I was surprised by this from Lanny Ebenstein’s biography, Milton Friedman: “Neither historically nor in his time to the present has the political orientation of Chicago’s Department of Economics been mostly free market. In a 1991 article on Laughlin, the first head of economics at Chicago, Friedman writes that the department had always had ‘prominent […]
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My lengthy journal article entitled “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” [pdf] is now publicly available for free at the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies‘ site. 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
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In this extended interview, philosopher Douglas Den Uyl responds to a series of questions about his life and work. Den Uyl is the author of many works. His latest book, co-authored with Douglas Rasmussen, is Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. Why did you become a philosopher? [0:19] Where did you get
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In my Philosophy of Art course, we’ve been reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy for the last two weeks, and we can add him to the list posted here of intellectuals across the ages bemoaning the poverty of their own time’s culture. Nietzsche on mid-19th century Germany: “What else, in the desolate waste of
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My original post on Toohey’s five strategies of altruism has been published in a print version designed by Christopher Vaughan, with graphics and scary pull quotes. Here is the PDF version. The post’s opening: “The ethics of altruism holds that others are standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests
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Tibor Machan is professor of philosophy at Chapman University in California. He was born in Communist Hungary, smuggled out as a teenager, and came to the United States, where he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. A prolific writer, he has published over forty books and scores of essays. A recent
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At Amazon’s Kindle books section, my Explaining Postmodernism holds two of the top six places for books on postmodernism. The first edition is now first, and the expanded edition is now sixth. [Update March 6: Now 1st and 4th.] They are neck-and-neck with The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism and The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism, two
Explaining Postmodernism 1st and 6th at Amazon Kindle Read More »
The Nazis were evil, killing millions of human beings, and they have universally and properly properly condemned for their horrors. The Soviets were also evil, killing more millions than the Nazis did, yet they have not been universally condemned. The Soviets have been attacked by libertarians, conservatives, and moderates as a great lesson in evil
Soviets and Nazis — which were worse? Read More »