PWNI

In Philosophy: Who Needs It, a collection of essays written by Rand in the years following Atlas Shrugged, she argues that philosophy is not a pastime for brooding teenagers or ivory tower intellectuals. It’s a subject that deals with some of the most important issues in human life. What kind of world do we live in? How do we separate knowledge from error? What is good and what is evil?

In Rand’s view, we cannot avoid having–and acting on–some answer to these questions.

“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt.”¹