Juliette Sellgren

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliet Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www.AdamSmithWorks.org. Welcome back. We've talked about objectivism before on this podcast, but it was fairly introductory and we didn't get into the weeds about its values and limitations, what it did well and what it kind of misses out on. Go check that episode out. But today, on March 21st, 2025, I am excited to welcome Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen to the podcast to talk about objectivism individualistic perfection and the differences between the two, where one goes wrong, where one doesn't, all that sort of stuff. They have written so much on this topic and so many others. Denial is a resident scholar at Liberty Fund and Rasmussen is a professor emeritus in philosophy from St. John's University, and he's a senior affiliated scholar at the Center for Economic Inquiry at Creighton University. Together they've written a lot on the subject, including editing a collection called The Philosophic thought of Ayn Rand. They've written a lot both together and individually at the journal for Ayn Rand studies. Denial has even written a book on the subject titled The Fountain Head and American Novel. This is the first time we're going to have two people on the podcast with me at the same time. So hold on to your hats, your horses, whatever you're going to hold onto. Welcome to the podcast, both of you. I'm excited to have you.

Douglas Rasmussen 

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Juliette Sellgren 

So first question, what is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't

Douglas Den Uyl (2:06)

For some reason, the thing that occurred to me and then Doug and I talked about it was manners. And it's not that your generation doesn't is unmanly. It's just a subject that's never taught, never discussed, and never given a reason for thinking about. And in this day and age, it seemed to us to be an important subject given all the alon that goes among all of us these days. And I don't know. So if both of us, this might be one thing that people have ignored, it might be value, you might want to add something.

Douglas Rasmussen (2:48)

Yeah, well, I just give examples, showing up on time for meetings, for dinners, dressing appropriately for the context. I know a lot of that can be viewed as just someone being an old fuddy duddy I suppose. But I think there are all sorts of things that we do that show respect for one another and understanding one another that helps to make conversation, go make social life much more amenable to amenable. And again, this was a part of the educational system at one time and it would be nice to see that emphasized again.

Juliette Sellgren (3:38)

It's funny because I grew up in a time where we wore sweatpants to school and pajamas. No one would change. And even I did that and I say that because now I get dressed. I take great pride in getting dressed for the occasion and maybe even going above and beyond.

Douglas Rasmussen (4:00)

Yeah, I'm going to probably get myself in trouble. But I remember showing on Facebook pictures of a professors and hobos and one was asked to choose which was the professor and which was the hobo. And unless you happen to know the particular people in advance, it was a very difficult thing to do. But again, that doesn't, I suppose necessarily mean that you don't have manners, but it is I think a suggestive of one of the things that's lacking in our culture.

Douglas Den Uyl (4:34)

Yeah, little things like people walk in front of you don't say, excuse me, just simple little things like that seem to become Also, I suppose a failure.

Douglas Rasmussen (4:46)

And this will get us into other themes to understand that one has to be responsible not only for one's life in terms of making it something worthwhile, but for how one deals with others and making that process something that is conducive to yourself and the others' wellbeing. It's minimal respect, minimal recognition of moral responsibility.

Juliette Sellgren 

Well, so that perfect segue, could you both, or one of you, whoever, lay out for us just very simply just to get into it, what is Objectivism and what is it that that philosophy teaches, I guess is the way to put it?

Douglas Den Uyl (5:44)

Well, objectivism is the title Ayn Rand has given to her philosophy and that's what her followers also use to describe what's the nature of her philosophy. She is, as you know, a philosopher, novelist. She has many of her ideas are posited through her literature, but she's also written a number of nonfiction articles and mainly collections of her articles that have turned into books that are nonfiction. I give the basic doctrine of the objective, but it is a capital O objective that she has entitled her philosophy. The word is used in philosophy, small o to describe a certain orientation, philosophical orientation, which is not outside of what she wants to. Go ahead, mention some element to the document.

