Category Archives: Ayn Rand

By Eric Michael Johnson

Every political philosophy has to begin with a theory of human nature, wrote Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin in his book Biology as Ideology. Thomas Hobbes, for example, believed that humans in a state of nature, or what today we would call hunter-gatherer societies, lived a life that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short in which there existed a war of all against all. This led him to conclude, as many apologists for dictatorship have since, that a stable society required a single leader in order to control the rapacious violence that was inherent to human nature. Building off of this, advocates of state communism, such as Vladimir Lenin or Josef Stalin, believed that each of us was born tabula rasa, with a blank slate, and that human nature could be molded in the interests of those in power.

Ever since Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand has been gaining prominence among American conservatives as the leading voice for the political philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism, or the idea that private business should be unconstrained and that governments only concern should be protecting individual property rights. As I wrote in Slate with my piece Ayn Rand vs. the Pygmies, the Russian-born author believed that rational selfishness was the ultimate expression of human nature.

Collectivism, Rand wrote in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases. An objective understanding of mans nature and mans relationship to existence should inoculate society from the disease of altruistic morality and economic redistribution. Therefore, one must begin by identifying mans nature, i.e., those essential characteristics which distinguish him from all other living species.

As Rand further detailed in her book The Virtue of Selfishness, moral values are genetically dependent on the way living entities exist and function. Because each individual organism is primarily concerned with its own life, she therefore concludes that selfishness is the correct moral value of life. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions, Rand wrote, it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction. Because of this Rand insists altruism is a pernicious lie that is directly contrary to biological reality. Therefore, the only way to build a good society was to allow human nature, like capitalism, to remain unfettered by the meddling of a false ideology.

Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights, she continued. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal. She concludes that this conflict between human nature and the irrational morality of altruism is a lethal tension that tears society apart. Her mission was to free humanity from this conflict. Like Marx, she believed that her correct interpretation of how society should be organized would be the ultimate expression of human freedom.

Ayn Rand was wrong about altruism. But how she arrived at this conclusion is revealing both because it shows her thought process and offers a warning to those who would construct their own political philosophy on the back of an assumed human nature. Ironically, given her strong opposition to monarchy and state communism, Rand based her interpretation of human nature on the same premises as these previous systems while adding a crude evolutionary argument in order to connect them.

Rand assumed, as Hobbes did, that without a centralized authority human life would erupt into a chaos of violence. Warfarepermanent warfareis the hallmark of tribal existence, she wrote in The Return of the Primitive. Tribes subsist on the edge of starvation, at the mercy of natural disasters, less successfully than herds of animals. This, she reasoned, is why altruism is so pervasive among indigenous societies; prehistoric groups needed the tribe for protection. She argued that altruism is perpetuated as an ideal among the poor in modern societies for the same reason.

It is only the inferior men that have collective instinctsbecause they need them, Rand wrote in a journal entry dated February 22, 1937. This kind of primitive altruism doesnt exist in superior men, Rand continued, because social instincts serve merely as the weapon and protection of the inferior. She later expands on this idea by stating, We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some missing links.

Rands view that social instincts only exist among inferior men should not be dismissed as something she unthinkingly jotted down in a private journal. In two of her subsequent booksFor the New Intellectual and Philosophy: Who Needs It?, where it even serves as a chapter headingRand quips that scientists may find the missing link between humans and animals in those people who fail to utilize their rational selfishness to its full potential. How then does Rand explain the persistence of altruistic morality if human nature is ultimately selfish? By invoking the tabula rasa as an integral feature of human nature in which individuals can advance from inferior to superior upwards along the chain of life.

Man is born tabula rasa, Rand wrote in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, all his knowledge is based on and derived from the evidence of his senses. To reach the distinctively human level of cognition, man must conceptualize his perceptual data (by which she means using logical deductions). This was her solution to the problem of prosocial behavior and altruism among hunter-gatherer societies.

