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.