ethics – Check Your Premises

Comments on Rand’s Moral Philosophy for a Danish Journalist

I gather that there is a scandal in Denmark concerning some private parties took advantage of some provisions in the Danish tax codes that enabled them to somehow reap tax revenues and these parties cited Ayn Rand's moral philosophy as justifying their actions. I recently had a brief correspondence with a Danish journalist writing about the case, and was quoted in his story about it. Since I don't read Danish, I'm not in a position to comment on the story itself.

Zwolinski vs. Hicks on Rand’s ethics and politics

Recently the Institute for Humane Studies' "Learn Liberty" site featured a debate between Matt Zwolinski (University of San Diego) and Stephen Hicks (Rockford University), both of whom have been participants in past sessions of the Ayn Rand Society. Notably, past ARS contributor Harry Binswanger (the Ayn Rand Institute) has also weighed into the debate in the comments section.

Zwolinski leads off the debate by raising critical points about Rand's ethical egoism, the consistency of her egoism with her theory of rights, and her view of property and value-creation.

Another Critic Who Doesn’t Care What Rand Thought or Why She Thought It, Only That She’s Wrong

One function of this blog is to address comments made by academics and public intellectuals on Rand's philosophy. Several weeks ago, research psychologist Denise Cummins wrote a piece on a PBS blog about what happens when people attempt to put Rand's ideas into practice. Her aim there was not to engage with Rand's ideas per se, but to discuss what happens when certain ideas are put into practice, and then to explain why these ideas lead to these results.

Teaching Philosophy with Atlas Shrugged: Aristotle and Francisco on Ultimate Ends

I am very privileged to be teaching a course this semester called "Philosophical Themes in Ayn Rand." I've been teaching philosophy in one capacity or another since 2002, but this is the first time I've ever proposed or taught a course focused on Ayn Rand's ideas. The main text of the course is Atlas Shrugged, but I've also assigned a series of secondary readings from classical philosophers whose ideas can be compared or contrasted with Rand's.

Harry Binswanger’s 1977 Letter to Robert Nozick

See PDF version here.

[Author's note: After I mailed the letter to Nozick, some weeks passed without a response from him. So, I phoned him about it. He said he had received the letter, and that he had added it to a pile on his desk of papers that he meant to read. But, he added, it was a big pile and he might never get to my letter.

Updates to Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy Entry on Ayn Rand

I was pleased to see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy feature an updated entry on Ayn Rand earlier this week. The piece is authored by past ARS presenter Neera Badhwar (University of Oklahoma) and Roderick Long (Auburn). The entry was originally published in the summer of 2010, and its first major revision was in the fall of 2012. (You can review earlier versions here.)

I was happy in 2010 to see this entry finally contributed to the SEP. Fair and accurate encyclopedia entries on Rand for philosophers have been few and far between.

An example of withdrawing the sanction of the victim

I learned of an interesting and inspiring historical episode last week, when reading Brent Staples' New York Times review of Ethan Michaeli's book The Defender (about the Baltimore newspaper of the same name, which was one the most prominent of the black newspapers in the mid-20th Century).

As Staples tells the story, John Sengstacke, who was The Defender's publisher and the president of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, had a meeting in 1942 with Francis Biddle, Franklin Roosevelt's Attorney General.

A Thought on Consequentialism

In a comment on Ben Bayer's recent post about the NDPR review of Sanford's Before Virtue, an anonymous person asks about the distinction between the consequentialist and teleological ethics.

In Ben's response, he mentions how I differentiated Rand's ethics from consequentialism in Ch. 6 of A Companion to Ayn Rand. I thought I'd take this opportunity to quote from that discussion:

Under the heading of “egoistic consequentialists,” I include Epicurus, Hobbes, and Chernyshevsky.

A Neo-Aristotelian Against Mainstream Virtue Ethics

Friends of mine who work on Rand's ethics often list Elizabeth Anscombe’s seminal 1958 article, “Modern Moral Philosophy” as a favorite. The paper is noteworthy for its sweeping condemnation of both consequentialist and deontological normative ethical theory and its allegation that both relied on concepts rooted in divine command morality.