David Kelley
Encyclopedia
David Kelley is an American
philosopher, author
, and advocate of Objectivism. He is founder and senior fellow of The Atlas Society
. He lives in Washington, D.C.
.
and MA
in philosophy from Brown University
, where he studied with the American rationalist, Roderick Chisholm
. He received his Ph.D.
in 1975 from Princeton University
, where his advisor was the American
postmodernist Richard Rorty
. He was an assistant professor of philosophy and cognitive science
for 7 years at Vassar College
. He then taught logic for a brief time at Brandeis University
, while working as a freelance writer for Barron's Magazine
and other publications.
A member of her circle, David Kelley read Ayn Rand
's favorite poem, "If—
", by Rudyard Kipling
, at her funeral in 1982.
(ARI) declared Objectivism to be a "closed system" containing only the philosophic principles advocated by Rand herself.
In 1989, Kelley set out in a pamphlet his critique of the ARI Objectivist movement. The pamphlet was titled "Truth and Toleration" (later republished in an expanded edition as the book The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand). Kelley declared Objectivism to be an "open system" amenable to revision and addition. He held that cognitive error can result from many factors and need not involve moral culpability (something with which both Rand and Peikoff also agreed). This "critique" subsequently split the movement into two factions. Kelley founding the Institute for Objectivist Studies (now The Atlas Society), a non-profit dedicated to cultural advocacy on behalf of "reason, individualism, achievement, and capitalism."
In 1990 he founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS). IOS was established to provide an Objectivist alternative to the Ayn Rand Institute
, founded by Leonard Peikoff
. IOS sponsored scholarly work on Objectivism
and conducted summer workshops attended by academics and graduate students. In 1999 IOS was renamed The Objectivist Center (TOC), as the organization took on a more public-outreach and advocacy orientation.
(TAS). TAS also moved its headquarters from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Washington, D.C. The organization continues to sponsor scholarly work, publishes a website and a political-cultural magazine, and puts on conferences and seminars where scholars and fans of Rand's work meet and mingle. Kelley reassumed the position of executive director for TAS in 2008.
Kelley's books cover a variety of subjects within philosophy. They include The Evidence of the Senses, which argues for a unique form of direct realism about perception; Unrugged Individualism, which explores benevolence as a virtue; A Life of One's Own, a moral critique of the welfare state; and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, focusing on the schisms within the Objectivist movement. With Roger Donway, he co-authored Laissez Parler: Freedom in the Electronic Media, a critique of government regulation of broadcasting.
Kelley has published little scholarly work in philosophy since 1998, but has given public addresses, taught courses, and has written articles on politics
and current events. An ongoing research and writing project over the past decade has been his magnum opus, The Logical Structure of Objectivism, which he is co-authoring with economist William Thomas. His most recent scholarly article is "Rand Versus Hayek on Abstraction," in the Fall 2011 issue of Reason Papers--a "descriptive and explanatory" account of the similarities and differences between Rand's and Friedrich Hayek's views on cognition and mind.
Currently, Kelley is also actively involved as a script consultant for Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the film version of Atlas Shrugged, which was released by independent film group The Strike Productions.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
philosopher, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and advocate of Objectivism. He is founder and senior fellow of The Atlas Society
The Atlas Society
The Atlas Society — of which The Objectivist Center is a part — is a research and advocacy organization promoting "a culture that affirms the core Objectivist values of reason, individualism, freedom, and achievement." It is part of the Objectivist movement that split off from the Ayn Rand...
. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
.
Education and career
Kelley is trained as a philosopher. He received his BABachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
and MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in philosophy from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, where he studied with the American rationalist, Roderick Chisholm
Roderick Chisholm
Roderick M. Chisholm was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, and the philosophy of perception. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University under Clarence Irving Lewis and Donald C. Williams, and taught at Brown University...
. He received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in 1975 from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where his advisor was the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
postmodernist Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
. He was an assistant professor of philosophy and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
for 7 years at Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
. He then taught logic for a brief time at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, while working as a freelance writer for Barron's Magazine
Barron's Magazine
Barron's is an American weekly newspaper covering U.S. financial information, market developments, and relevant statistics. Each issue provides a wrap-up of the previous week's market activity, news reports, and an informative outlook on the week to come....
and other publications.
A member of her circle, David Kelley read Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
's favorite poem, "If—
If—
"If—" is a poem written in 1895 by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kipling's 1910 collection of short stories and poems...
", by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, at her funeral in 1982.
Objectivism's 'open' faction
Leonard Peikoff's Ayn Rand InstituteAyn Rand Institute
The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism is a 501 nonprofit think tank in Irvine, California that promotes Ayn Rand's philosophy, called Objectivism. It was established in 1985, three years after Rand's death, by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's legal heir...
