“Absolute” in this context means necessitated by the nature of existence and, therefore, un­changeable by human (or any other) agency.

LP, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 24.

“Abstraction” is . . . the power to separate mentally and make cognitive use of an aspect of reality that cannot exist separately.

LP, “Differentiation and Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective,” OPAR, 78.

The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value . . . which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

AR, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 61.

“Ambition” means the systematic pursuit of achievement and of constant improvement in respect to one’s goal.

AR, “Tax-Credits for Education,” ARL, Mar. 13, 1972, 51.

Anarchism is the idea that there should be no government.

LP, “Statism as the Politics of Unreason,” OPAR, 371.

An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.

AR, “Credibility and Polarization,” ARL, Oct. 11, 1971, 1.

Appeasement is not consideration for the feelings of others, it is consideration for and compliance with the unjust, irrational and evil feelings of others.

AR, “The Age of Envy,” ROP, 136.

An arbitrary claim is one for which there is no evidence, either perceptual or conceptual.

LP, “The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False,” OPAR, 164.

The psychological pressure method consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate . . . and may be desig­nated as “the argument from intimidation.”

AR, “The Argument from Intimidation,” VOS, 162.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality accord­ing to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.

AR, “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM, 19. LP discusses in “Art as a Concretization of Metaphysics,” OPAR, 417.

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others.

AR, GS, FNI, 155. LP discusses in “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 11.

An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge.

AR, “Axiomatic Concepts,” ITOE, 55. LP discusses in “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 7.

The “benevolent universe” premise [means] . . . reality is “benevolent” in the sense that if you do adapt to it—i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally—then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. . . . Success and happiness are the metaphysically to-be-expected.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 8, quoted in “Benevolent Universe Premise,” LEX, 51. Last sentence is taken from earlier in the passage.

[See Malevolent Universe Premise.]

The “borderline-case” problem [is the question:] where . . . does one draw the line in grouping concretes that are neither essentially the same . . . nor essentially different?

LP, “Concepts as Objective,” OPAR, 115.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 19. LP discusses in “Capitalism as the Only Moral Social System,” OPAR, 380.

The law of causality is . . . [that] the nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.

AR, GS, FNI, 151. LP discusses in “Causality as a Corollary of Identity,” OPAR, 15.

[See Final Causation.]

Censorship . . . is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas . . . an edict enforced by the government’s scrutiny of all forms of com­munication prior to their public release.

AR, “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” TON, Mar. 1962, 9.

A central purpose is the long-range goal that constitutes the primary claimant on a man’s time, energy, and resources.

LP, “Productiveness as the Adjustment of Nature to Man,” OPAR, 299.

[See also Purpose.]

A conclusion is “certain” when the evidence in its favor is conclusive; i.e., when it has been logically validated.

LP, “Certainty as Contextual,” OPAR, 179.

[See Possible, Probable.]

“Character” means a man’s nature or identity insofar as this is shaped by the moral values he accepts and automatizes.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Q&A Lecture 2, quoted in “Character,” LEX, 68.

Characterization [in literature] is the portrayal of those essential traits which form the unique, distinctive personality of an individual human being.

AR, “Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 87.

[See Physical Force.]

Collectivism is the theory that . . . the collec­tive—society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.—is the unit of reality and the standard of value.

LP, “The Cause of Nazism,” OP, 17.

[See Individualism.]

Common sense is a simple and non-self-conscious use of logic.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

AR, answering question during LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Q&A Lecture 11, quoted in “Common Sense,” LEX, 77.

“Communism [is] a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.”

The American College Dictionary, quoted in AR, “The Dying Victim of Berlin,” ARC, 38.

Economic competition is a rivalry in pro­ducing and offering values.

HB, “‘Buy American’ is Un-American,” WBNP, 147.

The “complex” is that which involves many elements or units, all tied together or inter­related.

LP, “Why Should One Act on Principle?” TIA, Feb. 27, 1989, 3.

[See Simple.]

A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. . . . It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise.

AR, “Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?” VOS, 79. LP discusses in “Integrity as Loyalty to Rational Principles,” OPAR, 262.

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular meas­urements omitted.

AR, “Concept-Formation,” ITOE, 13. LP discusses in “Concept-Formation as a Mathematical Process,” OPAR, 88.

[See also First-Level Concept, Invalid Concept.]

The “Conceptual Common Denominator” [is] . . . “the characteristic(s) reducible to a unit of measurement, by means of which man differentiates two or more existents from other existents possessing it.”

AR, “Concept-Formation,” ITOE, 15. LP discusses in “Concept-Formation as a Mathematical Process,” OPAR, 87.

Concretization is an epistemological process, in which, to clarify some theory, you provide a concrete example.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume” lecture series (1972), Q&A Lecture 11.

Conjunctions . . . are concepts denoting relation­ships among thoughts (“and,” “but,” “or,” etc.).

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 37.

Consciousness [is] the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

AR, GS, FNI, 124. LP discusses in “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 6.

[1] The context is the entire field of a mind’s awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 43. LP discusses in “Definition as the Final Step in Concept-Formation,” OPAR, 97.

[2] “Context” means “the sum of cognitive elements conditioning an item of knowledge.”

LP, “Knowledge as Contextual,” OPAR, 123.

[See Non-Contradiction, Law of.]

A “corollary” is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge.