For instance, when discussing the social instinctdoes it matter whether it had existed in the early savages? Rand asks in her journal on May 9, 1934. Supposing men were born social (and even that is a question)does it mean that they have to remain so? If man started as a social animalisnt all progress and civilization directed toward making him an individual? Isnt that the only possible progress? If men are the highest of animals, isnt man the next step? Nearly a decade later, on September 6, 1943, she wrote, The process here, in effect, is this: man is raw material when he is born; nature tells him: Go ahead, create yourself. You can become the lord of existenceif you wishby understanding your own nature and by acting upon it. Or you can destroy yourself. The choice is yours.

While Rand states in Philosophy: Who Needs It? that I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent, she immediately goes on to make claims about how evolution functions. After aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies (italics mine). Rand further expands on her (incorrect) views about evolution in her journal:

It is precisely by observing nature that we discover that a living organism endowed with an attribute higher and more complex than the attributes possessed by the organisms below him in natures scale shares many functions with these lower organisms. But these functions are modified by his higher attribute and adapted to its functionnot the other way around. Journals of Ayn Rand, July 30, 1945.

One would have to go back to the 18th century (and Aristotle before that) to find a similar interpretation of nature. This concept of the great chain of being, brilliantly discussed by the historian Arthur Lovejoy, was the belief that a strict hierarchy exists in the natural world and species advance up natures scale as they get closer to God. This is an odd philosophy of nature for an avowed atheist, to say the least, and reflects Rands profound misunderstanding of the natural world.

To summarize, then, Rand believed in progressive evolutionary change up the ladder of nature from primitive to advanced. At the higher stages of this process (meaning humans) evolution changed course so that members of our species were born with a blank slate, though she provides no evidence to support this. Human beings therefore have no innate social instinctselsewhere she refers to it as a herd-instinctthat is, except for primordial savages and inferior men who could be considered missing links in the scale of nature. Never mind that these two groups are still technically human in her view. Selfishness is the ideal moral value because superior men are, by definition, higher up the scale of being.

Logic was essential to Ayn Rands political philosophy. A contradiction cannot exist, she has John Galt state in Atlas Shrugged. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in ones thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate ones mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. I couldnt agree more. However, Rand may have had more personal reasons for her philosophy that can help explain her tortured logic. As she was first developing her political philosophy she mused in her journal about how she arrived at her conclusion that selfishness was a natural moral virtue.

It may be considered strange, and denying my own supremacy of reason, that I start with a set of ideas, then want to study in order to support them, and not vice versa, i.e., not study and derive my ideas from that. But these ideas, to a great extent, are the result of a subconscious instinct, which is a form of unrealized reason. All instincts are reason, essentially, or reason is instincts made conscious. The unreasonable instincts are diseased ones. Journals of Ayn Rand, May 15, 1934.

This can indeed be considered strange. Looking deep within yourself and concluding that your feelings are natural instincts that apply for the entire species isnt exactly what you would call objective. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of how science operates. However, she continues and illuminates her personal motivations for her ideas.

Some day Ill find out whether Im an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusual or merely normal and healthy? Am I trying to impose my own peculiarities as a philosophical system? Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest? I think this last. Unlesshonesty is also a form of superior intelligence.

Through a close reading of her fictional characters, and other entries in her journal, it appears that Rand had an intuitive sense that selfishness was natural because thats how she saw the world. As John Galt said in his final climactic speech, Since childhood, you have been hiding the guilty secret that you feel no desire to bemoral, no desire to seek self-immolation, that you dread and hate your code, but dare not say it even to yourself, that youre devoid of those moral instincts which others profess to feel.

In Rands notes for an earlier, unpublished story she expresses nearly identical sentiments for the main character. He [Danny Renahan] is born with, she writes, the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling.

He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning or importance of other people. (One instance when it is blessed not to have an organ of understanding.) Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should. He knows himselfand that is enough. Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosenits inborn, absolute, it cant be changed, he has no organ to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel other people. (Thats what I meant by thoughts as feelings, as part of your nature.) (It is wisdom to be dumb about certain things.)

I believe a strong case could be made that Ayn Rand was projecting her own sense of reality into the minds of her fictional protagonists. Does this mean that Rand was a sociopath? Diagnosing people in the past with modern understandings of science has many limitations (testing your hypothesis being chief among them). However, I think its clear that Ayn Rand did not have a strongly developed sense of empathy but did have a very high opinion of herself. When seen through this perspective, Rands philosophy of Objectivism and her belief in the virtue of selfishness look very different from how she presented it in her work. When someones theory of human nature is based on a sample size of 1 it raises doubts about just how objective they really were.

