My journal article “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” [pdf] is now online here. The 43-page study was published this spring in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.
The abstract: “Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism.”
My opening paragraph: “To what extent is Ayn Rand’s ethical theory Nietzschean? Three Friedrich Nietzsches are relevant to making that judgment. …”
The major sections of the article:
Part One: On Critiquing Altruism
Three Nietzsches and Ayn Rand
Some intellectuals on Nietzsche and Rand
Egoism, altruism, and “selfishness”
A Nietzschean sketch
God is dead
Nihilism’s symptoms
Two bio-psychological types
Psychology and morality
Genealogy
Comparing Nietzsche’s and Rand’s critiques of altruism
Rand’s break with Nietzsche’s critique
Part Two: On Egoism
Rand’s egoism
Nietzsche’s rhetoric and system
The major differences between Nietzsche and Rand
Are individuals real?
Do individuals have free will?
What is the source of moral values?
How does the self identify its nature and values?
Are individual selves ends in themselves?
Are fundamental values universal?
Are the relations of individuals win/win or win/lose?
Rights, liberty, equality before the law?
Slavery and freedom, war and peace
Conclusion
Posted 4 weeks, 1 day ago at 8:04 am. Add a comment
An important editorial in The Washington Times about Elena Kagan, currently Solicitor General and nominee to the Supreme Court. (Thanks to Bob M. for the link.)
The article contains a classic false alternative — “Ms. Kagan’s First Amendment work repeatedly promotes the idea that speech rights are granted by government rather than inherent in the God-given nature of man” (i.e., rights are either made up by the State or made up by God) — but it also gives several suggestive quotations from Kagan’s writings about speech.
‘In a 1996 University of Chicago Law Review article, she argued that speech restrictions are allowable if the government’s “motive” is acceptably nonideological. In dense academic prose, Ms. Kagan openly mused about the merits of “redistribution of expression,” of “neutral regulations of speech … that are justified in terms of achieving diversity” and of “disfavoring [an] idea [to] ‘unskew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.”‘
More: ‘Ms. Kagan wrote that restrictions on corporate speech were based “on the ground that corporate wealth derives from privileges bestowed on corporations by the government. But this argument fails, because individual wealth also derives from government action. … The question in every case is whether the government may use direct regulation of speech to redress prior imbalances.”‘
So Kagan agrees with the old Permission or Concession Theory of the Corporation, i.e., the view that corporations exist only via special permissions or concessions granted by the State, and she combines it with standard affirmative-action-for-speech principles. By contrast, I agree with Stephen Bainbridge and Robert Hessen on the Contractual Theory of the Corporation, i.e., the view that corporations are networks of voluntary contractual relations among individuals that are recognized and protected by the government; and my essay, “Free Speech and Postmodernism,” lays out how the standard arguments for affirmative action are applied by the left and the postmoderns to speech.
Side note: Interesting to ponder that Kagan is for speech restrictions when the motive is non-ideological while those who want to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine for talk radio and the Internet favor speech restrictions when the motive is ideological. Hmmm … .
We are a long, long way from liberal speech theory.
Update: Professor Lester Hunt: “Kagan’s Disturbing Take on Free Speech.”
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago at 7:41 am. 2 comments
My “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” has come out in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Here is the abstract for my 43-page study:
“Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism.”
In the same issue, Professor Lester Hunt has a commentary on my essay and an independent reading of Nietzsche that is very valuable.
This entire issue of JARS is a symposium devoted to essays comparing Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. I haven’t read the other contributions yet, but it looks like a lively set.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 1:24 pm. Add a comment
11/30 Why were Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling convicted? Professor Larry Ribstein argues that no one seems to know for sure.
11/29 Eyal Mozes investigates: Is there a rational basis for determinism? And in Spiked, Stuart Derbyshire surveys the state of brain science and free will and argues that we’re no slaves of our senses.
11/28 The New York Times reports on further progress for women in India. (Thanks to Virginia for the link.)
