The voice of reason : essays in objectivist thought

350 Pages·2004·1.7 MB·English

by  Ayn Rand

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Part One: - Philosophy
Chapter 1 - Introducing Objectivism
Chapter 2 - Review of Randall’s Aristotle
Chapter 3 - To Young Scientists
Chapter 4 - Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?
Chapter 5 - The Psychology of Psychologizing
Chapter 6 - Altruism as Appeasement
Chapter 7 - The Question of Scholarships
Chapter 8 - Of Living Death
Chapter 9 - Religion Versus America
Part Two: - Culture
Chapter 10 - The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age
Chapter 11 - Our Cultural Value-Deprivation
Chapter 12 - Global Balkanization
Chapter 13 - How to Read (and Not to Write)
Chapter 14 - The Lessons of Vietnam
Chapter 15 - The Sanction of the Victims
Chapter 16 - Through Your Most Grievous Fault
Chapter 17 - Apollo 11
Chapter 18 - Epitaph for a Culture
Chapter 19 - Assault from the Ivory Tower: The Professors’ War Against
America
Chapter 20 - The American School: Why Johnny Can’t Think
Part Three: - Politics
Chapter 21 - Representation Without Authorization
Chapter 22 - To Dream the Noncommercial Dream
Chapter 23 - Tax Credits for Education
Chapter 24 - Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason
Chapter 25 - The Pull Peddlers
Chapter 26 - About a Woman President
Chapter 27 - The Inverted Moral Priorities
Chapter 28 - Hunger and Freedom
Chapter 29 - How Not to Fight Against Socialized Medicine
Chapter 30 - Medicine: The Death of a Profession
Chapter 31 - Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty
EPILOGUE
AYN RAND ON:
Objectivism: “A book salesman asked me whether I could present the essence of
my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did, as follows: 1. Metaphysics:
Objective Reality. 2. Epistemology: Reason. 3. Ethics: Self-interest. 4. Politics:
Capitalism.” (Introducing Objectivism)
The Vietnam War: “It was a shameful war ... because it served no national
interest, because we had nothing to gain from it, because the lives and heroism
of thousands of American soldiers were sacrificed in pure compliance with the
ethics of altruism, selflessly and senselessly.” (The Lessons of Vietnam)
The Death of Marilyn Monroe: “Anyone who ever felt resentment against the
good for being good and has given voice to it, is the murderer of Marilyn
Monroe.” (Through Your Most Grievous Fault)
Apollo 11: “For once, if only for seven minutes, the worst among those who saw
the lift-off had to feel—not ‘How small is man by the side of the Grand
Canyon!’—but ‘How great is man and how safe is nature when he conquers it!’ ”
(Apollo 11)
DR. LEONARD PEIKOFF worked closely with Ayn Rand for many years and
was designated by her as heir to her estate. He has taught philosophy at Hunter
College, Long Island University, and New York University, and he lectures on
Ayn Rand’s philosophy throughout the country. Dr. Peikoff is the author of The
Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (Mentor), and the editor of
The Early Ayn Rand (Signet).

MERIDIAN
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Published by Meridian, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. The Voice of
Reason previously appeared in an NAL BOOKS edition.
First Meridian Printing, June, 1990
Copyright © 1989 by Estate of Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rand, Ayn.
The voice of reason ; essays in objectivist thought / Ayn Rand ;
with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff ; and additional essays by
Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz.
p. cm.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
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eISBN : 978-1-101-13726-0
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Introduction
This is the final collection of Ayn Rand’s articles and speeches that I plan to
publish. It may be regarded as the best of the non-anthologized Ayn Rand. None
of the pieces (with one exception) has appeared before in book form.
Some of these twenty-six pieces are brief comments addressed to readers of
her newspaper column in the Los Angeles Times or of her own magazines.
Others are longer articles from her magazines, or lectures delivered to various
kinds of audiences. The material spans a period of twenty years, from 1961,
when she gave the first of her annual talks at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, to
1981, when she gave what was to be her last talk, to a businessmen’s group in
New Orleans.
I have also included six essays written after Miss Rand’s death in 1982: five
are the Ford Hall Forum talks I have been giving in her stead in recent years.
The sixth is an article by Peter Schwartz, editor of The Intellectual Activist, a
publication that covers current events from an Objectivist viewpoint.
The contents of this book vary widely in scope and subject matter. As the
subtitle indicates, however, all are “essays in Objectivist thought.” That is, all
take as their frame of reference Ayn Rand’s unique philosophy of Objectivism.
Objectivism upholds capitalism in politics, on the basis of egoism in ethics, on
the basis of reason in epistemology. Everything in this book, accordingly, is an
application of this last tenet, which is the root and essence of Objectivism. If one
accepts reason—in its full, philosophical definition and implications—all the rest
follows. Thus the title of the present collection.
The culture of our time, a legacy of two centuries of Kantian-ism, is shaped by
the opposite ideas; it is a product of mysticism, altruism, collectivism. All
around us we see rebels against the Enlightenment, who openly avow their
disdain for the mind—in favor of brain-drowning drugs or obedience to the State
or cults urging “back to nature” or “back to the Bible.” In this kind of era, there
is only one true rebel: the man or woman who challenges the root of the evil
sweeping the world, i.e., the radical who champions reason.
Reason is man’s faculty of integrating sensory data into concepts, and thereby
of expanding incalculably the power of his consciousness. Such integration is
man’s distinctive method of cognition and the source of all his achievements: it