(This is for Objectivists. Please feel free to forward this, and I appreciate any feedback that you care to provide.)
Ayn Rand saw the need for new intellectuals. She wanted to reach intelligent, ambitious, young (and older) minds with her inspirational, rational philosophy—a philosophy for living fully, successfully, and happily. Her long essay “For The New Intellectual” sets forth her views and purposes. She sought to inspire and enlist intellectual champions who would advance reason and rationality vs. mysticism and skepticism, individualism and egoism vs. altruism and collectivism, and capitalism and liberty vs. statism and tyranny.
I want to help advance her noble purposes.
To do so, I am funding and supporting a New Frontiers of Objectivism program around the world through my Prometheus Foundation.
New Frontiers of Objectivism
The New Frontiers of Objectivism (New Frontiers) is reaching ambitious, active-minded young people in 16 different countries who, so far, have engaged in 76 reading groups/seminars, with more than 3,000 attendees.
The Objectivist reading groups, seminars, and online webinars cover such topics as:
- Ayn Rand and the power of philosophy
- Politics—capitalism over conservatism
- Ethics—egoism over altruism
- Esthetics—romanticism over naturalism
- Epistemology—reason over mysticism
- Metaphysics—nature over supernature
The reading material accompanying the seminars, webinars, and reading groups include (but are not limited to) Ayn Rand essays and excerpts from Leonard Peikoff’s work:
- “The Good” and “Rationality as the Primary Virtue” from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
- “The Objectivist Ethics” from The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism by Ayn Rand.
- “This is John Galt Speaking” from For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand.
For more detailed information about the participants involved, see Objectivism: Reaching New Frontiers.
Objectivism, What is Needed
I think our mission for Objectivism should be worldwide engagement with intelligent, ambitious men and women. I think we should establish thousands of reading groups and educational programs all over the world, reaching tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then millions of active participants.
I think we need to “think big” and be quick about it.
That’s what I think. I’m wondering what you think.
Carl B. Barney
December 10, 2022