Leonard Peikoff offers an extended discussion of rationalism — a method of dealing with ideas characterized by trying to connect ideas into a system without reference to perceptual reality, an improper reliance on deduction from axioms, a misguided demand for comprehensiveness and system, and an antipathy to emotion. Peikoff offers many valuable points about how to identify rationalism in one’s own thinking and how to combat it. The lesson is of particular importance since, as Peikoff observes, students of Objectivism often have a tendency to rationalism, which distorts their thinking and their understanding of the philosophy in significant ways.