Douglas Rasmussen (6:59)

Yeah, I suppose I would just add that this is sort of a list that you get and is taken really from looking at rand. So this is what we'll call the basic tenets of objectivism. The first is that reality exists and is what it is independent and apart from what one may know, and that one can know both the existence and nature of reality. This is her metaphysical and epistemological view. There's nothing unique about this view. This view could be called metaphysical realism and it's a view that you could find an Aristotle or Aquinas, but she certainly has those tenets. The next thing you could say is that she looks at human beings as rational animals. There's more to being human than being a rational animal. But that would be the definition I think, of what she would say human beings are. And the crucial starting point for her thinking about human action in terms of ethics.

Objectivism would hold that we ought to pursue our rational self-interest, and that is the primary aim of morality. And from there she has written by book called The Virtue of Selfishness and other things that has essays on that issue. And the topic when we get to political philosophy, objectivism holds that liberty as defined and justified by individual rights is the paramount aim of the political legal order. And accordingly, she holds that laissez-faire. Capitalism has the expression of these rights and that system is morally superior to other economic systems. So that's I think as brief as I can probably put the basic tenets of objectivism,

Juliette Sellgren (9:04)

What led you both together and individually to embark on this journey of dealing with her thought? I mean, you've mentioned she writes nonfiction, but to the world, she's primarily known as a novelist. And so how do you two in dealing with what I might say is more formalized philosophy? Why were you motivated to and how did you end up engaging with her thought and kind of folding it into the discipline of philosophy and kind of dealing with it?

Douglas Den Uyl (9:53)

Well, she invites that by calling herself a philosopher and telling us that philosophy's important. So once you sort of get into being interested in her, it's only natural that you pay some attention to philosophy. I mean, there's different biography between Doug and I on how we got there, but the two of us ended up in graduate school together having had an interesting brand and tried to make it more academic, shall we say. I don't know if you want the biographies, but that's how we first got together was in grad school and wrote a piece called Nozick on the Randian Argument, I think was the first thing we cooperated on. Since then, we've been been together, right?

Douglas Rasmussen (10:46)

Yeah, there's probably, we could both tell some interesting histories about how we got initially acquainted with Rand's thought. But going back to the first thing that Doug and I did together Nozick on the Randian Argument, that was for a journal published by the University of Southern California Department of Philosophy. And Robert Nozick, the Harvard professor, had written a very interesting and powerful argument criticizing Rand's ethics. And we thought it was a very good article, but we also thought there were misinterpretations of Rand. And really more importantly, I think from our perspective, the criticism that Nozick was advancing failed to consider what we would later call a neo-Aristotelian view of ethics. And so we started looking at that and one thing led to another, and we came to the conclusion that Rand wasn't always as polite and as respectful of other philosophers as she should have been. In accordingly, that also meant that others didn't treat her that way, but we were concerned that there was a serious intellectual position there, but it needed to be considered calmly, carefully, and scholarly. And this led us to embark on the Nozick big project together, which was getting the University of Illinois press to publish a book of essays that we edited called The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand.

Juliette Sellgren (12:41)

I'm having a hard time figuring out where to begin. I mean, where do you see the values of her thought? Kind of along the lines of if there is a serious academic, philosophical, intellectual position, what parts of that, I guess what parts of that are born out either in what you believe as being a logical, valid and at carrying water type of argument versus where do her arguments kind of fall short? And we can get more into it into each, but just to begin, I guess, what about her thought ends up remaining after your analysis and what parts of it kind of fall short?

Douglas Den Uyl (13:43)

Well, probably my case, maybe Doug's part of it was her political views at the time we were young men were quite antithetical to the sort of socialists, the doctrines that were being entitled by people in position. So for me, it was unlike even of the direction she was going politically, that got me interested in the other stuff. Maybe Doug started at the other end with the philosophy and ended up with the politics. I don't know, but probably typically people did it sort of my way because she got known for being a critic of socialism, et cetera. There weren't that many around at that time that were very big. She was not a conservative either. And my family background was conservative. So you're always looking into how much of what your parents tell you it's correct and not correct. And that was part of it also, she appealed to the youth striking out on their own and doing things that way.