Prospect magazine has this fascinating overview (statist assumptions aside) of India’s under-achieving middle class. Philosopher Stone has a post with links about India and Ayn Rand. And thanks to my friend Bill, I’ve been watching Bollywood movies this year—let me recommend Guru (“a villager, Gurukant Desai, arrives in Bombay 1958, and rises from its streets to become the GURU, the biggest tycoon in Indian history”), Lagaan (“the people of a small village in Victorian India stake their future on a game of cricket against their ruthless British rulers”), and Veer-Zaara (“the story of the love between Veer Pratap Singh, an Indian, and Zaara Hayaat Khan, a Pakistani”).
11/27 A sad case study in far-left educational culture: Charlotte Allen explains Who killed Antioch College. (Thanks to Charles for the link.) On financial accountability in higher education: Ward Connerly looks at the factors. And Yale professor Anthony Kronman reminds those of us in higher education Why We Are Here.
11/26 A brief look at the social skills of the new generation of entrepreneurs. Here is an overview of Dietrich Doerner’s work on failure. The BusinessPundit on the one book every executive should read. And some useful advice to young entrepreneurs from a young entrepreneur.
11/20 Three interesting conferences coming up next April: Objectivity in the Law at the University of Texas, Liberty Studies at the College of New Jersey, and the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education in Las Vegas. Update: And in February a Students for Liberty conference at Columbia University, featuring speakers David Boaz of Cato, Alan Kors of the University of Pennsylvania, and Will Thomas of The Atlas Society.
11/19 It’s getting better all the time. Graphically-presented data on average income in the USA along with several other progress-related charts and graphs. Here is a website devoted to improvement indicators. (Thanks to Anja for the link.) And why even the optimistic Star Trek series underestimates future potential.
11/17 Professor Tara Smith investigates: Why Originalism Won’t Die—Common Mistakes in Competing Theories of Judicial Interpretation. (Thanks to Richard for the link.)
11/16 “In 1993, over a million saiga antelopes roamed the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. Today, fewer than 30,000 remain, most of them females.” Unintended consequences meet the tragedy of the commons, as Tyler Cowen explains.
11/12 Sawse has twenty-five photographs taken at precisely the right time.
11/11 Reflecting on Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Lester Hunt makes some shrewd observations about the moral psychology of cynicism, socialism, and nihilism. And John Palmer, the EclectEcon, has a datum on the European left’s deep crisis.
11/10 The bedbugs are back. Yet another thing to thank Rachel Carson for. Or not.
11/8 This Friday’s Free Kareem rallies. And while a relatively liberal young man languishes in jail, here is a classic piece explaining the attraction of intellectual-lightweight entertainment superstars to heavyweight-murderous political thugs: Humberto Fontova considers the case of Che.
11/7 In The New York Times, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw has a closer look at health care comparison numbers. Johan Norberg is also looking at the number of uninsured Americans. Philosopher Stone has a good round-up of links on the economics and politics of healthcare. Meanwhile, John Enright wonders what life-saving information we should suppress next. And Tom Kirkendell reminds us of an important anniversary: 30 years of angioplasty.
11/6 Overcoming the destructive eras in our history. An important history lesson by Shelby Steele on the legacy of Little Rock. Some pictorial evidence relevant to the question: to what extent were the Nazis Christian? And here’s an essay on the Regressives—or rather, the so-called Progressives in American history. Professor David Mayer has also written wisely on the reactionary progressives.
11/5 
Art historian Lynn Catterson speculates on the Laocoön scuplture: Hellenistic masterpiece or Michelangelo’s brilliant ploy? More on the hypothesis here—though would “forgery” be the right word? Meanwhile, classicist Mary Beard plays hooky to visit the Laocoön exhibition in Rome.
11/4 Cato’s David Boaz argues that on balance we are freer than at many points in our past (PDF format). Here is a stellar line-up of back issues of Cato’s Letter. By contrast, it’s election year in Saskatchewan, the resource-rich and socialism-poor Canadian province. The contrast to its neighbor Alberta is instructive. And even worse: Meghan Cox Gurdon puts some of our domestic rhetoric in perspective.
