Reprising this post from when I enjoyed George Selgin’s Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821 (University of Michigan Press, 2008). Come the Industrial Revolution, the number of wage earners rose dramatically, increasing dramatically the need for small denomination coins to pay them and for them to […]
Private coins and the Industrial Revolution Read More »
Judge for oneself. Here is the mature Karl Marx writing, eight years after publishing The Communist Manifesto, for the New-York Daily Tribune: Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew, as is every pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the
Was Marx really that anti-Semitic? Read More »
Revisiting this deeply personal question: Do I have what it takes to be a philosopher-king? Maybe not, according to Plato’s Republic Book 6 description of the true philosopher’s character. A real philosopher, he says: 1. Will love the pursuit of truth [485b],2. Will be indifferent to the pleasures of the body [485d],3. Will not be
Could I be a philosopher-king? Read More »
I’ll be traveling to speak at these in-person events over the next month or so: Belgrade, Serbia, April 11, 2023, Lecture: “Love and Hate in Uncertain Times.” Debate: “Is Objectivism an Open or Closed Philosophy?” Ayn Rand Center Europe. Warsaw, Poland, April 14, 2023. “Clash with Totalitarianisms, 1939-1945.” Institute of National Remembrance. Stockholm, Sweden, May 9-12, 2023, various
Speaking schedule: Serbia, Poland, Sweden, Norway (April-May 2023) Read More »
Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy (USA) and John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister (Australia) discuss Democracy, the do-it-yourself politics that presupposes agency — in contrast to Marxism’s environmental determinism that overrides agency. Excerpted from this full-hour interview. Related:
In his notebooks, Walt Whitman wrote: “I never yet knew how it felt to think I stood in the presence of my superior.—If the presence of God were made visible immediately before me, I could not abase myself.” In his Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote: “The real test of being in the presence of
Self-esteem in Walt Whitman and C. S. Lewis Read More »
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, I sat down and responded to 22 questions from Charlie Zagoren and Maria Marty. The questions range over ethics, art, politics, religion, and autobiography. Related: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, for my views on other philosophers:
Introduction to My Thinking Read More »
Nietzsche is usually labelled an individualist. One of the more controversy-generating claims of my Nietzsche and the Nazis appears in Section 34, where I argue that Nietzsche is more collectivist than individualist.[1] Re-reading Zarathustra I came across two more relevant quotations. In both cases, Zarathustra is speaking: “A thousand goals there have been until now,
Zarathustra’s predatory collectivism Read More »