New Book of Leonard Peikoff’s Essays on Living a Principled Life

In June 2024 the Ayn Rand Institute Press published Why Act on Principle? by Leonard Peikoff, a collection of fourteen of his favorite essays and talks, most of them previously unanthologized and hard to find. The editors of New Ideal are pleased to republish the book’s Foreword, written by the Ayn Rand Institute’s chairman, Yaron Brook. The book is available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.

FOREWORD TO WHY ACT ON PRINCIPLE?

By Yaron Brook

The incisive essays collected in this book will enrich your knowledge of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, help you understand pivotal cultural events and trends, and, what is more, provide you with a model of what it looks like to apply Objectivist principles to the real world.

Let me highlight just a few essays that left a deep imprint on me. “Why Should One Act on Principle?” brings luminous clarity to a difficult issue that pervades our culture—and that newcomers to Objectivism typically have lots of questions about. Principles, Leonard Peikoff shows, are neither luxuries nor duties nor demands for martyrdom. On the contrary, they’re a “practical, earthly necessity” to anyone truly committed to his own self-interest. For everyone, Dr. Peikoff vividly explains, “principled action is the only successful kind of action.”

“Fact and Value” goes to the core of what’s unique to Objectivism. Rand’s philosophy holds “that value is objective,” not revealed nor whim-driven; “value is based on and derives from the facts of reality.” This essay—addressing moral judgment, integrity, and compromise—was especially helpful when I was executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, whose mission is to advance the philosophy of Objectivism.

“An Exercise in Philosophical Detection” offers a glimpse of Dr. Peikoff’s extraordinary ability to identify and surface unadmitted philosophic premises. It’s a bracing illustration of how to uncover the essential meaning of otherwise inexplicable or seemingly innocuous statements—and evaluate them properly.

The title “Some Notes About Tomorrow” belies this essay’s penetrating analysis of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Taking seriously the fundamental role of philosophy in human life, Dr. Peikoff argued in 1992 that (contrary to widespread predictions) freedom and capitalism were unlikely to emerge in post-Soviet Russia. Instead he warned of a resurgence of authoritarianism (a warning borne out in Putin’s regime).

“End States Who Sponsor Terrorism,” written days after the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001, explained the life-and-death consequences of repudiating moral principles. Profound, trenchant, and courageous, this essay was seminal to my thinking on foreign policy: It informed the media interviews, lectures, articles, and books that we at ARI worked on in the following two decades.

Everywhere we turn in today’s world, we can see the repudiation of principles, the anti-conceptual mentality, the tribalism that Dr. Peikoff discusses in these pages. People who reject principles leave themselves helpless, because they “reject the human method of dealing with complexity.”

But we have the antidote. Ayn Rand has defined an inspiring, rational alternative, a philosophy of reason. Objectivism is a guide for living as a conceptual being, embracing the “human method of dealing with complexity,” and pursuing one’s own happiness. And in Leonard Peikoff’s lectures, courses, and books—now including this anthology—we have invaluable tools to better understand, integrate and apply Objectivism, first-handedly.