| | Jbrad,
Rich's suggestion that you first read the novels is excellent. I would argue that, for pure literary art and for an example of how the philosophy applies to one man, that you start with _The Fountainhead_ before going on to _Atlas Shrugged_. _Atlas_ is more explicitly philosophical and tackles political philosophy as applied to a whole society as well as more technical issues at the root of philosophy.
Most people come to Objectivism from first being fans of these books, along with maybe the novella _Anthem_. They present the philosophical ideas in a coherent, living way so that you can see what Rand meant with concrete examples, rather than trying to deduce yourself what she meant from a naked academic presentation of her ideas. All of the advanced nonfiction works on Objectivism assume a thorough knowledge of the two major novels. Almost all serious commentary on her work references passages and characters from them.
Leonard Peikoff's book _Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand_ (called OPAR) by contrast would be a very bad place to start. Not least because many scholars of Objectivism argue over whether its presentation of certain fundamental issues is even correct. And its organization is very top-down in important ways. This is in contrast to the fact that Objectivism is very much a bottom-up philosophy that relies primarily on observation of the world to back up its claims. This top-down organization makes it difficult for those new to the philosophy to get its flavor adequately.
At best, OPAR is a very challenging book that should only be used to sharpen and systematize your knowledge after you have familiarized yourself with the novels and Rand's own non-fiction and preferably taken a course or listened to a set of taped lectures on 'Objectivism 101' or something of the kind.
Sorry, there is no royal road to Objectivism without reading the novels. This is actually good news, because the novels are very beautiful and inspirational on their own.
The first thing to know about Objectivism as a system of thought is that it is a _system_. It is not a collection of isolated statements on politics, economics, etc. which you might have heard and which might have influenced you to refer to a "cowboy philosophy."
Ayn Rand taught that philosophy has five fundamental branches:
i.) metaphysics: the study of the world as a whole
ii.) epistemology: the study of the means of human knowledge
iii.) ethics: the study of choice (i.e. the science of how conscious beings should make decisions about how to live in the world.)
iv.) politics: the study of a specialized branch of ethics as it pertains to relationships between human beings
v.) esthetics: briefly, the philosophy of art. (A more thorough definition of esthetics would require first delving into Objectivist epistemology, ethics, and esthetics far enough to justify the following claim: That art is a requirement of the human method of consciousness insofar as it uniquely presents us with a concretization of abstract ideas that is necessary for us as conceptual beings to focus on our long-range goals.)
Objectivist scholars such as Peikoff teach that various individual philosophers have advanced one or another branch of philosophy, have more rarely produced an entire system of thought in one branch, and have more rarely still produced an entire integrated system of thought that united two or more branches. But in the history of Western philosophy, only four thinkers have produced entire original systems that combined and united all five branches: Plato, Aristotle (reacting to Plato,) Immanuel Kant (building on Plato,) and Rand (reacting to Kant and building on Aristotle.)
In Objectivism, these five fields are tightly integrated. For example, in studying the world of everything around us (metaphysics,) we find that there is an important special case of beings, namely humans, that are different from everything else that we are aware of. In studying what makes them different, we find that they uniquely have a conceptual consciousness. (Objectivists call this the study of the metaphysical nature of man, the highest subfield within metaphysics, and one that unites metaphysics with epistemology at a different level.) In studying this conceptual consciousness (epistemology,) we find that it has unique requirements for proper functioning but that it also can produce results not available to members of any other species. Thus we are led towards a conception of the nature and purpose of human life (ethics.) In studying these requirements of a conceptual consciousness, we find that physical force directed against the consciousness in question or threat of the same can only retard or halt the conceptual process. Thus we are led towards conclusions about the use of force by one person against another (politics.) As we study them further, we find that a concrete representation of the world, embodying abstract ideas, can give a conscious being, among other benefits, a greater ability to function in the world by, among other means, making it easier to relate the abstract to the concrete (esthetics.)
Mathematics and the physical sciences are specialized fields that deal with the same basic subject matter as metaphysics but focused on more detailed aspects of the world than metaphysics does, and using specialized methods of gaining knowledge that collectively represent an advanced application of epistemology. (i.e. the scientific method.)
Economics is a specialized science that is related to ethics in approximately the same way that the physical sciences are related to metaphysics, with the proviso that economics to date has typically limited itself to the study of quantitative optimization of human choice as applied in the realm of material gain. In principle, it could also study optimization of the pursuit of non-material human values. Objectivist economists reject as a false dichotomy the separation of "macro" from "micro" economics, and teach it as an integrated field of knowledge.
The second thing to know about Objectivism as a system of thought is the following: Some philosophers have believed that metaphysics comes first and epistemology is derived from it. Others have believed the reverse. Rand, by contrast, believed that metaphysics and epistemology are both basic and intimately related, so that their study of their fundamentals must proceed in tandem. She compensated for this complexity by keeping her metaphysics very simple and rejecting from the field of metaphysics various subfields that had traditionally been classified with it, such as cosmology, which she consigned to the specialized science of astronomy.
The third thing to know about Objectivism is its claim that most important arguments in philosophy ultimately resolve to a difference in epistemology. Most of Rand's most important and original insights were in this field.
The fourth thing is that we have values as a result of being living beings, because only living beings are responsible for their own existence. (Non-living matter can change from one form to another, but we have never observed it coming into existence or passing out of existence. Living beings, otoh, take steps to preserve themselves and are uniquely subject to death.) Because we are living beings with a conceptual consciousness, we have an ability to pursue our values and thus to preserve ourselves that other living beings do not. The need for a science of ethics results from the desire to maximize this value-pursuing ability of the conceptual consciousness. (This paragraph summarizes Rand's greatest theoretical insights outside the field of epistemology. And notice how even they veer into the epistemological.)
The above represents my own attempt to summarize ideas I learned in studying Rand, Peikoff, Kelley, and others. It is only the sketchiest of outlines. Any errors, omissions, or poor wording are purely my own.
Hope this helps you get started!
-Bill
(Edited by William A. Nevin III
on 7/24, 3:32pm)
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