Douglas Rasmussen (14:52)

Yeah. Well, the thing that struck me about brand as I first read her was the realization that when you have in the American Declaration [of Independence] among the rights, the right to pursue happiness is if you understand happiness is something more than mere pleasure, but it's something about a worthwhile human life that you living a worthwhile life, that you being the best you can be to use that old expression. If that view is considered morally repugnant or morally secondary, if in general life is to be understood as sacrificing yourself to the collective or to the social whole. If you don't have a right to exist for your own development, then the case for liberty gets knocked down quite a bit. Now, I don't think the connection between the two are as direct as maybe Rand thought it to be, but there is, I think in Rand, an assertive of the importance of the individual human being that is seldom recognized in ethics. And I think that importance is crucial to understanding why a system that defends liberty is important.

Juliette Sellgren (16:42)

This is something I kind of struggle with because it's along the lines of her popularity. Obviously she's a relatively controversial figure. There are a lot of people who really don't like her and there are a lot of people who like her a lot, but she does something in the way that she depicts economic decay and the value of the individual things like this where the imagery and the descriptiveness kind of brings it to life, I think. But on the other hand, there's kind of this criticism that her characters fall flat. And as I'm reading it again Atlas Shrugged, I kind of see this critique come out more and more in that there is something about some of her characters which are a little unbelievable, although some of the descriptions, even though what she's describing has been described by [Friedrich] Hayek, say, there's this section where she talks about the importance of this big oil producer to the market and how his exit from the market has all these effects in all these different markets and on all these people's lives. And even though Hayek describes this and kind of the way the interconnectedness of all these markets, it's so real when she describes it in this way. And maybe it's because it took so long for her to build up to the point where we could say that

Douglas Rasmussen (18:20)

I think the reason it's so real is what resonates in her thought is the immorality of a system of coercion, the immorality of business people using the government to get special interest. The whole idea that we can function in a society where one group in effect cannibalizes another, that moral angle that she has, I think that's what grabs hold of people and she does that better I think, than almost any person in classical liberal libertarian land. And regardless of what you think of her arguments or everything that I think is just what resonates with people.

Douglas Den Uyl (19:21)

And to put it in literary form also helps. I mean, we covered the world through our imagination first anyway, and appeals to that and captures us, whereas some abstract philosophical argument you may get to, but you're probably going to need some intro way to get there. And she provides it with her literary style.

Juliette Sellgren (19:47)

So how did it complicate things for you both when you were dealing with her thought and trying to parse through her arguments when, I mean, I think a lot of the appeal is the fact that it is kind of like an emotional visceral, she captures this description well, but it's because it brings something out of the reader, which is not super, super explicit. It's not very, robust is maybe not the right word, but it's not a clear philosophical argument. So how did you deal with that and how do people deal with stuff like that because she seems to mix art and philosophy in a way that's wonderful, but that makes it then hard to deal with, I think.

Douglas Den Uyl (20:45)

Well, that's partly true, although I think for us in large part, we found the images compelling, and we wanted to look further into it. Again, youth has something to do with this because youth is in a state where they want to individualize, find their own path of life and so forth. And she appeals to that right away. And in our cases, we decided to take her seriously and look further into her ideas. And both of us at least probably never has to do that. But we both went into philosophy because that's where we thought the poor development was to be found.

Douglas Rasmussen (21:31)

Yeah, I think the emotional pull of her thought points to something that maybe she didn't fully recognize, and that is that our emotions do give us a clue as to what is worthwhile. Now of course, our emotions can be skewed the wrong way and all of that, but if you say, why does this pull on me so much? Why does this strike me as just on target, just right? Remember when people say that, you have to say, well, why do I think that? And what is behind that? And that invites you to the philosophical consideration that invites you to think more deeply. And that's especially the case when you see people have the opposite emotional reaction. I've seen people read a passage from Rand and almost, well, I'm speaking metaphorically, they almost want to vomit. They have such a negative reaction. And so that's why you have to get into what is it that people see or don't see that's pushing their emotions, but the importance of that emotional tug or pull is I think, vital for understanding yourself and the world around you.

