Author’s Preview
The Page of Reason
Integrating 2600 Years of Rational Investigations
Catalyzing the Age of Rationality
Objectivism: The Philosophy of
Reality Integrated Reason
Eight-Parts in Eight-Pages
Part 5 is The Page
Let There Be Light!
(Bite the Apple)
Orrin Smith
An incisively rational cause-and-effect analysis
concerning the future prospects for human life on earth
that incorporates a plan for enriching those prospects
based upon the Principles of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.
Dedication
Thank! goodness! for each individual who, within the prodigiously long duration of human history, by punctuated rational-work, against insurmountable odds, meticulously produced life-enriching technologies and ideas: bit by tiny bit.
Preface
From all of my life experience, from all knowledge that I have ever acquired from a magnificent array of generous knowledge contributors, I assert that Objectivist Principles are the only possible principles for incisive pursuits of survival, prosperity, and happiness, for all humans, all around the Earth. Within The Page of Reason, I will make my case.
Since the advent of primeval languages, our human minds have been assaulted by ever-more, ever-various, ever-contradictory, and ever-evasive irrational ideas. And, on countless occasions throughout the ages, willfully chosen and enacted to their final social conclusions, irrational ideas have caused vast destitution, destruction, and death.
Our primeval natures will always be with us. However, irrational ideas are just simplistic conceptual errors. They are just ideas that have become entangled with the persistent and pernicious, primeval principle that: anything-goes!
With great life-enriching effects, we are able to overcome primeval anything-goes ideas by wisely employing our reasoning skills. And it is only by such wise reasoning that we will ever become able to consistently cultivate our pursuits of happiness.
Such a wise desire notwithstanding, it is impossible to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—about the facts of human rationality, in detail. However, by well-formulated principles, we can profitably progress towards our important purpose.
To be useful, to be stable, to be good, to be true, such well-formulated principles must subsume the broadest reasonably possible range of presently known facts, and they must be well-anchored within objective reality by incisive rational-work.
Rationality has always been our distinctive human attribute, our principal virtue, and our fundamental talent. Nevertheless, it has only been within the most recent 2600 years that we humans have engaged in meaningful investigations of rationality. Thus, within the prodigiously long duration of human history, we have only just recently begun to actualize the vibrantly good life that rationality offers.
Why has this investigation work only just recently begun, and then evolved at such an excruciatingly slow pace? For three primary reasons:
- One: Reason, rationality’s method of work, is a set of voluntary skills that can only become performed within individual human minds.
- Two: Rational-work, non-contradictory integrations of percepts and concepts by logical reason, must become performed.
- Three: Culturally significant rational-work always depends upon present states of literacy and of various sorts of information technologies.
It is only within individual human minds that reasoning skills and conceptual knowledge can exist and develop. However, at birth, our minds became formed devoid of such content. Nevertheless, since our births, our minds have become slates, upon which, by choice, we can write and rewrite to the very end of our conscious lives.
By my choice, for almost thirteen years, I directed my mind towards important, purposeful work:
- First: I worked hard to systematically investigate and to thereby reasonably assimilate a very broad knowledge context.
- Second: Once I came to understand their utterly crucial importance, I then worked hard to acquire an incisive understanding of fundamental rational principles.
- Third: Beginning with a limited set of writing skills, I then worked very hard to further develop, hone, and polish those skills.
- Fourth: During five years, as I worked on those writing skills, I composed The Page of Reason, the final purpose of which is to communicate fundamental rational principles to you, and to each other able individual, on Earth.
Within this book, I have done my utter best to incisively define those principles.
- For incisive pursuits of survival, prosperity, and happiness, on Earth, such principles, Objectivist Principles, are necessary.
Let there be light! And there is light, a human light: reason. And, as we proceed, by principles, to further separate the light from the darkness, we will see that this light is good: every! day.
A Brain is Free. A Mind is Earned.