Update: A point that has been brought up repeatedly is that Ayn Rand used a different definition of altruism than what is standard in biology and so therefore what I wrote is invalid. This is incorrect. To clear up any confusion, Ayn Rand relied on Auguste Comtes definition from his Catchisme Positiviste (1852) where he advocates laltruisme sur lgosme (altruism over egoism) because, he writes, vivre pour autrui fournit le seul moyen de dvelopper librement toute lexistence humaine (to live for others provides the only means to develop freely throughout human existence). The biological definition of altruism is not only consistent with Comte, it subsumes his definition and makes it testable and, one would think, more objective.

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Ayn Rand vs. Anthropology

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Biology Proves Ayn Rand Wrong About Altruism and Laissez-Faire Economics

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Ayn Rand Was Wrong about Human Nature - Evonomics

Ayn Rand's two most famous novels "The Fountainhead" (1943) and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) are among the greatest word-of-mouth hits in American publishing. Both were scorned by the critics when they came out, went on to become enormous best-sellers, and to this day sell tens of thousands of copies annually. "Atlas Shrugged," Rand's magnum opus, is sometimes said to be the second-most influential book in American thought, next only to the Bible.

The reason for the books' success probably has less to do with their novelistic merits, or lack of them, than with the way they package in fictional form a philosophy Rand called Objectivism, which in effect turned the Judeo-Christian system on its head. In Rand's view, selfishness was good and altruism was evil, and the welfare of society was always subordinate to the self-interest of individuals, especially superior ones. In some ways, Objectivism is an extreme form of laissez-faire capitalism, a view that Rand came to naturally.

She was born in Russia in 1905, lived through the Russian Revolution, and by the time she emigrated to America, in 1926, determined to reinvent herself, she wanted no part of anything that resembled a state-run system. She sometimes wore a gold brooch shaped like a dollar sign, and the dollar sign is also the final image in "Atlas Shrugged," a novel in which liberals and humanitarians are ruinously taking over the world while the intellectual elite, led by the genius industrialist John Galt, hunker down in Colorado.

For a while in the '60s, Objectivism had almost cult status on some American campuses. Much of the fervor dwindled after Rands death in 1982, but the books continue to be rediscovered and passed from one initiate to another. Among the many people influenced by Rand are Camille Paglia, Hugh Hefner, Alan Greenspan and Angelina Jolie. -- Charles McGrath, Sept. 13, 2007.

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Ayn Rand - The New York Times

Its not uncommon to hear that free will is an illusion that belief in free will is incompatible with science.

Yet, the existence of free will lies at the heart of every important issue in your life. Understanding precisely what is and is not within the power of your free choice is crucial to your pursuit of knowledge, values, personal relationships and happiness.

Join us November 4 to 6 in Atlanta, GA, at the Ayn Rand Student Conference 2016 (#AynRandCon) for an in-depth exploration of the concept of free will from the perspective of Ayn Rands philosophy of Objectivism. Rand the novelist, philosopher and cultural icon famous for her bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged developed a new account of free will, one that underpins the distinctive view of good and evil and of heroism that runs through her novels.

Rejecting the false alternative of nature vs. nurture, Rand advanced a radical view of man, which holds that you are a being of self-made soul, capable of exercising fundamental control over your own thinking, actions and character. Far from viewing belief in free will as a superstition incompatible with science, Rand argued that the facts support the existence of free will and that its unscientific as well as disastrous personally and culturally to dismiss free will as illusory.

At #AynRandCon youll hear leading experts on Rands philosophy discuss the nature of free will and its implications for your life and for a range of current controversies, from inequality to free speech to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Youll hear from practitioners inspired by Rands message to take control of their fates and build the kind of career and life they wanted. Youll meet other students who love Rands novels and are learning how to apply her ideas to their own lives. And youll have the chance to network with speakers, professionals and students.