Juliette Sellgren (23:07)

It's funny because, well, so I mentioned before that I'm leading this reading group on Atlas Shrugged, and I've read it before a few times, but this is definitely the oldest I've been reading it and also with the responsibility of guiding other people through it, which then means that I have to, at least I feel as though I have to adequately show where maybe you could critique, where you could question as well as maybe what she did and well, and where we stand now, whoever we is. And it's very odd because in a way I didn't when I was younger, I think I respond more negatively, I respond more and I respond more negatively than I used to it because I don't know, there's something age changes you I guess. But I also think I've marinated in these ideas a little bit and seen them in action. So when we're trying to think through where her ideas fall short, so there's this emotional pull, positive, negative, we want to vomit or we're jumping for joy. Someone did it, someone explained it. Well, I guess the way I want to go about this is you guys come out with this idea of individualistic perfection, perfectionism, one or the other. And so what is that idea and how does it differ from objectivism? They're often pitted against each other, so what is that kind of interplay between the two?

Douglas Den Uyl (25:04)

Doug part of that? But lemme just go back a step. One thing about Rand is that she has views that you need to consider when you critique her. And the one I'm thinking the view that she has, she has a particular philosophy of art that you may not like, but she's very true to it. And I mentioned that in The Fountainhead. So for example, I don't think I want to hang out with many of her characters frankly. They don't seem like very fun people and so forth. I'm being a little facetious either. But they do fit her model of what she thinks she needs to do in literature to make it so when you critique her, you have to be careful that you are also recognizing what she herself thinks she's doing in this. And that would be true of any philosopher or any thinker that you need to be fair to them.

You have to consider what they're trying to do or what they think they're trying to do. Now, objectivism versus individual perfectionism, just so your audience knows, perfectionism is a sort of technical term in philosophy, which involves typically a teleological dimension where you are moving towards maturity sometimes is a better word because people get hung up with perfectionism is to be perfect in some way they have, but that's really not what's going on here. It's more like maturation or performance would be better terms. So I'll let Doug take it from there and say more about this.

Douglas Rasmussen (26:48)

Yeah, I mean there's a long tradition in ethics. I think it goes all the way back to Plato. Certainly, it's in Aristotle. You can find it in Aquinas, you can find it in people who talk about psychology today. It's sometimes called the doctrine of self-actualization. A contemporary philosopher by the name of David Norton wrote a book called The Personal Destinies, which is about this and by and large, it's the idea that you need to create your character, create yourself into the type of person where you actually know what is good for you and you pursue it in a way that will allow you to be excellent. And you do that without having your emotions pull you away from it. One of the famous lines you can find in Aristotle is that the eudaimonia perfective person or flourishing person is one about whom one can interchangeably say they're doing what they ought to be doing and they're doing what they want to be doing.

Imagine that to have a life in which what is really truly the best for you morally and what you want to do coincide rather than having this internal poll. Now today, this type of ethic is besides being called a perfectionist ethics, it's also sometimes called a virtue ethics, which is meant to distinguish it from forms of utilitarianism or duty ethics. And so there's a whole set of things we could say about that, but I don't think we need to go into that. By and large, the important thing about perfection besides getting an acquisition or virtues is going to be that human beings have to be moral agents and their moral agency or what we call self-direction is crucial to the entire process. I suppose maybe we can talk about this later some more, but I think also what is interesting about our account of individualistic perfectionism is that it's not an atom, meaning that it doesn't think of human beings as existing apart from others. And two, it also recognizes that it's quite possible for one's good to be perfected when one does good for another for another's sake. And that's something usually would be taken to go against egoism at least as normally understood. That's sort of a brief starting point on this.

Douglas Den Uyl (29:50)

Yeah, that's good. The only other thing I would add is that individualism is an important dimension of the individualist perfectionist. What's good for you may not be good for me. And we're speaking ethically to you. We're not saying you and I like chocolate, we're talking about types of lives and things that people do. They differ from one person to another and be perfectly morally sound.