I invite you to embark with me upon this brief great adventure, and to then employ The Page of Reason, as a useful tool, within your own enduring great adventure. You and I have much to discuss: me within my rational text, you within your own rational mind.
- Get the Kindle eBook or the paperback book from Amazon.
- https://amazon.com/(id pending) or just search for the title.
- Free Kindle reader apps are available for most devices.
- Order the paperback book from your favorite bookstore.
- Checkout the paperback from your library or the checkout the eBook from your library’s OverDrive service.
- Expect publication by April 1st of 2021, possibly sooner.
Eight-Parts in Eight-Pages is a self-imposed, one part per page, artistic constraint that is implemented in an 8‑point font, on legal-size pages, within the master copy. During five years’ worth of rational-work, I employed this artistic constraint to systematically prevent textual bloat, while progressively enriching, refining, and tightly packing textual content, most particularly within Part 5, the part that drove the need for the 8‑point font.
- Throughout this book, ThePageOfReason.com is referred to as “the website.”
- The website hosts supplemental information in support of this book’s themes.
- Part 5 (The Page), in its original one-page format, can be viewed at the website.
Preface Endnotes
Endnotes: Endnotes are incorporated as final sections within most parts, and I recommend that due attention be paid to them.
The Dictionary: Webster’s is referenced in about 60% of this book’s endnotes, and definition parts have been selected that best reflect this book’s intended meanings. Each such reference is a reference to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1986.
Attribute: Webster’s, page 141. (1b) A quality intrinsic, inherent, naturally belonging to a thing or person.
Happiness: Webster’s, page 1031. (2a1) A state of well-being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion ranging in value from mere contentment to intense joy in living, and by a natural desire for its continuation.
Incisive: Webster’s, page 1142. (2) Marked by sharpness and penetration, especially in keen clear unmistakable resolution of matter at issue or in pointed decisive effectiveness of presentation. clear-cut, crisp.
Knowledge: Webster’s, page 1252. (2a1) The fact or condition of knowing something with a considerable degree of familiarity gained through experience of or contact or association with the individual or thing so known. (2d) The fact or condition of possessing within mental grasp through instruction, study, research, or experience one or more truths, facts, principles, or other objects of perception.
Objectivism: “Objectivism” is the name of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. All works of others, mine included, that profess knowledge of her philosophy are commentaries, interpretations, opinions, etc. Furthermore, the words “Objectivism, Objectivist, etc.” should only be employed in reference to Ayn Rand’s philosophy as a philosophy, certainly never as names for other sorts or types of ideas or entities.
Primeval: Webster’s, page 1801. Of or relating to the earliest ages of the world or human history.
Primeval Languages: Most estimates for the emergence of primeval “word” languages fall within the range of 50 to 150 thousand years ago. And we can reasonably infer that primeval “sign” languages (facial expressions, gestures, etc.) existed before and concurrent with primeval “word” languages.
Principal: Webster’s, page 1802. (2) A matter or thing of primary importance. A main or most important element.
Principle: Webster’s, page 1803. (1a) A general or fundamental truth. A comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption on which others are based or from which others are derived. (1b1) A governing law of conduct. An opinion, attitude, or belief that exercises a directing influence on the life and behavior. A rule or code of usually good conduct by which one directs one’s life or actions.
Reason: Webster’s, page 1891. (2a1) The power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking, especially in orderly, sensible, rational ways. The ability to trace out the implications of a combination of facts or suppositions. (2a2) The proper exercise of the intellective faculty in accordance with right judgment, right use of the mind, right thinking.
Talent: Webster’s, page 141. (3) The abilities, powers, and gifts bestowed upon a man. Natural endowments. (4a) A special innate or developed aptitude for an expressed or implied activity usually of a creative or artistic nature. (4b) General intelligence or mental power. ability.
Vast Destitution, Destruction, and Death: Besides populations of millions, and all else in between, an individual human life is vast, for the individual who lives it.
