would like to meet Ayn Rand.”

The lecture

On March 6, 1974, Ayn Rand and her friends arrived, checked in at the Thayer Hotel, and made the arranged rounds.

Herman Van Ivey made sure that Kelly Weems and several other officers had a chance to meet her. She met Edwin Sutherland and Jack Capps, the head and deputy head of the English Department. She met General William Knowlton, a four-star general and superintendent at West Point. She was, by all accounts, a big hit even before the lecture itself. Ivey remembered that General Knowlton had insisted on seeing her, was a great admirer, and that her meeting with him had been a “mutual admiration society, if one ever existed on this planet.”⁴⁶ General Knowlton attended the lecture, too — as part of a record crowd.

It was usual, at West Point, to have a large audience for the outside speakers. Ivey tells us:

The lecture was for my class, but all the lectures that are delivered for courses are open to the Academy community and the public-at-large. So this lecture certainly was, and it was also advertised in the local publications and bulletins. I had a great crowd. When Loren Eiseley showed up, I had a huge crowd; people came from everywhere, but not like when she showed up. If we’d have had a larger auditorium, I think we could have probably filled it up.⁴⁷

West Point was ready for a crowd. Ivey tells us: “The place was packed. It was a standing-room-only crowd. We held it in the largest auditorium we had at the time, about a 1,500-seat auditorium. And there were probably a hundred or so people standing in the back.”⁴⁸

At the talk, Ivey made the introduction, drawing on his discussions with her and his awareness of her knowledge of the ideas of other philosophers.⁴⁹ He was drawing on their conversations together, and chose to bring to the public what he had learned about her in private.

He limited his remarks to three minutes. He explains:

The lecture began with a brief introduction by myself, because when you’re dealing with someone who needs no introduction, there’s no point in fooling around, and the audience wants to hear her, not me. But I did make a couple of remarks about the range of her philosophical writings and her literature, and turned it over to her.⁵⁰

And then she spoke.

She started with a self-introduction: “Since I am a fiction writer.” She told a story about a spaceship that crashes, and the questions the emerging astronaut would have to ask:

Suppose that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions in your mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do?⁵¹

She described how a person in this situation might commit evasion, refusing to look at the sky and to realize how far the planet might be from Earth.

You turn to your instruments: they may be damaged, you don’t know how seriously. But you stop, struck by a sudden fear: how can you trust these instruments? How can you be sure that they won’t mislead you? How can you know whether they will work in a different world? You turn away from the instruments.

Now you begin to wonder why you have no desire to do anything. It seems so much safer just to wait for something to turn up somehow; it is better, you tell yourself, not to rock the spaceship. Far in the distance, you see some sort of living creatures approaching; you don’t know whether they are human, but they walk on two feet. They, you decide, will tell you what to do.

You are never heard from again.

Most people, she said, live their lives in the way that the reckless astronaut did.

Most men spend their days struggling to evade three questions, the answers to which underlie man’s every thought, feeling and action, whether he is consciously aware of it or not: Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do They have never discovered the fact that the trouble comes from the three unanswered questions — and that there is only one science that can answer them: philosophy.

She then explained that these questions are addressed by metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and that even if you have not consciously considered your convictions in relation to these branches of philosophy, you live by the thinking you have done, or have failed to do.

She explained that these catch phrases are expressions of philosophy, including several from the philosophers in the textbook the students had been reading. The cadets were paying attention: they responded, audibly, when they heard the names they recognized. She referred to Hume (whom they read on pages 123–132 of the Monson textbook), to Plato (pages 161–168), to William James (summarized and quoted on page 101), to Kant (pages 82–91), to Dewey (pages 104–112).

Regarding Kant, in fact, she made use of an expression that is typical of his phrasing, and not typical of hers. She wrote: “One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to surrender his moral autonomy to others: like the astronaut in my story, he does not know whether they are human, even though they walk on two feet.” By “moral autonomy” she meant: independent judgment regarding morality. Her own typical phrasing would be “moral sovereignty,” which she wrote on the holograph manuscript, and then altered on the page. The expression “moral autonomy” is characteristic of Immanuel Kant, who used it with a different meaning.⁵² She had mentioned him three times in her lecture, and discussed him with Ivey.

She explained that one needs to shape one’s soul, to weigh and consider the ideas that matter. She said that one must take ideas seriously: What you don’t know can hurt you. She told the cadets that, in the military, self-defense depends on knowing where there is danger and how to avoid it. The very issue that Weems and Ivey discussed in relation to her visit — know your enemy — is what she told the cadets in this speech.

She praised them for their honor, and she differentiated military service from self-sacrifice. She made it clear that she regarded the armed services as requirements for the protection of the nation, and that she regarded as heroes the men before her. As Jack Capps, deputy head of the English Department noted, the cadets were “hungry for that sort of endorsement,” especially in 1974, in the context of Viet Nam.⁵³

It was a speech for the students at West Point in 1974, and for anyone who wants to live. It started with fiction, continued with questions, concluded with a call to be dedicated, as, she said, West Point students themselves are dedicated, to the best within us.