Douglas Rasmussen (30:16)

Yeah. That's why we disagree very much with Rand's claim that she says that it's not possible for there to be conflicts between human beings regarding what is in fact morally right and good for a person. Now the point we're getting at here is not that of a relativism where whatever one thinks or wants or chooses makes something good, but rather a situation where in determining what virtues and goods your life requires for yourself given the type of person you are in that situation can indeed conflict with another person. That can happen the world. That doesn't mean it always happens, but it can happen. And that's important to thinking about ethics. So that leads to a discussion of how in ethics we have to learn to find the appropriate course of conduct for ourselves. And this brings us back to the old Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom and finding the doctrine of the mean at which interestingly enough, unless I've missed it, I could never find in Rand’s thought at all. Maybe it's somehow implied and someone can derive it somehow, but there's no explicit discussion of that. Anyway.

Juliette Sellgren (31:48)

I think you're right that you can't really find any sort of mean, I mean people have always described Rand's thought to me as extreme and kind of an extremist philosophy in a sense. And I don't know if you both would agree with that, but it seems kind of right, at least upon face value for the most part that she takes a lot of things to the extreme and some things do need to be taken to the extreme. 

Douglas Rasmussen (32:16)

Yeah, I mean the thing I should say here is that the me doctrine of the mean doesn't mean average. It means finding what is appropriate for you in that situation. And that appropriateness is a function of not only what you are as a human being, your basic needs, but also who you are as the individual you are. And so the whole model of ethics that tries to give it as a big set of rules that everybody must follow regardless of who they are when their situation, that way of thinking about ethics is radically mistaken. And that's one of our views. And that's at times something that I think, Doug, come in on this if you want, I think Rand doesn't realize.

Douglas Den Uyl (33:16)

That's part of her extremism is that there doesn't seem to be room for you. There's only room for everybody who acts like Ray Watson to Aristotle's interesting in this regard because it's the me relative to us, the ads. So I may be prone to cowardice, but I can find a mean of courage if I work at it. It may not be as strong as Doug's, but it suits me vice versa. So there's a lot of individuation here. The individual is important in this regard, and if you take it seriously, it does lead you towards sort of the classical liberal political philosophy because we're really that different. We need space to do our own thing, so to speak. I hate to use the trite phrase, but that's part of it and that implies that liberty has an important value to us. Doug might want comment further on self-directedness as a central component of our view.

Douglas Rasmussen (34:27)

Yeah, I mean what happens here is if the human good, human flourishing, perfection, if it's something real, but if it's always individualized, then to make human flourishing or the good, the aim of the political order almost by definition requires that some version of the good is going to be sacrificed to another version of the good. Interestingly enough, that's a phrase you can use a phrase from ran called moral cannibalism here to describe that. But the challenge for political philosophy is to how to find a fundamental value for the political legal order that will protect the pluralistic character of the human good. And one of the things that we've come up with, the major thing we've come up with is the idea that virtue is a matter of our own self-directed agencies. Or as John Cooper, the Aristotle scholar said, eudaimonia isn't eudaimonia unless done it yourself. And so you've got to protect one's agency or self-direction. This starts having implications about when physical force or the threat thereof or fraud can be used. And this has has implications for a question about how a political legal order should work. And so that's a very quick way of getting at the political implications of individualistic perfectionism. There's a lot of details to that I've left out though.

Douglas Den Uyl (36:12)

Yeah, the two things that you can say about the state, one of them is coercion that is actually directly against self ness. But the other is, I lost, I lost the other one, sorry. You'll have to,

I know it's that the individual self-directedness means that the state, one of the tools in the state besides coercion that it cannot give up is univers- universalization. It has to universalize everything. That's one of the tools the state uses. And that's not going to work if you're going to talk about directing people ethically in some way because a lot of things cannot be universalized that are ethically dependent upon you as an individual.

