Objectivism Online
A community for the philosophy of Ayn Rand · since 2003
Two decades of serious discussion of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, plus a reference wiki that says what its ideas actually hold.
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From the wiki
Proof
Proof is the process of establishing a conclusion by reducing it, through a chain of logical steps, to the evidence of the senses. Objectivism holds that proof is therefore hierarchical rather than merely formal: a valid deduction from premises that were never themselves reduced proves nothing.
Updated
Objectivism in twelve concepts
Four branches of philosophy, three concepts each. Every term links to its wiki article.
Metaphysics
- Existence
- The widest concept in Objectivism: everything that is, taken together, and the first axiom of Objectivist metaphysics.
- Identity
- The fact that a thing is what it is: every existent has a specific nature and cannot be something else in the same respect.
- Consciousness
- The faculty of perceiving that which exists. It is a faculty of awareness, not of creation: it perceives reality, it does not constitute it.
Epistemology
- Reason
- The faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses, and man's only means of knowledge.
- Concept formation
- The process by which a mind integrates two or more units into a single concept: differentiating them, then omitting their measurements.
- Objectivity
- Adhering to reality by a volitional method: forming conclusions from evidence by logic, accountable to facts rather than to feelings.
Ethics
- Egoism
- The ethical position that each person's own life is his standard of value and his own happiness the moral purpose of his life.
- Value
- That which one acts to gain or keep. Not a primary: it names a relation between an entity and a goal it acts to achieve.
- Life
- A process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. Because it alone is conditional, life is what makes values possible.
Politics
- Rights
- Moral principles defining a person's freedom of action in a social context: a sanction to act, not a claim on other people's effort.
- Capitalism
- A social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
- Individualism
- The view that each man is an independent, volitional being who owns his own life, and that a group has no rights apart from its members.
Starting points elsewhere
New to the ideas? Start with Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, the Ayn Rand Institute's overview of the philosophy, or The Philosophy of Objectivism, Leonard Peikoff's foundational recorded lecture course.
Want to go further? ARI Campus has free on-demand courses, and The Objective Standard is a journal applying Objectivism to culture and current events.