[Neil Parille continues where he left off in 2009.] Ayn Rand was quite explicit that ideas are what matter and, in particular, it’s abstract...

The issue of philosophical literacy is a troubling one for Objectivism on multiple levels. To begin with, many of Rand’s most ardent followe...

“[Intellectual appeasement] is an attempt to apologize for his intellectual concerns and to escape from the loneliness of a thinker by profe...

“The process of forming a concept is not complete until its constituent units have been integrated into a single mental unit by means of a s...

“To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem.” It is not surprising that n...

Since the McCaskey schism is (as Daniel Barnes has noted ) largely arose from "philosophical" issues, it might be illuminating to ...

Ayn Rand contra Libertarianism 2. In my last post I summed up Rand’s allegations against Libertarianism as follows: Libertarians are bad a...

Individual Rights 2: Rand’s theory examined. Rand introduces her theory of individual rights as follows: The source of man’s rights is not ...

Politics of Human Nature 21: Conclusion. What can be gathered from this long series of posts on politics and human nature? Mainly, three ma...

For nearly every critic of Objectivism there is usually one or two things in Rand’s philosophy that he finds particularly objectionable. For...

Politics of Human Nature 17: Vanity and “social metaphysics.” Closely related to the obsession with preeminence and status is vanity. The p...

Politics of Human Nature 16: Struggle for preeminence. Social darwinists use to argue that within society there existed a brutal “struggle ...

Politics of Human Nature 15: Sociology of the Intellectual. In the essay “For the New Intellectual,” we find Rand insisting that “the need ...

Politics of Human Nature 12: Humanitarianism and nihilism. Humanitarianism, when it becomes extreme, desperate, belligerently utopian, and ...

Politics of Human Nature 11: Humanitarianism and tribalism. In an earlier post , I quoted Rand characterizing “ the morality of altruism” a...

An Objectivist fairy tale. In previous posts, I have brought forth compelling evidence for the the view that neither "reason" nor...