What is Objectivism

Objectivism is the philosophy Ayn Rand developed and named, holding that reality exists independently of consciousness, that reason is man's only means of knowing it, that each person's own life and happiness are his proper moral purpose, and that capitalism is the only social system consistent with those facts.

Rand first dramatised the philosophy in her novels, above all Atlas Shrugged (1957), and then stated it directly in non-fiction essays collected in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967). Its most systematic presentation is Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991).

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
~ Ayn Rand, appendix to Atlas Shrugged

The essentials

Asked to present her philosophy while standing on one foot, Rand gave four answers, one per branch:

Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism

and translated each into common speech as, respectively, "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed"; "You can't eat your cake and have it, too"; "Man is an end in himself"; and "Give me liberty or give me death."

The ordering is not arbitrary. Each branch rests on the ones before it, which is why this wiki is organised the same way.

Metaphysics: existence exists

Things are what they are independently of anyone's awareness of them. Consciousness is the faculty of perceiving what exists, not of creating it, so wishing does not alter facts. See Axioms, Identity, Causality and the Primacy of Existence.

Epistemology: reason is the means of knowledge

Knowledge begins in sense perception and is organised into concepts by a specific, identifiable process. Reason is not automatic: man must choose to focus, which is why volition is central and why error is possible. See Concept formation, Measurement omission, Objectivity and Logic.

Ethics: life is the standard of value

The concept of value presupposes an alternative, and only life faces one. A living thing's own life is therefore its standard of value, and for man, who survives by thinking, the virtues are the means of living by that standard. See Egoism, Altruism, Rationality and Happiness.

Politics: rights bar the initiation of force

Because a mind cannot be forced to think, the requirement of human life in society is that no one initiate physical force against anyone else. Rights state that requirement in social terms, and the sole proper function of government is to enforce it. See Initiation of force, Capitalism, Statism and Collectivism.

Esthetics: art as a re-creation of reality

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments, which is what makes it a human need rather than a decoration. See Aesthetics.

A closed system

Rand held that Objectivism is a specific body of ideas rather than an open-ended tradition. On the usual account among her associates, the philosophy consists of what she wrote and approved for publication, together with the work of others she explicitly endorsed. Later thinkers may apply it, argue about it, or discover that some part of it is wrong, but doing so produces their own work rather than an extension of hers.

This has a consequence worth stating plainly, because it is the source of a great deal of confusion: nothing on this wiki is authoritative. These articles are written by contributors and are a guide to the primary sources, not a substitute for them or a definition of what Objectivism holds.

It also follows from Objectivist epistemology itself that no one should accept a claim because Rand made it. A philosophy whose first principle is that knowledge comes from reason applied to evidence cannot consistently ask to be taken on authority.

Common misunderstandings

That it is a defence of doing whatever you feel like. The standard is man's life qua man, a factual standard about what human survival requires. Acting on unexamined desire is whim-worship, which Rand treated as the opposite of her ethics rather than an instance of it.
That it is the same as libertarianism. The political conclusions overlap substantially. Rand rejected the movement anyway, on the grounds that a politics detached from its philosophical base is a floating abstraction. The disagreement is about foundations, not policy.
That "selfishness" means indifference to others. Rand held that other people are among the greatest values available to a person, and that trade and benevolence, not sacrifice in either direction, are the rational relations between them.
That it is anarchism. Objectivism holds that a government with a monopoly on retaliatory force, restrained by objective law, is necessary precisely to keep force out of ordinary life.
That Objectivism is a religion or a cult. The charge usually rests on the closed-system point above. Holding that a philosophy has a definite content is not the same as demanding assent to it.

Discussion

Threads on the Objectivism Online Forum:

Is Objectivism a cult? — on the closed-system question
On Objectivist epistemology and metaphysics
Rand and Sartre: Objectivism vs existentialism
Another split in organized Objectivism

References

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957. Appendix, "About the Author".
Rand, Ayn. "Introducing Objectivism". The Objectivist Newsletter, August 1962. The source of the "standing on one foot" summary.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton, 1991.

External links

The Ayn Rand Lexicon — Rand's own words, indexed by topic
The Ayn Rand Society — an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association