Reason, Self And Self-interest-Research On Ayn Rand’s Ethical Thought

Ayn Rand was an American novelist who was born in Russia, and she was also the founder of the philosophy called Objectivism. As an active intellectual, she often participated in public debate as well. From an overall view of Objectivism, there is no doubt that ethical thought is the essential part of Rand’s philosophy, and also the most debatable one. The debate explains two things : one is that Rand’s ethical thought has its reasonable parts and is worthy of discussion. The other is that the study of this topic isn’t ended and has space for further discussion. Ethical thought always has an impact on people’s behavior in real life. Thus, the significance of research into Rand’s ethical thought is not only theoretical but also practical. According to the current research status and its essential features on Reason, Self, and Self-Interest, this dissertation tries to have a complete and deep analys is of Rand’s ethical thought of the idea of the Self, the relationship between Self and The Other, as well as Self and Country.Besides the introduction and conclusion, the main body of this dissertation consists of five chapters.The introduction explains why the author chose Rand’s ethical thought as the topic, and its research significance, research status, research approaches, research contents and original points of the dissertation.Chapter One explores cultural sources, philosophical foundations and essential features of Rand’s ethical thought. Cultural sources are focused on analyzing the effect of Jewish culture, Russian and Soviet culture, as well as American culture on the formation and development of Rand’s ethical thought. The philosophical foundation part analyses the influences of Aristotle and Nietzsche on Rand’s philosophy, and Objectivism as the philosophical foundation of Rand’s ethical thought. Its ontology emphas izes that principle “Existence exists”, and its epistemology is Reason; its three essential features being Reason, Self and Self-Interest.Chapter Two: Self-theory. One of the essential features of Rand’s ethical thought is an emphasis on Self. This chapter will searc h for the answers to the following questions: Why do we need Self? How to achieve Self? What is the ultimate purpose of the Self? This chapter will have the following three sections to study the problems. View of life: life is the foundation of Self, and Self only has meaning to living life; Axiology: value is the way to express Self, and to achieve Self is to create value; Theory of happiness: achieving happiness is the ethical purpose of one’s Self, and also the meaning of it.Chapter Three: Self and the other. The Self always has relationships with others. Rand’s discussion on these relationships has three sections. Theory of friendship: She thinks that loving yourself is the basis of friendship, and its essence is in finding someone similar to you. Furthermore, there are no responsibilities or conflicts between true friends. Theory of love: Rand believes that the essence of love between two individuals is for them both to have equal values and to exchange those values between each other. She also asserts that love is selfish. Theory of female: Rand’s view of the female is complicated. She believes that women and men are equal while she also thinks that women should admire the men. Her unique thoughts about being female are embodied in her attitude towards gender, sex and identity.Chapter Four: Self and Utopia. Beyond the relationships between individuals, this chapter is research on Rand’s political thought. Political thought is an important part of Rand’s ethical thought, and she emphasized many times that the purpose of her ethical thought is to build a reasonable ethical system for free capitalism. As an economic concept, free capitalism has a close relationship with political institutions and social systems where the former is the superstructure, and the latter is linked to societal distribution. Thus, this chapter will discuss Rand’s political thought by the following three sections: government, free capitalism and the theory of justice. There will be a deeper analys is of Rand’s attitude towards the nature of government, the idea of free capitalism as an economic system, and the relationship between freedom and equality, right and justice, charity and welfare under the social system.Chapter Five: Paradox and Irony. This section presents a critical discussion of the rationality of Rand’s ethical thought. Whereas the previous chapters detail the content of Rand’s ethical thought, this chapter focusses on critical thinking of Rand’s ethical thought in general and discusses its rationality. It will be discussed in the following three sections: the theoretical limitations of Reason, Self and self-interest as three essential features of Rand’s ethical thought; the ideology feature where Rand takes “Gault valley” as the utopian city of her political thought; the acceptance and impact of Rand’s ethical thought in real life. Finally, this chapter will highlight the paradoxical and ironical aspects of Rand’s ethical thought.Conclusion: Ayn Rand- one dimensional “Steppenwolf ”. The conclusion of this dissertation offers the opinion that Rand is trying to build unitary thought by using a dualism-based approach in order to create a world without paradox and conflict. People who live in this world are all one dimensional persons and believe in one dimens ional thought. Rand tries to cover the human’s essence of “Steppenwolf ” on purpose and deny the diversity of the human’s soul and thought. This is exactly embodied by the fact that Rand is a “Steppenwolf ” herself trying to find certainty at any risk. However, unfortunately, Rand’s life experiences have proved that her experimental thought has no soil in real life. Nevertheless, objectively speaking, Rand’s ethical thought has its reasonable part in some of the detailed content of her works. Furthermore, as a woman who is brave enough to create her own ethical thought, Rand and her thinking is worthy of serious discussion and is to be respected.