11/3 Where is Voltaire when you need him? John Leo wonders who will stand up for free speech on campus. Here is one university committed to brainwashing students with false and destructive messages. (Thanks to Johann for the link.) And David Thompson comments on the right not to be offended. Update: The FIRE reports that the University of Delaware has dropped its obnoxious indoctrination plans.
11/2 Ayn Rand in Latin America, with these follow-up interviews with Alex Chafuen, Giancarlo Ibargüen, and Juan Fernando Carpio. Harry Binswanger’s useful The Ayn Rand Lexicon is now free online. (Thanks to Anja for the link.) And YouTube user DJ Lorenzen has Ayn Rand on audio.
11/1 Trends of the times: A short interview in The Globe and Mail with the always-observant Grant McCracken, a summary look at IRS tax data, more data on badly misplaced priorities in the drug war and the fight against crime (thanks to Virginia for the link), and evidence that being a cop just keeps getting more difficult.
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3/30 Here is an occasionally snarky interview with the gutsy Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Christopher Hitchens and David Thompson enlist themselves as allies. Ali’s Infidel was published in February.
3/28 You must watch this 30-minute video of a debate at the University of Toronto:
Christopher Hitchens on free speech.3/27 Tom Kirkendall is right to be worried about the criminalization of business: cases that should be handled in civil suits are increasingly being taken to criminal courts. Kirkendall links to a webcast of a law conference at Georgetown University on the theme of Corporate Criminality: Legal, Ethical, and Managerial Implications. The conference was organized by Professor John Hasnas, whose book, Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is Against the Law, documents the increasing frequency with which CEOs and other business professionals must choose between legal and ethical behavior.
3/26 I haven’t read Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism yet, but the discussion around it is very interesting. Here is the text of a Cato Unbound article by Doherty on his book, a response by Tyler Cowen urging that libertarianism evolve to adapt to the current state of the world, and a follow-up response by Bryan Caplan who takes Cowen to task for offering the worst advice ever to libertarians. Update: David Boaz takes The New York Times to task for publishing a clueless-on-libertarianism review of Doherty’s book.
3/24 File these items under “All cultures are equal and worthy of respect”: In Nigeria, a teacher beaten to death. In Indonesia, perpetrators jailed for beheading schoolgirls. And in Pakistan, lovers stoned to death.
3/21 First some good news: several striking photos of Africa from the air. Then the continuing bad news: Africa continues to stagnate while the rest of the world develops. For example, here’s an intriguing comment on colonialism’s legacy. But good ideas are available. Here, for example, is Enterprise Africa, a joint project of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, The Free Market Foundation of South Africa, London’s Institute for Economic Affairs, and The Templeton Foundation.
3/20 Michael Newberry has three new tutorials posted this month—including a magnificent one on the making of Denouement.
3/19 Are cooler heads beginning to prevail? Not PC summarizes a Scientific American report on a formal scientific debate on global warming: alarmists routed. You can see some scientists’ commentary in this online documentary: “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” (Thanks to Robert for the link.) And scientist Hans von Storch raises some taboo questions about climate change
3/17 Professor Mayer reviews the new book by the author of The Fair Tax Book: Neal Boortz’s “eloquently blunt” Somebody’s Gotta Say It!
3/16 Big thinker round-up: Economist Brad Delong on how reading Foucault led him to appreciate Adam Smith’s genius. (Via Virginia Postrel.) Jason Pappas launches a good discussion of Cicero’s enduring importance and follows up with this post on Cicero on human nature and society. And here’s a The New Yorker piece on Alfred Russel Wallace.
3/15 A strong profile of Edward Harriman, the railroad magnate, by—of all people—John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. (Thanks to Joe for the link.)
3/14 What percentage of college professors are atheists? And here is a list of famous atheists. (Thanks to Chris for the link.)
3/13 Government medicine: Reason’s Ronald Bailey has it exactly right about the sorry case of Walter Reed Hospital.
And Cato has a scary story from Britain: government-paid witch doctors. By contrast, here’s a post with links to the competitive and successful world of open heart surgery.
