text: Rand considered Immanuel Kant her philosophical opposite and "the most evil man in mankind's history"; she believed his epistemology undermined reason and his ethics opposed self-interest.Philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon have argued she misinterpreted Kant and exaggerated their differences.She was also critical of Plato and viewed his differences with Aristotle on questions of metaphysics and epistemology as the primary conflict in the history of philosophy.Rand's relationship with contemporary philosophers was mostly antagonistic.She was not an academic and did not participate in academic discourse.She was dismissive of critics and wrote about ideas she disagreed with in a polemical manner without in-depth analysis.She was in turn viewed very negatively by many academic philosophers, who dismissed her as an unimportant figure who should not be considered a philosopher or given any serious response.Early academic reaction During Rand's lifetime, her work received little attention from academic scholars.In 1967, John Hospers discussed Rand's ethical ideas in the second edition of his textbook, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis.That same year, Hazel Barnes included a chapter critiquing Objectivism in her book An Existentialist Ethics.When the first full-length academic book about Rand's philosophy appeared in 1971, its author declared writing about Rand "a treacherous undertaking" that could lead to "guilt by association" for taking her seriously.A few articles about Rand's ideas appeared in academic journals before her death in 1982, many of them in The Personalist.One of these was "On the Randian Argument" by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who criticized her meta-ethical arguments.In the same journal, other philosophers argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case.In an article responding to Nozick, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B.