Philosophy is inescapable.
Your philosophy is your worldview, which is a backdrop for all thought and a context for all knowledge. The decision about examining philosophy is between: 1) to make your philosophy explicit, or 2) to be a slave to the subconscious notions, principles, and other people's philosophies picked up throughout life. To ignore the topic of philosophy is to be doomed to the second choice. Examining your philosophy will allow you to discover and root out all errors and contradictions and allow you to more easily acquire knowledge and to think in concepts rather than concretes.

A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown. Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

This site explores the importance of philosophy and presents many of the important concepts and questions that must be considered. It will tell you how to base your philosophy on reason rather than randomness, which will lead to clarity, certainty, success, and happiness. The alternative to an explicit rational philosophy is an indifference that leads to confusion and often failure.

Philosophy is not some arcane field important only to old men in ivory towers. It explicitly asks and answers fundamental, inescapable questions such as "How can I know something?" and "What should I do?" Without some answer to these questions, no knowledge or action is possible. Again, the only choice is to explicitly examine the underlying assumptions involved or to be at the mercy of the random flotsam picked up throughout life.

You can start by learning the major ideas and how they're related by looking at the Concept Chart and clicking on the various concepts, which index into the more complete set of information contained in the Five Branches of Philosophy section.

Philosophy
Objectivity
Logic
Reason
Knowledge
Standard Of Evaluation
Perception
Concepts
Definitions
Words
Emotions
Integration
Values
Certainty
Deduction
Induction/Abstraction
Focus
Evasion
Context
Fundamentals
Knowledge is Hierarchical
The Arbitrary

Dictionary of Concepts

The content of this website is primarily based on Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.

Site Map

Concept Chart

Introduction to the Five Branches of Philosophy

Metaphysics

Epistemology

Ethics

Politics

Esthetics

Misbegotten Notions:

Mystical Metaphysics

Irrational Epistemology

Evil Ethics

Bloody Politics

Post-Modern Esthetics

Dictionary of Concepts