Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek has a lovely piece titled “Motives vs. Results,” exploring the motives of those who promote liberty, and how they compare to those who might instead promote big government.

I wrote of the article on Facebook:

A beautiful explication of why one could and should promote political freedom as a way to improve the world. It ( Read more... )

A friend on Facebook lamented the fact that academics tend to equate libertarian thinking with Ayn Rand - “And it’s never her ideas of anything like self-ownership or individuality that get cited either. It’s always her batshit personality quirks,” like “Her creepy admiration of William Edward Hickman, a serial killer.”

My reply:

I’ve heard that ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

A writer I’ve never heard of before, named Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, has a very interesting article titled “The Virtues of Enlightened Selfishness” that begins:

The human being has two wings, the wing of universality and the wing of individuality, with which to fly above the earth and to soar into the heavens. The wing of universality grows in the ( Read more... )

Brian Wright offers some insightful reflections after seeing the Atlas Shrugged movie. These pargaraphs caught my attention as particularly noteworthy:

Tonight I find myself clarifying several of the key ideas that Ayn Rand developed that were expressed in the movie. Here are the four key ideas I see in ASM:

1. Innovation and the joy of creation
2. The ( Read more... )

I just submitted the following question on Peikoff.com.

It’s a question I’ve had for many years, and the answers I’ve gotten from various Objectivist thinkers have varied considerably. It seems like a pretty important question, particularly for a philosophy that aspires to be internally consistent:

Ayn Rand taught that we have no unchosen ( Read more... )

My thanks to a user on braincrave.com for transcribing the parts of my August 2008 interview with Reason.tv that pertain to Ayn Rand’s legacy. I’m pasting his transcription below (with a few light edits and corrections) for Mudita Journal readers interested to revisit some of the themes I explored in that interview.

I definitely think her novels ( Read more... )

Jeff Perren sent me a link to two recent articles about Ayn Rand - “Ayn Rand: engineer of souls” by Anthony Daniels and “One or two thoughts about Ayn Rand” by Roger Kimball - and asked for my thoughts. My reply:

I found Daniels making some fair enough points, pro and con, but was stopped in my tracks when I got to this: “She entirely lacks the ( Read more... )

Peter’s reply to The Invitation reminded me of a conversation he and I had several years ago, which had prompted me to write my post on Buddhism and Suffering.

In that post, I concluded:

So to me, the case for the significance of suffering, once we look at it closely, seems overwhelming.

Does this mean we resign ourselves to suffering, or become ( Read more... )

The interview, titled “Dating in the Atlasphere,” was actually conducted in August 2008, but they’ve waited a while to publish it as part of a long series of interviews about Ayn Rand’s legacy.

From Reason TV’s summary:

Joshua Zader’s intellectual relationship with Ayn Rand began as it does for so many, during his college years. He then blazed a ( Read more... )