I want to mention, at this point, one more thing about her speech. This speech was a continuation of the rest of her life, and also a return to an idea she had had long before.

She began her lecture with the words: “Since I am a fiction writer.”

She used the present tense.

She was referring to her career as a writer of fiction. Although Atlas Shrugged was her final novel (published in 1957), she still regarded herself, in 1974, as a fiction writer. To identify herself to an audience as a fiction writer was consistent and coherent with the career she had chosen at the age of nine.

Telling a story about a spaceship was also consistent with a specific writing project, long interrupted. Her final novel had elements of speculative fiction, as did some of her earlier work (Anthem and Think Twice). But first, before any of these, came the idea she called “the airplane story.” (As a teenager in Russia, she had the idea of writing about a large interplanetary passenger “airship that becomes a satellite around the earth.”)⁵⁴ But in 1974, she found a way, at last, to compose a spaceship story, which she presented at the start of her lecture.

The end of the lecture, too, was something special: she thanked the cadets. Jack Capps said that “at the end of her presentation, she stepped from behind the lectern — of course, she was just barely tall enough to see over it — but that didn’t deter her at all. . . .” She saluted. “At that point, the cadets broke into great applause, and she got a standing ovation.”⁵⁵

Then came the Q&A. The bulk of the Q&A was approximately twenty-three minutes, featuring the cadets. Her longest answer (approximately four minutes) concerned political issues involving racism, in response to a question about racism:

Ma’am, at the risk of stating an unpopular view, when you were speaking of America, I couldn’t help but think of the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Black men in this country, and the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. How do you account for all this in your view of America?

She began by explaining that the issue of individual rights is fundamental, in that when individuals lose their rights or a group loses rights, “all individuals lose their rights.” She then considered the three topics raised by the questioner. After condemning slavery and the internment of the Japanese-Americans, she characterized Native American tribes (at the time of the arrival of the Europeans) as not respecting and protecting individual rights.⁵⁶

After about twenty-two minutes, Ivey said that there was time for one more question. The questioner said:

Miss Rand, I was wondering, in your novel Atlas Shrugged, you seem to portray a very strong attitude to the feminine or the female sex and you also said, I got the idea that the relationship between a man and a woman should be more or less on a business-like attitude and going away from sex except on a completely necessary basis. I was wondering if you thought that—

She interrupted: “I missed a part of your sentence there. What did you say?”

There was an explosion of laughter. Then the questioner resumed:

You came across to me as portraying respect, an attitude of respect between a man and a woman. I was wondering if you thought a man and a woman could experience the emotion of love.

After a pause of several seconds, Ayn Rand said: “You know, I don’t think you finished reading Atlas Shrugged.”

And off she went to the reception, with more cadets, and more questions. It was an adventure.

Even though cadets had tight schedules and many commitments, they made time for this lecture and this speaker. A number of the former cadets responded to my inquiries, with varied memories and impressions. One remembered that she began her lecture with a story about an astronaut — and that Michael Clifford, a member of the Class of ’74, later became an astronaut. Some agreed with her ideas at the time (and had read her work); others disagreed at the time (and continue to disagree). Several remembered the controversy during the Q&A. Some noted that the faculty treated her with great respect (almost, one said, as “literary royalty”). Several mentioned her “forthright” attitude, her love for the United States, the “fascinating atmosphere.”⁵⁷

The next morning, when she spoke with Ivey, “she expressed satisfaction with the night, and appreciation, and said that it had been all that she had wanted it to be. She was very generous with me and told me that if ever she could help me in any way, to let her know.”⁵⁸

The legacy of the lecture at West Point

What happened later?

On March 7, Colonel Edwin Sutherland, head of the English Department, wrote to thank her:

Many thanks to you for the magnificent lecture last evening. It was a memorable event in every respect; and I am particularly grateful to you for the sincere interest you showed in our students, answering their questions late into the evening.

Your eloquence and wit captivated the cadets, forcing them to plumb the unexplored depths of their philosophical consciousness.

Considering their remarks afterwards and the invigorating debate going on in our classrooms today, it is quite obvious that you successfully motivated them to commit themselves to the very important task of examining their basic metaphysical and ethical premises before moving out into the world of action. And in the course of that inspirational effort, you perceptively outlined and supported our academic efforts in that regard.⁵⁹

He expressed appreciation for her encouraging the cadets to examine their premises.

