Ayn Rand is not a philosopher: a simple, empirical test
Below is a list of philosophers. Their names have been entered into the search engine on JSTOR, an archive of downloadable papers in the arts and humanities. I narrowed the selection down to just the journals dealing with philosophy. There are currently 55 journals archived in JSTOR in the area of philosophy. These include: American Philosophical Quarterly, Analysis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, British Journal of Educational Studies, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Erkenntnis, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Ethics, Human Studies, Hypatia, Intl Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Journal of Ethics, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Journal of the History of Biology, Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, Law and Literature, Law and Philosophy, Linguistics and Philosophy, Mind, Nous, Philosophical Issues, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Philosophy East and West, Philosophy of Science, Phronesis, Political Theory, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (and Supplemental Volumes), Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Religious Studies, Review of Metaphysics, Sociological Theory, Studia Logica, Studies in Eastern European Thought and Synthese.
The list shows the search results for the philosophers. Note that towards the bottom of the list are a number of mentions of popular author Ayn Rand and her philosophical system “Objectivism”. Many consider Ms. Rand a philosopher and Objectivism an important and systematic contribution to philosophy as practiced by academics, while the majority of those in academic philosophy do not (a sample of this attitude can be seen on Brian Leiter’s blog). See Objectivism in academia on Wikipedia for some details of people who hold the contrary position on Rand’s contributions.
kant: 28,529
aristotle: 25,805
plato: 23,265
hume: 16,915
hegel: 15,733
wittgenstein: 14,172
locke: 11,671
quine: 10,943
marx: 9,847
socrates: 9,460
leibniz: 9,162
spinoza: 8,171
nietzsche: 8,142
frege: 8,131
heidegger: 7,869
davidson: 7,494
aquinas: 7,035
hobbes: 6,718
popper: 6,061
rawls: 5,367
kripke: 5,213
sartre: 5,207
augustine: 5,156
bertrand russell: 5,130
rousseau: 5,124
[p.f.] strawson: 4,832
kierkegaard: 4,563
kuhn: 4,271
ayer: 4,245
armstrong: 4,198
schopenhauer: 3,675
reid: 3,417
[jerry] fodor: 3,286
[michael] dummett: 3,247
john stuart mill OR “J.S. Mill”: 3235
[elizabeth] anscombe: 3,162
bentham: 2,901
foucault: 2,794
searle: 2,787
derrida: 2,722
ockham or occam: 2,652
nozick: 2,643
dennett: 2,293
[ernest] sosa: 2,226
feyerabend: 2,202
peter singer: 2,025
dretske: 1,961
gadamer: 1,683
alvin goldman: 1,577
rand: 1,464 (see note a)
jaegwon kim: 1,432
objectivism: 1,419 (see note b)
[peter] unger: 1,199
paul churchland: 1,139
amartya sen: 1,003
[susan] haack: 874
maimonides: 795
[lawrence] bonjour: 742
soames: 686
deleuze: 675
copleston: 653
clive bell: 350
ayn rand: 239
objectivism rand: 73 (see note c)
Note a: the vast majority of Rands are not Ayn - rather, they are Rose, Sebastian, Benjamin, E. K., M. G., Gertude, Harry and so on. The word ‘rand’ is also used as an abbreviation of the word ‘random’ in a symbolic logic paper.
Note b: the vast majority of mentions of objectivism on the first page were not being used in the Randian sense of the word - e.g. “Objectivism vs. Subjectivism in the Social Sciences”.
Note c: many of these results were “Back Matter” or “Books Received” sections of journals, simply listing that the journal has received a copy of a book about Rand and Objectivism, rather than providing meaningful scholarly analysis of Rand’s work. Less than a third of these articles are actually about Rand’s philosophy.
I have omitted Berkeley, as it was difficult to get an accurate count - because of the city and university in California. This list is not some canonical list of the most important philosophers. The selection was rather random: it consisted of the philosophers whose names popped into my mind today, and whose books are on my desk (which means it’s going to be biased towards logic, metaphysics, epistemology and language).
Randroids should feel at liberty to pop this in whichever orifice it will fit in and let it slowly dissolve their cultishness (do read that article: I particularly like the bit about the Randroid wedding, complete with a reading from the Gospel of Ayn etc.). Non-Randroids should feel free to point to this from philosophical discussions where Randroids want to put Atlas Shrugged up there as the most important work of philosophy ever written.
