Ayn Rand Her Life And Philosophy Essay
Ayn Rand: Her Life And Philosophy Essay, Research Paper
AYN RAND: HER LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY
Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher who influenced many people? s manner of thought in really profound ways. She was born in Russia in 1905 and came to America at the age of 21 where she published her foremost fresh, We The Living, in 1936. The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and brought Ayn Rand international celebrity. Although she considered herself chiefly a fiction author, she realized that in order to make epic fictional characters, she had to place the philosophic rules which make such persons possible. Subsequently, she besides expressed her doctrine in nonfiction signifier.
Ayn Rand named her doctrine? Objectivism? and described it as a doctrine for life on Earth. Objectivism is an incorporate system of idea that defines the abstract rules by which a adult male must believe and move if he is to populate the life proper to adult male. Ayn Rand was one time asked if she could show the kernel of Objectivism while standing on one pes. Her reply was:
Metaphysicss: Objective World
Epistemology: Reason
Ethical motives: Self-interest
Politicss: Capitalism
She so translated those footings into familiar linguistic communication:
? Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ?
? You can? t eat your bar and have it, excessively. ?
? Man is an terminal in himself. ?
? Give me liberty or give me decease. ?
Harmonizing to Ayn Rand, world, the external universe, exists independent of adult male? s consciousness, independent of anybody? s cognition, beliefs, feelings, desires or frights. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they are? and that the undertaking of adult male? s consciousness is to perceive world, non to make or contrive it. Therefore Objectivism rejects any belief in the supernatural? and any claim that persons or groups create their ain world.
The theory of Objectivism besides tells us that adult male? s ground is to the full competent to cognize the facts of world. Reason, the conceptual module, is the module that identifies and integrates the stuff provided by adult male? s senses. Reason is adult male? s merely agencies of geting cognition. Therefore Objectivism rejects mysticism ( any credence of religion or feeling as a agency of cognition ) , and it rejects incredulity ( the claim that certainty or cognition is impossible ) .
Harmonizing to the theory of Objectivism, adult male is a rational being. Reason, as adult male? s merely agencies of cognition, is his basic agencies of endurance. But the exercising of ground depends on each person? s pick. Harmonizing to Ayn Rand, ? That which you call your psyche or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you name? free will? is your head? s freedom to believe or non, the merely will you hold, your lone freedom. This is the choic
vitamin E that controls all the picks you make and find your life and character. ? Therefore Objectivism rejects any signifier of determinism, the belief that adult male is a victim of forces beyond his control ( such as God, destiny, upbringing, cistrons, or economic conditions ) .
Rationality is adult male? s basic virtuousness, and his three cardinal values are: ground, intent, self-esteem. Man? every adult male? is an terminal in himself, non a agency to the terminals of others ; he must populate for his ain interest, neither giving himself to others nor giving others to himself ; he must work for his rational opportunism, with the accomplishment of his ain felicity as the highest moral intent of his life.
Objectivism rejects any signifier of selflessness? the claim that morality consists in populating for others or for society.
Ayn Rand besides describes the relationship between her doctrine and political relations. She explains that, the basic societal rule of the Objectivist moralss is that no adult male has the right to seek values from others by agencies of physical force? i.e. , no adult male or group has the right to originate the usage of physical force against others. Work forces have the right to utilize force merely in self-defence and merely against those who initiate its usage. Work force must cover with one another as bargainers, giving value for value, by free, common consent to common benefit. The lone societal system that bars physical force from human relationships is individualistic capitalist economy. Capitalism is a system based on the acknowledgment of single rights, including belongings rights, in which the lone map of the authorities is to protect single rights, i.e. , to protect work forces from those who initiate the usage of physical force. Therefore Objectivism rejects any signifier of Bolshevism, such as fascism or socialism. It besides rejects the current? assorted economic system? impression that the authorities should modulate the economic system and redistribute wealth.
Harmonizing to Ayn Rand, ? Art is a selective re-creation of world harmonizing to an creative person? s metaphysical value-judgments. ? The intent of art is to concretize the creative person? s cardinal position of being. Ayn Rand described her ain attack to art as? Romantic Realism? : ? I am a Romantic in the sense that I present work forces as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth. ? The end of Ayn Rand? s novels is non didactic but artistic: the projection of an ideal adult male as an terminal in himself? non as a agencies to any farther terminal.
Every book by Ayn Rand published in her life-time is still in print, and 100s of 1000s of transcripts are sold each twelvemonth, so far numbering more than twenty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of adult male and her doctrine for life on Earth have changed the lives of 1000s of readers and launched a philosophic motion with a turning impact on North American civilization.