The conference is brought to you by the Ayn Rand Institute in collaboration with STRIVE (STudents for Reason, Individualism, Value pursuit, and Enterprise) and is made possible by the generous support of the Michael and Andrea Leven Family Foundation, as well as by the support of the Charles Koch Foundation, Ellen and Harris Kenner, Chris J. Rufer, and Loren and Kathy Corle, RELCO LLC.

Thanks to these donors, students are able to attend this conference at little or no cost. All students will receive a scholarship covering their travel, lodging and registration expenses.

Apply to attend by October 10, 2016!

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Ayn Rand Student Conference 2016

In a letter written on March 19, 1944, Ayn Rand remarked: Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous themecollectivism. Rand would later expand on this insight in various articles, most notably in two of her lectures at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston: The Fascist New Frontier (Dec. 16, 1962, published as a booklet by the Nathaniel Branden Institute in 1963); and The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus (April 18, 1965, published as Chapter 20 in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal [CUI] by New American Library in 1967).

The world conflict of today is the conflict of the individual against the state.

Rand knew better than to accept the traditional left-right dichotomy between socialism (or communism) and fascism, according to which socialism is the extreme version of left-ideology and fascism is the extreme version of right-ideology (i.e., capitalism). Indeed, in The Ayn Rand Letter (Nov. 8, 1971) she characterized fascism as socialism for big business. Both are variants of statism, in contrast to a free country based on individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. As Rand put it in Conservativism: An Obituary (CUI, Chapter 19):

The world conflict of today is the conflict of the individual against the state, the same conflict that has been fought throughout mankinds history. The names change, but the essenceand the resultsremain the same, whether it is the individual against feudalism, or against absolute monarchy, or against communism or fascism or Nazism or socialism or the welfare state.

The placement of socialism and fascism at opposite ends of a political spectrum serves a nefarious purpose, according to Rand. It serves to buttress the case that we must avoid extremism and choose the sensible middle course of a mixed economy. Quoting from Extremism, Or The Art of Smearing (CUI, Chapter 17):

If it were true that dictatorship is inevitable and that fascism and communism are the two extremes at the opposite ends of our course, then what is the safest place to choose? Why, the middle of the road. The safely undefined, indeterminate, mixed-economy, moderate middlewith a moderate amount of government favors and special privileges to the rich and a moderate amount of government handouts to the poorwith a moderate respect for rights and a moderate degree of brute forcewith a moderate amount of freedom and a moderate amount of slaverywith a moderate degree of justice and a moderate degree of injusticewith a moderate amount of security and a moderate amount of terrorand with a moderate degree of tolerance for all, except those extremists who uphold principles, consistency, objectivity, morality and who refuse to compromise.

In both of her major articles on fascism (cited above) Rand distinguished between fascism and socialism by noting a rather technical (and ultimately inconsequential) difference in their approaches to private property. Here is the relevant passage from The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus:

Observe that both socialism and fascism involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates the vesting of ownership and control in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.

Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means property, without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.

In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say more honest, not betterbecause, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

Contrary to many conservative commentators during the 1960s, Rand maintained that America was drifting toward fascism, not socialism, and that this descent was virtually inevitable in a mixed economy. A mixed economy is an explosive, untenable mixture of two opposite elements, freedom and statism, which cannot remain stable, but must ultimately go one way or the other (Extremism, or The Art of Smearing). Economic controls generate their own problems, and with these problems come demands for additional controlsso either those controls must be abolished or a mixed economy will eventually degenerate into a form of economic dictatorship. Rand conceded that most American advocates of the welfare state are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property. These welfare-statists want to preserve private property while calling for greater government control over such property. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.

A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies.

Rand gave us some of the finest analyses of a mixed economyits premises, implications, and long-range consequencesever penned by a free-market advocate. In The New Fascism, for example, she compared a mixed economy to a system that operates by the law of the jungle, a system in which no ones interests are safe, everyones interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. A mixed economy divides a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense. Although Rand did not invoke Thomas Hobbes in this context, it is safe to say that the economic chaos of a mixed economy resembles the Hobbesian war of all against all in a state of nature, a system in which interest groups feel the need to screw others before they get screwed themselves.

A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one anothers expense by an act of governmenti.e., by force.

