Ours is an age of “complexity worship” says Leonard Peikoff in this lecture on the nature and necessity of principles. Rejecting the spurious charge of “simplisticism,” he shows how today’s pragmatism reduces man to the perceptual level, i.e., to the state of an animal. This is an invaluable lecture on the principle behind the principles.

This lecture was delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum on April 24, 1988.