3/12 Will we hear calls for progressive taxation on leisure too? Steven Landsburg notes that the poor have more leisure time than the rich and wonders why. Key quotation: “If you think it’s OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.”
3/10 Larry Ribstein comments on how hostility to business made Rudy Guiliani’s career. And in a surprise move,
J. J. Jackson pushes Wal-Mart for President in 2008! (Thanks to Joe for the link.)
3/9 In The Boston Globe, painter Dushko Petrovich calls for a practical avant-garde. And here is a review of The Unknown Monet exhibit in London. (Both via Arts & Letters Daily.)
3/8 I propose this definition of tetzel: the amount of money one must transfer to an authorized organization to ease one’s guilt over carbon emission by one standard emotional unit. For example, if you choose to breathe for one day, that would cost you one tetzel. If you drive an SUV, 10 tetzels. If you jet to an environmentalist conference, 100 tetzels (plus a $200 hypocrisy tax). Meanwhile a cardinal in the Catholic Church argues that comparing global warming hysteria to religious zealotry is unfair and that “The science is certainly more complicated than the propaganda.” (Thanks to Joe K. for the link.)
3/7 Just how “gay” is Oxford University? Apparently the sensitivity police are angry there. The University of Wisconsin’s Lester Hunt has an open letter and updates on the Leonard Kaplan case. And FIRE’s speech code of the month: against “sexism” at Western Michigan University’s. And via InstaPundit: The French authorities have “approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images.”
3/5 Keith Windschuttle calls it “the English-speaking Century.” The opening two paragraphs: “In the past one hundred years, four successive political movements—Prussian militarism, German Nazism, Japanese imperialism, and international Communism—mounted military campaigns to conquer Europe, Asia, and the world. Had any of them prevailed, it would have been a profound loss for civilization as we know it. Yet over the course of these bids for power, a coalition headed first by Britain and then by the United States emerged not just to oppose but to destroy them utterly. “From the long perspective of human affairs, these victories must stand as among the most remarkable of the past three millennia. They were as decisive for world history as the victories of the ancient Greeks over Persia, of Rome over Carthage, and of the Franks over the Umayyad Caliphate.”
3/3 I’m on the board of advisors of EpistemeLinks, a great philosophy resource and portal run by Tom Stone. Here is one of its new features: a philosophy-on-the-web search engine.
3/2 Clive James on Moeller and Jünger, two of Hitler’s intellectual supporters.
3/1 Our extreme Earth: a Space.com collection of 101 facts about our planet. I did not know, for example that “70 percent of the Earth’s fresh-water supply is locked up in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. The remaining fresh-water supply exists in the atmosphere, streams, lakes, or groundwater and accounts for a mere 1 percent of the Earth’s total.”
Posted 3 years, 5 months ago at 4:52 am. Add a comment
5/31 Two recent takes on contemporary intellectual culture: In the Chronicle, Michael Kimmel reviews several trendy novels in the “lad lit” genre, describing that genre as “a sort of anti-bildungsroman, in which a sardonic, clever, unapologetic slacker refuses to grow up, get a meaningful job, commit to relationships, or find any meaning in life.” And Julian Baggini argues that, philosophically, the “comic cartoon [is] the form best suited to illuminate our age”: “To speak truthfully and insightfully today you must have a sense of the absurdity of human life and endeavour. Past attempts to construct grand and noble theories about human history and destiny have collapsed.” (Both via Arts & Letters Daily.)
5/30 Is Darwinian conservatism an oxymoron? James Seaton reviews Larry Arnhart’s recent book. And here is a review of leftist Todd Gitlin’s new book on how postmodernism gutted the Left. Exactly. (Though it had already suffered a brain-stroke, as I have argued, by the time it turned to desperate pomo measures.)
5/27 Has Ragnar shrugged? And here is an inspiring profile of Ken Iverson, a twentieth-century business hero.
5/26 Sally Satel on organ donation and the kindness of strangers. (Thanks to Roy for the link.) Here is the latest in human longevity research. And 91-year-old Cliff Garl will be forever young.