Of course, Rand never claimed that America had degenerated into full-blown fascism (she held that freedom of speech was a bright line in this respect), but she did believe that the fundamental premise of the altruist-collectivist moralitythe foundation of all collectivist regimes, including fascismwas accepted and preached by modern liberals and conservatives alike. (Those who mistakenly dub Rand a conservative should read Conservatism: An Obituary [CUI, Chapter 19], a scathing critique in which she accused conservative leaders of moral treason. In some respects Rand detested modern conservatives more than she did modern liberals. She was especially contemptuous of those conservatives who attempted to justify capitalism by appealing to religion or to tradition.) Rand illustrated her point in The Fascist New Frontier, a polemical tour de force aimed at President Kennedy and his administration.

There is no such thing as the public interest except as the sum of the interests of individual men.

Rand began this 1962 lecture by quoting passages from the 1920 political platform of the German Nazi Party, including demands for an end to the power of the financial interests, profit sharing in big business, a broad extension of care for the aged, the improvement of public health by government, an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education, and so forth. All such welfare-state measures, this platform concluded, can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.

Rand had no problem quoting similar proposals and sentiments from President Kennedy and members of his administration, such as Kennedys celebrated remark, And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what America will do for youask what you can do for your country. The particulars of Rands speech will come as no surprise to those familiar with her ideas, but I wish to call attention to her final remarks about the meaning of the public interest. As used by Kennedy and other politicians, both Democratic and Republican, this fuzzy phrase has little if any meaning, except to indicate that individuals have a duty to sacrifice their interests for the sake of a greater, undefined good, as determined by those who wield the brute force of political power. Rand then stated what she regarded as the only coherent meaning of the public interest.

[T]here is no such thing as the public interest except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all menall rational menis freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of the public interestnot what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundationand cannot exist without them.

The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of the public interest.

I shall conclude this essay on a personal note. Before I began preparing for this essay, I had not read some of the articles quoted above for many, many years. In fact, I had not read some of the material since my college days 45 years ago. I therefore approached my new readings with a certain amount of trepidation. I liked the articles when I first read them, but would they stand the test of time? Would Rands insights and arguments appear commonplace, even hackneyed, with the passage of so much time? Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Rand was exactly on point on many issues. Indeed, if we substitute President Obama, for President Kennedy or President Johnson many of her points would be even more pertinent today than they were during the 1960s. Unfortunately, the ideological sewer of American politics has become even more foul today than it was in Rands day, but Rand did what she could to reverse the trend, and one person can only do so much. And no one can say that she didnt warn us.

Republished from Libertarianism.org.

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Ayn Rand Predicted an American Slide toward Fascism ...

POST by The Editors| View all Posts November 09, 2016

Thanks to our contributors, ARI is able to show students how Ayn Rands ideas can empower them to live free and thrive in a big way.

In this episode of The Yaron Brook Show, Yaron Brook comments on the unusually intellectual response to his talks in Europe and illustrates how philosophy shapes history, particularly the positive impact of Aristotles ideas. Also, Brook discusses why he wont debate Stefan Molyneux, the political and economical state of Greece, race realism and free will.

The rich are getting richer in a system rigged in their favor. True or false? Hear two sides of the economic inequality story in the upcoming debate between Yaron Brook, ARI executive chairman, and Jonathan Haughton, Beacon Hill Institute senior economist.

The 2016 Ayn Rand Student Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, is about to begin.

Why is voter rage so rampant? What has brought out this ugliness and hate? How can you exercise your rights and keep out of the emotionalism plaguing America?

Join Tara Smith, ARI board member and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, for a panel discussion of her latest book Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System.

This talk examines the development, operation and performance of monetary systems in the absence of government intervention. Topics covered include the spontaneous evolution of money, the rise of banks, bank self-regulation under competition and crisis management in the absence of a central bank.

What exactly is globalism? Are trade deals like NAFTA desirable? Should one go into politics? Is tuition-free college education a good idea?

What do you call a payment of money for the release of a prisoner? Yes, its a ransom. But not if the recipient is Iran. That, the Obama administration calls a triumph of diplomacy.

