What Søren Kierkegaard Can Teach the Left About Ayn Rand

“The view of Rand as a self-absorbed, even solipsistic, apologist for the greed of nefarious capitalists…was always a myopic misreading of Rand, at least if one pays close attention to her novels.”

In an essay for Merion West, Matt McManus attempts to explain what the Left can learn from Søren Kierkegaard. The “father of existentialism,” Kierkegaard had much to say about the individual’s quest for a meaningful existence. As McManus writes, the “one consistent theme in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre…is how only a true individual can obtain meaning in their life.” This focus on the individual stands in contrast to conservative views that prioritize the community over the individual. In the words of McManus, “[t]he inverse argument to this is Kierkegaard’s warnings about the meaninglessness of sacrificing one’s individuality to become a member of mass society.”

Ironically, this is the same root concern that occupied Ayn Rand throughout her life. In telling us what Kierkegaard can teach the Left, McManus implicitly makes a case for what the Left can learn from a perennial favorite of right-wing libertarians. Rand not only shared the Left’s “staunchly secular” approach to life but also joined Kierkegaard in his concern with the quest of a “true individual” for meaning in life. Like Kierkegaard, Rand was deeply skeptical that questions about meaning in life can be adequately resolved by an appeal to community norms and values.

An enemy of collectivism, Rand was highly contemptuous of conformity. She would have agreed wholeheartedly with Kierkegaard’s caustic observation that “[p]eople demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought they seldom use.” In Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, the character Ellsworth Toohey exploits his right of free speech, as well as his platform as an esteemed architecture critic for popular publications to promote a “humanitarian” ideal for society. This humanitarian ideal effectively vilifies individuals who exercise their freedom of thought. Toohey promotes a culture of collective solidarity that insidiously stifles, and even belittles, aspirations and achievements that arise from the creative activities of individuals exercising their freedom of thought.