An Institute Where Objectivists Study

The Institute for Objectivist Studies began its life on February 24, 1990, when David Kelley delivered an address, "Objectivism: The Philosophy and the Movement," at the Doral Inn Hotel in New York City. But despite the organization's ambitious name, the "Objectivist studies" carried out by the institute (apart from Kelley's own work ) have in general been performed off-site. That situation changed somewhat last year, when William R Thomas began commuting once a week, from Albany to Poughkeepsie, in order to collaborate with David Kelley on The Logical Structure of Objectivism. But this summer the Institute for Objectivist Studies will truly become an institute for Objectivist studies as Stephen Hicks joins the staff for one year, with the title of "senior fellow."

Says IOS executive director David Kelley: "To me, Stephen's coming here on a fellowship is the culmination of something I have been working for since the beginning of IOS: to have this be a true intellectual center, to reach the point where we can essentially buy the time of scholars and let them devote that time to topics related to Objectivism and advance our mission in the world. There are a lot of talented people out there whose time is devoted to whatever they need to do to make a living. We are now at the point where we can start buying that time."

Stephen Hicks is well known to most IOS members, for in a sense he has been with the institute from the beginning, attending the very first summer seminar when he was a graduate student. In 1992, he became a summer seminar lecturer for the first time, and he has returned often since then. His lectures on post-modernism at last year's summer seminar were one of the week's major hits. In addition, the February issue of Navigator presented an extensive interview with Hicks, also on post-modernism, and outtakes from that interview appear on the IOS Web site: http://ios.org. Briefly, though, for those who may not know him: Stephen Hicks received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1992, from Indiana University, and in that same year joined the faculty at Rockford College, in Rockford, Illinois, where he is now chairman of the philosophy department. He is the author of numerous papers, reviews, and articles in all branches of philosophy and is the co-editor, with David Kelley, of Readings for Logical Analysis.

Recently, Hicks has completed the manuscript for a book on business ethics, begun under a grant from IOS, and he is now looking for a publisher. In this work, Hicks begins by examining some concrete disputes involving relations of three fundamental types: disputes between businesses and consumers, employers and employees, and businesses and their competitors. After presenting the arguments on both sides of these concrete disputes, Hicks shows how the competing arguments arise from competing ethical approaches, basically egoism or altruism. Lastly, he shows how egoism and altruism affect a broad range of issues in each of the fundamental types of disputes.

During his time at IOS, Hicks will concentrate on producing a major new study of post-modernism, for a general audience. "This is a core project for us," Kelley says, "which will help us develop our concept of the three cultures: our Enlightenment outlook and its opposition to the pre- and post-Enlightenment outlooks. Stephen's analysis will be a key part of our campaign to make that analysis known and widely accepted." In addition to writing his book, Hicks will also be advancing public recognition of the institute by publishing popular-level articles and accepting speaking engagements. His talk "Defending Shylock: Productivity in the Financial Markets" remains high on Principal Source's bestseller list.

Of course, the chief obstacle to bringing a senior scholar to the institute has always been salary, and the institute's ability to overcome that obstacle is in large measure the result of our members' generosity. Specifically, it results from the remarkable growth of institute membership at the level of "regular member" and above, the levels at which contributors not only belong to the institute but begin to fund its work. Without such funding, IOS simply could not employ the services of a top-notch Objectivist intellectual such as Hicks.

No less critical to employing Hicks, however, is the fact that academic year 1999-2000 is a sabbatical year for him, during which time Rockford College will continue to pay a portion of his salary. By leveraging that partial pay, and adding in his 1999 and 2000 "summer vacations," Hicks will be able to give the institute fifteen months of work for a price within the institute's means.

Adding to the "think-tank" atmosphere at the institute this summer will be Will Wilkinson, who will be at the institute working with Executive Director David Kelley as part of IOS's "apprenticeship" program. This is the same program under which William R Thomas began working with Kelley on The Logical Structure of Objectivism.

"The program has two purposes," says David Kelley. "One is to have advanced students work with me and come that much closer to being able to speak and write professionally as Objectivists. But, second, they do that by working on a project that IOS wants to get done anyway, and in that sense it is an apprenticeship. Will is going to spend a couple months working on a monograph that will be part of our Objectivist Studies series, which we've just initiated. The topic is going to be "the analytic-synthetic dichotomy," looking at it as an issue in epistemology and philosophy of language and relating it to the Objectivist theory of concepts. This will go beyond Leonard Peikoff's existing essay on the subject in various ways, primarily be addressing a lot of the scholarship and theories that have been propounded in the last thirty years.

In addition to having Hicks and Wilkinson, the institute will be taking up an offer from Farsam Shadab, a student at the University of California in San Diego, to serve as a volunteer at the institute for several months. After arriving at the institute in April, he will begin writing a review-essay article with Editor Roger Donway on one aspect of the history of technology.