It looks like the upcoming 2016 Ayn Rand Student Conference is going to be the largest student Objectivist conference ever. The conferences theme is free will. But what exactly is free will? Does it even exist? How do you know? Whats the Objectivist perspective? And what implications, if any, does it have for how you live your life?

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Voices for Reason Blog | The Ayn Rand Institute

(Photo: Leonard McCombe/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Whenever Ayn Rand met someone newan acolyte whod traveled cross-country to study at her feet, an editor hoping to publish her next novelshe would open the conversation with a line that seems destined to go down as one of historys all-time classic icebreakers: Tell me your premises. Once youd managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is A, and so forththe whole Objectivist catechism. And once you conceded any part of that basic platform, the game was pretty much over. Shed start piecing together her rationalist Tinkertoys until the mighty Randian edifice towered over you: a rigidly logical Art Deco skyscraper, 30 or 40 feet tall, with little plastic industrialists peeking out the windowsa shining monument to the glories of individualism, the virtues of selfishness, and the deep morality of laissez-faire capitalism. Grant Ayn Rand a premise and youd leave with a lifestyle.

Stated premises, however, rarely get us all the way down to the bottom of a philosophy. Even when we think weve reached bedrock, theres almost always a secret subbasement blasted out somewhere underneath. William James once argued that every philosophic system sets out to conceal, first of all, the philosophers own temperament: that pre-rational bundle of preferences that urges him to hop on whatever logic-train seems to be already heading in his general direction. This creates, as James put it, a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentionedWhat the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe of God. What it isand oh so flagrantly!is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is.

No one would have been angrier about this claim, and no one confirms its truth more profoundly, than Ayn Rand. Few fellow creatures have had a more intensely odd personal flavor; her temperament could have neutered an ox at 40 paces. She was proud, grouchy, vindictive, insulting, dismissive, and rash. (One former associate called her the Evel Knievel of leaping to conclusions.) But she was also idealistic, yearning, candid, worshipful, precise, and improbably charming. She funneled all of these contradictory elements into Objectivism, the home-brewed philosophy that won her thousands of Cold Warera followers and that seems to be making some noise once again in our era of bailouts and tea parties. (Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are Rand fans; Alan Greenspan, once a member of her inner circle, had his faith in the markets rationality shaken by the crash.)

Its easy to chuckle at Rand, smugly, from the safe distance of intervening decades or an opposed ideology, but in personher big black eyes flashing deep into the night, fueled by nicotine, caffeine, and amphetaminesshe was apparently an irresistible force, a machine of pure reason, a free-market Spock who converted doubters left, right, and center. Eyewitnesses say that she never lost an argument. One of her young students (soon to be her young lover) staggered out of his first all-night talk session referring to her, admiringly, as Mrs. Logic. And logic, in Rands hands, seemed to enjoy superpowers it didnt possess with anyone else. She claimed, for instance, that she could rationally explain every emotion shed ever had. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive, she once wrote, and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. One convert insisted that she knows me better after five hours than my analyst does after five years. The only option was to yield or stay away. (I should admit here my own bias: I was a card-carrying Objectivist from roughly age 16 to 19, during which time I did everything short of changing my last name to Randersona phase Im deeply embarrassed by, but also secretly grateful for.)

Rand insisted, over and over, that the details of her life had nothing to do with the tenets of her philosophy. She would cite, on this subject, the fictional architect Howard Roark, hero of her novel The Fountainhead: Dont ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think. But the things she thought, it turns out, were very much dependent on her family, her childhood, her friends, and her feelingsor at least on her relative lack of all that.

Anne Hellers new biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, allows us to poke our heads, for the first time, into the Russian-Americans overheated philosophical subbasement. After reading the details of Rands early life, I find it hard to think of Objectivism as very objective at allit looks more like a rational program retrofitted to a lifelong temperament, a fantasy world created to cancel the nightmare of a terrifying childhood. This is the comedy, the tragedy, and the power of Rand: She built a glorious imaginary empire on that nuclear-grade temperament, then devoted every ounce of her will and intelligence to proving it was all pure reason.

