Ayn Rand
Philosophe et romancière américaine.
Biographie
Ayn Rand (2 février 1905 - 6 mars 1982), née Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, est une philosophe et romancière américaine (d’origine juive russe émigrée), connue pour sa philosophie, l’objectivisme. Sa principale œuvre est Atlas Shrugged (1957), un roman qui met en scène des entrepreneurs se révoltant face au pillage étatiste.
Œuvres
Fiction
- Anthem
- Atlas Shrugged
- The Fountainhead
Essais
- The Virtue of Selfishness
- Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal
- We The Living
- Philosophy: Who Needs It
Articles
Philosophie
Autres
Éthique
Dans Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand élabore une théorie de ce qu’elle appelle « éthique » :
- Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.[1]
Mais comment déterminer ce qui est « proper » et ce qu’il ne l’est pas ? Blank out, comme elle dirait, c’est un peu de l’anti-concept à la « dignité humaine » (« ce qui est digne pour un homme »).
Avec, naturellement, le même genre de dérives absurdes :
- I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Politique
Ayn Rand défendait un État « minimal », financé volontairement, mais néanmoins coercitif de par son monopole sur un territoire donné [2].
Ayn Rand et les libéraux
Ayn Rand se montrait extrêmement critique des libéraux [3]. Ainsi à propos de Milton Friedman :
- I saw five minutes of it [Free to Choose]; that was enough for me, because I know [Milton] Friedman’s ideas. He is not for capitalism; he’s a miserable eclectic. He’s an enemy of Objectivism, and his objection is that I bring morality into economists, which he thinks should be amoral. I don’t always like what public television puts on, but they have better programs than ‘Free to Choose’ – the circus, for instance.
À propos des libéraux en général :
- They’re not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of every persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now it’s a bad sign for an allegedly pro-capitalist party [Libertarian Party] to start by stealing ideas.
- I don’t think plagiarists are effective. I’ve read nothing by libertarians (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled – that is, the teeth pulled out of them – with no credit given. I didn’t know whether to be glad that no credit was given, or disgusted. I felt both. They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable. I’ll take Jane Fonda over them.
