Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION—The definitive statement of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as interpreted by her best student and chosen heir.

This brilliantly conceived and organized book is Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s classic text on the abstract principles and practical applications of Objectivism, based on his lecture series “The Philosophy of Objectivism.” Ayn Rand said of these lectures: “Until or unless I write a comprehensive treatise on my philosophy, Dr. Peikoff’s course is the only authorized presentation of the entire theoretical structure of Objectivism—that is, the only one that I know of my knowledge to be fully accurate.”

In Objectivism, Peikoff covers every philosophic topic that Rand regarded as important—from certainty to money, from logic to art, from measurement to sex. Drawn from Rand’s published works as well as in-depth conversations between her and Peikoff, these chapters illuminate Objectivism—and its creator—with startling clarity. With Objectivism, the millions of readers who have been transformed by Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead will discover the full philosophical system underlying Ayn Rand’s work.

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suggested

Frederic Bastiat

The Law

Read this for FREE at mises.org

The Law, originally published as a pamphlet in 1850. It defines, through development, a just system of laws and then demonstrates how such law facilitates a free society. In The Law, he wrote that everyone has a right to protect "his person, his liberty, and his property". The State should be only a "substitution of a common force for individual forces" to defend this right. "Justice" (defense of one's life, liberty, property) has precise limits, but if government power extends further, into philanthropic endeavors, government becomes so limitless that it can grow endlessly. The resulting statism is "based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator." The public then becomes socially-engineered by the legislator and must bend to the legislators' will "like the clay to the potter": "I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes". Bastiat posits that the law becomes perverted when it punishes one's right to self-defense (of his life, liberty, and property) in favor of another's right to "legalized plunder," which he defines as: "if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." Bastiat was thus against redistribution.

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Ludwig von Mises

Liberalism in the Classical Tradition

In 1927, classical liberalism, based on a belief in individualism, reason, capitalism, and free trade, was dying, when one of the 20th century's greatest social thinkers wrote this combative and convincing restatement. Nowhere are the key principles of Mises' philosophy better represented than in this timeless work.

Mises was a careful and logical theoretician who believed that ideas rule the world, and this especially comes to light in Liberalism.

"The ultimate outcome of the struggle" between liberalism and totalitarianism, say Mises, "will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales."

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Henry Hazlitt

Thinking As A Science

This book provides not only what one might expect, namely, instruction in clear, logical thinking, advice on pitfalls to avoid, information about errors of analogy and definition, and so on, but stands also as a guide for good reading and writing. Laying out a method of how to think effectively from problem to solution, Hazlitt gives us a way to save time, or rather, how not to waste it in fruitless and fallacious diversions.

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