David Kelley

David Kelley (born June 23, 1949 in Shaker Heights, Ohio) is an American philosopher, author, and advocate of Objectivism, though his position that Objectivism can be revised and influenced by other schools of thought has prompted disagreements with other Objectivists. He is also founder and senior fellow of The Atlas Society.

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.

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.

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