Objectivist Round-up, January 2026

1. A new edition of The Letters of Ayn Rand was just published.  According to the description:

This edition presents the complete transcripts, including more than fifty newly added letters, restored passages previously cut for space, and extensive new commentary by Berliner. Altogether, the added material expands the book by roughly thirty percent.

In her 2009 biography, Goddess of the Market, historian Jennifer Burns revealed that much of the posthumously published by the Archives was so heavily edited as to be essentially worthless.  She did say, however, that the Letters was more or less accurate.

2. The Ayn Rand Institute just published their year end report.  

3. The ARI invited neuroscientist Steven Pinker to the 2026 Objectivist Conference, although it’s been reported that a video of his appearance won’t be made available.  I’m curious why they would invite someone whose best-known book is The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and holds views of the relationship between intelligence, personality and genetics which most ARI authors would consider “deterministic” if not evil.  

2025 Year in Review

1.  The big story in 2025 was the continuing controversy over the situation between Leonard Peikoff and his daughter Kira.  In 2024, Kira filed a conservatorship action against Leonard arguing that he was so mentally impaired that he was not competent to make decisions.  She dropped the action toward the end of 2024 stating that her relationship with her father was so strained that continuing the case would be pointless.  This generated a fair amount of discussion on the internet and even an article in The Atlantic about the matter.  It doesn’t appear that the two have reconciled.

Objectivist Round-up, December 2025

1. Objectivist historian C. Bradley Thompson wrote and interesting article in which he argued that Marxism is a kind of Christian heresy.  The similarities between these two ideologies have been noted occasionally, even by Christians.  But the same thing could be said about Objectivism.  A while ago I wrote an essay comparing ARI-style Objectivism and religion.   One thing that has occurred to me over the years is that just as there is the phenomenon of six degrees of separation between people, there is a similar concept at work with ideologies.  It’s easy to find parallels, but that doesn’t mean there is a direct line of influence.  Anthropologists have for example found similarities between Native American religions and the religions of Australian Aborigines although direct influence is virtually impossible.

Yaron Brook Challenges Peikoff by Neil Parille

Recently, Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) Chairman of the Board Yaron Brook decided to “unload” on fellow Objectivists Andrew Bernstein, David Harriman, and (to a lesser extent) Leonard Peikoff.  This was surprising for a couple of reasons.  First, Brook has said over the years that he doesn’t want to comment on specific Objectivists.  Second, Leonard Peikoff is 92 and the status of his estate (and Rand’s papers most importantly) might still be up in the air.

What prompted this tirade was a question about Andrew Bernstein’s recent essay on President Trump, where he argued that Trump was a hero.  Brook said that, on the contrary, Trump is a horrible president and may be the worst president in American history.  Not only that, but he’s also a flat out “villain,” hates the United States, and says Bernstein’s piece is “B.S.” (he didn’t use the abbreviation).  However, he went on to say that Trump is supportive of business and businessmen.  In addition, he says that Trump – for whatever his flaws – speaks his mind and doesn’t care what people think about him.  However, the few topics he mentioned was Trump’s support for tariffs and attacking drug dealers.  At the end of the day, it looks like what is driving Brook is that Trump is an anti-intellectual populist.

Objectivist Round-up, November 2025

1. American philosopher John Searle passed away.  I recall Harry Binswanger writing that he was the academic philosopher whose thought was closest to Rand’s.  Years ago I read Searle’s Mind, Language and Society and some parts reminded me of Objectivism.

2. The always outspoken Ayn Rand Institute Chairman of the Board Yaron Brook said recently that European countries, to assimilate Muslims, should be “required” to periodically run cartoons of Muhammad.  He was asked if he would post such cartoons on his web site and said he would at the right time but didn’t know where he would place them.

3. Speaking of Brook, he said he was invited to and attended Leonard Peikoff’s 92-year birthday party.  He said he talked to Peikoff but doesn’t know if he’s “patched it up” with Peikoff.