On March 20, she offered the West Point library a subscription to the Ayn Rand Letter, if they were able to accept such a thing.⁶⁰ They were able to do so, and they did, on April 1, with appreciative remarks about her visit. Jack Capps wrote: “It was assuredly our pleasure to have you as our guest. In my fifteen years with the Academy faculty, I can recall few lecturers who have so enlivened the intellectual scene — and the discussions have not yet subsided. I am glad the evening proved as enjoyable to you as it was for us.”⁶¹ Other recent speakers at West Point had included Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, and William Faulkner, who spoke there a few months before his death. West Point was able to attract eminent speakers. She had been in distinguished literary company, and, among them, stood out as one who inspired unusual student engagement. Her newsletter, moreover, would become part of the West Point library.

On March 22, she received word that her speech, if she agreed, would become part of the West Point curriculum. Captain John Bergen of West Point had called to ask if they could include her speech in their new textbook. She said yes. He wrote on March 29 with a short biographical profile for her to approve. She revised the biographical profile, and on April 5, she sent the revised sketch to Ivey, asking it was “okay,” and offering to make changes. Ayn Rand, who did not ordinarily solicit advice about her writing, paid him the respect of asking if the sketch would suit the venue. A few days later, the speech itself, virtually verbatim, had reached West Point, and her version of her profile was published in the textbook, along with her speech.⁶²

The idea for including “Philosophy: Who Needs It” in the textbook came from Ivey himself, because he thought the talk was “great” and wanted her essay to introduce students to the subject of philosophy.

In fact, I felt it was so appropriate, that I asked her if I could use a transcript of her lecture as the introduction for course textbook for the following year. She gave her permission, and we were pleased to print the speech standing first in our textbook for the next year, to be used as the initial assignment for our cadets. Her lecture could be used, be referred to, throughout the course of instruction, so it was very valuable that way.⁶³

She agreed, and she let Ivey know how much she appreciated the event in general and him in particular: “I believe that the cadets enjoyed it — and as for me, it was the most interesting and enjoyable of my lecture appearances. As you might have gathered, I do admire rational military efficiency, and you stand in my mind as one of its best symbols.”⁶⁴

The event had been a success on many levels. Ayn Rand herself warmly inscribed a copy of Atlas Shrugged to Kelly Weems: “To Major Kelly Weems, with many, many thanks for being one of the organizers of the occasion.”

Leonard Peikoff wrote up a report about the event, which Ayn Rand sent to Herman Van Ivey (May 31), expressing willingness to make changes.⁶⁵ This was another indication of her respect and consideration. No changes were requested. The report was published in the Ayn Rand Letter.⁶⁶ Leonard Peikoff reports on the military and civilian audiences, the two standing ovations, the crowded reception, the subsequent requests for copies of The Ayn Rand Letter, and the request to include her speech at the beginning of the new West Point philosophy textbook.

What else happened, afterwards? She met with Ivey at least twice more.⁶⁷ He subsequently returned to military duty, writing to her from Frankfurt on October 7, enclosing postage stamps (knowing that she was a stamp collector), and saying he recalled “their long conversations with pleasure” and enjoyed receiving issues of The Ayn Rand Letter.⁶⁸ He remained an enthusiastic admirer, even though he was no longer at West Point to champion her and her work.

On August 22, 1974, Duane Haack, the deputy course director for EN 402 sent her two copies of the textbook: Reading in Philosophy, Science, and Art (USMA).⁶⁹ The West Point volume, for two years, served as the course textbook. It included some of the thinkers who had appeared in Charles Monson’s Philosophy, Religion, and Science (Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Dewey, Aquinas, Hume, etc.); the new book added some other canonical figures, e.g., Locke, Comte, Kierkegaard, etc.). Both books, in other words, were anthologies, featuring many of the usual suspects.

What happened to the course itself?

I checked the Redbook (United States Military Academy Academic Program) for the next five years. The West Point textbook was taught in 1974–75, and 1975–76.⁷⁰ 

In 1974–75, the course title was “Readings in Philosophy: Inquiries into Ethical, Aesthetic, and Spiritual Values,” with the main textbook Reading in Philosophy, Science, and Art (USMA). This was the volume that included, as orientation, Ayn Rand’s “Philosophy: Who Needs It.” The course texts included, as well, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest.⁷¹

The course itself changed its description, its content, and its timing, and the textbook with Ayn Rand’s essay eventually disappeared from the curriculum. It is possible that the changes reflected changes in personnel, including the absence of Ivey, who had re-organized the course during his time at West Point and who had invited Ayn Rand and placed her essay at the head of a West Point textbook. Ivey had gone back to military service. If he had been at West Point, perhaps the book would have been there, too.

The enduring legacy of “Philosophy: Who Needs It”

“Philosophy: Who Needs It,” however, did not disappear from the intellectual scene.

