Böcker av Leonard Peikoff

With his groundbreaking and controversial DIM hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought, and thereby on Western culture and history.In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, or separate laws into a Constitution, or single events into a story. The first method, in which data is integrated through rational means, he calls Integration. The second, which employs non-rational means, he calls Misintegration. The third is Disintegration-which is nihilism, the desire to tear things apart.In The DIM Hypothesis Peikoff demonstrates the power of these three methods in shaping the West, by using the categories to examine the culturally representative fields of literature, physics, education, and politics. His analysis illustrates how the historical trends in each field have been dominated by one of these three categories, not only today but during the whole progression of Western culture from its beginning in Ancient Greece.Extrapolating from the historical pattern he identifies, Peikoff concludes by explaining why the lights of the West are going out-and predicts the most likely future for the United States.

Based on a lecture course given by Leonard Peikoff in 1972, this book provides essential knowledge for everyone whose life pursuits are threatened by our culture's widespread irrationality. "To fight for your values in a world such as ours, you must regard yourself as a psychotherapist of an entire culture," states Dr. Peikoff in his opening lecture. "Its present state at any given time cannot be understood except as an outgrowth from its past. The errors of today are built on the errors of the last century, and they in turn on the previous, and so on back to the childhood of the Western world, which is ancient Greece." For example, he says, the phenomenon of progressive education can be explained only by reference to John Dewey: "But Dewey simply applied to education the principles of William James, and James made an obvious deduction from Hegel, and Hegel is a minor variant on Kant, and Kant was trying to answer Hume, who was the last consistent consequence of thetrend inaugurated by Descartes and Locke, who were simply reformulating, in a somewhat more secular way, the principles of Augustine, who was reformulating in a somewhat more religious way the principles of Plato, who was trying to answer the dilemma posed by Heraclitus and Parmenides, who took off from four sentences of Thales with whom we are beginning tonight."

Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is increasingly influencing the shape of the world from business and politics to achieving personal goals. Here, Leonard Peikoff—Rand's heir—explains how you can communicate philosophical ideas with conviction, logic, and, most of all, reason.Based on a series of lectures presented by Peikoff, Objective Communication shows how to apply Objectivist principles to the problem of achieving clarity both in thought and in communication.Peikoff teaches readers how to write, speak, and argue on the subject of philosophical ideas—ideas pertaining to profoundly important issues ranging from the question of the existence of God to the nature and proper limits of government power.Including enlightening discussions of a wide range of Objectivist topics—such as the primacy of consciousness, the pitfalls of rationalistic thinking, and the true meaning of the word "altruism,” as well as in-depth analysis of some of Ayn Rand's own writings—Peikoff's Objective Communication is essential reading for anyone interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy.