Why, she asks, does man need morality in the first place? Her answer to that question culminates in the definition of a new code of morality, based in rational self-interest, aimed at each individual’s life and happiness, and rejecting sacrifice as immoral. Debate then centers on details: Should we serve an alleged God or substitute “society” for God? How much sacrifice is required? Who’s entitled to benefit from others’ sacrifices? In this volume’s lead essay, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Ayn Rand challenges that basic assumption by reconsidering ethics from the ground up.
Most ethical discussions take for granted the supreme moral value of selfless service. In these eighteen essays, readers learn why Rand’s answer to the question of who needs philosophy is an emphatic: you do. Skinner, and, above all, Immanuel Kant, whom Rand regards as her arch philosophical adversary. Contrary to the notion that philosophy is detached from the practical concerns of life, Rand sees philosophy’s influence everywhere, leading her to ask questions like: How can a person’s views about metaphysics impact his ambition and self-confidence? How has the notion of “duty” given morality a bad name? How did the belief that faith is superior to reason unleash the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism? Philosophy: Who Needs It also includes Rand’s assessment of a number of prominent thinkers, including John Rawls, John Maynard Keynes, B.
She identifies connections between egalitarianism and inflation, collectivism and the regulation of pornography, alcoholism, and the problem of free will vs. In these essays, Rand shows how abstract ideas have profound real-life consequences. Philosophy: Who Needs It is the last work planned by Ayn Rand prior to her death in 1982. A 1999 edition, Return of the Primitive, added supplementary articles, including three by editor Peter Schwartz analyzing the New Left’s enduring legacy. Rand’s writings on these and related topics were collected in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution(1971). In a number of essays, she analyzes the campus protests and the ideology of the New Left, concluding that far from rebelling, they were slavishly following every basic idea of their teachers - and that far from being idealistic, they were attacking the key foundations of a rational, free society. Protesting everything from Vietnam to industrial capitalism, college students under the banner of the New Left forcibly occupied campus buildings and idolized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro - and were hailed as idealistic revolutionaries. The ’60s are usually glorified as a time when America’s youth stood up in rebellion against the cultural establishment. Anthem anticipates the theme of Rand’s first best seller, The Fountainhead, which she stated as “individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul. In pursuit of his quest for knowledge, Equality 7-2521 struggles to answer the questions that burn within him - questions that ultimately lead him to uncover the mystery behind his society’s downfall and to find the key to a future of freedom and progress. Obedience to the collective is so deeply ingrained that the very word “I” has been erased from the language. All expressions of individualism have been suppressed in the world of Anthem personal possessions are nonexistent, individual preferences are condemned as sinful and romantic love is forbidden.
Equality 7-2521 is a young man who yearns to understand “the Science of Things.” But he lives in a bleak, dystopian future where independent thought is a crime and where science and technology have regressed to primitive levels. Anthem is Ayn Rand’s “hymn to man’s ego.” It is the story of one man’s rebellion against a totalitarian, collectivist society.