I’m happy to announce a new edition of my “Ayn Rand and Business Ethics” has been published. Thanks to the team at The Atlas Society for producing it. The essay was originally published in The Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy and has since been translated into Korean, German, Serbo-Croatian, and Portuguese. Abstract: Most […]
Ayn Rand and Business Ethics — new booklet edition Read More »
I wrote this brief entry on “Self-interest in Ayn Rand”, contrasting her view to the strong nativist e.g., Christianity, Freud) and strong tabula rasa (e.g., Skinner, Foucault) positions. Source: Ruth Hagengruber and Mary Ellen Waithe, editors, The Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers, Paderborn University, Germany, 2018.
Rand in *The Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts* by Women Philosophers Read More »
Without comment, I offer this excerpt from the Gospel of Thomas (114): Simon Peter said to Jesus, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.” Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself
Jesus and transgenderism Read More »
The Right says: If drugs are legal, people will shoot up, and society will go to hell. The Left says: If guns are legal, people will shoot-em up, and society will go to hell. Word-play aside, other options are possible: The authoritarians say: People can’t be trusted with either. The (true) liberals say: We can
Guns! Drugs! — The difference between Left and Right Read More »
Stanley Fish, postmodern provocateur, gave a talk at Indiana University when I was a graduate student there in the late 1980s. He was then working on what would become There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Fish’s theme was social construction and oppression: We all are products of our
How Randy Newman Solved Stanley Fish’s Credibility Problem Read More »
“People are scum.” “Mankind is a moral wasteland.” “I’m ashamed to be human.” Whenever cynics express themselves, I’m tempted to retort that philosophy is autobiography and they should put their claims in the first-person: “I am scum.” “I am a moral wasteland.” “I’m ashamed to be me.” A colleague once took me up on that
Why Humans are Born Fit for Freedom [Good Life series] Read More »
An ancient myth tells of a poor young man who found a magical ring. The young man’s name was Gyges. He was a shepherd, responsible for tending his village’s sheep as they grazed in the summer meadows away in the hills. His job was lonely, poorly paid, and most of the time he smelled like
Are We Too Wicked for Freedom? [Good Life series] Read More »
As with sex and money — and most of the important matters in life — many silly things are said about power. Perhaps the granddaddy of those silly things is the oft-quoted phrase, Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is an important truth that Lord Acton’s phrase tries to capture. But taken literally