Aristotle, Plato, and Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged - The Metaphsycial Divide

It is useful to point out that Atlas Shrugged is written in three "parts." The first is called "non-contradiction," the second, "either or", the third "a is a." These three titles are a reference and an homage to the three great sections of Aristotle's metaphysics. In these titles, Ayn Rand is taking a "stand" on the side of Aristotle in the classic philosophical battle between Plato and Aristotle which I will outline here.

Aristotle is the father of most of the "sciences" that we work in today, including botany, zoology, meteorology, and others, and his work on epistemology, ethics, and politics are seminal in western philosophy.

Aristotle wrote as a contemporary of Plato, back in the fourth century B.C. However, whereas Plato suggested that the world of our senses (physical reality) is only a "shadow" of another/ideal world which is "really real," Aristotle said that the world we experience through our senses is the "real" world. Further, he suggested that we gain knowledge about the world by studying it as clearly and directly as possible, not through some type of mystical revelation open only to the spiritual elite.

While Aristotle's ideas provided a foundation for a more scientific approach to reality, the mystical elements of Plato made him very attractive to the mythical believers of various religious cults. With the rise of Christianity, the platonic worldview took dominance, and the works of Aristotle were repudiated, destroyed, and lost, plunging us into what is typically referred to as the Dark Ages. Fortunately, 30 of Aristotle's reported 150 treatises were preserved by the Arabs, and eventually brought back to Europe through trade and conquest, leading to the European Renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries. As Aristotle was rediscovered, and integrated into educated worldview, Europe began to come out of the dark ages and began a new philosophical era of science.

This "battle" between Plato and Aristotle, between sensory reality as a shadow, versus sensory reality as "reality," was well understood in the times of the Renaissance. The great painter Raphael depicted this in a world famous painting "The School Of Athens" which I show below. In it, the two great masters of Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle are surrounded by various onlookers. Plato is pointing up towards the heavens, while Aristotle has his hands pointed down towards the earth.


When it comes to science, the Aristotelian worldview has won the battle. When it comes to morality, politics, aesthetics, and the "humanities" (including most of philosophy), the platonic worldview is still very much all the rage. Ayn Rand repudiated the philosophy of Plato, and understood herself to be reviving and clarifying the works Aristotle. She worked to extend this "objective reality-based" worldview into these additional realms. She argued that it is for us, their legacy, to complete the work they started, and extended onward and upward into a new set of possibilities for human society, and human... being.

To this end, Atlas Shrugged is her great gift to us, her legacy, as we use her clarity and insight as a foundation on which to build yet higher.

These three ideas, non-contradiction, either or, and they is a, become the themes and the liet motifs that recur constantly throughout the book. In many ways, Atlas shrugged is a Symphony by Ayn Rand using these themes as its central melodies. However, Ayn Rand goes far beyond Aristotle in this work. Hence, other than pointing out the names of the parts of the book, it's time to get into SHE has to say...