LP, “Causality as a Corollary of Identity,” OPAR, 15.

Moral cowardice is fear of upholding the good because it is good, and fear of opposing the evil because it is evil.

AR, “Altruism as Appeasement,” VOR, 37.

“Creation” means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before.

AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 25. LP discusses in “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 25.

A crime is a violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud).

AR, “‘Political’ Crimes,” ROP, 176.

The “crow epistemology” [refers to] the fact that any consciousness—animal or human—can deal mentally with only so many units [in one frame of awareness].

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation. The fact was discovered first in an experiment with crows.]

AR, “The Role of Words,” ITOE, 172. The bracketed text “in one frame of awareness” is in the published version.

[See Unit-Economy.]

A nation’s culture is the sum of the intellec­tual achievements of individual men, which their fellow-citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life.

AR, “Don’t Let It Go,” PWNI, 205-206.

Deduction is . . . the process of applying a universal or general proposition to a par­ticular case. . . . [It] is the process of reasoning from a universal premise to a conclusion which is no wider in extent . . . than the premises.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Introduction to Logic” lecture series (1974), Lecture 4.

[See Induction.]

A definition is a statement that identifies the nature of the units subsumed under a concept.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 40.

“Democracy” means a [political] system of unlimited majority rule.

LP, “Government as an Agency to Protect Rights,” OPAR, 368.

To “deserve” . . . is to “become worthy of recompense (i.e., reward or punishment), according to the good or ill of character or conduct.”

OED, quoted in LP, “Justice as Rationality in the Evaluation of Men,” OPAR, 282-283.

Determinism is the theory that everything that happens in the universe—including every thought, feeling, and action of man—is necessitated by previous factors, so that nothing could ever have happened differently from the way it did, and everything in the future is already pre-set and inevitable.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 1, quoted in “Determinism,” LEX, 122.

[See also Indeterminism.]

A dictatorship is a country that does not recognize individual rights, whose govern­ment holds total, unlimited power over men. . . . [It] has four characteristics: one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalization of private property, and censorship.

AR, PLB, 15.

“Differentiation” is the process of grasping differences, i.e., of distinguishing one or more objects of awareness from the others.

LP, “Differentiation and Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective,” OPAR, 77.

[See Integration.]

A dogma is a set of beliefs accepted on faith: that is, without rational justification or against rational evidence.

AR, PLB, 9.

“Duty” [means] the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.

[This is an invalid concept.]

AR, “Causality Versus Duty,” PWNI, 96. LP discusses in “Values as Objective,” OPAR, 245.

[See Invalid Concept.]

“Economic growth” means the rise of an economy’s productivity, due to the discovery of new knowledge, new products, new tech­niques, which means: due to the achievements of men’s productive ability.

AR, “Progress or Sacrifice,” ARC, 9.

Economic power [as opposed to political power] . . . is the power to produce and to trade what one has produced. . . . [It] is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value.

AR, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 47-48. There is a significant deletion in the excerpt. For a similar treatment, see LP, “Capitalism as the System of Objectivity,” OPAR, 402.

[See Political Power.]

Education [is] the systematic training of the conceptual faculty of the young by means of supplying in essentials both its content and method.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Philosophy of Education” lecture series (1985), Lecture 1.

“Effort” means the expenditure of energy to achieve a purpose.

LP, “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not,” OPAR, 59.

[See Self.]

Egoism states that each man’s primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare, well-being, or self-interest. . . . He should be “selfish” in the sense of being the beneficiary of his own moral actions.

LP, “The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action,” OPAR, 230.

“Egoistic” . . . means self-sustaining by an act of choice and as a matter of principle.

LP, “The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action,” OPAR, 231.

An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck.

AR, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” VOS, 54.

Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subcon­scious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 30.

Since it is axiomatic, the referents of [entity] can be specified only ostensively, by pointing to the things given to men in sense percep­tion . . . solid things with a perceivable shape, such as a rock, a person, or a table.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

LP, “Causality as a Corollary of Identity,” OPAR, 13.

Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 36.

The “essential” characteristic(s) is the funda­mental characteristic(s) which makes the units the kind of existents they are and differentiates them from all other known existents.

LP, “Definition as the Final Step in Concept-Formation,” OPAR, 97.

Esthetics [is the branch of philosophy that] studies the nature of art and defines the standards by which an art work should be judged.

LP, Introduction to “Reality,” OPAR, 3.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that . . . provides “a code of values to guide man’s choice and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.”

LP, Introduction to “The Good,” OPAR, 206, quoting AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 13.

[See Morality.]

An evaluation is an identification of the beneficial or harmful relationship of some­thing to a value.

HB, Seminar on OPAR, Objectivist Graduate Center, Fall 1994.

Evasion . . . is “the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know.”

LP, “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not,” OPAR, 61, quoting AR, GS, FNI, 127.

“Evidence” . . . is “testimony or facts tending to prove or disprove any conclusion.”

OED, quoted in LP, “Certainty as Contextual,” OPAR, 176.

[See Standard of Value.]

Formulated and named by Aristotle, the Law of Excluded Middle states: everything is either A or non-A at a given time and in a given respect.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

Aristotle, formulated in LP, “Introduction to Logic” lecture series (1974), Lecture 1.

“Existence” here is a collective noun, denot­ing the sum of existents.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

LP, “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 4.

