By Leonard Peikoff Objective Communication: Writing, Speaking and Arguing [Paperback]

by Leonard Peikoff

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Writing, Nonfiction, Communication

Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Leonard S. Peikoff (born October 15, 1933) 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. For several years, he hosted a radio talk show.

http://www.peikoff.com/bio.html

Reviews

[Dianne Durante · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard this course as a taped lecture series when I was in grad school, and practiced what Peikoff suggests on my students. That's probably why so much of it stuck! His comments are invaluable, and reading it in book form was a great refresher course. From this, I went into Ayn Rand's *Art of Nonfiction* - a perfect complement.

[M. Chéwl]

Didn’t finish; it became tedious, and ironically given the title, it was inscrutable to read in parts - particularly after the chapter on ‘Crow Epistemology’. The author’s ceaseless disparaging of Rationalism and all that lends itself to this branch of philosophy, was a turn off for me.

[Tom Nowak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite good, I think I will listen to the audio version of this in a year's time for a refresher. Leonard stresses engaging your audience and motivating them, limiting the context to the essentials, having a logical organization in your speech, and ensuring that abstract principles are properly grounded with real examples. The principles and concepts that he mentions, such as the crow epistemology, do not necessarily need to be memorized and practiced perfectly every time one needs to communicate an idea, but having an awareness of these ideas while communicating will allow one to gradually improve their communicative abilities the more they practice. Eventually, you too can be an excellent communicator of ideas!

[Mark Gowan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leonard Peikoff, the famous editor of Ayn Rand's writings, presents a collection of his lectures and examples that make use of Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Unfortunately, Objective Communications misses the mark in my point of view. The book is loaded with Peikoff's analogies concerning the Objectivist philosophy but is missing the passion that Rand is famous (or infamous depending upon your point of view) for.

While the book does offer some insight into putting Objectivism into practice, it does so in a pedantic and obtrusive way. The writing is clearly academic (coming from many of his lectures), and pushed the envelope of the patience of this reader. While the examples are helpful at times, most are extracted in painful detail that is often not needed and not helpful. While I applaud Peikoff's work with Rand's writings, I found this book to be difficult to approach even after reading Rand's Objectivism. That being said, without having read any of Rand's philosophy, this book would be non-approachable and perhaps confusing.

In a way, Objective Communication is oxymoronic to Rand's principles and views on education as a whole and unfortunately proves her point that often academia misses the very thing that it proposes to do: educate.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review of the audio lectures, which the book was apparently a product of:

A lot of communication resources are either leftist trash, or business resources... which are bad. This course provides smart people a means to arrive at effective written works. Limiting the new content, considering what the audience knows, content people self contained and a lot more. The objectivist philosophy being advanced was the point of this course, so it's obviously present. The course is still fine, even if you're not an objectivist, which I'm not.

Aside from Rand's two books, and Nabokov's On Literature, there isnt anything else I'd recommend.

[Syawal Ameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Objective Communication

Bacaan yang baik untuk pelajar di peringkat pengajian tinggi. Buku ni bukan sembang pasal verbal communication semata, tetapi termasuk juga berkomunikasi melalui penulisan. Buku ni daripada series of lectures yang dijadikan tape/CD course yang dibuat oleh penulis sekitar tahun 1980.
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Buku ni menyentuh bahagian writing, speaking dan juga arguing supaya bila kita menulis, menyampaikan, dan berbahas setiap, bait tulisan, tutur kata dan hujah tersusun rapi dan dilihat segar oleh pembaca dan audiens.
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Worth it to read.
#Letsاقرأ #syawalbookreview
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[Jeffrey Falk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a heavily-edited transcript of Peikoff's original 1980 lecture course (which he has neither approved nor examined). This helpful (if not entirely comprehensive) book identifies principles of effective writing, speaking, and arguing with Objectivism as its philosophic base and should help any careful reader (Objectivist or otherwise) become a better writer, speaker, and/or arguer. There is fascinating and perspicacious philosophic material unavailable elsewhere (at least in book form). There are a few questionable editorial decisions. [Although Ayn Rand participated in at least one of the post-class question-and-answer sessions in 1980, none of her comments are in this book (at least some of them were edited and published in "Ayn Rand Answers" in (2005). There is no previously-unpublished material from Ayn Rand in this book.]

[Pavel Urubčík · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book about how to communicate ideas. It's focus is philosophical ideas and it's using the philosophy of Objectivism as an example. However the knowledge on communication is applicable to anything that can be reasoned about.
The book goes through subject of written communication and spoken presentation as well as hot argumentation that we all get into.
It's not too easy reading but it was worth the while. I'm already making use of it.