Ayn Rand’s historic speech, “The Objectivist Ethics,” is a marvel of compression. This pair of courses brings to light the 7/8 that, iceberg-like, lie under the surface.

Course 1 covered the base and proof of the Objectivist ethical system, including Rand’s answer to Hume’s infamous “is”-“ought” problem and the step-by-step progression of her proof that man’s life is the standard of morality.

Course 2 covers the rest of the speech, covering the normative content of Rand’s ethics: the full meaning of rational selfishness, the 3 cardinal values, the 7 virtues, and why the political expression of the Objectivist ethics is laissez-faire capitalism.

Course 1 Recordings: 14 classes $750 (each class is 30 minutes, plus Q&A session for 15 to 30 minutes)

Course 2 Live (10/20-11/14/2025): 12 classes  $600 (each class is 30 minutes, plus Q&A session for 15 to 30 minutes)

$1150 for both courses, 26 classes, total. (Course 1 is available as video recordings.)

Why this particular essay?

“The Objectivist Ethics” is an extraordinary achievement, even for Ayn Rand. In roughly 20 pages, she not only:

• puts forward “a new concept of egoism”
• shows that egoism is the base of individual rights
• connects rights to laissez-faire capitalism
• proves her moral code—something logically impossible according to Hume and everyone since

but also:

• illustrates the “method of reduction”
• introduces the concept of “mental focus”
• ties focus to free will
• ties volitional focus to man’s survival

Along the way, she adds, almost as a bonus, definitions of “sensation,” “perception,” and “concept.”

The essay breaks neatly in half: paragraphs 1 through 60 cover “meta-ethics,” that is, the nature of morality as such and the proof of her moral code. The second half of the essay explains the content of that egoist code.

The first half took Ayn Rand only 30 minutes to deliver (at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1961); it took me 14 classes (7 hours) to help attendees fully grasp and appreciate its unprecedented integrations.

Course 1 also had two sub-goals 1. to identify the essay’s “mechanics”—Rand’s startlingly original methodology; 2. to demonstrate how to confront the text—how to mine the subsurface gold that Rand’s writing always contains.

Both courses use a novel format: short classes with more frequent meetings, to maintain the momentum. We meet three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at 5 pm, for half-hour classes. After each class is a Q & A of at least 15 minutes. Only written questions submitted in advance are answered—to have the best, essentialized, on-topic questions.

The class is presented on Zoom. You can attend live or watch/listen to recordings on your schedule. Video recordings are available  online, and audio-only recordings are available in an easy-to-access podcast form.