Egoism vs Altruism

Ayn Rand was truly a remarkable woman and accomplished an astonishing feat throughout her career and her philosophy continues to affect many people’s lives. Through her works of fiction and her essays later in her life she discovered a whole new philosophy, a philosophy for living on earth. This vision has inspired countless people to take charge of their own lives.

Ayn Rand’s Anthem connects to daily life, society, and history through conformity. In some parts of the world, people are sheltered from the truth of the world, and of life. In society, people are expected to fulfill their roles, and impossibly high standards, therefore being pressured into a subtle conformity, and forced to an obligation in order to please society.

Ayn Rand was a Russian- American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905. She is known for her very controversial novella showing a fictional, but eerily realistic post-apocalyptic world that has fallen into communism called Anthem. Anthem was published in 1938 and depicts a city that has fallen into now would be considered inhumane acts and laws. The city in the story Anthem features a collectivist dictatorship which holds strict laws that must not be broken, these laws prohibit individuality, creativity, and freedom.

After moving from soviet Russia to the United States in 1926, Ayn Rand became a well known playwright, author, and philosopher. Rand is well-known for her philosophical system, objectivism. Objectivism stresses that happiness is the most important goal one should have. All of these ideas and philosophies are present in the novel Rand composed, Anthem. In this collectivist society the people act as robots as they carry out their lives with little emotion, limited technology, and the constant threat of punishment. The atmosphere of this novel depicts a society with very rare opposition to the leadership because the people whom it is made up of have no reason to oppose it and since they are constantly threatened with punishments.

Well-known American author, Ayn Rand, in her short novel, Anthem, explores a post-apocalyptic world where individualism has disappeared. Rand’s purpose is to inspire readers to be original and not conform to society’s standards. She adopts a tone of pity for most of the humans in the story, but a tone of respect for the main characters in order to raise awareness about the dangers of all people being alike in her young adult audience.

Anthem by Ayn Rand is a utopian novella written through the perspective of Equality 7-2521. The society that he is a part of worships collectivism and the word “we.” The author uses this story as a warning of the dangers of collective ideologies, such as communism and socialism, but also to praise objectivism and individuality. In Ayn Rand’s Anthem, the leaders in the society seek to accomplish eliminating individual thought by choosing each person’s career, destroying “I” from their vocabulary, and neutralizing preferences to stop emotions.

The struggle and debate for and about utopias has been going on for thousands of years. In the classic book, Brave New World, the author, Aldous Huxley, explores the aspects of happiness and stability through creating a utopia of his own. Of course, the civilization that he writes about is imperfect in many ways and the story follows an outcast in the society. In the book, Huxley shows us that true universal happiness is unattainable because to live a happy and fulfilled life with a true emotional range of feelings, essentially what it means to be human, people need to have freedom and thought. But in order to have a utopia with never ending happiness, people need stability and control. This makes a utopia an impossible

As much as I’d like to be familiar with one mister Ayn Rand and be able to answer this question, I am not whatsoever familiar with Ayn Rand or his writings. So therefore, I cannot answer this question.

Elizabeth, you did a good job at avoiding judging the scenario on your own personal morals and restricting your discussion to utilizing the ethical systems proposed. I believe when you stated, “We should do no harm, but do not have an obligation to help anyone, if it does not benefit ourselves, first and foremost”, it describes enlightened egoism, “a slight revision of this basic principle, adding that each person’s objective is long-term welfare” (Pollock, pp. 42, 2017). Your source clarifies the distinction made by Ann Rand by saying she “does advocate showing all people a “generalized respect and good will” which amounts to nonintervention; we should avoid arbitrarily doing harm to others, but our duties to aid them are also minimal” (Ethical

Ayn Rand argues that man must be rational to survive and that those who are not ration survive based purely on luck. Rand argues that the virtue of rationality is incredibly important and that man must rely on his own knowledge in order to survive (Rand 28). Rand also says that those who rely on others rationality to survive are parasites. This suggests that Rand views human beings as primarily individuals and not as a community. Humans are responsible for their own survival but not others and she is concerned with the survival of the individual and not the community.

Utilitarianism is a theory within ethics that states that people should base their actions on what is best for the society. Ethical egoism is the exact opposite; it states that people should generally base their actions off of self-interest. It is impossible to say either utilitarianism or ethical egoism is correct, by looking into two case studies though, we can see how followers of each theory base their decisions.

Howard Roark is the physical embodiment of Ayn Rand’s entire philosophy: independent, self-interested, and non-conforming. He possesses a confidence that his foil,

As products of evolution, humans appear to be simply animals. However, we appear to be more than animals because of our complex emotions and intelligence. So people wonder what role our evolutionary history should play in understanding our identity as humans.

The world would be better off if every person only cared about themselves and not care about benefiting other people. A problem with that argument is that if it makes the society better than it goes against what Ethical Egoism stands for. The philosopher Ayn Rand believe that altruism will cause a person to sacrifice they life to make someone else happy; thus only Ethical Egoism values a person's life. The issue with what Rand believe in is that there's people less fortunate than others that should be help by other people; therefore, it should be a balance between altruism and Ethical Egoism. Ethical Egoism has opposing arguments on why it should not be practice by a

Ayn Rand was from the Soviet Union, and her background helps us to understand her rhetoric about why she preached her philosophy. “Born in Russia, and a hater of the revolution, Ayn Rand dreamed of America as an Eden of individualism. When she got there - becoming first a Cecil B de Mille extra, later a