This morning of Facebook in the comment thread of a post by Yaron Brook, I came across a link to a recording of Ayn Rand’s speech titled “Apollo and Dionysus.”  I had never listened to this before and it is a wonderful speech and as valid today as it was when she gave it.

In this speech she discusses the apparent dichotomy between reason and emotion.  The title of the speech comes from Nietzsche, who uses Apollo to symbolize beauty, order, efficacy, and reason and Dionysus to symbolize ecstasy, wild feelings, emotions, and whim.  Ayn Rand uses the then current, the speech is given in 1969, events of the Apollo 11 mission and the festival at Woodstock to concretize  the philosophic principles involved in this apparent dichotomy and what consequences it entails.

You can listen to it in pieces on YouTube, or in its entirety, along with the complete Q&A session, at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Here is the speech.

Here is the Q&A period.

Ed: July 2014 – Updated the post to embed the audio recordings directly from their new home on the Ayn Rand Institute’s Soundcloud page.