Virtue: Webster’s, page 2556. (1a1) Wisdom based on a knowledge of the good that makes one act in accordance with the good. (1a2) A habit involving the choice of excellence in conduct with the excellence being realized in a mean between excess and defect.
Part 1: The Preliminary Introduction
Some ages, brow did sweat.
Some pages, brow did whet.
From dust came pages, brow, and sweat,
And to dust they shall pay their debt,
But not, just, yet.
Section 1: The Principal Themes
- Reason constitutes the essential tool for the survival, prosperity, and happiness of each human individual.
- Objectivism constitutes the philosophy of reality integrated reason.
- Each able individual, on Earth, would most certainly benefit from an understanding of Objectivism.
- Objectivism’s fundamental principles have been incisively defined on a single page of about 2000 words (Part 5: The Page).
Section 2: Reality Integrated Objectivist Principles
The easily understood rational principles that are necessary for incisive pursuits of survival, prosperity, and happiness:
Rational Reality and Knowledge
Rational Ethics, Virtues, and Rights
Rational Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and Government
Rational Artistic Purpose
Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain. Anyone can say that he dispenses with a view of reality, knowledge, the good, but no one can implement this credo. The reason is that man, by his nature as a conceptual being, cannot function at all without some form of philosophy to serve as his guide.
Peikoff, Leonard. Chapter 1, “Reality.” Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian, 1993, page 1, paragraph 1.
Section 3: Reason, Integration, and Pursuits of Happiness
Throughout the ages, to achieve beneficial outcomes, humans have rearranged bits and pieces of cause-and-effect natural reality. However, not being nature’s creators, to achieve those cause-and-effect rearrangements, it has always been necessary for us to first grasp nature’s non-contradictory truths. And, just as reason ever has been our tool for grasping those truths, it will ever be just so.
Nature is only to be commanded by obeying her.
Bacon, Sir Francis. First Book. Novum Organum. 1620, aphorism 129.
Reason (logical reason) is a set of voluntary skills that can only become progressively mastered by punctuated rational-work within individual human minds. And to integrate is to assemble valuable parts into a non-contradictory purposeful whole. The purpose of reason is to integrate observations of reality into non-contradictory knowledge; from non-contradictory knowledge, to integrate non-contradictory values and judgments; and from those, to integrate non-contradictory actions.
Close evaluations of knowledge, values, judgments, and actions will disclose that, to the degrees well-integrated, they are ultimately employed within pursuits of happiness. Moreover, it is from these inescapable facts of everyday life that the fabric of each individual’s life becomes composed.
Section 4: Irrationality, Consequences, and Corrections
Natural reality = objective reality + subjective reality. Within objective reality, contradictions do not exist. However, within subjective reality, irrational ideas, which always entail contradictions, do exist. And ideas do cause consequences. At minimum, they simply consume precious time. However, at worst, on countless occasions throughout the ages, willfully chosen and enacted to their final social conclusions, irrational ideas have caused vast destitution, destruction, and death.
Excepting simple accidents and innocent knowledge deficits, such ideas are the root causes of all human generated tragedies. And ultimately, such ideas can only become corrected by rational-work, non-contradictory integrations of percepts and concepts by logical reason, not by suffering further irrational ideas.
I present The Page of Reason, as a potent tool, as a powerful catalyst, to substantially correct irrational ideas: to thereby diminish human generated tragedies.
Choices are required. Time and work are also required. However, this is not particularly difficult work, and it is virtually guaranteed to become extraordinarily rewarding and pleasurable work. Our choices. Our time. Our work. Our rewards. Our pleasures. Reason is noble. Welcome! And I am pleased to meet you here.
Section 5: Understanding The Page of Reason
The Initial Purpose: My work to compose The Page of Reason began with a purposeful desire to rationally integrate, within my own mind, a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience. Towards that purpose, I began within an earlier attempt to formulate the best of my ideas onto a one-page written text. Then, throughout my later long writing project, I worked consistently to enrich and refine that text into an expanded work of internal consistency. However, . . .
