Anthem

By Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

• Born in Russia in 1905• Taught herself to read and was getting

published in magazines as a child• Opposed to Russian culture of the time• Looked at America as a more ideal culture

during the early 1900’s

Ayn Rand

• Communism and the Bolshevik Revolution left her family without jobs or money

• Left for the US in 1925• Her novel Anthem is considered anti-

collectivist and opposing what Rand saw in her Russian culture

• Came up with “objectivism” as a philosophy• Died in 1982

Objectivism

• Rand called it “a philosophy for living on Earth”

• Simply put, reality is one truth that exists regardless of what one believes

Objectivism

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

2. Reason is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

Objectivism

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

Objectivism

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics.

Objectivism

• Put the 4 principles of objectivism in your own words

Collectivism

• “Collectivism favors the group over the individual.

• Collectivism holds that man must be chained to a collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good’”

• Rand did not like this about Russia

Collectivism

Individualism

• Favors the individual over the group• “Individualism regards man—every man—as an

independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society . . . can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members”

Individualism

Altruism

• Helping others while being completely selfless; not having an interest in any personal gain

• Self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.

Egoism

• “Egoism states that each man’s primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare, well-being, or self-interest . . . He should be ‘selfish’ so he can benefit from his own actions.

Conformity

• “The act or habit of bringing [oneself] into harmony or agreement with others; of adhering to conventional behavior”

Obedience

• “Complying with a command; yielding to those in authority”

Independence

• “One’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind . . . is the virtue of independence”