The Logical Structure of Objectivism

A collaboration between David Kelley and William R Thomas, based on a series of lectures originally composed by Dr. Kelley, it traces out the logical connections among the various principles of Objectivism. It uses an argument diagramming technique featured in Dr. Kelley's logic text, The Art of Reasoning, to show relations within the system and to highlight the dependence, at every point in the philosophy, on factual evidence. The book is meant to provide students of Objectivism with a road-map to the system, and to provide interested intellectuals with a clear and comprehensible exposition of this distinctive philosophic perspective.

In 1999, William R Thomas offered a course based on this project at The Institute for Objectivist Studies' (now: TAS) Summer Seminar at University of Vermont in Burlington. He also discussed, along with Dr. Kelley, the methodology of the project at the first annual Advanced Seminar held there. For those lectures, the authors prepared a draft of the book, dubbed the "Beta" version, and offered it for comments to a limited number of students and scholars.

The "LSO" is currently being revised by Kelley and Thomas.

In the meantime, as a resource and to provide the background against which the revisions are being composed, Thomas and Kelley have posted their 1999 "Beta" draft (saved both as a complete file and as separate individual chapters, in Adobe PDF format). Please note that the "Beta" draft is not being offered for comments, except of the most general character.

LSO Beta "Big Diagram": an integrated diagram of the argument structure of Objectivism (companion to the LSO Beta text)

      VISIO version (complete, full-size) (Requires Microsoft Visio.)

      PDF version (formated for letter-size paper print-out; broken up into letter-size tiles.)

All material on this site is copyright The Atlas Society, and is not to be used without the permission of TAS, except as allowed by law.

You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read the "Beta". If you don't have the Reader, you can download it for free at Adobe.