An “existent” [is] something that exists, be it a thing, an attribute or an action.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

AR, “Cognition and Measurement,” ITOE, 5.

Extortion . . . consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values, but by the threat of force, violence or injury.

AR, “The Nature of Government,” VOS, 130; CUI, 333.

Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward—a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 29.

[See Introspection.]

“Faith” means acceptance on the basis of feeling rather than of evidence.

LP, “Mysticism and Skepticism as Denials of Reason,” OPAR, 183.

“Package-Dealing” is the fallacy of failing to discriminate crucial differences. It consists of treating together, as parts of a single conceptual whole or “package,” elements which differ essentially in nature, truth-status, importance or value.

LP footnote in AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 24.

A fallacy I call the reification of the zero . . . consists of regarding “nothing” as a thing, as a special, different kind of existent.

AR, “Axiomatic Concepts,” ITOE, 60.

The attempt to alter the metaphysically given is . . . the fallacy of “rewriting reality.” Those who commit it regard metaphysically given facts as nonabsolute and, therefore, feel free to imagine an alternative to them. In effect, they regard the universe as being merely a first draft of reality, which anyone may decide at will to rewrite.

LP, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 26-27.

The fallacy of self-exclusion is a form of self-refutation in which what a statement asserts is contradicted by the very act of asserting the statement, e.g., “There is no truth.”

HB, Seminar on Logic, Objectivist Graduate Center, Spring 1995.

“The fallacy of the frozen abstraction” . . . consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs . . . [e.g.,] substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.”

AR, “Collectivized Ethics,” VOS, 94.

The fallacy of the “stolen concept” . . . consists in using a higher-level concept while denying or ignoring its hierarchical roots, i.e., one or more of the earlier concepts on which it logically depends.

LP, “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 136.

“True” and “false” are assessments within the field of human cognition: they designate a relationship [of] correspondence or contradic­tion between an idea and reality. . . . The false is established as false by reference to a body of evidence and within a context, and is pro­nounced false because it contradicts the evidence.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 6, quoted in “Falsehood,” LEX, 158. Brackets and ellipses appear in the published version.

Fascism is: “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism.”

The American College Dictionary, quoted in AR, “The Fascist New Frontier,” ARC, 98.

For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero worship—the desire to look up to man.

AR, “About a Woman President,” VOR, 268.

Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being) [is] the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it.

AR, “Causality Versus Duty,” PWNI, 99.

A “first-level” concept, such as “table” or “man,” is one formed directly from perceptual data.

LP, “Concepts of Consciousness as Involving Measurement-Omission,” OPAR, 91.

“Floating abstractions” [are] . . . concepts detached from existents, concepts that a person takes over from other men without knowing what specific units the concepts denote.

LP, “Definition as the Final Step in Concept-Formation,” OPAR, 96.

“Focus” is the state of a goal-directed mind committed to attaining full awareness of reality.

LP, “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not,” OPAR, 56.

[See Physical Force.]

Fraud . . . consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises.

AR, “The Nature of Government,” VOS, 130; CUI, 333.

A course of thought or action is “free,” if it is selected from two or more courses possible under the circumstances.

LP, “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not,” OPAR, 55.

[See Right of Free Speech.]

“Free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

AR, GS, FNI, 127.

[Same as “volition.” See Volition.]

Freedom, in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion.

AR, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 46.

[See Fallacy of the “Frozen Abstraction".]

“Fundamental” means that upon which everything in a given context depends.

LP, “‘Life’ as the Essential Root of ‘Value,’” OPAR, 209.

The rule of fundamentality [states that] when a given group of existents has more than one characteristic distinguishing it from other existents, man must observe the relationships among these various characteristics and discover the one on which all the others (or the greatest number of others) depend, i.e., the fundamental characteristic without which the others would not be possible. This fundamental characteristic is the essential distinguishing characteristic of the existents involved, and the proper defining characteristic of the concept.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 45.

“Goal-directed,” in this context, [designates] the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism’s life.

AR, footnote in “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 17. LP discusses in “Living Organisms as Goal-Directed and Conditional,” OPAR, 190.

[See Standard of Value.] [See also Objective Theory of the Good.]

A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.

AR, “The Nature of Government,” VOS, 125; CUI, 329. LP discusses in “Government as an Agency to Protect Rights,” OPAR, 363.

Grammar is a science dealing with the formulation of the proper methods of verbal expression and communication, i.e., the methods of organizing words (concepts) into sentences.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 37.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.

AR, GS, FNI, 123. LP discusses in “Happiness as the Normal Condition of Man,” OPAR, 336.

[See Right to the Pursuit of Happiness.]

Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.

AR, “The Age of Envy,” ROP, 131.

Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality.

AR, PLB, 8.

A hierarchy of knowledge means a body of concepts and conclusions ranked in order of logical dependence, one upon another, accord­ing to each item’s distance from the base of the structure. The base is the perceptual data with which cognition begins.

LP, “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 131.

“Honesty” is the refusal to fake reality, i.e., to pretend that facts are other than they are.

LP, “Honesty as the Rejection of Unreality,” OPAR, 267.

Caused by a profound self-doubt, self-condem­nation, and fear, hostility is a type of projection that directs toward other people the hatred which the hostile person feels toward himself.

AR, “The Psychology of Psychologizing,” VOR, 25.