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The One Argument Ayn Rand Couldnt Win New York Magazine

Ayn Rand, llam a su filosofa, "Objetivismo", describindola como la filosofa para vivir en la tierra. El objetivismo es un sistema integrado de pensamientos, que define principios abstractos en los que el hombre debe pensar y actuar si es que quiere vivir la vida propia de un hombre. En primer lugar, Ayn Rand, present su filosofa a travs de las novelas, ambas best-sellers, "The Fountainhead" (1943), traducida al castellano como "El Manantial", y "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), como "La Rebelin de Atlas". En estas se presenta al hombre como un ser herico, un individuo racional digno de vivir en la tierra, ya que puede lograr lo mejor de s msmo. Posteriormente, present su filosofa en forma de no-ficcin.

METAFISICA:

La realidad, el mundo exterior, la existencia independiente de la conciencia del hombre; independiente de cualquier conocimiento, creencias, sentimientos, deseos o temores. Esto significa que A es A, los hechos son hechos, las cosas son lo que son; y la tarea de la conciencia del hombre es percibir la realidad, no crearla o inventarla. As, el objetivismo, rachaza toda creencia en lo supernatural, y cualquier aclamacin de individuales o grupos que dicen crear su propia realidad.

EPISTEMOLOGIA:

La razn del hombre es completamente competente de conocer los hechos de la realidad. La razn, facultad conceptual, es la facultad que identifica e integra el material provisto por los sentidos del hombre. La razn es el nico medio del hombre para adquirir conocimientos. As, el objetivismo, rechaza al misticismo (no acepta a la fe y a los sentimientos, como medios de conocimiento); y al escepticismo (que proclama la imposibilidad del conocimiento y/o estar seguro de algo). La naturaleza humana: El hombre es un ser racional. La razn, nico medio de conocimiento del hombre, es su medio de supervivencia. El hombre es un ser de conciencia volitiva, por eso el ejercicio de la razn depende de la eleccin de cada individuo. Tu conciencia es lo que sols llamar alma o espritu; y a lo que llams 'libre albedro', es a la libertad que tiene tu mente de pensar o no. Esta es la nica eleccin que tienes. Es la eleccin que controla tadas las otras elecciones que hacs; y determina tu vida y tu caracter . As, el objetivismo, rechaza toda forma de determinismo; la creencia de que el hombre es vctima de fuerzas que escapan a su control (como ser: dios, el destino, los genes, condiciones de nacimiento o econmicas).

ETICA:

La razn del hombre es la nica fuente que le permite juzgar valores y guiarlo hacia la accin. Un estndar de tica correcto es: la supervivencia del hombre como hombre, es decir, lo requerido por su naturaleza para sobrevivir como un ser racional (y, no una momentnea supervivencia fsica como un bruto sin mente). La virtud bsica del hombre es su racionalidad, y sus tres valores fundamentales son: razn, propsito, auto-estima. El hombre es un fin en s msmo, y no un medio para los fines de los dems; debe vivir por su propio propsito, sin sacrificarse para otros o sacrificar a otros para s; debe trabajar por su propio inters racional y lograr su propia felicidad como el propsito moral ms alto de su vida. As, el objetivismo, rechaza cualquier forma de altruismo (que dice que la moralidad consiste en vivir para otros o para la sociedad).

POLITICA:

El principio social bsico de la tica objetivista es que ningn hombre tiene el derecho de buscar valores ajenos por medio de la fuerza fsica. Ningn hombre o grupo tiene el derecho de usar la fuerza fsica contra otros; con exepcin de cuando acta en propia defensa y solo contra quienes inicien su uso. Los hombres deben tratar unos con otros como comerciantes, dando valor por valor, por medio de un libre y mutuo consentimiento y mutuo beneficio. El nico sistema social que erradica de las relaciones humanas, la fuerza fsica, es el capitalismo de laissez-faire (libre comercio). El capitalismo es un sistema basado en el reconocimiento de los derechos individuales, y protege a los hombres de aquellos que inician el uso de la fuerza fsica. As, el objetivismo, rechaza cualquier forma de colectivismo, como lo son, el fasismo y el socialismo. Tambin rechaza la actual 'economa mixta', nocin de que el gobierno debera regular la economa y redistribuir la riqueza.