Douglas Rasmussen (37:08)

Interestingly enough, there's sort of an economic common-sense version of that point. People realize that Ronald Reagan's line, I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. One of the things people understand is that this assistance isn't going to be appropriate to themselves and their situation, and there'll be little appreciation for that. Now, that's sort of a practical reaction to it, but there's a moral meaning to that. And that moral meaning is ultimately one in which it takes the very core of basis for moral responsibility out of human action. Rand did say in an essay called What is Capitalism? This is a line, I remember reading way back when I was my early college days to try to force or coerce the morals of a man or a person. It's like trying to provide somebody a picture gallery at the price of cutting out their eyes. So I mean, that's sort of a livid example, but in a way, I think the thing that gets at the idea here,

Juliette Sellgren (38:26)

So I want to get back to the whole societal aspect in a moment, but something that really struck me when you both were talking about this is these ideas of being able to, well, of maturation and of self-directedness that we are pursuing happiness. I mean, as was said before that we don't know everything. And when you read her works as though her characters don't discover anything, they're kind of static you. And this is really an appeal that I think she lacks and that seems super present. So I'm kind of wondering what you two think about this in your work and your actual critique of this and kind of response as to how it actually does work that we are growing that without the growth, without the movement upwards towards something, we wouldn't be humans. It's almost a fundamental part of what it means to even be able to act ethically is to be able to learn what that means. And I don't know, would you read that into your work?

Douglas Den Uyl (39:38)

Well, one of the things that seems to be absent in her is development itself. We don't see growth. I mean, these characters can act fully mature and fully self-perfected, so you don't see what struggles they went through. It's as if they're born a Randian hero kind of thing. And so that I think turns people off a bit. There's no struggle to be who they are. They're already that way, and that's part of her philosophy of writing. Also, she wants to pick the ideal. There's not much interested in the non-ideal, but that's where development occurs. And it's important to realize that part of the thing that turns people off is the full dimension of humanity is not really a part of her literary style. And that gets people, I think, a bit off the track when it comes to looking at her stuff.

Douglas Rasmussen (40:43)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I never really appreciated many of the Randian characters. I think the only character I really appreciated was Hank Reardon.

Juliette Sellgren (40:59)

She doesn't even like him that much because he's not perfect.

Douglas Rasmussen (41:02)

Yeah, that's fine. Probably. I also love the line where he is at Thanksgiving dinner where Philip Reardon is nauseatingly sick, parasitic brother says to Hank Reardon, all you care about is money. And Reardon says, no, what I care about is my money. I remember a kid laughing about that for a long time. It is interesting though that she does in her more formal writing talk how knowledge is contextual, how the definitions have to be constantly checked and looked at, and omniscience is not required and all of that. So I mean, there's some awareness of that. But I think again, this is the difference between trying to write philosophy and trying to write novels. So yeah.

Juliette Sellgren (42:01)

So then in terms of what the world looks like, what would a classical liberal, whole individualistic perfectionism society look like? Right? So there is altruism. It's not atomistic, but liberty and freedom are an important part. This growth and pursuing the good is an important part. In what ways politically and even just societally in the way that we engage with each other, does that world look different from the objectivist world

Douglas Den Uyl (42:44)

Politically? I don't think there's a lot of difference in ours. We are trying to protect the self-directedness of individuals. I think that's what she's after as well. There are sort of anarchist wings of the classical liberalism more so than others, and she was certainly not one of those. So I think our picture politically of those are pretty close. I think that it's more in the other direction that directions, I should say, that we have differences.

