Cartoon metaphysics
With cartoonists like Zach Weiner, who needs philosophy professors? Click here or on the image for a humorous summary of the metaphysical turf wars. (Thanks to J.S. and T.N. for the link.)
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Philosophy
Defending Shylock — Kindle version
My essay, Defending Shylock: Productive Work in Financial Markets, is now available in Kindle format. In this essay, I discuss the great value that financial markets add to an economy and the nature of the intellectual work that underlays them. In addition, I argue against the critics of financial markets who argue that those who
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Atlas Shrugged movie — first reaction
As someone who read and loved the book, this movie totally worked for me. Schilling’s Dagny is intelligent, emotionally expressive, and beautiful. Bowler’s Hank Rearden is equally intelligent and competent, with occasionally bemused, understated humor and equally occasionally understated anger. And the sexual chemistry between the two — yes, indeed. Wisocky is tone-perfect as that
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APEE update — Deirdre McCloskey
Why did the modern economic revolution in production and trade first happen in north-western Europe? At the APEE conference, Deirdre McCloskey delivered a plenary address based on her new book, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. Her argument is that neither material resources nor technology nor capital accumulation nor geographical factors drove
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Warby reviews Nietzsche and the Nazis
Australia’s Lorenzo Warby’s review of my Nietzsche and the Nazis. Intriguing sideways connection to Heidegger and militarism: Warby also reviews Brian Daizen Victoria’s Zen at War, “a study of how Zen Buddhism became deeply complicit in Japanese militarism,” just as Heidegger’s mystically-charged writings became complicit in German militarism. Warby there points to this piece by
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Hayek and Rand on values — APEE 2011 conference
For this year’s conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I am organizing and chairing a session on two giants of the twentieth century — Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand — with four scholars comparing their views on values and political economy. Topic: Hayek and Rand on Values Chair: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D., Rockford College,
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Successful nations and the British empire
One measure of a nation’s success is its economic health: how free are a nation’s citizens to pursue their own economic goals, and how wealthy on average are its citizens? Almost always the wealthy countries are those that enjoy a significant degree of the economic freedom. (See the chart in the image; click to enlarge.)
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Three lectures at Cato-IHS seminar
I will be giving a series of three lectures this summer at the “Liberty and Current Issues” seminar sponsored jointly by the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. The seminar runs the week of July 2–8 at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. As the dates get nearer, I will post my lecture
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