Objectivist Round-up, October 2025

1. In 2022, correspondence was discovered from Murray Rothbard to Frank Meyer concerning his involvement with Ayn Rand and Objectivism.  I haven’t had the time to read the essay in full, but here is the abstract:

Relying on live-ink letters discovered in an Altoona, Pennsylvania, warehouse in 2022, this article provides a fresh look at an old controversy: Murray Rothbard’s bitter parting from the inner orbit of Ayn Rand. The correspondence from Rothbard to National Review senior editor Frank S. Meyer pertaining to the Randians details Rothbard’s rollercoaster of responses toward the Collective. The letters on Rand begin shortly before the release of Atlas Shrugged in October 1957 and end after the publication of an unsigned 1961 Newsweek article belittling the novelist. The newly discovered correspondence undermines the persistent claim that Rothbard fabricated unflattering descriptions of the Objectivists in response to their accusations of plagiarism. The letters, sent long before Nathaniel Branden leveled those charges, reflect the general description of the group in Rothbard’s “Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult,” issued in 1972. The article further details the influence of Meyer’s Molding of Communists on Rothbard in his structuring of “The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult.”

2. Objectivist writer Craig Biddle has a series of videos on religion and reason.  See here (concerning William Craig).  Biddle thinks that – as Rand said – faith means believing something without reason or that is opposed to reason.  Biddle knows that there are plenty of religious believers who think that their faith is supported by reason, faith means trust, etc. but, seems to think that at the end of the day they are “really” operating on faith as Rand defined it.  

The overvaluing of definitions is a sub theme of Objectivism -- definitions don’t just describe how words are used, but somehow (at least if you get them correct) give a deeper understanding of the world.  For example, as Rand wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness, “[y]et the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word ‘selfishness’ is: concern with one's own interests.” I don’t know any dictionary that defines “selfishness” that way and dictionaries don’t normally give “exact” definitions.*  Likewise, in her essay “Racism,” Rand defines racism as “the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.”  I’d say that racism includes an element of invidiousness.  However, taken to the extreme, according to Rand, if you believe Joe White Guy is smarter than Bill White Guy and this has something to do with genes, you might as well be George Wallace or even Adolf Hitler.  

The latest version of “definitionalism” is the constant use by Ayn Rand Institute Objectivists is the endless attack on “tribalism,” which apparently means anything that the ARI speaker doesn’t like.  ARI Charman of the Board Yaron Brook seems to think that every issue from immigration to free trade to abortion could be resolved if you get the definition of tribalism correct (and apply it to anyone Brook doesn’t like).  Would that resolving life’s most complicated questions be so easy.

In any event, as libertarian philosopher David Gordon wrote me, “Biddle misstates Craig's position. Craig is saying, if we have good reason to think someone is trustworthy, then we have good reason to accept what he tells us. He is not saying that reason and faith are the same concept, as Biddle claims. Craig is a trained philosopher, and Biddle is out of his depth.”

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*A prominent Objectivist once told me that the dictionaries of the world should be rewritten to define “selfishness” according to the Randian definition even if that definition is still in the minority of normal usage.

Objectivist Round-up, September 2025

1. It’s been reported that Allan Blumenthal and his wife Joan Mitchel Blumenthal passed away recently.  Allan Blumenthal (Nathaniel Branden’s cousin) was a psychiatrist and a member of the Collective (he signed the statement denouncing Nathaniel after Rand booted Nathaniel and Barbara out of the movement).  Allan (who was joint heir to Rand’s estate with Leonard Peikoff) broke with Rand around 1974, finding it impossible to maintain a civil, non-argumentative relationship with her.  Barbara Branden, in her biography of Rand quoted Allan: "She was relentless in her pursuit of so-called psychological errors [concerning judgments on art]. If an issue were once raised, she would never drop it; after an evening's conversation, she'd telephone the next day to ask what we had concluded about it overnight . . . It was becoming a nightmare." She quotes Joan: "but, often, she would seem deliberately to insult and antagonize us." 

2. Ayn Rand Institute thinkers Don Watkins and Onkar Ghate have a new book, Profit Without Apology: The Need to Stand Up For Business.  I discussed it here.

3. The Ayn Rand Fan Club has an excellent discussion of grudges within and outside of the Objectivist movement.  Highlights: Yaron Brook says (shockingly) that “I’m a big believer in holding grudges” and Leonard Peikoff saying in 1989 that he won’t live long enough to forgive David Kelley even if Kelley became repentant.  They make they point that many Objectivist schisms are in part personal grudges disguised as philosophical disputes.

—Neil Parille