(ARI) declared Objectivism to be a "closed system" containing only the philosophic principles advocated by Rand herself.
In 1989, Kelley set out in a pamphlet his critique of the ARI Objectivist movement. The pamphlet was titled "Truth and Toleration" (later republished in an expanded edition as the book The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand). Kelley declared Objectivism to be an "open system" amenable to revision and addition. He held that cognitive error can result from many factors and need not involve moral culpability (something with which both Rand and Peikoff also agreed). This "critique" subsequently split the movement into two factions. Kelley founding the Institute for Objectivist Studies (now The Atlas Society), a non-profit dedicated to cultural advocacy on behalf of "reason, individualism, achievement, and capitalism."
In 1990 he founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS). IOS was established to provide an Objectivist alternative to the Ayn Rand Institute
Ayn Rand Institute
The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism is a 501 nonprofit think tank in Irvine, California that promotes Ayn Rand's philosophy, called Objectivism. It was established in 1985, three years after Rand's death, by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's legal heir...
, founded by Leonard Peikoff
Leonard Peikoff
Leonard S. Peikoff is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is an author, a leading advocate of Objectivism and the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former professor of philosophy, he was designated by the novelist Ayn Rand as heir to her estate...
. IOS sponsored scholarly work on Objectivism
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
and conducted summer workshops attended by academics and graduate students. In 1999 IOS was renamed The Objectivist Center (TOC), as the organization took on a more public-outreach and advocacy orientation.
Scholarly work
In order to pursue his scholarly interests, Kelley stepped down as executive director of TOC in 2004, and the organization – now under the leadership of former regulatory policy analyst Edward Hudgins – was again renamed as The Atlas SocietyThe Atlas Society
The Atlas Society — of which The Objectivist Center is a part — is a research and advocacy organization promoting "a culture that affirms the core Objectivist values of reason, individualism, freedom, and achievement." It is part of the Objectivist movement that split off from the Ayn Rand...
(TAS). TAS also moved its headquarters from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Washington, D.C. The organization continues to sponsor scholarly work, publishes a website and a political-cultural magazine, and puts on conferences and seminars where scholars and fans of Rand's work meet and mingle. Kelley reassumed the position of executive director for TAS in 2008.
Kelley's books cover a variety of subjects within philosophy. They include The Evidence of the Senses, which argues for a unique form of direct realism about perception; Unrugged Individualism, which explores benevolence as a virtue; A Life of One's Own, a moral critique of the welfare state; and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, focusing on the schisms within the Objectivist movement. With Roger Donway, he co-authored Laissez Parler: Freedom in the Electronic Media, a critique of government regulation of broadcasting.
Kelley has published little scholarly work in philosophy since 1998, but has given public addresses, taught courses, and has written articles on politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and current events. An ongoing research and writing project over the past decade has been his magnum opus, The Logical Structure of Objectivism, which he is co-authoring with economist William Thomas. His most recent scholarly article is "Rand Versus Hayek on Abstraction," in the Fall 2011 issue of Reason Papers--a "descriptive and explanatory" account of the similarities and differences between Rand's and Friedrich Hayek's views on cognition and mind.
Currently, Kelley is also actively involved as a script consultant for Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the film version of Atlas Shrugged, which was released by independent film group The Strike Productions.
Works
- The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception (1986) Louisiana State University Press (based on his Princeton PhD dissertation) ISBN 0-8071-1476-6
- A Theory of Abstraction (full text; ISBN 15-7724-062-6) (2001) The Objectivist Center. Originally published in Cognition and Brain Theory, 1984, v. 7 (3 & 4), pp. 329–357.
- "Rand Versus Hayek on Abstraction" (full text, in Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies, vol. 33 (Fall 2011), pp. 12-30.
- Evidence and Justification (full text; ISBN 15-7724-019-7) (1998) The Institute for Objectivist Studies. Originally published in Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies, vol. 16, 1991, pp. 165-79.
- The Art of Reasoning (1988) ISBN 0-393-97213-5. Originally published in 1998 by W. W. NortonW. W. NortonW. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university...
, it is currently in its third edition, and has been well received.http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/phil/reason3/endorsements.htm - Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence (1996, rev 2nd ed 2003) ISBN 15-7724-066-9
- A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State (1998) ISBN 1-882577-71-X
- The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism (2e full text; ISBN 07-6580-060-8 and ISBN 15-7724-010-3) (1990, exp 2e 2000)
External links
- The Atlas Society
- Publications by David Kelley at The Objectivism Store
- The David Kelley Corner at Objectivist Living
- Curriculum Vitae
- The Party of Modernity Western Liberalism vs. Post-Modernism and Pre-Modernism (November 2003)