Humor is the denial of metaphysical importance to that which you laugh at.

AR, answering question during LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Q&A Lecture 11, quoted in “Humor,” LEX, 207.

Idealism [as a technical term in philosophy] . . . is the view . . . from metaphysics, that reality is basically non-material; that the material world is not an irreducible primary, but actually simply a by-product or expression of something more fundamental, something which is non-material in character.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume” lecture series (1972), Lecture 2.

[See Materialism.]

The “identity” of an existent means that which it is, the sum of its attributes or characteristics.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

LP, “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 6.

The Law of Identity [states]: to be is to be something, to have a nature, to possess identity. A thing is itself; or, in the traditional formula, A is A.

LP, “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 6.

A political ideology is a set of principles aimed at establishing or maintaining a certain social system.

AR, “The Wreckage of the Consensus,” CUI, 222.

Man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.

AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 25.

Implicit knowledge is passively held material which, to be grasped, requires a special focus and process of consciousness.

AR, “Axiomatic Concepts,” ITOE, 57.

“Important” . . . means “a quality, character or standing such as to entitle to attention or consideration.”

The American College Dictionary, quoted in AR, “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” RM, 28. LP discusses in “Art as a Concretization of Metaphysics,” OPAR, 424.

Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate—not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.

AR, “Textbook of Americanism,” ARC, 92.

One’s acceptance of the responsibility of form­ing one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind . . . is the virtue of independence.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 28. LP discusses in “Independence as a Primary Orientation to Reality, Not to Other Men,” OPAR, 251.

Indeterminism . . . holds that not all human action is necessitated, because some actions allegedly have no causes at all. . . . In certain cases it is just a sheer, causeless accident which of two actions a man performs.

HB, “Volition as Cognitive Self-Regulation” booklet, 5.

[See Right.]

“Individualism” is the view that, in social issues, the individual is the unit of value; this is a moral corollary of the principle that each man is an end in himself.

LP, “Individual Rights as Absolutes,” OPAR, 361.

[See Collectivism.]

An Aristotelian definition of induction [is] the process of reasoning from the observation of concretes or individuals to a general or universal conclusion.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Introduction to Logic” lecture series (1974), Lecture 9.

[See Deduction.]

“Infinity” denotes merely a potentiality of indefinite addition or subdivision.

LP, “Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 31.

“Inflation” is defined in the dictionary as “undue expansion or increase of the currency of a country, esp. by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie.”

Random House Dictionary, quoted in AR, “Moral Inflation,” ARL, Mar. 11, 1974, 301.

“Initiation” [of physical force] means starting the use of force against an innocent indi­vidual(s), one who has not himself started its use against others.

LP, “The Initiation of Physical Force as Evil,” OPAR, 310.

An “instinct” is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge.

[This is an invalid concept.]

AR, GS, FNI, 121-122.

[See Invalid Concept.]

“Integration” is the process of uniting ele­ments into an inseparable whole.

LP, “Differentiation and Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective,” OPAR, 77.

[See Differentiation.]

“Integrity” is loyalty in action to one’s con­victions and values.

LP, “Integrity as Loyalty to Rational Principles,” OPAR, 259.

Intellectuals [are] those who disseminate ideas and whose professional work lies in the field of the humanities.

AR, “The Age of Envy,” ROP, 150.

Intelligence is the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions.

AR, “The Comprachicos,” ROP, 58.

[Certain] schools of thought regard the referents of concepts as intrinsic, i.e., as “universals” inherent in things . . . as special existents unrelated to man’s consciousness—to be per­ceived by man directly, like any other kind of concrete existents, but perceived by some non-sensory or extra-sensory means.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 53.

[See Subjective Theory of Concepts.] [See also Objective.]

The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 21.

[See Objective Theory of the Good, Subjectivist Theory of the Good.]

Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 29.

[See Extrospection.]

Invalid concepts [are] words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions or false propositions, such as concepts originat­ing in mysticism—or words without specific definitions, without referents, which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern “anti-concepts.”

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 49. LP discusses in “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 137.

“Irrationalism” is the doctrine that reason is not a valid means of knowledge or a proper guide to action.

LP, “Hitler’s War Against Reason,” OP, 47.

An irreducible primary is a fact which cannot be analyzed (i.e., broken into compo­nents) or derived from antecedent facts.

AR, “Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 13.

To judge means: to evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard.

AR, “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?” VOS, 84.

“Justice” is the virtue of judging men’s char­acter and conduct objectively and of acting accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves.

LP, “Justice as Rationality in the Evaluation of Men,” OPAR, 276.

“Knowledge” is . . . a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual obser­vation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 35. LP discusses in “Mysticism and Skepticism as Denials of Reason,” OPAR, 182.

[See also Implicit Knowledge.]

Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting concepts into the mental equiv­alent of concretes.

AR, “Concept-Formation,” ITOE, 10. LP discusses in “Differentiation and Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective,” OPAR, 79.

A “law” is a rule of social conduct enforced by the government.

HB, “What is Objective Law?” TIA, Jan. 1992, 8.

[See Causality, Law of.]

[See Excluded Middle, Law of.]

[See Identity, Law of.]

[See Non-Contradiction, Law of.]

[See Right to Liberty.]

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action.

