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Objectivist scholars and their work

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Here's what I've read:

-all of Ayn Rand's fiction/non-fiction (excluding only "Red Pawn")

-The Ayn Rand Lexicon

-OPAR by Peikoff

-Den Uyl and Rasmussen's book on AR

-James T. Baker's "Ayn Rand"

-Best of AR's Q/A

-1-40 of Peikoff's podcasts

here's what I've heard I should read:

"The Ayn Rand Reader"/"Voice of Reason"

"The Ominous Parallels" by Peikoff

"Normative Values" by Tara Smith

"Ayn Rand" by Allan Gothelf

"The Evidence of the Senses" by Kelley

and I guess there is teh upcoming:

"DIM Hypothesis" by Peikoff

and Binswanger's work on consciousness

But what is some other seminal objectivist scholarship I should read? Suggestions welcome.

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The two that I would most strongly recommend would be David Kelley's Evidence of the Senses and (especially) Tara Smith's Viable Values. Viable Values pretty much single-handedly convinced me of the correctness of an egoistic approach to ethics.

I also gained some value from reading David Kelley and William Thomas' Beta version of The Logical Structure of Objectivism, although it diverges very significantly from Rand in both structure and content and therefore could not be termed "Objectivist."

If you're interested in self-esteem issues, Branden has written oodles of books since his break with Rand which are, by and large, in the Objectivist tradition and can still be valuable.

This goes without saying, but just read everything critically.

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Here is a thread that discusses a lot of the upcoming Objectivist work, mostly done by academics.

I have read a lot of Objectivist essays/dissertations, mostly acquired by fellow O'ists. There aren't many books out now, but Tara Smith is probably your best chance. She has two books out on Rand's ethics. I actually prefer "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist" to "Viable Values", but maybe that's the future academic snob speaking in me, as it just seems more professional.

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It really depends on your areas of interest. If you're not interested in economics, you probably shouldn't tackle Reisman's Capitalism even though it was written by an Objectivist. Some of the books you list, like Gotthelf's Ayn Rand and Hull's The Ayn Rand Reader are introductions or samplers, in which you won't find anything new if you're read substantively in the main corpus.

Rather than try to present a comprehensive list of books by Objectivist and/or Objectivish intellectuals, it would be better if you gave us some indication of what your purpose is. Are you interested in philosophy? History? Economics? Psychology? Art? The internal history of the Objectivist movement?

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I found the views on causal relations and general propositions from "How Ideas Work: Think with Conviction; Act with Confidence" by Kent Worthington enlightening, even though it does not cover the subjects of metaphysics and epistemology in as great a depth as I would have liked to have seen. It is written on the level appropriate for a layman, and so is not an in-depth technical treatise. It's available at:

http://www.howideaswork.com/

The book's 5 chapters are reviewed on Associated Content.com by G Stolyarov II. Here is the review to chapter 1:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2...ons.html?cat=38

Edited by Anintegrate
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