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CONTENTS WORDS OF WISDOM: INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY

42. Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand,1905 – 1982 CE, was a Russian-American novelist and

Previous: Bertrand Russell–two essays philosopher. She is best known for her two novels, The Next: Modern Wisdom

Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical

system she called Objectivism. She was born and educated in Russia,
and moved to the United States in 1926. She was rst noticed by the
media and the general public after the publication in 1943 of her novel,
The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the
novel Atlas Shrugged. Rand insisted that reason be the only means of
acquiring knowledge and she adamantly rejected any kind of
adherence to or use of religion. She supported rational and ethical
egoism and rejected any form of altruism.

You might want to hear about a couple of basic concepts right from
Ayn Rand herself:

Ayn Rand on Reason

Ayn Rand on the importance of Happiness

Excerpts from various works

(From e Virtue of Sel shness. “ e Objectivist Ethics” )

About Sel shness:

The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational sel shness— which
means: the values required for man’s survival qua man — which means: the values
required for human survival — not the values produced by the desires, the
emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational
brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacri ces,
have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest
but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacri ces
and cannot be achieved by the sacri ce of anyone to anyone. It holds that
the rational interests of men do not clash — that there is no con ict of interests
among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacri ces nor
accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Ayn Rand

“The provocative title of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of

Sel shness matches an equally provocative thesis about ethics.
Traditional ethics has always been suspicious of self-interest,
praising acts that are sel ess in intent and calling amoral or
immoral acts that are motivated by self-interest. A self-interested
person, on the traditional view, will not consider the interests of
others and so will slight or harm those interests in the pursuit of
his own.

Rand’s view is that the exact opposite is true: Self-interest,

properly understood, is the standard of morality and sel essness
is the deepest immorality.“

(From Philosophy: Who Needs I . “Faith and Force: the

Destroyers of the Modern World”) About Altruism:

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has
no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justi cation of
his existence, and that self-sacri ce is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of
others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes
impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacri ce
— which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction —
which means: the self as a standard of evil, the sel ess as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such super cialities as whether you should or should not give
a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or
do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether
you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose
to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the rst mortgage on
your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to
be regarded as a sacri cial animal. Any man of self-esteem will
answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”

Example

Ayn Rand: How is This Still a Thing?

Comedy can be an interesting way to approach big ideas. Ayn Rand has
been very controversial in philosophy and ethics. Try watching a little
John Oliver and his commentary about Ayn Rand and her ideas from this
October 2014 clip before continuing on reading about Rand’s ideas.

(From Philosophy: Who Needs It, “Sel shness

Without a Sel ”) About Altruism:

It is obvious why the morality of altruism is a tribal

phenomenon. Prehistorical men were physically unable to
survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and
Testifying before
protection against other tribes. The cause of altruism’s
Congress
perpetuation into civilized eras is not physical, but psycho-
epistemological: the men of self-arrested, perceptual mentality are unable to
survive without tribal leadership and “protection” against reality. The doctrine of
self-sacri ce does not offend them: they have no sense of self or of personal value
— they do not know what it is that they are asked to sacri ce — they have no
rsthand inkling of such things as intellectual integrity, love of truth, personally
chosen values, or a passionate dedication to an idea. When they hear injunctions
against “sel shness,” they believe that what they must renounce is the brute,
mindless whim-worship of a tribal lone wolf. But their leaders — the theoreticians
of altruism — know better. Immanuel Kant knew it; John Dewey knew it; B. F.
Skinner knows it; John Rawls knows it. Observe that it is not the mindless brute,
but reason, intelligence, ability, merit, self-con dence, self-esteem that they are
out to destroy.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of
another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Ayn Rand

(From For the New Intellectual. “Galt’s Speech”) About the

Self:

The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on

one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential “you” which
you cannot express or de ne, is not your emotions or inarticulate
dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal
whom you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray
shyster you describe as your “feeling.”

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Ayn Rand

(From For the New Intellectual. “Galt’s Speech”) About the

Self:

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single

axiom: existence exists — and in a single choice: to live. The
rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things
as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason — Purpose
— Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge —
Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must
proceed to achieve — Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty Who is John Galt?
that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy
of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and
require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence
and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice,
productiveness, pride.

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