
Ayn Rand: An Introduction
Libertarianism.org Guides
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $14.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Voice Bunny
-
By:
-
Eamonn Butler
About this listen
Few 20th-century intellectuals have been as influential - and controversial - as the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. Her thinking still has a profound impact, particularly on those who come to it through her novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead - with their core messages of individualism, self-worth, and the right to live without the impositions of others. Although ignored or scorned by some academics, traditionalists, progressives, and public intellectuals, her thought remains a major influence on many of the world’s leading legislators, policy advisers, economists, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Why does Rand’s work remain so influential? Ayn Rand: An Introduction illuminates Rand’s importance, detailing her understanding of reality and human nature, and explores the ongoing fascination with and debates about her conclusions on knowledge, morality, politics, economics, government, public issues, aesthetics, and literature. The book also places these in the context of her life and times, showing how revolutionary they were, and how they have influenced and continue to impact public policy debates.
©2018 Cato Institute (P)2018 Institute of Economic AffairsListeners also enjoyed...
-
Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts That Support It
- By: Craig Biddle
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Loving Life demonstrates that morality is not a matter of divine revelation nor social convention nor personal opinion but a matter of the factual requirements of human life and personal happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest.
-
-
A guide book to a great life.
- By DarnestownMom on 07-27-19
By: Craig Biddle
-
The Right Side of History
- How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
- By: Ben Shapiro
- Narrated by: Ben Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has a God-shaped hole in its heart, argues New York Times best-selling author Ben Shapiro, and we shouldn't fill it with politics and hate.
-
-
As an atheist
- By Benjamin on 03-27-19
By: Ben Shapiro
-
Rediscovering Americanism
- And the Tyranny of Progressivism
- By: Mark R. Levin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell, Mark R. Levin
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Rediscovering Americanism, Mark R. Levin revisits the founders' warnings about the perils of overreach by the federal government and concludes that the men who created our country would be outraged and disappointed to see where we've ended up. Levin returns to the impassioned question he's explored in each of his best-selling books: How do we save our exceptional country? Because our values are in such a precarious state, he argues that a restoration to the essential truths on which our country was founded has never been more urgent.
-
-
More scholarly than I expected
- By Wayne on 06-29-17
By: Mark R. Levin
-
The Virtue of Selfishness
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: C. M. Hernert
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life - the life proper to a rational being - as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with human nature, with the creative requirement of survival, and with a free society.
-
-
Beyond brilliant
- By R. Aiken on 10-29-03
By: Ayn Rand
-
Philosophy
- Who Needs It
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.
-
-
Deep and provocative
- By Sierra Bravo on 05-21-09
By: Ayn Rand
-
Philosophers
- Classical and Modern Critical Thinkers with Steady Morals
- By: Nelly Vortex
- Narrated by: Ric Chetter
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this audiobook on philosophers, several fascinating thinkers will be covered. Their inspiring and debatable thoughts will give you new insights in life and death and in ethics and morals. First, the political philosophers John Locke will be explored. Mr. Locke was the libertarian who said something when things appeared to go in the wrong direction.
-
-
Very good
- By Anonymous User on 05-06-20
By: Nelly Vortex
-
Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts That Support It
- By: Craig Biddle
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Loving Life demonstrates that morality is not a matter of divine revelation nor social convention nor personal opinion but a matter of the factual requirements of human life and personal happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest.
-
-
A guide book to a great life.
- By DarnestownMom on 07-27-19
By: Craig Biddle
-
The Right Side of History
- How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
- By: Ben Shapiro
- Narrated by: Ben Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has a God-shaped hole in its heart, argues New York Times best-selling author Ben Shapiro, and we shouldn't fill it with politics and hate.
-
-
As an atheist
- By Benjamin on 03-27-19
By: Ben Shapiro
-
Rediscovering Americanism
- And the Tyranny of Progressivism
- By: Mark R. Levin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell, Mark R. Levin
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Rediscovering Americanism, Mark R. Levin revisits the founders' warnings about the perils of overreach by the federal government and concludes that the men who created our country would be outraged and disappointed to see where we've ended up. Levin returns to the impassioned question he's explored in each of his best-selling books: How do we save our exceptional country? Because our values are in such a precarious state, he argues that a restoration to the essential truths on which our country was founded has never been more urgent.