In 1974, Ayn Rand had her own publication, with her own name on it. She had closed the periodical The Objectivist in 1971 and started The Ayn Rand Letter, which she published until 1976. There were eighty-one issues. “Philosophy: Who Needs It” was published in The Ayn Rand Letter in two consecutive issues: Vol. III, no. 7 and no. 8.⁷² It was also the lead essay in the last collection she planned during her lifetime. Leonard Peikoff saw it through to publication in 1982, after her death.

One more way this event and this talk were special: “Philosophy: Who Needs It” is the only speech, and the only article, that became the full title of one of her books.⁷³ Ayn Rand did not write merely for her own time. When she wrote, when she spoke, she meant her words to matter not only for the here-and-now, but for always — like philosophy itself. Share on X

She did not write this speech with the prospect of implying that these would be her famous last words. She did not know that this talk would be the beginning of her last book. She intended this piece, as she told the students, as an attempt to sell them not on the philosophy of Objectivism, not on her philosophy, but on philosophy itself.

Also, she wanted students to know, as she had said in a speech more than ten years earlier, at Yale, that they had choices, that we all have choices, that we can direct our minds.

This, then, is the choice. Think it over. Consider the subject, check your premises, check past history and find out whether it is true that men can never be free. It isn’t true, because they have been. Find out what made it possible. See for yourself. And then if you are convinced — rationally convinced — then let us save the world together. We still have time.⁷⁴

She said, as she always said: “See for yourself.” “Think it over.”

On March 6, 1974, she told a short story with a science fiction premise. She had written a spaceship story, in which she told us how all of us should approach life. But, as she said, hers was not, after all, a philosophy limited to spaceships. It was a philosophy for living on earth.

Ayn Rand’s favorite novelist was Victor Hugo, who said: “if a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”⁷⁵ Ayn Rand wrote that his statement expressed her attitude toward her own writing.⁷⁶ And we know she never broke her pen and threw it away.

She did not write merely for her own time. She did not intend for her words and thoughts to be merely topical, as ephemeral as yesterday’s news. When she wrote, when she spoke, she meant her words to matter not only for the here-and-now, but for always — like philosophy itself, which is needed, and which matters, as long as human beings are human beings.

This, of course, is the subject of her West Point speech, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” and it’s relevant, too, to Ayn Rand’s own speeches and to those of her fictional characters. In her novels, her characters make speeches, and their speeches are always related to a particular time, place, and audience — and also of great value to everyone, everywhere, always. Like Ayn Rand. She would devote attention and thought to the particular setting — when she spoke at MIT, as I told you, she had some particular remarks for scientists — but she always had something to say for everyone, everywhere, always. And it’s always our job to listen.

Conclusion

I have tried to present for your contemplation the content, the context, and the consequences of Ayn Rand’s “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” a speech delivered by a philosopher who lived on earth. But the full context of the speech entails an appreciation of her full life, and the calendar.

Ayn Rand’s college major was history, and history is concerned, in part, with a record in time. Her novels place the narratives in time.⁷⁷

In Ayn Rand’s life, the calendar eventually rolled around to March 6, 1982, the day she took her last breath, eight years after her West Point talk.

She was asked once, in 1969, what she thought would happen to her after she died. She said: “I assume that when I die, what will happen to me is that I will be buried.” She added: “We know that we have a body and a mind, and that neither can exist without the other. Therefore, when I die, that will be the end of me, the person. I don’t think it will be the end of my philosophy.”⁷⁸

As a college student at the University of Petrograd, she had anticipated having a place in the history of philosophy. At an oral final exam in a course on ancient philosophy (a course emphasizing both Plato and Aristotle), she was asked only about Plato. She knew all the answers.

I knew exactly what the theory was. And he asked me all over, you know, different kind, what was Plato’s view of this or of that and I would explain it. And finally he looks at me, slightly sardonically, and he asks, “Tell me, you don’t agree with Plato, do you?”

Now I had not said anything, but I think he gathered it by my tone of voice. And I said, “No, I don’t.”

“He asked, ‘Will you tell me why?’”

And I answered, “My views on philosophy are not part of the history of philosophy yet, but they will be.”⁷⁹

She did not tell her philosophy professor why she did not agree with Plato, but she had plenty to say on that topic later on. Her views on philosophy have indeed become part of the history of philosophy. The West Point textbook recognized an existing fact.

Whether or not every student who listened on March 6, 1974, actually heard all that she said and grasped all that she meant, whether or not West Point retained that book as the course textbook or retained the course itself, she wrote what she wrote, she said what she said, she was what she was.

March 6, 1982, was not the end of her philosophy.

The title of the lecture remains urgent and current. “Philosophy: Who Needs It.”