AR, GS, FNI, 121. LP discusses in “Living Organisms as Goal-Directed and Conditional,” OPAR, 191.

[See Right to Life.]

Literature [is the branch of art which] re-creates reality by means of language.

AR, “Art and Cognition,” RM, 46.

“Lobbying” is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators.

AR, “The Pull Peddlers,” CUI, 168; VOR, 262.

Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

AR, GS, FNI, 126. LP discusses in “Objectivity as Volitional Adherence to Reality by the Method of Logic,” OPAR, 118. See elaboration in LP, “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 138.

“Long-range” means “allowing for or extend­ing into the more distant future.”

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, quoted in LP, “Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value,” OPAR, 214.

“Love” is . . . an emotion proceeding from the evaluation of an existent as a positive value and as a source of pleasure.

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 34.

A “malevolent universe” metaphysics [is] the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achieve­ment are impossible to him.

AR, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” VOS, 56.

[See Benevolent Universe Premise.]

Man is the rational animal.

AR discusses in “Definitions,” ITOE, 44.

“Man-made facts” [are] objects, institutions, practices, or rules of conduct that are of human origin.

LP, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 24.

[See Metaphysically Given.]

“Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan—in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 26. LP discusses in “Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value,” OPAR, 219.

[See Standard of Value.]

[See Socially Objective Value.]

Materialism [as a technical term in philosophy] . . . is the view that reality is basically matter in motion, and that all so-called non-material or mental phenomena are to be explained entirely in physical, material terms.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume” lecture series (1972), Lecture 2.

[See Idealism.]

Mathematics is . . . the science of measurement, i.e., of establishing quantitative relationships.

AR, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts,” ITOE, 64.

Measurement is the identification of a relation­ship—a quantitative relationship established by means of a standard that serves as a unit.

AR, “Cognition and Measurement,” ITOE, 7. LP discusses in “Concept-Formation as a Mathematical Process,” OPAR, 81.

“Mercy” means an unearned forgiveness.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Q&A Lecture 8, quoted in “Mercy,” LEX, 290.

“Metaphysical” [means] that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 14.

That aspect of metaphysics which serves as a bridge between metaphysics and ethics [is] a fundamental view of man’s nature. That view involves the answers to such questions as whether the universe is knowable or not, whether man has the power of choice or not, whether he can achieve his goals in life or not. The answers to such questions are “meta­physical value-judgments,” since they form the base of ethics.

AR, “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” RM, 28.

The “metaphysically given” . . . means any fact inherent in existence apart from human action (whether mental or physical).

LP, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 23-24.

[See Man-Made.]

Metaphysics [is] the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality.

AR, “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM, 19.

A mixed economy [is] a mixture of capital­ism and statism, of freedom and controls.

AR, “The Obliteration of Capitalism,” CUI, 185.

Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this require­ment, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, homogeneous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctuations of value, and always in demand among those you trade with.

AR, “Egalitarianism and Inflation,” PWNI, 127.

Moral perfection is an unbreached rational­ity—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the accept­ance of reason as an absolute.

AR, GS, FNI, 178-79. LP discusses in “Pride as Moral Ambitiousness,” OPAR, 304.

“Moral values” are chosen values of a fundamental nature.

LP, “Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value,” OPAR, 214.

A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

AR, GS, FNI, 122. LP discusses in “Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value,” OPAR, 214.

[See Ethics.]

An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it. . . . But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought.

AR, GS, FNI, 179.

Music [is the branch of art which re-creates reality by employing] the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man’s sense-of-life emotions.

AR, “Art and Cognition,” RM, 46.

Mysticism is the theory that man has a means of knowledge other than sense perception or reason, such as revelation, faith, intuition.

LP, “Mysticism and Skepticism as Denials of Reason,” OPAR, 182.

A “nation” . . . is a large number of individuals who live in the same geographical locality under the same political system.

AR, “Don’t Let It Go,” PWNI, 205.

Nationalism is collectivism, with the nation—and in the end this means, the ethnic group or the race—as the favored collective.

LP, “Some Notes about Tomorrow,” TIA, Jul. 1992, 4.

Naturalism [in art] rejected the concept of volition and went back to a view of man as a helpless creature determined by forces beyond his control . . . [holding] that values have no power and no place, neither in human life nor in literature, that writers must present men “as they are,” which meant: must record whatever they happen to see around them.

AR, “The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age,” RM, 124.

[See Romanticism.]

Nature is existence regarded as a system of interconnected entities governed by law; it is the universe of entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.

LP, “Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 31.

“Necessary” names existents considered as governed by the law of identity. “To be,” accordingly, is “to be necessary.”

LP, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” OPAR, 24.

“Need” in this context denotes that which is required for survival.

LP, “‘Life’ as the Essential Root of ‘Value,’” OPAR, 210.

The essence of the theory [of nominalism is]: universals are merely collective names, arbi­trarily imposed by men on roughly resembling particulars, by the standard of subjective human convenience.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume” lecture series (1972), Lecture 9.

[The Law of Non-Contradiction states:] the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.

[Same as “Law of Contradiction.”]

Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 3 (W. D. Ross translation), quoted in “Contradictions,” LEX, 107.

A novel is a long, fictional story about human beings and the events of their lives.

AR, “Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 80.

A “number” is a mental symbol that integrates units into a single larger unit (or subdivides a unit into fractions) with reference to the basic number of “one,” which is the basic mental symbol of “unit.”