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self-Reliance. 1841, paragraph 14.
- Clearly, Ralph Waldo would judge my mind to be: a foolish little hobgoblin mind.
From the very first page of my writing, I employed a self-imposed one-page constraint. I sensed a purposeful need to tailor a big memory full of big ideas into a fashionable hat of a consistent texture and style that would comfortably fit my own foolish little hobgoblin mind.
Furthermore, also from the very first page, I employed the principle that I should compose in a consistent texture and style that would consistently communicate my ideas to you. If I could consistently communicate my ideas to you, then I would consistently understand them within my own foolish little hobgoblin mind.
Oh Ralph, Ralph, Ralph Waldo! Take a hike! Slump along now and hump your foolish, inconsistent, misfit ideas into some stinky slug-plumped swamp—somewhere, light-years away. Dump ‘em there. Then, sprint back to us: unburdened and refreshed.
The Long Project: I began composing The Page of Reason on October 15th of 2015 as a novice author who possessed reasonably well-developed verbal language skills. However, I did not possess any significant writing experience, and I most definitely did not possess the writing skills that were necessary to produce this book. Therefore, I had to acquire, hone, and polish much of that, and that work, well-increased by countless bits of rational-work on all other aspects of this project, consumed considerable doses of time and effort.
Judging it complete, I first published The Page of Reason on April 1st of 2016 (on the website). However, I was then unable to restrain myself from authoring further enrichments and refinements. On July 4th, I called a final halt. Then, on August 15th, following numerous re-reads, I embarked once more! Then, all over, again, again, and again! (Finalized: January 19th of 2021.)
- By rational-work, I chew, chew, chewed a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience. By that, I produced this book. Never give-up!
The Parts: I began composing The Page of Reason with initial work on Parts 4 and 5. And, throughout my long writing project, I worked assiduously to make those two parts easy to read, easy to understand, and incisively accurate. However, my self-imposed one-page constraints excluded further, important and valuable, information and context. Therefore, once I had resolved to share Parts 4 and 5 with you, I then concurrently composed the additional parts and supplements.
Part 5 constitutes an exceptionally independent sub-essay. However, to establish important context, the whole book should first be read in sequential order. Once that context has been established, then Part 5’s value becomes greatly enriched, and all other parts and supplements become substantially independent sub-essays.
The Razor: Part 5, Orrin’s Razor, concludes my attempt to formulate a one-page incisive definition of Objectivism. I am confident that individuals who possess significant preknowledge of Objectivism will find Part 5’s definition to be extraordinarily accurate and valuable. However, concerning such conclusions, each Student of Objectivism must formulate their own judgments.
The Cultivators: Here are four facts that each able individual should know:
- Objectivism constitutes the presently unsurpassed cultivator of fundamental rational principles.
- The Page of Reason, coupled with The Great Persuasion, constitutes the presently unsurpassed cultivator of Objectivism (my intention).
- By choice, one can cultivate one’s own conceptual mind: to thereby cultivate one’s own pursuits of happiness.
- Prodigiously few adults are ever thoroughly unable.
The Emotions: Though I am most definitely not an emotionalist, each time that I have read through this book, I have experienced important emotional responses. I can therefore testify that one’s rational efforts to grasp the truths of reality, knowledge, the good are not cold, dry, and remote.
Well-integrated knowledge consistently causes appropriate, noble, well-informed, and well-nuanced emotions. Value judgments constitute consequential subsets of our knowledge. And vigorously, subconsciously, at lightning fast speeds, our minds match our variously directed, variously focused, limited observations with our preformed value judgments, and thereby cause our emotions.
- Rational knowledge enriches and refines value judgments, and thereby enriches and refines emotions.
Should you choose to read the whole book, then know that I will be engaging in a no holds barred effort to communicate to you: Objectivism’s fundamental principles—with all of the rational knowledge and emotional power that my foolish little hobgoblin mind can possibly muster.