Douglas Rasmussen (43:30)

Yeah, I think also there's a point in Rand's writings where she'll say, well, this is a matter for sociology or this is a matter for the philosophy of law, or this is a matter for this or that. And she doesn't say much about that. And I think those are some of the wiser moments when she's talking. And I mean, it is in part, I think if you believe in individuality, if you believe in self-direction, if you believe that the good is not one size fits all, then there's something strange about trying from one's armchair to describe what society is going to look like and all of that. I think that's a bit hubristic and rationalistic in a way that you don't want to be. It's what Hayek called constructive rationalism, if I recall that name. And I think one wants to avoid that. But again, since I did just mention Hayek, I do think that there's a huge difference between people that have, are inspired by Rand, or at least if they're not, what's inspired by Rand approach, classical liberalism from a neo Aristotelian background between those. And then people in classical liberal land that do not, because there's a sense in which morality and ethics is really the fundamental game in town where I think with others it's more economics and whether you're going to grow an economy and all of that. And of course to say that is not to say either side should be without the other, but the point is what's primary.

Juliette Sellgren (45:27)

So then would you say that maybe one of the important differences is in the response to what we owe to each other as people, even if we can't depict exactly what society would look like, even if we shouldn't necessarily try to do that in the way we engage with each other in the way that we are together, is that one of the key places where it differs?

Douglas Den Uyl (46:00)

Well, we might, as we've been talking, that she's a bit incomplete in how we're going to deal with each other, that she doesn't have really that insightful view of socialization, in my view, that we could get from others. So that would be part of it. But politically, we are interested in lending what the state does very strictly and very little. So the rest is going to have to come culturally going to have to come from the actions of individuals. And we can imagine consistent with classical liberalism, societies which have different cultures, they're not going to all going to look the same. We're not even going to define our key concepts in practice the same way, what the limits to private property are and things like that. It might differ from one society to another, but she's a bit truncated in how people socialize, in my view.

Douglas Rasmussen (47:03)

I don't recall any in really long discussion in her novels or even in her nonfiction work of family, children, the art of rearing children. That whole dimension of life.

Juliette Sellgren (47:27)

Or even culture more broadly, I feel is entirely neglected. The idea that America is culturally different from France, for example, no notion of anything,

Douglas Rasmussen (47:42)

Which is interesting because she certainly in The Fountainhead, there's a spirit of what it is to be an American that's at work there. That is, well, certainly based on the political point, but it even transcends that. It's the idea of being a self-motivated, creative entrepreneur person that thinks that life is not a veil of tears, but something that is open to great possibilities, and that's at least a part of the American myth, if not the reality.

Juliette Sellgren (48:23)

Thank you both for taking the time to come on the podcast and for sharing your work and your wisdom with me and with my listeners. I've really enjoyed it, so I know they will as well. I have one last question for you if you have the time. That is, what is one thing that you believed at one time in your life that you later changed your position on and why?

Douglas Rasmussen (48:51)

Just one. What I want to say, it's not that my basic ideas when I was in my twenties, it's not that those ideas are wrong, it's just they're rather radically incomplete. And so there are dimensions to things just to, you give an example. I used to think that in order to figure out what the virtues and goods of the human life are, I had to somehow have a deductive argument from the proposition that man is a rational animal. And I tried to understand that way, and I came to the conclusion, but that's a very improper way of conceiving of it. And if we had another 45 minutes, maybe we could talk about what that was. And in general, for me, it's been just seeing that there's so much more to the story.

Douglas Den Uyl (49:58)

I would hesitate almost to tell my, what came to me when you asked that question, ed the story quite well, but I'll tell it anyway and you can edit it out if it's too embarrassing for me. I was playing in a rock band for a long time when I was a teenager, and then my first year in college I was getting heavily into Rand, and Rand suggested that rock and roll was anti mind and anti life. So I dispose of all my big collection of rock and roll music only to realize somewhat after that was a silly thing to do that it wasn't Randian at all because I wasn't thinking for myself and damnit there were exits that all the same and you could appreciate different excellencies still woke me up a bit, but it certainly has got a regret for how many decades now that I didn't have those albums I threw away or broke back then. So I dunno, that's what came to mind when you asked that question.

Juliette Sellgren 

Once again, I'd like to thank my guests for their time and insight. I'd also like to thank you for listening to The Great Antidote Podcast means a lot. The Great Antidote is sound engineered by Rich Goyette. If you have any questions, any guests or topic recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me at great antidote@libertyfund.org. Thank you.