UNDERSTANDING OBJECTIVISM UNDERSTANDING OBJECTIVISM A GUIDE TO LEARNING AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY LECTURES BY LEONARD PEIKOFF EDITED BY MICHAEL S. BERLINER NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First Printing, March 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © Leonard Peikoff, 2012 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: Peikoff, Leonard. Understanding objectivism: a guide to learning Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism/edited by Michael S. Berliner. p. cm. ISBN: 978-1-101-57733-2 1. Objectivism (Philosophy) I. Berliner, Michael S. II. Title. B945.R234P45 2012 191—dc23 2011044769 Set in Baskerville MT Std Designed by Ginger Legato Printed in the United States of America Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHER’S NOTE While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. CONTENTS Preface From Leonard Peikoff LECTURE ONE: The Role of Philosophy LECTURE TWO: Life as the Standard of Value LECTURE THREE: Honesty, Importance of Principles LECTURE FOUR: Force and Rights LECTURE FIVE: The Hierarchy of Objectivism LECTURE SIX: Objectivism Versus the Intrinsic and Subjective LECTURE SEVEN: Rationalism LECTURE EIGHT: Rationalism and Empiricism LECTURE NINE: Objectivism Versus Rationalism and Empiricism LECTURE TEN: Emotions and Moral Judgment LECTURE ELEVEN: Intellectual Honesty PREFACE Philosophy, and particularly Objectivism, is supposed to be an aid in life; and if it’s chewed and concretized, that’s how it functions. And that’s the main reason I wanted to give this course on understanding Objectivism. Objectivism should help you to enjoy life. It should help to make you glad that you’re alive. —Leonard Peikoff, from “Understanding Objectivism,” Lecture Eleven O n October 4, 1983, Leonard Peikoff presented the first lecture in his course “Understanding Objectivism.” Dr. Peikoff’s lectures continued for another ten weeks, live at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City. Beginning in early 1984, the course was offered on tape to audiences in more than a hundred cities throughout the United States and Canada and in numerous other countries. “Understanding Objectivism” is still in use today, with a number of the lectures included in the curriculum of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center. This course—and this book—should not be considered an introduction to Objectivism. As Dr. Peikoff stresses in the opening lecture, it “presupposes familiarity with Ayn Rand’s works…. [I]f you don’t know anything about Objectivism, this is the wrong lecture to be at.” The focus is on thinking methods: the right and wrong methods for trying to understand philosophy in general and for understanding and validating Objectivism in particular. But there is a “dividend,” as Dr. Peikoff put it, which is to “get clear on some specific idea that we are applying the method to.” The teaching of a method to understand Objectivism necessitates the “chewing” of its essential ideas (for example, objectivity and life as the standard of value), and thus considerable time is spent on the content of Objectivism and Objectivism as a philosophical system. Because the course was offered orally and much of it extemporaneously, a significant amount of editing was required to make it more amenable to the reading audience, but I tried to retain the less formal tone of the original oral discourse. I hasten to add, however, that I did not edit for philosophical content. I eliminated repetition, colloquial and conversational expressions, and even some material that was time-sensitive—that is, relevant to the live audience but not to readers—and I made some grammatical changes. I also eliminated (as repetitive or off topic) some questions and answers from the Q&A sessions following each lecture, and I moved some questions and answers to the lectures that contained those topics. All punctuation is mine, because I had access only to the tape recording, not to any original manuscripts. A word-for-word transcript of the tape recording of the course resides in the Ayn Rand Archives. —Michael S. Berliner