David Kelley

Education and career

Kelley is trained as a philosopher. He received his BA and MA in philosophy from Brown University, where he studied with the American rationalist, Roderick Chisholm. He received his PhD in 1975 from Princeton University, where his advisor was the American postmodernist Richard Rorty. He was an assistant professor of philosophy and cognitive science for 7 years at Vassar College. He then taught logic for a brief time at Brandeis University, while working as a freelance writer for Barron's Magazine and other publications.

A member of Ayn Rand's circle, Kelley read her favorite poem, "If—", by Rudyard Kipling, at her funeral in 1982.

Objectivism's 'open' faction

Leonard Peikoff's Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) declared Objectivism to be a "closed system" containing only the philosophic principles advocated by Rand herself.

In 1989, Kelley set out in a pamphlet his critique of the ARI Objectivist movement. The pamphlet was titled "Truth and Toleration" (later republished in an expanded edition as the book The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand). Kelley declared Objectivism to be an "open system" amenable to revision and addition. He held that cognitive error can result from many factors and need not involve moral culpability (something with which both Rand and Peikoff also agreed). This "critique" subsequently split the movement into two factions.

In 1990 he founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS; now The Atlas Society), a non-profit dedicated to cultural advocacy on behalf of "reason, individualism, achievement, and capitalism." IOS was established to provide an Objectivist alternative to the Ayn Rand Institute, founded by Leonard Peikoff. IOS sponsored scholarly work on Objectivism and conducted summer workshops attended by academics and graduate students. In 1999 IOS was renamed The Objectivist Center (TOC), as the organization took on a more public-outreach and advocacy orientation.

Scholarly work

In order to pursue his scholarly interests, Kelley stepped down as executive director of TOC in 2004, and the organization – now under the leadership of former regulatory policy analyst Edward Hudgins – was again renamed as The Atlas Society (TAS). TAS also moved its headquarters from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Washington, D.C. The organization continues to sponsor scholarly work, publishes a website and a political-cultural magazine, and puts on conferences and seminars where scholars and fans of Rand's work meet and mingle. Kelley reassumed the position of executive director for TAS in 2008.

Kelley's books cover a variety of subjects within philosophy. They include The Evidence of the Senses, which argues for a unique form of direct realism about perception; Unrugged Individualism, which explores benevolence as a virtue; A Life of One's Own, a moral critique of the welfare state; and The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, focusing on the schisms within the Objectivist movement. With Roger Donway, he co-authored Laissez Parler: Freedom in the Electronic Media, a critique of government regulation of broadcasting.

Kelley has published little scholarly work in philosophy since 1998, but has given public addresses, taught courses, and has written articles on politics and current events. An ongoing research and writing project over the past decade has been his magnum opus, The Logical Structure of Objectivism, which he is co-authoring with economist William Thomas. His most recent scholarly article is "Rand Versus Hayek on Abstraction," in the Fall 2011 issue of Reason Papers—a "descriptive and explanatory" account of the similarities and differences between Rand's and Friedrich Hayek's views on cognition and mind.

Kelley was a script consultant for Atlas Shrugged: Part III, the third part in a film version of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Works