And if her ideas are ever considered not part of the history of philosophy, where they belong, then there is something terribly wrong with that history of philosophy.⁸⁰

1. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_018_001.
2. Ivey held a Bachelor of Science degree from West Point and several graduate degrees from Columbia.
3. Scott McConnell interviewed him on March 15, 2000, as part of the Ayn Rand Oral History Program (1996–2003), a project of the Ayn Rand Archives, a department of the Ayn Rand Institute. An edited version of the interview was published in 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand (NY: New American Library, 2010), 483–93. For this article, I read the full, unedited transcript, and quoted from it on only one occasion (note 17, below). All other quotations (identical in meaning and nearly verbatim) are drawn from the publicly available version; Herman Van Ivey agreed to the publication of this edited version.
4. The description of the course, which earned 2.5 credit hours, was as follows:

   PURPOSE: In recognition of Socrates’ principle that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” EN 402 is designed to provide First Classmen [i.e., Seniors] an opportunity in the classroom to consider those ultimate issues of human experience loosely labeled “philosophic.” Subsidiary goals are to develop skills in critical reading, to improve writing and speaking ability, and to continue development of an appreciation for literature.

   SCOPE: Within a broad context of philosophical inquiry, the course focuses on human values—ethical, aesthetic, spiritual—as they have evolved in man’s quest for viable accommodation with life’s uncertainties. Readings include expository essays, philosophic discourses, and imaginative literature, ranging among such authors as Plato, Aquinas, Kant and Camus. The course examines the epistemology, metaphysical position, and moral view of each of three approaches to life: the philosophic, the religious, and the scientific. Writing requirements include two 750–1000 word themes. 

   The 1972–73 West Point Academic Program, was known as the Redbook. The Redbook, published for each academic year, provides information for students about courses, syllabi, and course advisors, and I have relied on this publication as a source of information about the course as offered over the years. According to the 1972–73 Redbook, English 402 was required for graduation, and ordinarily taken in senior year (First Year, in West Point terminology). The textbooks consisted of two edited anthologies: Charles H. Monson’s (New York: Scribner, 1963), and Holley Gene Duffield’s Problems in Criticism of the Arts: Readings (New York: Chandler, 1968), as well as four novels: Albert Camus’s The Stranger, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Lessons were one hour long, for a total of forty hours, encompassing philosophy (twenty-four hours, including eight for aesthetics), religion (twelve hours), and science (four hours). The fields of morality, epistemology, and metaphysics were relevant, according to the chart in the Redbook, involved in all forty hours (i.e., to religion and science as well as philosophy). See the United States Military Academy Archives and Special Collections, Academic Program, 1972–73, II-2, XIV-46, for information about the 1972–73 course (taught by Herman Van Ivey). See 1971–72, XIV, 44 for a description of the 1971–72 course, before he taught the course. The title was “Advanced Exposition: Readings in Philosophy.” The texts were Charles Monson’s Philosophy, Religion, and Science, W. W. Little, W. H. Wilson, and W. E. Moore’s Applied Logic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. For a history of English 402 in earlier years, see Karl E. Oelke, “English 402: A Challenge for the ’70s,” Assembly, 30 (1971), 20–21, 39–40. I will provide, later in this article, information about the course in 1973–74 (the year in which Ayn Rand spoke), as well as the changes in the course in the years after she spoke.