AR, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts,” ITOE, 63.

To be “objective” in one’s conceptual activities is volitionally to adhere to reality by follow­ing certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropriate to man’s form of cognition.

LP, “Objectivity as Volitional Adherence to Reality by the Method of Logic,” OPAR, 117.

[See Intrinsic Theory of Concepts, Subjective Theory of Concepts.]

The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. . . . The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 22.

[See Intrinsic Theory of the Good, Subjectivist Theory of the Good.]

Objectivity . . . pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness. Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic).

AR, “Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” VOR, 18.

A venerable rule of logic [states] that the onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive, and that one must not attempt to prove a negative.

LP, “The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False,” OPAR, 167.

[Original sin] means that man is evil and guilty by nature.

[This is an invalid concept.]

AR, PLB, 5.

[See Invalid Concept.]

[See Fallacy of “Package-Dealing".]

Painting [is the branch of art which re-creates reality] by means of color on a two-dimen­sional surface.

AR, “Art and Cognition,” RM, 46.

A “perception” is a group of sensations auto­matically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 20. LP discusses in “The Perceptual Level as the Given,” OPAR, 53.

“Perfection” is: flawlessly complete satisfac­tion of a standard of value.

HB, “The Possible Dream,” TOF, Feb. 1981, 3.

[See also Moral Perfection.]

“Philosophical detection” . . . is the art of dis­covering the fundamental premises that underlie and shape men’s statements on intellectual issues.

LP, “An Exercise in Philosophical Detection,” TOF, Oct. 1981, 12.

By “philosophically objective,” I mean a value estimated from the standpoint of the best possible to man, i.e., by the criterion of the most rational mind possessing the greatest knowledge, in a given category, in a given period, and in a defined context.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 24. LP discusses in “Capitalism as the System of Objectivity,” OPAR, 397.

[See Socially Objective Value.]

Philosophy [is the science that] studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man’s relationship to existence.

AR, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 2.

Physical force is coercion exercised by physical agency, [e.g.,] by punching a man in the face, incarcerating him, shooting him, or seizing his property.

LP, “The Initiation of Physical Force as Evil,” OPAR, 310.

[See also Initiation of Physical Force.]

A plot [in literature] is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.

AR, “Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 82. LP discusses in “Romantic Literature as Illustrating the Role of Philosophy in Art,” OPAR, 429.

A “plot-theme” is the central conflict or “situation” of a story—a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events.

AR, “Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 85.

Poetry is the form of literature whose medium is the sound of concepts.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Poems I Like and Why” lecture series (1999), Lecture 1.

The nature of political power [as opposed to economic power] is: the [government’s] power to force obedience under threat of physical injury. . . . [It] is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction.

AR, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 46-48. There is a significant deletion in the excerpt. For a similar treatment, see LP, “Capitalism as the System of Objectivity,” OPAR, 402.

[See Economic Power.]

Politics [is the branch of philosophy] which defines the principles of a proper social system.

AR, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 4.

A conclusion is “possible” if there is some, but not much, evidence in favor of it, and nothing known that contradicts it.

LP, “Certainty as Contextual,” OPAR, 176.

[See Certain, Probable.]

“Pride” is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection.

LP, “Pride as Moral Ambitiousness,” OPAR, 303.

The primacy of consciousness [is] the notion that the universe has no independent exist­ence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both).

AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 24.

The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity.

AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 24.

A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.”

AR, “The Anatomy of Compromise,” CUI, 144.

A conclusion is “probable” if the burden of a substantial body of evidence, although still inconclusive, supports it.

LP, “Certainty as Contextual,” OPAR, 178.

[See Certain, Possible.]

[See Universals, Problem of.]

Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 17.

Productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form.

AR, GS, FNI, 130.

The virtue of productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 29.

“Proof” is the process of establishing truth by reducing a proposition to axioms, i.e., ultimately, to sensory evidence.

LP, “Objectivity as Volitional Adherence to Reality by the Method of Logic,” OPAR, 120.

[See Right to Property.]

Psycho-epistemology is the study of man’s cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious.

AR, “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM, 18. LP discusses in “Art as a Concretization of Metaphysics,” OPAR, 419.

Psychologizing consists in condemning or excusing specific individuals on the grounds of their psychological problems, real or invented, in the absence of or contrary to factual evidence.

AR, “The Psychology of Psychologizing,” VOR, 24.

The principle of purpose means conscious goal-directedness in every aspect of one’s existence where choice applies.

LP, “Productiveness as the Adjustment of Nature to Man,” OPAR, 298.

[See also Central Purpose.]

A purposeful action is a conscious action caused by the agent’s desire for some antici­pated consequence of his action.

HB, “The Analysis of Purposeful Action,” BBTC, 34.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.

AR, “Racism,” VOS, 147; ROP, 179.

[1] Concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.

AR, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts,” ITOE, 72.

[2] Rand’s Razor . . . states: name your primaries.

LP, “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 139.

Rational self-interest . . . means the ethics of selfishness, with man’s life as the standard of value defining “self-interest,” and rationality as the primary virtue defining the method of achieving it.

LP, “The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action,” OPAR, 234.

The virtue of rationality means the recogni­tion and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 28. LP discusses in “Rationality as the Primary Virtue,” OPAR, 221.

