Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand (February 2nd 1905 - March 6th 1982), born Alisa Zinov' yevna Rosenbaum , is a Philosophe and American Romancière (Jewish Russian emigrated), known for its rationalist philosophy deeply and close to that of the movement libertarien: the objectivism. Its major works, translated into French, are the Revolt of Atlas , the Source lives , the Virtue of selfishness and Us them Vivants .

Biography

Russian youth

Ayn Rand is born with Saint-Pétersbourg in 1905 in an agnostic Jewish family from three children of which it is the elder one. It is interested very young person in the literature and the cinema, writing as of the 7 years age of the novels or the scenarios. It nourishes its imagination of the novels of Sir Walter Scott or of Alexandre Dumas and is filled with enthusiasm for the romantic movement. In particular she discovers at 13 years that which will become its favorite author and which she regarded as the largest novelist: Victor Hugo. The come to power of the Bolsheviks in 1917 constrained his family with the escape in the Crimea, until the Bolsheviks invade the the Crimea in 1921. It flaring then its diary which contained passages anticommunists with vitriol. It starts studies of history and of philosophy at the university of Petrograd (Saint-Pétersbourg) and there discovers works of Rostand, Schiller and Dostoïevski. It leaves graduate on October 13rd, 1924 there. It continues to write and between at the Institute of cinematographic State of the art in 1924. At the end of 1925, one him agreement a visa to visit to close relations living to the the United States.

Beginnings in the United States

It arrives at New York in February 1926. Its first impressions in front of scrapes-ciels mark it deeply and will inspire descriptions of the Source lives , one of its novels. It chooses not to turn over in Soviet Union and leaves for Hollywood where it becomes scenario writer. At this point in time it changes its name into Ayn Rand, in reference according to it to the transcription into Cyrillic of the name of its family. Some say that is in reference to the typewriter Remington Rand but it was sold only afterwards. She makes odd jobs then thanks to a fortuitous meeting with Cecil B. DeMille obtains a station in one of her films. She meets Frank O' Connor there, young actor whom she marries on April 15th, 1929. She is naturalized in 1931. She will be always proud and thus declared for it in 1974 in a speech with the pupils of the military academy of West Point: " I edge say-not ace has patriotic bromide, goal with full knowledge off the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States off America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history off the world" Its first literary success is the sale of its scenario Red Pawn in 1932 with Universal Studios. She writes in 1934 the play Night off January 16th which is produced on Broadway. The part was a lawsuit of which the jury, selected among the spectators, could choose the end. In 1936 it publishes Us them alive ( We the living room ) on the cruelty of the life under the Russian Communist regime then Anthem in 1938 which describes a company in which collectivism triumphed. Anthem was accepted by no editor in the United States and did not meet a great success. Stephen Cox, of Objectivist Center, considers that is due at the time: “was published when the popularity of Russian socialism was with most among the American makers of opinions”.

Success

Its first great success arrives with the publication of the Source lives in 1943 after it had spent 7 years to write it. Refused by twelve editors, it is finally accepted by the publisher Bobbs-Merrill. The book became a planetary success, adapted in 1949 to the cinema under the title the Rebel in France. The book was sold since with more than 6 million specimens and it is still sold 100 of it; 000 per annum.

In 1957 is published its principal work, Atlas Shrugged , a novel which puts in scene contractors in hillock at the state control of a socialist company pre-totalitarian. Initial pulling is of 100.000 specimens and the book quickly becomes a world best-seller . According to a study of 1991 of the Library of the American Congress, the book is quoted by the Americans as the book which influenced them after the Bible.

In 1950 it creates a group which takes by provocation the name the collective with Alan Greenspan, future president of EDF or Nathanael Blumenthal (who will become Nathaniel Branden). The circle of friends takes a more important role, helping Ayn Rand to diffuse its ideas (objectivism) through the Nathaniel Branden Institute . It will publish soon a periodical, The Objectivist .

The friendly relation between Branden and Ayn Rand becomes in love with the passing of years, with considering and known their respective couple. Their history ends in 1968 after temporary separations. It breaks definitively with Branden and his wife, being never reconciled with the latter. Barbara Branden in The Passion off Ayn Rand will be very critical besides on the relation of the philosopher with her husband.

Ayn Rand taught in many universities as from 1960, year when it begins at the university from Yale, with Princeton and the Columbia University. She also taught with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute off Technology (MIT).

Were published in French:

the Source Lives (The Fountainhead), editions Jeheber 1945 then Olivier Orban 1981 then Plon. The author adapted it in scenario for the cinema: the Rebel, realized by King Vidor.
the Revolt of Atlas (Shrugged Atlas) in three volumes, of which only the two first were published.

T.1 : the Sharks , Jeheber, 1958

T.2: Exploited the , Jeheber, 1959

T.3: Revenge , envisaged at Jeheber but ever published

the Virtue of selfishness (The Virtue off Selfishness), the Beautiful Letters, 1993, ISBN 2251390197
Us them Alive (We the Living room), Right Bank, 1996, ISBN 2841520285
Anthem (Anthem), Right Bank, 2007, ISBN 2841521028

Disease and dead

Its health worsens with the beginning of the year 1970, it is operated in 1974 for a lung cancer. The end of the relation with Branden signs the end de facto NBI and certain friendly objectivists move away from them. Its activities within the movement objectivist rarefy at the end of the years 1970, situation amplified by the death of her husband on November 9th, 1979. One of its last projects was a televised adaptation of Atlas Shrugged as well as a novel, To Lorne Dieteling , of which it left only preparatory drafts.

She dies of a cardiac failure on March 6th, 1982 at her with New York. Many companions objectivists go to his burial of which Alan Greenspan and David Kelley who will read If Rudyard Kipling.

Ideas

The philosophy of Ayn Rand wants to be deeply rationalist and objectivist, the emotions of the man must be subjected to its reason, or else, the man would base his existence on dreams resulting from his representations of the world and not on the facts. She does not disavow therefore the emotional sphere but considers that the man who loses himself in his emotions tries to flee reality instead of adapting to it. She declared as follows:

Not, you are not held to live if you do not want it; but if you choose food, you must live in human beings - by the effort and the judgment of your spirit.

Not, you are not held to live in human beings: it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live differently - and the alternative is this life worse than death than you observe now in you and around you, this unsuitable situation with the existence, which lowers you in lower part of the animal, a situation which involves you year by year through a painful anguish, towards an absurdity and blind man self-destruction.

Not, you are not held to think: it is an act of moral choice. But it was necessary that somebody thinks to maintain to you in life. If you choose to conceal you with the thought, you conceal yourselves with the existence by transmitting some the load to a moral being, by hoping that it will sacrifice its wellbeing to enable you to survive in your defect.

Not, you are not held to be men; and it is true that the true men are not any more among you today. I moved away your means from survival - your victims.

Ayn Rand insists in a recurring way on the regard of oneself and the fact that the human being does not need to be justified to exist: it is an end in itself. By doing this, it rejects the currents of thoughts in vogue has its time, beat, according to it, on the culpability and of rejection of the major aspirations of the individual to the profit of a collective alienating and disrespectful realization of each one.

We are in strike against the car-immolation. We are in strike against the principle of the unmerited rewards and the obligations without counterpart. We are in strike against the doctrines which condemn the continuation of personal happiness. We are in strike against the dogma according to which any life is sullied with culpability

Influence

The former president of the EDF, Alan Greenspan, was influenced much by Rand and stated in this connection: “It showed me that capitalism is not only effective, but also moral”.

Ayn Rand is one of principal auteures quoted in the Bible of Satan of Anton LaVey.

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