5. Weems had a Bachelor of Science from West Point and an M.A. from Indiana. The annual West Point catalog has formal information about the faculty, their academic ranks, their military ranks, and their academic degrees. United States Military Academy Archives and Special Collections, Catalog of Information, USMA, 1972–73, 45.
6. Interview by Shoshana Milgram of Kelly Weems, September 29, 2023.
7. Lost on the Road to Oz, Pennsauken, NY: BookBaby, 2022.
8. Kelly Weems believes they may have been headed for a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. That is certainly possible. The Alvin Ailey company was rising and thriving. In 1971, the company had performed at the New York City Center where they later became a resident company, and at the Kennedy Center, at the inaugural gala performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (interview by Shoshana Milgram of Kelly Weems, September 29, 2023). The Alvin Ailey Company was, at the time, a hot ticket.
9. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 483.
10. “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” in Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 13.
11. Interview by Shoshana Milgram of Kelly Weems, September 29, 2023.
12. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 487-88.
13. Interview by Shoshana Milgram of Kelly Weems, September 29, 2023.
14. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 483.
15. Jack Capps was interviewed for the Ayn Rand Oral History Project on March 1, 1999. I consulted the unedited version of the interview. An edited version of his interview is published in 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 494–99. In this article, my quotations are drawn from the edited version, publicly available; they are identical in content with the passages in the unedited interview. (Catalog of Information, USMA, 1972–73, 44.)
16. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 483.
17. Interview of Herman Ivey by Scott McConnell, March 15, 1999, transcript provided by Ayn Rand Archives, 4.
18. Ayn Rand Papers, 089_05x_025_001.
19. The letter refers to her eminence as a critic of cultural values and also as a popular, exciting writer. The letter describes a course in philosophical, religious, and scientific values. The letter promises a responsive audience of over four hundred future leaders. The letter even uses the magic word, a word she had featured in Atlas Shrugged: “This course caps the education of these young men by encouraging them to reexamine their premises . . .”
20. Could Herman Van Ivey, who knew Ayn Rand’s work, have written the letter, the language of which is similar to the course description that year (and different from the course description in earlier years)? He says that his superiors had signed the letter. If they had composed the letter, why would Herman Van Ivey have phrased it that way? In any event, this invitation was distinctly inviting in its language and focus.
21. From an unpublished manuscript entitled “NOTES FOR AN ARTICLE ON ‘DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE PUBLIC,’” Ayn Rand Papers, 097_01x_006_003.
22. Why did so many soldiers write to her? Why, for that matter, were so many soldiers reading books? During the war, there was a donation project, the Victory Book Campaign, for which the poster said: “Our men want books. Send all you can spare.” Because many novels were too large and heavy for soldiers to carry with them, there were special portable, softcover volumes (yes, some of them abridged), published in Armed Services Editions, just the size for a breast pocket or a hip pocket. Photographs show soldiers reading books while eating, while getting their hair cut, while waiting for the order to go over the top. Feeding the soul was part of the war effort. The Nazis were burning books, and the Americans were publishing them. President Roosevelt gave a speech: “Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books can never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.” He gave that speech in May 1943, the same month The Fountainhead was published. Books were made available to the soldiers, who were hungry for books. And The Fountainhead was one of the books they devoured. (Information about the Armed Services Editions is drawnfrom Molly Guptill Manning and Brian Anderson, The Best-Read Army in the World (NY: Grolier Club, 2020), a book accompanying the Grolier Club exhibition May 13–August 1, 2020). Books were made available to the soldiers, who were hungry for books. And The Fountainhead was one of the books they devoured. The Fountainhead was published in something similar to the Armed Services Editions, in Omnibook, a quarterly pulp magazine that featured abridgements authorized by the publishers. It was one of the selections in January 1944. It shared space with Ernie Pyle’s Here Is Your War (which was pictured on the front cover), Elizabeth Hawes’s Why Women Cry, and Alexander Woollcott’s Long, Long Ago. Special sales on the books were advertised as “ideal as a gift for men and women in the armed services.” When Ayn Rand saw the Omnibook version, she said she could have done a better job of abridging it within the same space — but it was “not too awful.” The Omnibook edition is probably the way that many soldiers, for whom her work was a lifeline, read The Fountainhead. They read her, they heard her, they understood her, and they told her. They wanted what she offered.
23. She had spoken to Philosophy 1 at Yale to Brooklyn College classes taught by John Hospers to Allan Gotthelf’s philosophy class at the Pratt Institute to “Conceptual Foundations of Business” in Columbia’s School of Business. She had given public lectures not only at her favorite venue, the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, but at such universities as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Syracuse, and Johns Hopkins. She had even given public lectures at the same school where she spoke to a course.
24. Ayn Rand Papers, 089_05x_027_001.
25. In 1936, after the publication of We the Living, she had given several public talks about Russia. In 1940, she gave six performances a day, speaking and answering questions, when she was actively campaigning for Wendell Willkie, who was running for president. In the late 1950s (after the publication of Atlas Shrugged) and in the early and mid-1960s, she spoke at many colleges and universities, and to large crowds.
26. The rare exceptions: In 1968, she spoke to the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration (Ayn Rand Papers, 041_01B_022_001). In 1970, she repeated at a local community college the lecture she had just given at Ford Hall (Ayn Rand Papers, 041_01B_006_001).
27. 100 Voices: Oral History of Ayn Rand, 486.
28. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_009_002.
29. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_007_001.
30. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_005_001.
31. It had some changes. It eliminated Camus’s The Stranger and added a book on aesthetics (Irwin Edman, Arts and the Man, 1949) and two novels: Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. See Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_006_001, 001_01B_006_002.
32. United States Military Academy Archives and Special Collections, Academic Program, 1973–74 Redbook, XIV–47.
33. Charles H. Monson (ed.), Philosophy, Religion, and Science: An Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Scribner’s, 1966), xvi, 557.
34. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 484.
35. Ayn Rand’s Daily Desk Calendars (Ayn Rand Archives).
36. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 485.
37. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 485–86. A recording of his three-minute introduction at the event can be found here.
38. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 486.
39. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 486.
40. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 485.
41. Her customized remarks were published, under the title “To Young Scientists,” in The Objectivist Newsletter, 3, no. 10 (October 1962), 41, 46. The first page included a direct personal appeal, with a specific reference to a character in Atlas Shrugged:

    No man and no class of men can live without a code of ethics. But if there are degrees of urgency, I would say that it is you, the scientists, who need it most urgently. . . . It is obvious why you should know — before you start out — to what purpose and service you choose to devote the power of your mind.