The Final Purpose: Too often, our lives become swamped, by treacherous assaults, of multifarious kinds, from copious-cadres of death-worshiping, death-dealing, anything-goes misfits.
Distinctly counter-assaulting such evils: Objectivism incisively identifies, defines, and explains the only known full-set of fundamental rational principles that are necessary to establish rational order within each of our cultures and civilizations: for the life-enriching rational-self-interest of each human individual.
Therefore, due to Objectivism’s unrivaled importance, amongst all possible earthly ideas, it would be good if The Page of Reason were to become available to each able individual, on Earth. Then, for each one, to read, or not to read: that would be a choice. To ascend to the mountain top, or not: that would also be a choice.
- Would it be good to become well-informed about rationality, our fundamental talent, the talent by which we live or die every day: bit by tiny bit?
Part 1 Endnotes
Ethics: Webster’s, page 780. (1) The discipline of dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation.
Evil: Webster’s, page 789. (2a) Something that is injurious to moral or physical happiness or welfare. • Orrin: With wisdom, evil intellectual ideas are to be justly counter-assaulted by good intellectual ideas, evil physical forces by good physical forces.
Integrate: Webster’s, page 1174. (2) To form into a more complete, harmonious, or coordinated entity often by the addition or arrangement of parts or elements.
Objective: Webster’s, page 1555. (1b3) Belonging to nature or the sensible world. Publicly or intersubjectively observable or verifiable. Independent of what is personal or private in our apprehensions and feelings. Of such nature that rational minds agree in holding it real or true or valid.
Reality: Webster’s, page 1890. (2c1) What actually exists. What has objective existence. What is not a mere idea. What is not imaginary, fictitious, or pretended.
Right: Webster’s, page 1955. (1) Something morally just or consonant with the light of nature. (2) Something to which one has a just claim. (2b) A power, privilege, or condition of existence to which one has a natural claim of enjoyment or possession.
Subjective: Webster’s, page 2275. (2c) Of, relating to, or being whatever in experience or knowledge is conditioned by merely personal characteristics of mind or by particular states of mind as opposed to what is determined only by the universal conditions of human experience and knowledge.
Virtually: Webster’s, page 2556. (2) Almost entirely. For all practical purposes.
Part 2: The Topical Outline
Nothing Can Be Rationally Known to Exist That Is
More Magnificent, More Important, or More Glorious
Than One’s Own Conceptual Mind.
- This part’s leader, Part 5 outline, and footer are particularly significant.
- Otherwise, this part is an elaborated table of contents, a good structural overview, of the whole book.
- Preface and Preface Endnotes
- Part 1: The Preliminary Introduction
- Section 1: The Principal Themes
- Section 2: Reality Integrated Objectivist Principles
- Section 3: Reason, Integration, and Pursuits of Happiness
- Section 4: Irrationality, Consequences, and Corrections
- Section 5: Understanding The Page of Reason
- Part 1 Endnotes
- Part 3: The Beginnings: About Orrin Smith and The Page of Reason
- Section 1: Early Work History: Respect for End-to-End Evil-Force-Free Trade
- Section 2: Early Education History: Moderate Achievements: Dribs and Drabs
- Section 3: Intellectual Bedrock: Just Another Guy (With an Everyday Light!)
- Section 4: Middle Professional History: Adept, Productive, and Respected
- Section 5: April Fools’ Day of 2008: The Secret Plan: Blend Tasty Lemonade
- Section 6: The Accomplishments: Yes! Yes! and a Vibrant Sprint-In-Progress!
- Section 7: Refreshment Time! A Superbly Blended Batch of Tasty Lemonade!