Rationalization is . . . a process of providing one’s emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications—in order to hide one’s motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself.

AR, “Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 18.

Reality is that which exists.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

AR, GS, FNI, 126.

Reason is the faculty that identifies and inte­grates the material provided by man’s senses.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 22. LP discusses in Introduction to “Reason,” OPAR, 152.

“Reduction” is the process of identifying in logical sequence the intermediate steps that relate a cognitive item to perceptual data.

LP, “Knowledge as Hierarchical,” OPAR, 133.

[See Fallacy of Reification of the Zero.]

A “republic” . . . is a [political] system restrict­ed to the protection of rights.

LP, “Government as an Agency to Protect Rights,” OPAR, 368.

[See Fallacy of “Rewriting Reality”.]

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.

AR, “Man’s Rights,” VOS, 110; CUI, 321. LP discusses in “Individual Rights as Absolutes,” OPAR, 351.

The right of free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by the government.

AR, “Man’s Rights,” VOS, 114; CUI, 325.

The right to liberty is . . . the right to think and choose, then to act in accordance with one’s judgment.

LP, “Individual Rights as Absolutes,” OPAR, 352.

The right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.

AR, “Man’s Rights,” VOS, 110; CUI, 322.

The right to property is . . . the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

AR, “Man’s Rights,” VOS, 110-111; CUI, 322. LP discusses in “Individual Rights as Absolutes,” OPAR, 352.

The right to the pursuit of happiness is . . . the right to live for one’s own sake and fulfillment.

LP, “Individual Rights as Absolutes,” OPAR, 352.

Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man pos­sesses the faculty of volition.

AR, “What is Romanticism?” RM, 99. LP discusses in “Romantic Literature as Illustrating the Role of Philosophy in Art,” OPAR, 428.

[See Naturalism.]

[See Fundamentality, Rule of.]

“Sacred” [means] the best, the highest possible to man.

AR, “Requiem for Man,” CUI, 303.

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue.

AR, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” VOS, 50. LP discusses in “The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action,” OPAR, 232.

The “sanction of the victim” means the moral man’s approval of his own martyrdom, his agreement to accept—in return for his achieve­ments—curses, robbery, and enslave­ment.

LP, “Virtue as Practical,” OPAR, 333.

Science is systematic knowledge gained by the use of reason based on observation.

LP, “Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 35.

Sculpture [is the branch of art which re-creates reality] by means of a three-dimensional form made of a solid material.

AR, “Art and Cognition,” RM, 46.

A man’s self is his mind—the faculty that perceives reality, forms judgments, chooses values.

AR, “Selfishness Without a Self,” PWNI, 50.

Self-esteem [is man’s] inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

AR, GS, FNI, 128.

To be self-evident means to be available to direct observation, without the need of inference.

HB, “Volition as Cognitive Self-Regulation” booklet, 20.

[See Fallacy of Self-Exclusion.]

An action is self-generated when it results from the utilization of an internal energy source integral to the agent according to a directive mechanism.

HB, “Self-Generation,” BBTC, 54.

[See Rational Self-Interest.]

The exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.

AR, Introduction, VOS, vii.

[See Egoism.]

A “sensation” is an irreducible state of aware­ness produced by the action of a stimulus on a sense organ.

LP, “The Perceptual Level as the Given,” OPAR, 52.

A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.

AR, “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” RM, 25. LP discusses in “Art as a Concretization of Metaphysics,” OPAR, 426.

Similarity, in this context, is the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree.

AR, “Concept-Formation,” ITOE, 13. LP discusses in “Concept-Formation as a Mathematical Process,” OPAR, 85.

The “simple” . . . is that which involves one, or at most a few, units.

LP, “Why Should One Act on Principle?” TIA, Feb. 27, 1989, 3.

[See Complex.]

Skepticism is the theory that knowledge of reality is impossible to man by any means.

LP, “Mysticism and Skepticism as Denials of Reason,” OPAR, 183.

A social system is a set of moral-political-economic principles embodied in a society’s laws, institutions, and government, which determine the relationships, the terms of association, among the men living in a given geographical area.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 18.

Socialism [is] a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, etc. in the commu­nity as a whole.

The American College Dictionary, quoted in AR, “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” CUI, 202.

Socially objective value [is] the sum of the individual judgments of all the men involved in trade at a given time, the sum of what they valued, each in the context of his own life.

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 24-25. LP discusses in “Capitalism as the System of Objectivity,” OPAR, 398.

[Same as “market value.”] [See Philosophically Objective Value.]

Society is a large number of men who live together in the same country, and who deal with one another.

AR, “Textbook of Americanism,” ARC, 88.

Soul [means] the essence of a person, which is his mind and its basic values.

LP, “Reason as an Attribute of the Individual,” OPAR, 202.

The spiral theory [of knowledge] is simply this idea: first we learn a given idea; then we leave it—we move to something else, we learn other subjects. Then we encounter the original idea again, but now with more knowledge, with a deeper context.

[Extemporaneous, unedited formulation.]

LP, “Understanding Objectivism” lecture series (1984), Lecture 3.

By “spiritual” I mean “pertaining to con­sciousness.”

AR, “Concepts of Consciousness,” ITOE, 33.

A “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 27. LP discusses in “The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action,” OPAR, 229.

The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.

