1. Ayn Rand: Historical Background
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2. Biography Born: 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia
1917 the Russian Revolution convinced her family to move to Crimea to escape the fighting. (This is where she finished high school and started learning about America. She fell in love with its ideals.)
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: Czar Nicholas II is overthrown (think Anastasia story). He was a bad ruler. “Provisional Government” takes over the decision- making for the country until they can figure out what kind of government they want to have. Bolshevik Party leader, Vladimir Lenin, took over and decided they would be a Marxist government. (Karl Marx believed that capitalism would eventually turn into socialism).
1924- graduates with a degree in Philosophy and History
1925- moves to America
1937- Anthem is published//1943 –The Fountainhead is published (makes her famous)

4. “An industrialist who produces a fortune, and a gangster who robs a bank are regarded as equally immoral, since they both sought wealth for their own “selfish” benefit. A young man who gives up his career in order to support his parents and never rises beyond the rank of grocery clerk is regarded as morally superior to the young man who endures an excruciating struggle and achieves his personal ambition.”
Ayn Rand’s philosophy

6. Objectivism
REALITY –Ayn Rand believed that reality does not vary from person to person. Objectivism holds that facts are facts, independent of anyone’s wishes or beliefs. Reality – nature –is absolute.
REASON –Objectivism does not support being guided by faith, instinct, or “your gut.” You can be certain of things in life, but only if you use sense-perception, concepts, logic, and REASON. This is your only guide to successful action.

7. Reason & reality

8. “Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil.”
[talking about the man who is constantly sacrificing himself for others] “He may hope that others might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices himself for theirs, but he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment, not pleasure –and that, morally, their pursuit of values will be like an exchange of unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents.”
altruism
NOUN
The belief or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well- being of others.

9. The condition of being concerned with one’s own interests and profit.
“In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil: the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.”
“Objectivist ethics is a morality of… rational selfishness.”
“It is not a license “to do as he pleases,” and it is not applicable to the altruists’ image of a “selfish” brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims.”
Selfishness
NOUN
The condition of being concerned with one’s own interests and profit.

10. “In contrast to the idea that the state exists to promote the “public interest,” Objectivism holds that it exists to protect each individual’s rights. It should control neither the ideas nor the production.”
“A separation of state and economics, in the same way… as the separation of church and state.”
capitalism
NOUN
An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

11. “Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group –whether to a race, class, or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good.’”
collectivism
NOUN
The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in the group.

12. Interview with Donahue 1979
om/watch?v=3u8Jjth81 _Q
5 questions you have for Ayn Rand
24:22