- Part 3 Endnotes
- Part 4: The Critical Introduction: A Discovery of Objectivism
- Section 1: Objectivism and The Page
- Section 2: Mastering Any Subject
- Section 3: Mastering the Subject of Rational Philosophy
- Section 4: The Sweat of His Brow: Orrin’s Great Big Rational Chew
- Section 5: Comments on Key Objectivist Literature
- Section 6: Table of Key Objectivist Literature (with brief comments)
- Part 4 Endnotes
- Part 5: Orrin’s Big Razor: His One Page Definition of Objectivism
- Section 1: The Requirement: A Vigorous Philosophy for a Vibrant Life
- The Root: Reality: “What defines conceptual knowledge?” Plus: Knowledge: “What defines conceptual knowledge?” (An inextricably intertwined pair.)
- The Trunk: Ethics: “What defines good individual judgment?”
- The Branches: Politics: “What defines good social judgment?” And: Esthetics: “What is beautiful, worthy of admiration, worthy of emulation?”
- Section 1: The Requirement: A Vigorous Philosophy for a Vibrant Life
-
- Section 2: Reality: “What Defines Conceptual Reality?”
- Note: Within zero to absolute degrees of certainty, our conceptual minds possess only reality perspectives. And, to the degree that a concept is rationally valid, is rationally certain, it is a fact. Ideas, propositions, definitions, etc. are interminglings of concepts, each of which must possess validity.
- Objectivism’s Three Axiomatic Concepts: The immediately observable, mutually integrated, and rationally irrefutable human reality perspectives.
- Existence: The human universal, spherical, reality perspective.
- Identity 1: The human differentiating reality perspective.
- Identity 2: The human cause-and-effect reality perspective.
- Consciousness: The human identification reality perspective. And: Objectivism’s Primacy of Existence Corollary.
- Section 2: Reality: “What Defines Conceptual Reality?”
-
- Section 3: Knowledge: “What Defines Conceptual knowledge?”
- 1. Percepts: The original raw data: for all higher-animals.
- 2. Concepts: Possible knowledge: for human higher-animals, only.
- 3. Percept Range: From an individual human mind’s all-inclusive isolation to its potential turbo-charging from civilizations’ rich intellectual legacies.
- 4. Concept Power: For life, rational-work shuffles symbolically named memory files to pack, unpack, and repack evolving concept definitions, thereby provisioning individual humans with life-enriching benefits.
- 5. Genesis: From start to finish, we formulate our knowledge by intermittent and naturally limited rearrangements of observations and concepts.
- 6. Validity: The roots of valid concepts reside exclusively within non-contradictory cause-and-effect objective reality.
- 7. Just Knowing: By spewing turbulent clouds of smoke and fog, memory factories subtly fuel alleged forms of “just knowing.”
- 8. Language: Rational-work is performed exclusively in introspective language.
- 9. Emotions 1: Their three important functions: attachment, reporting, and motivation.
- 10. Emotions 2: Their one fundamental cause: observations matched with preformed value judgments.
- Section 3: Knowledge: “What Defines Conceptual knowledge?”
-
- Section 4: Ethics: “What Defines Good Individual Judgment?”
- 1. Irrationality: Irrationality is the principal root cause of human generated tragedies.
- 2. Judgment Tree: Root: the goodness of individual human life. Trunk: virtues. Branches and Leaves: subordinated values, laws, rules, and options.
- 3. Virtues: The trunk of important, life-enriching, and root integrated principal values for good judgment guidance.
- Section 4: Ethics: “What Defines Good Individual Judgment?”
-
- Section 5: Politics: “What Defines Good Social Judgment?”
- 1. Rights: Rights bridge ethics and actions within social contexts. Each individual possesses a natural right to perform evil-force-free acts.
- 2. Evil-Force: Any human generated force that is aimed towards abrogating any valid, non-self-abrogated, individual human right is prohibited.
- 3. Government: Its only source, purpose, and obligation: individual rights. Its only methods: civil adjudication and retaliatory force justice.
- Section 5: Politics: “What Defines Good Social Judgment?”
-
- Section 6: Esthetics: “What Is Beautiful, Worthy of Admiration, Worthy of Emulation?”
