Abstract

Contrary to the standard Objectivist view of post-Kantian philosophy's two principal lines of development, Linguistic Analysis and Existentialism, there are deep and striking commonalities between Ayn Rand's aesthetic views and those of two prominent writers in the latter traditions: Susanne Langer and Albert Camus. In particular, Langer holds the equivalent of Rand's microcosm view of art (as elaborated upon in Roger Bissell, "Art as Microcosm," Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5, no. 2), and Camus holds a view indistinguishable in all essential respects from Rand's definition of art as "selective re-creation of reality."