5/25 Fascinating: What physicists think happened the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. And how much progress have we made toward strong artificial intelligence? Jeff Hawkins summarizes. (Thanks to Jim H-N. for the link.)
5/24 Harry Binswanger makes a strong moral and practical case for open immigration. (Via Not PC.) And Russell Roberts identifies some further cultural and political components of a full solution to the issues that immigration raises.
5/23 Michael Barone has more good world-economic news. (Via Rich Karlgaard.)
5/22 New record-high life-expectancy statistics in the U.S. (Thanks to Virginia for the link.) And the Bureau of Labor Statistics has average hourly and weekly earnings for American workers.
5/19 Here are five fascinating numbers. And worth browsing is this History of Mathematics Archive.
5/18 Why the rich need a tax break. For more data see also this government report.
5/17 Improving the fruits of the Enlightenment: Gadgets then and now. And here comes the Six-Billion-Dollar Man. And here is a website devoted to one of the mathematical and political giants of the Enlightenment: the Marquis de Condorcet.
5/16 Do not miss the excellent underwater photographs from the sunken city of Alexandria. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.) And here is a series of
lovely images of planet Earth.
5/15 The always-worth-reading George Reisman enlightens us about price gouging. Professor Bainbridge has an intriguing hypothesis about union leaders’ arguments about CEO pay. And Roy Poses reports on out-of control conflicts of interest in the University of California system.
5/13 Should we privatize peace efforts in, e.g., Darfur? Rebecca Ulam Weiner weighs the issues of efficiency, cost, and accountability. Shelby Steele wonders why, since World War II, the West fights its wars so delicately. And Andrew Klavan believes that to get the job done we should draft Hollywood.
5/12 Neil Parille’s new web blog has an admirable goal: “Its aim is to discuss Objectivism free from the name calling and hoopla too often associated with the discussion of Rand and Objectivism on the web.” The Objective Reference Center has a good selection of texts by Ayn Rand available online. And this just in: Kathy Sierra has advice Objectivists could profitably adapt to philosophy.
5/11 The home decoration dictators are coming to your neighborhood. (Via Philosophy 101.) And now that the health police have put Big Tobacco on the defensive, it’s time to take on Big Ice Cream.
5/10 Philosopher Lester Hunt explains why he is against multi-culturalism. And here is an immigrant-group success story—twice.
5/9 Humberto Fontova rips into the historically-uninformed critics of The Lost City: Andy Garcia’s movie about Cuba. (Thanks to Brent for the link.) Which also raises an interesting question: How much is Fidel Castro worth? And “Protagoras” asks another: Why do some find it so hard to learn from history?
5/8 Grant McCracken asks: How do we measure how creative a culture is? And Jeff Cornwall has advice to entrepreneurs about failure on the highway to success.
5/6 Is the evolution of the eye irreducibly complex? In this four-minute video, Swedish scientist Dan-Eric Nilsson demonstrates one possible straightforward evolutionary path. And some actual—as opposed to mythical—intelligent design: This is one Clever design for a car.
5/5 A new tutorial by artist Michael Newberry: Rhythm in painting.
5/4 Superstar teacher John Taylor Gatto is working on an ambitious documentary project about American education: “The Fourth Purpose”. (Thanks to Jim for the link.)
5/3 A website devoted to the great Romantic novelist Victor Hugo. Interesting and new to me was this account of Carl August Hagburg’s visits with Hugo in 1836.
5/2 A new book on one of the architects of the Reign of Terror: Maximilien Robespierre. And for something more uplifting, Ken Gregg has a post on a vigorous and fascinating Pole who embraced Enlightenment ideals: Tadeusz Kosciuszko was recruited by Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, became a great friend of Thomas Jefferson and a hero of the Revolutionary war.
5/1 Logic and economics: Don Boudreaux has a good example illustrating why ad hominem is an invalid argument tactic. And he has a further post illustrating why tu quoque is a perfectly understandable reaction.
Posted 4 years, 3 months ago at 12:45 pm. Add a comment