ESTETICA:

El arte es una re-creacin selectiva de la realidad, acorde al juicio metafsico del artista; es concretizar su visin fundamental de la existencia. Ayn Rand, describe su aproximacin al arte como: "Realismo Romntico": "Yo soy Romntica en el sentido de que presento a los hombres como deberan ser. Soy Realista en el sentido de que los ubico aqu, ahora y en esta tierra". El propsito de las novelas de Ayn Rand no es didctico; es artstico: la proyeccin de un hombre ideal: "Mi propsito, primera causa y desencadenante, es el retrato de Howard Roark o John Galt o Hank Rearden o Francisco d'Anconia como un fin en s msmo, y no como un propsito para un fin posterior".

Dijo uno de los presentes: - Convnceme de que la lgica es til. - Quires que te lo demuestre? - S. - Entonces....es necesario que recurra a una demostracin. Y al ver que el otro asenta le dijo: - Si te engao con sofismas, cmo hars, pues, para darte cuenta? El otro guard silencio. - Ya ves como te das cuenta de que la lgica es necesaria y que, apartndote de ella, ni siquiera puedes llegar a saber si es necesaria o no. Epicteto, Conversaciones, II, 25.

La democracia es dos lobos y una oveja votando sobre que se va a comer. La Libertad es la oveja, armada, impugnando el resultado. Benjamin Franklin

info @ objetivismo . com

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Ayn Rand, nascida Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (em cirlico russo: ; So Petersburgo, 2 de fevereiro de 1905 Nova Iorque, 6 de maro de 1982) foi uma escritora, dramaturga, roteirista e filsofa norte-americana de origem judaico-russa, mais conhecida por desenvolver um sistema filosfico chamado de Objetivismo, e por seus romances.

Nascida e educada na Rssia, Rand emigrou para os Estados Unidos em 1926. Ela trabalhou como roteirista em Hollywood, e teve uma pea produzida na Broadway, no perodo de 1935 a 1936.

Alcanou a fama com seu romance The Fountainhead (que foi lanado no Brasil com o ttulo de A Nascente, e deu origem a um filme homnimo conhecido no Brasil por Vontade Indmita), publicado em 1943. Em 1957 lanou seu melhor e mais conhecido trabalho, o romance filosfico Atlas Shrugged (no Brasil, Quem John Galt?, inicialmente lanado em 1987 e, posteriormente, relanado em 2010 como A Revolta de Atlas).

Sua filosofia e sua fico enfatizam, sobretudo, suas noes de individualismo, autossustentao e capitalismo. Seus romances preconizam o individualismo filosfico e a livre iniciativa econmica[1].

Ela ensinava:

Um admirador de Ayn Rand, David Nolan, organizou, em 1971, o Partido Libertrio Americano, cujo programa original tinha os traos que ela mesma defendia nos anos 40.[2] Posteriormente, ela brigou com libertrios como Murray Rothbard[3] e passou a criticar o partido[4] pelo fato da filosofia dela ter se distanciado a da escola austraca.[5][6]

Um de seus principais pupilos foi Alan Greenspan, mais tarde presidente da Reserva Federal (o sistema de bancos centrais dos Estados Unidos).[7][8]

Ela se posicionou tambm como uma anti-arabista e sionista durante o conflito rabe-israelense.[9]

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Ayn Rand Wikipdia, a enciclopdia livre

Edit Personal Details Other Works: Newsletter: "The Ayn Rand Letter" See more Publicity Listings: 1 Biographical Movie | 17 Print Biographies | 1 Portrayal | 1 Interview | 1 Article | See more Height: 5'2"(1.57m) Edit Did You Know? Personal Quote: Today, we live in the Age of Envy. "Envy" is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify. Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that ... See more Trivia: Was a "friendly witness" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, testifying on alleged Communist "influences" in Hollywood. See more Trademark: In her books, characters often give very long speeches, sometimes stretching over dozens of pages, explaining their philosophy of life. Rand used this as an opportunity to elaborate Objectivism, the philosophic system she is credited with creating, but also to showcase her view of other philosophic systems whose characteristic concepts conflicted with those of Objectivism. See more Message Boards Recent Posts

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