There is nothing new about this, of course. For decades writers and scholars have speculated on the relationship between Rand and Nietzsche, and Objectivist scholars have written a fair amount on the topic. (For example, see the written seminar, sponsored by the Atlas Society, 2011, here.) Conclusions differ somewhat, but no investigator denies Nietzsche’s influence on the young Ayn Rand, before she developed her own philosophy in detail. In personal notes taken during the 1920s (while Rand was in her twenties), she mentions Nietzsche numerous times, she quotes him occasionally, and she even uses the Nietzschean notion of Übermensch, which is usually translated into English as “Superman.”

Most scholars who have investigated this matter have agreed with the view expressed by Barbara Branden in “A Biographical Essay” (in Who is Ayn Rand? [1962]). This was an authorized biography—Branden based it on taped interviews with Rand—so there can be no doubt that Rand read and approved of Branden’s treatment. According to Branden, Rand was attracted to Thus Spake Zarathustra because “Nietzsche revered the heroic in man, because he defended individualism and despised altruism, [so] she thought she had found a spiritual ally.” But Rand “was made uneasy by the implication that a great man would seek power, not over nature, but over other men; to rule, she thought, was an unworthy occupation for a hero; a hero would not degrade himself by spending his life enslaving others.”

Rand’s hope for Nietzsche turned to disappointment upon reading The Birth of Tragedy , which contains “an open denunciation of reason.” Thereafter Rand realized that she differed fundamentally from Nietzsche. They were “philosophical opposites,” and the only value she could hope to gain by reading Nietzsche further would be “partial and selective.”

Rand discussed her opinion of Nietzsche in the Introduction to the Twenty‐​Fifth Anniversary Edition of The Fountainhead (1968). She explained that she originally included a quotation from Nietzsche in the manuscript of The Fountainhead, but decided not to include it in the final, published version. She feared she would be misunderstood, because some readers would take the epigraph as indicating that she agreed with Nietzsche more than she actually did. Her disagreements, however, were “profound.”