Ontological rationality in metaphysical naturalism. Naturalism covers all areas of cognition from medicine to physics to mathematics, art, diet, religion, etc. Not all those subjects will be addressed in this column, which is more...
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Ontological rationality in metaphysical naturalism. Naturalism covers all areas of cognition from medicine to physics to mathematics, art, diet, religion, etc. Not all those subjects will be addressed in this column, which is more aligned with the philosophical aspects themselves as they relate to those other areas of cognition.
GREENSPAN GOT HIS START WITH AYN RAND
In 1966, Ayn Rand collected a series of essays into the book, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.” Twenty of the essays in the were written by Rand. The rest came from a trio of Rand’s acolytes, followers who had already been writing the newsletter of her “Objectivist” cult for more than a decade. Among these were three essays from a member of Rand’s inner circle; an economic advisor and dropout from the graduate economics program at Columbia - Alan... Read Full Story
Deliberately Misplaced Blame Mises Daily by Sean W. Malone Let's play a game. I have a not-so-famous quotation to share with you, and then you guess who said it: We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. I'll give you a hint; it was spoken by a sitting US president. Not quite enough... Read Full Story
Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election, combined with congressional gains for Democrats, will prompt a wave of soul-searching on the right. Among other things, we will be asking: What is the road back from the political wilderness? Where can we look for hope that the next four years will be a temporary lurch to the left from which America will soon recover? Fortunately, a long search is not really necessary. The past few weeks have provided—too late, alas—two clear answers, from... Read Full Story
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Allen Barra at The Daily Beast has posted a book review of two new biographies about the life of Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller, and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns. Capitalism’s Wicked Witch – The Daily Beast “Allen Barra thinks we should once and for all recognize her as a fraud and an ideologue with creepy followers.”
Any objectivity about the founder of Objectivism is impossible. I’ll lay... Read Full Story
I normally don't read biographies but was so much fun that I finished this huge 600-pages long volume in 4 days. Heller's biography of Ayn Rand is extremely detailed (sometimes, excessively so), but it is overall well-written and fun to read. For the most part, Heller sticks to relating the facts and doesn't attempt to offer her own interpretation of anything. This is a very good decision for this author because on the few occasions that she does venture an opinion, she almost often commits... Read Full Story
Elan Journo from the Ayn Rand Center joined Robert Spencer from Jihad Watch in giving a presentation to students at NYU on Islamo-Fascism, Nov. 19. The event was titled: "The Jihad Still Threatens America." Both speakers experienced a pie throwing incident. A Pakistani Jihadist named Maulana Maududi hurled whip-cream pies in their direction. But as an eyewitness to Gawker pointed out, the pair went "unscathed." The Leftwing Anarchist site InfoShop News described Journo's Pro-Defense... Read Full Story
Racism is a form of collectivism; the Right wing is individualist A representative from ARI, Dr. Harry Binswanger, describes for Glenn how it is that fascists like von Brunn came to be identified with the Right. "How did it happen that you look at people that are Nazis and you say that those are right wing? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever!" "There was a deal made between the Communists and the Nazis in the '30s where they each agreed to the define themselves as the opposite of the other... Read Full Story
The last M/MLA conference where I spoke the day after getting married was good in all respects except one: the book-fair. Normally, I love book-fairs at conferences, but this one looked more like a parody of a regular fair. It was held in the same room where banquets were served to the participants. The abundance of food presented a disturbing contrast to the paucity of actual books available for purchase. It were as if the conference organizers were trying to suggest that food for our... Read Full Story
The late philosopher Ayn Rand advocated abolishing all forms of government intervention in the economy. And lately, she’s been in the spotlight — with reported sales spikes of her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged and two new books out about her. But even before markets tumbled last October, the study of Rand had been getting attention from some Kentucky universities. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports.
One of Ayn Rand’s biggest fans recently spoke at the University of Louisville’s College of... Read Full Story
The Guardian has an article on the current Ayn Rand revival. There's an Ayn Rand revival in America these days. Sales of her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have skyrocketed in the past year, along with the number of Rand-themed articles in mainstream publications. The central philosophical (and indeed, scientific) problem for individualist like Rayn is the fact that homo "sapiens" is a social animal. Individualism is an idealism in an age when all philosophers are non-idealists... Read Full Story
