Objectivism is a
philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist
Ayn Rand (1905–1982). Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and
inductive and
deductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or
rational self-interest, that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure
laissez faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.