    If you do not care to know — well, I would like to say that there is a character in Atlas Shrugged who was dedicated to you as a warning, with the sincere hope that it would not be necessary. His name is Robert Stadler.

42. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_011_001.
43. Ayn Rand Archives, Butterfield Collection, RALETTER, V1974, 1004.
44. Page 4, for example, has a marginal 8, page 13 has a marginal 24, and page 17, at the end, has a marginal 32. For the hand-edited typed copy, see Ayn Rand Papers, 107_21A_001_001-17. The recording of the 38-minute talk (not including the Q&A) can be found here.
45. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_010_001-02.
46. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 488.
47. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 489–90.
48. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 490.
49. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 486. A recording of his three-minute introduction at the event can be found here.
50. 100 voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 490.
51. Philosophy: Who Needs It,” in Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (NY: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 1. Subsequent quotations from the speech are drawn from this publication.
52. Thanks to Jason Rheins for confirming that the phrase “moral autonomy” is characteristic of Kant, and not of Ayn Rand.
53. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 496.
54. Biographical interview of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden and Nathaniel Branden, Interview 6, recorded January 2, 1961. Transcript and recording at the Ayn Rand Archives. In the story, the ensuing conflict between a scientist and some communist spies would show the disintegration of a society under communism. In her early years in the United States, she considered using this idea for a first novel. It would, she said, be in her “real style,” in that she needed “to create my own universe.” She ultimately decided to write We the Living instead of “the airplane story” — partly because she wanted to get Russia out of her system, and partly because she found, in a science fiction pulp magazine, a story with a similar fantastic premise of an airship “caught in an interplanetary gravitational space” and she thought she would have to check that there was no problem with that minor parallel. She did not name the magazine or the story. A likely candidate from one of the few science fiction magazines published in the late 1920s and early 1930s is Ed Earl Repp, (Hugo Gernsback, ed.), “Beyond Gravity,” Air Wonder Stories, 1 (2) (August 1929) 114–31, 183. “Beyond Gravity” features a ship that goes out of control. It otherwise has nothing in common with Ayn Rand’s idea for a story.
55. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 496.
56. The 23-minute Q&A portion of the presentation is included in “Philosophy: Who Needs It — West Point Lecture” (MP3 download), available at estore.aynrand.org. A transcript of the Q&A is in Ayn Rand Papers 001_01B_025_001-005. An account of her long response to the question about racism can be found in John Lewis and Gregory Salmieri, “A Philosopher on Her Times: Ayn Rand’s Political and Cultural Commentary,” in A Companion to Ayn Rand, Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri (eds.), (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 394–95.
57. Thanks to John Cerasulo for facilitating my contact with Bill Muir, who wrote to the Class of ’74. Thanks, too, to the members of the Class of ’74 who wrote to me.
58. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 491.
59. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_020_001.
60. She had noticed that the wife of Jack Capps was the librarian, and she mentioned that fact. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_013_001.
61. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_022-001.
62. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_004_001, 089_05x_023_001-002.
63. 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, 491.
64. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_018_001.
65. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_002_001 (offering to make changes if Herman Van Ivey requested) and 001_01B_002_002 (Leonard Peikoff’s report).
66. The Ayn Rand Letter, 3, no. 10 (February 11, 1974), 5–6 . The Ayn Rand Letter, at that time, had had publication delays; the report was published several months after the West Point talk.
67. Ayn Rand Daily Desk Calendars (Ayn Rand Archives).
68. Ayn Rand Papers, 157_14x_005_001.
69. Ayn Rand Papers, 001_01B_001_001. The book itself is in the Ayn Rand Papers 181 (in multiple folder).
70. United States Military Academy Archives and Special Collections, Academic Program.
71. The description was substantially the same as the description of the course in 1972–73 and 1973–74:

    PURPOSE; In recognition of Socrates’ principle that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” EN 402 is designed.to provide First classmen an opportunity in the classroom to consider those ultimate issues of human experience loosely labeled, “philosophic.” Subsidiary goals are to develop skills in critical reading, to improve writing and speaking ability, and to continue development of an appreciation for literature.

    SCOPE: Within a broad context of philosophical inquiry, this course focuses on human values — ethical, aesthetic, spiritual — as they have evolved in man’s quest for a viable accommodation with life’s uncertainties. Readings include expository essays, philosophic discourse, and imaginative literature, ranging among such authors as Plato, Aquinas, Kant, and Camus. The course examines the epistemology,, metaphysical position, and ethical view of each of four approaches to life: the philosophic, the religious, the artistic, and the scientific. Writing requirements include two 750–1,000-word themes and one 200–300-word essay. (1974–75 Redbook, 94.)

