Shedon Richman on Nathaniel Branden and the Pursuit of Happiness

This has been a rough year for the freedom
movement. We’ve lost five luminaries: Leonard Liggio, John
Blundell, Gordon Tullock, Tonie Nathan, and now Nathaniel Branden,
at age 84. Branden, writes Sheldon Richman, became known to the
world as the man who helped systematize and present the philosophy
dramatized in Ayn Rand’s novels, especially Atlas
Shrugged. The Objectivist movement became an integral part of
the budding libertarian movement in the late 1950s and ’60s. After
his break with Rand, Branden moved from New York City to Los
Angeles, where he made a name for himself through a series of books
about the role of self-esteem in the pursuit of happiness, work he
had begun while he was Rand’s associate. The binding together of
“perfection” (virtue, or excellence, in the Greek sense) and
liberty (internal and external) with the pursuit of happiness is
noteworthy.

View this article.