- Artistic Purpose: Weaving affirmations, inspirations, and motivations for boundless evil-force-free pursuits of survival, prosperity, and happiness.
- Section 6: Esthetics: “What Is Beautiful, Worthy of Admiration, Worthy of Emulation?”
-
- Section 7: The Delivery: A Vigorous Philosophy for a Vibrant Life
- Reality Integrated Logical Reason: The only possible razor for validly cultivating knowledge, values, judgments, and actions.
- Reality Integrated Objectivist Principles: The easily understood rational principles for survival, prosperity, and happiness.
- Objectivism: The only known indestructible map to rational human life.
- Section 7: The Delivery: A Vigorous Philosophy for a Vibrant Life
-
- Part 5 Endnotes
- Part 6: The Critical Analysis: Objectivism in Context
- Section 1: Objectivism in Knowledge Context: About Concept Definitions
- Section 2: Objectivism in Historic Context: Our Fundamental Axiomatic Race
- Section 3: Objectivism in Learning Context: Incisively Cognizing Objectivism
- Part 6 Endnotes
- Part 7: Rational Knowledge Resources
- Section 1: Time and Choice
- Section 2: Objectivism: Key Objectivist Literature
- Section 3: Objectivism: Ayn Rand: The Philosopher
- Section 4: Objectivism: Leonard Peikoff: Ayn Rand’s Chosen Heir
- Section 5: Objectivism: The Objective Standard
- Section 6: Objectivism: The Page of Reason
- Section 7: The Great Courses: The Deep Well-Chewed News
- Section 8: The Great Courses: A Vibrant Foundational Enrichment
- Section 9: The Great Courses: A Broad Knowledge Context
- Section 10: The Great Courses: A Vast Conceptual Hierarchy of History One
- Section 11: The Great Courses: A Vast Conceptual Hierarchy of History Two
- Section 12: Objectivism: A Brief Nomination of Additional Virtues
- Part 7 Endnotes
- Part 8: John Galt, God, Jesus, Candide, and The Huckleberrys!
- Section 1: The Irrational Nightmare: Ghosts and Zombies Galore!
- Section 2: Interregnum: Betwixt the Nightmare and the Dream
- Section 3: The Rational Dream: Your Very Own Noble Prize
- Section 4: And Thank You for Reasoning
- Part 8 Endnotes
- The Great Persuasion
- Opening Remarks:
- Section 1: Your Invitation to the Great Persuasion
- Section 2: Apocalyptic Conclusions
- Section 3: Context Keeping and Rational Definitions
- Section 4: Capitalism and Politics
- Squawking with Great Parrots:
- Section 5: A Jeremiad for Justice (squawks included)
- Section 6: The Great Parrot High-Brow Squawks
- Section 7: Our Middle-Brow Goldsmith Counter-Squawks
- Section 8: Saturday Night Knockdown! Able Reason vs. Caint Thinks!
- Cause-and-Effect:
- Section 9: Big Cosmos and Free Will
- Section 10: Pure Gold from Gray Ores
- Section 11: Choices and Principles
- Section 12: Defining Institutions
- Section 13: Rational Persuasion
- Propagation Work:
- Section 14: Middle-Brow Goldsmiths
- Section 15: Our USA Project
- Section 16: Our USA Sub-Projects
- Section 17: Rational-Self-Interest Service Fees
- Closing Remarks:
- Section 18: Our Progressive Conquests of Evil
- Section 19: Glimmering Pearls and Gems
- Section 20: Smoke and Fog
- Section 21: I Rest My Case
- Opening Remarks:
- Afterword
- Section 1: Ayn Rand: The Philosopher
- Section 2: Leonard Peikoff: Ayn Rand’s Chosen Heir
- Section 3: The Page of Reason: Three Notable Causes
- Section 4: Further Remarks
- Final Endnotes
- Section 1: A Few Key Hodgepodgisms
- Section 2: Two Key Non-Hodgepodgisms
- Section 3: Further Final Endnotes
- WebLinks
- Bibliography