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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: O. L. Davis, Jr. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1996. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 416-432). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1996. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 416-432). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-82).

Author and philosopher Ayn Rand has gathered a cult like following thanks to her bestselling novels We the Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Through Rand's fictional writings she illustrates the principles of her philosophy objectivism. Objectivism employs five principles; objective reality, reason, self -interest, capitalism and individualism as the truths that govern the philosophy. Objectivists believe that their self-reliant philosophy holds the key to all life's answers. This thesis examines the following question: what would the founder of objectivism Ayn Rand think about the U.S. Constitution? Sadly Ayn Rand passed away in 1982 and never expressed her full opinion on how she felt about the U.S. Constitution. However, using the five principles of the objectivist ideology, public interviews done with Ayn Rand during her life time, and the opinions expressed by Rand in her four fictional novels this thesis will deconstruct the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and then reconstruct them so that they concur with the objectivist philosophy. The purpose of this thesis is to inform readers of the objectivist philosophy and to highlight the differences and similarities between Ayn Rand's beliefs and the Founding Fathers through the Constitution.

In this essay, I intend to analyze and respond to criticism directed towards the subjective component of Susan Wolf’s Bi-partite “Fitting Fulfillment View”, criticism directed from Thaddeus Metz, Ben Bramble, and Aaron Smuts. Wolf offers a theory about meaning in life which considers both that the subject should find it meaningful and that the source of this meaningfulness should be objectively valuable. However, critics have argued that a subject’s attitude towards meaningfulness should not affect whether one’s life is meaningful or not. Out of the critics I found promising and responded to I did not find any that seriously threatened Wolf’s theory and, in some cases they even seem to misunderstand Wolf’s claim. In the final section, I raise a question for Wolf’s account that I believe would be interesting to pursue in a further study.

The purpose of this study was to examine a thesis stating that the fundamental concepts of Romanticism form the basic components of the Objectivist philosophy demonstrated in the works of Ayn Rand. The study reviewed some of the scholarship on the topic of Romanticism, notably that of Morse Peckham and Henry Remak. Analogies were drawn between European and American Romanticism; the nature of romanticism as a developmental morality in relation to principles established by Lawrence Kohlberg was discussed. This study adopted a definition of Romanticism as a state of mind which begins in the individual and involves an entire society in a moral development that renounces the static, embraces the dynamic, and holds humanity at its center.Next examined was the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. A review of that ethic indicated that Objectivism also is a developmental ethic that holds humanism as its primary tenet. The characteristics of diversity, the creative imagination, growth and change, pride/self-worth/self-knowledge/love, leadership of the mind, and autonomy were found evident in both Objectivism and Romanticism, leading into a blending of the systems into an ethic of objective Romanticism. Such an ethic was examined in the context of Ayn Rand's works and found consistent in its appearance as an epistemology consequent to the progression of an individual or a community toward a level of self-actualization as defined by Abraham Maslow.A review of Rand's aesthetic ethic as presented in The Romantic Manifesto provided support for the romantic roots in Rand's writing. Rand's own premises for the evaluation of a romantic work were found evident in her own writings. It was therefore determined that Ayn Rand's works do indeed blend the components of Romanticism and Objectivism into a moral ethic that relies heavily upon the development of the individual state of mind toward a level of self-actualization in which the "I" becomes the axiom of human existence. / Department of English

The author believes that Ayn Rand presents a systematic approach to aesthetics and that her work presents an interesting and significant approach to aesthetic problems. The author will attempt to present Ayn Rand's basic aesthetic concepts that throw light on her literary theory. The author will also present her views on literary schools and of individual authors.

Moral issues such as abortion, immigration, and gun rights are subject to constant debate. Yet such discussions are increasingly unproductive, perhaps because we enter such debates with closed, rather than open mindsets, which might rigidify our views, leading to perceptions of an objectively ‘correct’ answer to moral issues. This study tested whether different modes of interaction led to differences in levels of this ‘objectivist’ thought. The study also tested whether and whether threat, experienced in anticipation of a contentious interaction, mediated this effect. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which they received instructions on how they should approach an upcoming interaction on the topic of abortion. Instruction conditions included: competition, cooperation, persuasion, learning, neutral control, and no-opposition control (except for no-opposition control, all conditions specified that the other person disagreed with the participant on abortion). Although hypothesized group differences were not found, hypothesized mediation analyses were significant, such that competition, cooperation, and neutral control conditions produced increased threat for participants, while learning, persuasion, and no opposition control conditions produced reduced threat. Threat level positively predicted moral objectivity level for both abortion (the topic of discussion) and other moral issues. These results provide insight into why debating morally contentious issues can seem futile at best, and provides a glimpse of why this does not have to be the case.