-
-
More scholarly than I expected
- By Wayne on 06-29-17
By: Mark R. Levin
-
The Virtue of Selfishness
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: C. M. Hernert
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life - the life proper to a rational being - as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with human nature, with the creative requirement of survival, and with a free society.
-
-
Beyond brilliant
- By R. Aiken on 10-29-03
By: Ayn Rand
-
Philosophy
- Who Needs It
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.
-
-
Deep and provocative
- By Sierra Bravo on 05-21-09
By: Ayn Rand
-
Philosophers
- Classical and Modern Critical Thinkers with Steady Morals
- By: Nelly Vortex
- Narrated by: Ric Chetter
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this audiobook on philosophers, several fascinating thinkers will be covered. Their inspiring and debatable thoughts will give you new insights in life and death and in ethics and morals. First, the political philosophers John Locke will be explored. Mr. Locke was the libertarian who said something when things appeared to go in the wrong direction.
-
-
Very good
- By Anonymous User on 05-06-20
By: Nelly Vortex
-
How to Be a Conservative
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live otherwise. As he writes, the book ‘is not about what we have lost, but about what we have retained, and how to hold on to it’. In this witty and frank account, Scruton draws on his years of experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life.
By: Roger Scruton
-
Between Past and Future
- Eight Exercises in Political Thought
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.
-
-
Just stunning
- By Peter Stephens on 02-26-18
By: Hannah Arendt
-
Capitalism
- The Unknown Ideal
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.
-
-
Ashame this is not taught in our
- By Karen on 08-18-07
By: Ayn Rand
-
Suicide of the West
- How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jonah Goldberg
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
-
-
Put some gratitude in your attitude
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-18
By: Jonah Goldberg
-
On Anarchism
- By: Noam Chomsky, Nathan Schneider - introduction
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.
-
-
Hit and Miss
- By Jacob King on 06-18-14
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
-
The DIM Hypothesis
- Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out
- By: Leonard Peikoff
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his groundbreaking and controversial book The DIM Hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought and thereby on Western culture and history. In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, separate laws into a constitution, or single events into a story.
-
-
If you were frustrated by Ayn Rand's narrow focus
- By Steve L. on 11-30-18
By: Leonard Peikoff
-
The Closing of the American Mind
- By: Allan Bloom
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In one of the most important books of our time, Allan Bloom, a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago and a noted translator of Plato and Rousseau, argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis.
-
-
VERY IMPORTANT WORK!
- By Douglas on 06-29-10
By: Allan Bloom
-
The Sane Society
- By: Erich Fromm
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sane Society is a continuation and extension of the brilliant psychiatric concepts Erich Fromm first formulated in Escape from Freedom; it is also, in many ways, an answer to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Fromm examines man’s escape into over conformity and the danger of robotism in contemporary industrial society: Modern humanity has, he maintains, been alienated from the world of their own creation. Here Fromm offers a complete and systematic exploration of his “humanistic psychoanalysis.”
-
-
Stimulating and insightful
- By T. Holden on 04-07-16
By: Erich Fromm
-
Ayn Rand Answers
- The Best of Her Q & A
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order to bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed added not only an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs, but a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself.
-
-
It sounds like Ayn Rand
- By Anonymous User on 06-09-18
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Voice of Reason
- Essays in Objectivist Thought
- By: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand's life, they reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor.
-
-
Explains Everything Of Today
- By L. Nicholson on 11-20-15
By: Ayn Rand, and others
-
Explaining Postmodernism (Expanded Edition)
- Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
- By: Stephen R. C. Hicks
- Narrated by: Scott R. Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.
-
-
Does not actually explain postmodernism.
- By Daniel Schealler on 02-04-19
-
Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
- Thinkers of the New Left
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Rory Barnett
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of the leading critics of leftist orientations comes a study of the thinkers who have most influenced the attitudes of the New Left. Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. Scruton delivers a critique of modern left-wing thinking.
-
-
Deconstructing the New Left
- By Wayne on 01-17-20
By: Roger Scruton