Since reason is man’s basic means of sur­vival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 25. LP discusses issue in “Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value,” OPAR, 219.

[See Man’s Survival qua Man.]

“Statism” means any system that concentrates power in the state at the expense of individual freedom.

LP, “Statism as the Politics of Unreason,” OPAR, 369.

[See Fallacy of the “Stolen Concept”.]

Study is persistent, careful, concentrated effort to acquire and retain a body of knowl­edge.

HB, “How to Study Ayn Rand’s Writings” lecture (1994).

“Style” is a particular, distinctive or charac­teristic mode of execution.

AR, “Art and Sense of Life,” RM, 40.

“Stylized” means condensed to essential char­acteristics, which are chosen according to an artist’s view of man.

AR, “Art and Cognition,” RM, 67.

The subjective means the arbitrary, the irrational, the blindly emotional.

AR, “Art and Moral Treason,” RM, 150.

[See Objective.]

[Certain] schools [of thought] regard concepts as subjective, i.e., as products of man’s con­sciousness, unrelated to the facts of reality, as mere “names” or notions arbitrarily assigned to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the ground of vague, inexplicable resemblances.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 53.

[See Intrinsic Theory of Concepts.] [See also Objective.]

Subjectivism is the belief that reality is not a firm absolute, but a fluid, plastic, indeter­minate realm which can be altered, in whole or in part, by the consciousness of the per­ceiver—i.e., by his feelings, wishes or whims.

AR, “Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” VOR, 19.

[See Objectivity.]

The subjectivist theory holds that the good bears no relation to the facts of reality, that it is the product of a man’s consciousness, created by his feelings, desires, “intuitions,” or whims, and that it is merely an “arbitrary postulate” or an “emotional commitment.”

AR, “What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 21-22.

[See Intrinsic Theory of the Good, Objective Theory of the Good.]

Supernaturalism [is] the view that reality is a higher, spiritual dimension (like God and Heaven), in relation to which this world is low and unreal.

LP, “The ‘Mystery’ of Heaven’s Gate,” TIA, Jul. 1997, 3.

A theme [in literature] is the summation of a novel’s abstract meaning.

AR, “Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 81.

A theory . . . is a set of abstract principles purporting to be either a correct description of reality or a set of guidelines for man’s actions.

AR, “Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 14.

All thinking is a process of identification and integration.

AR, GS, FNI, 125.

Time is measurement of motion; as such, it is a type of relationship.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Q&A Lecture 2, quoted in “Time,” LEX, 503.

“Trade” . . . denotes a voluntary exchange of values.

LP, “Capitalism as the Only Moral Social System,” OPAR, 386.

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.

AR, GS, FNI, 133. LP discusses in “Justice as Rationality in the Evaluation of Men,” OPAR, 286-287.

Truth is the recognition of reality.

AR, GS, FNI, 126. LP discusses in “The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False,” OPAR, 165.

Tyranny is any political system (whether absolute monarchy or fascism or communism) that does not recognize individual rights (which necessarily include property rights).

AR, “From a Symposium,” ROP, 173.

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 17. LP discusses issue in “‘Life’ as the Essential Root of ‘Value,’” OPAR, 212.

To understand means to focus on the content of a given subject . . . to isolate its essentials, to establish its relationship to the previously known, and to integrate it with the appropriate categories of other subjects. Integration is the essential part of understanding.

AR, “The Comprachicos,” ROP, 68.

A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members.

AR, “Cognition and Measurement,” ITOE, 6. LP discusses in “Differentiation and Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective,” OPAR, 75.

The essence . . . of man’s incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units—which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty.

[The essence is the ability to economize the units required to hold in mind a given content.]

AR, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts,” ITOE, 63. Material in brackets was provided by LP for this glossary. It is an extemporaneous, unedited formulation by LP, adapted from LP, “Concepts as Devices to Achieve Unit-Economy,” OPAR, 106.

[See “Crow Epistemology”.]

[Defenders of conceptual knowledge] were unable to offer a solution to the “problem of universals,” that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relation­ship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.

AR, “For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 30.

The universe is the total of that which exists.

LP, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 2, quoted in “Universe,” LEX, 517.

Utilitarianism . . . holds that man’s duty is to serve . . . “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

LP, “Kant Versus America,” OP, 119.

“Validation” . . . subsumes any process of estab­lishing an idea’s relationship to reality, whether deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, or perceptual self-evidence.

LP, “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms,” OPAR, 8.

“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 16, 27. LP discusses in “‘Life’ as the Essential Root of ‘Value,’” OPAR, 208.

[See also Moral Values, Ultimate Value.]

“Violence” names . . . force that is swift, intense, rough, and/or accompanied by fury.

LP, “The Initiation of Physical Force as Evil,” OPAR, 319.

“Virtue” is the action by which one gains and keeps [a value].

AR, GS, FNI, 121. LP discusses in “Rationality as the Primary Virtue,” OPAR, 221.

Man’s volition is an attribute of his con­sciousness (of his rational faculty) and consists in the choice to perceive existence or to evade it.

[Axiomatic concept: not a definition.]

AR, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,” PWNI, 25.

[Same as “free will.” See Free Will.]

A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.

AR, “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 14. LP discusses in “Rationality as the Primary Virtue,” OPAR, 228.

A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept.

AR, “Definitions,” ITOE, 40.

[See Fallacy of Reification of the Zero.]