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Una vez le preguntaron a Ayn Rand si podía presentar los fundamentos de su filosofía, de forma breve, estando de pie sobre un solo pie. Esto es lo que dijo:
or “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.”
Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
or “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
or “Man is an end in himself.”
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
or “Give me liberty or give me death.”
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
Si mantuvieras estos conceptos con total coherencia, como base de tus convicciones, tendrías un sistema filosófico completo para guiar el curso de tu vida. Pero sostenerlos con total coherencia -comprenderlos, definirlos, demostrarlos y aplicarlos- requiere volúmenes de pensamiento. Por eso no se puede hablar de filosofía estando de pie sobre un solo pie, ni estando de pie sobre dos pies a ambos lados de cada valla. Esta última es la posición filosófica predominante hoy en día, sobre todo en el ámbito de la política.
Copyright © 1962 by Times-Mirror Company
This article has been edited by The Atlas Society. It was originally published on June 17, 1962 in the Los Angeles Times as "Ayn Rand Ties Her Beliefs to Today's World"
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