    In 1975–76, the course title was still “Readings in Philosophy: Inquiries into Ethical, Aesthetic, and Spiritual Values,” but the only text listed was the anthology “Reading in Philosophy, Science, and Art (USMA),” which began with “Philosophy: Who Needs It.” The description was shorter: “By encountering some of man’s most significant ideas, this course raises questions about meaning and value in life. Students must read various and difficult texts closely, analyze and evaluate complicated concepts in frequent writing assignments, and in class engage in rigorous discourse.” (1975–76 Redbook, 45 of 106-page PDF (course descriptions were not paginated separately)).
    
    In 1976–77, the course title became “Philosophic Issues.” The course description read: “This senior-level course seeks to understand differing viewpoints on significant philosophic issues through reading of imaginative literature, expository essays, and philosophic works. The course emphasizes competence in analysis and evaluation of issues in epistemology, religion, metaphysics, and ethics.” (1976–77 Redbook, 62 of 113-page PDF. (Course descriptions were not paginated separately.))
    
    The new textbook was Philosophy: A Literary and Conceptual Approach, edited by Burton S. Porter. This text had some of the classic philosophers featured in earlier textbooks, such as Epictetus, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche (along with newer figures, such as B. F. Skinner), but also a large number of literary excerpts from, among others, Sophocles, Alexander Pope, Shaw, Archibald MacLeish, Ionesco, and Pirandello. The literature excerpts were introduced to illustrate the philosophical ideas.

    The book was organized not by branch of philosophy or by such larger abstractions such as philosophy vs. science, but in terms of issues, such as “The Problem of Evil” and “Free Will and Determinism.” The topic “Free Will and Determinism” promised more than it delivered. Three of the four sub-headings concerned determinism. For the fourth subheading, “The Affirmation of Free Will,” the literary example was Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which conflates free will with capriciousness. The protagonist expresses contempt and antipathy for reason, and wants to affirm his free will, i.e., that he is a man and not a piano key, by behaving badly. (Burton F. Porter, ed., Philosophy: A Literary and Conceptual Approach (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.))

    Further changes were ahead. In 1977–78, the title remained “Philosophic Issues,” and the course description was retained, but no textbooks were listed. (1977–78, Redbook, 93.) The following year, the entire curriculum was in the process of revision, regarding the titles of courses, the description, and the years in which the students were required to enroll. The course was renamed “Philosophy,” with the designation PY 201. The 1978–79 Redbook indicates that the course will be offered in years other than senior year, initially for all classes, and later during the third-class year.

    This sophomore-level course helps cadets develop their capabilities to think clearly and critically. It acquaints them with alternative viewpoints on major philosophic issues and assists them in acquiring a special facility with the language, arguments, and methods of moral discourse. During AY 1978–79, this course will be presented to the classes of 1979, 1980, and 1981; subsequently, it will be offered to each class during the Third Class year. No textbook was listed. (1978–79, Redbook, 9–21.)

72. The official dates were December 31, 1973, and January 14, 1974. At that time, The Ayn Rand Letter had had publication delays. The article was described as a speech given on March 6, 1974.
73. The words “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” (the title of an article) were included in the title of a book, but only as a subtitle. That book is The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.
74. “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” (a lecture delivered at Yale University on February 17, 1960), Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 92.
75. « Si l’écrivain n’écrivait que pour son temps, je devrais briser et jeter ma plume.” He was reflecting on the gulf between him and his contemporaries. Quoted in André Maurois, Olympio: The Life of Victor Hugo, Gerard Hopkins (transl.), (New York: Harper, 1956), 378 (see note 22 on 484).
76. Ayn Rand quoted Hugo in her introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), vii.
77. We the Living takes place during the early years of Soviet Russia, with specific dates. The Fountainhead, set during the 20th century in America, includes dates, in such a way that the year of the century corresponds to the year in the life of the hero. The novel starts in 1922, when Howard Roark himself is 22. In Atlas Shrugged, set in the future, we do not have indications of the year, but there is a visual calendar in the very first scene, showing the month and day. The novel starts on September 2, and we notice when the calendar rolls around again to September 2.
78. “Apollo and Dionysus,” Ford Hall Forum, November 9, 1969. 1:45 of the recording.
79. Biographical interview of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden and Nathaniel Branden, Interview 6, January 2, 1961. For information about the course in ancient philosophy at the University of Petrograd, see Shoshana Milgram, “The Education of Kira Argounova and Leo Kovalenski,” Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, second edition, Robert Mayhew (ed.), (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012), 89–94, 110.
80. I am grateful, for my access to the papers I have used, to the Ayn Rand Archives staff, especially Michael Berliner, Jeff Britting, and Jenniffer Woodson. Thanks to Scott McConnell for his interviews with Herman Van Ivey and Jack Capps. For additional coverage of the West Point talk, see Tom Bowden, “Ayn Rand at West Point: ‘Philosophy: Who Needs It,’” New Ideal, March 6, 2025.