Belying their seemingly chaotic diversity, all of modern fiction and modern criticism unite on at least one point: rejection of romanticism. The characteristic literature—and, indeed, art in general—of the twentieth century has been, broadly, either naturalist or nonobjective.
Why is it important to dramatize our values? Well, morality or ethics, Rand tells us, “is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.
Casual acquaintance with Ayn Rand’s ideas often involves the assumption that Rand would approve of Oliver Stone’s character Gordon Gekko (of “greed is good” fame) and of popular rich guys such as Donald Trump. It is easy to correct the misapprehension concerning Gordon Gekko. He spouts a philosophy at odds with Rand’s, insisting that morality must be abandoned for wealth while she suggests the opposite. But explaining why Rand would not approve of Donald Trump is a trickier matter—if it does not seem so, start to give it a try.
Perhaps everyone will agree that if we were all angels, no state would be necessary, and if angels were the governors, they would require neither internal nor external constraints to ensure that they governed justly.
Harvard professor of philosophy, John Rawls, can be credited with provoking the most recent angst over the issue of intergenerational equity. Rawls views intergenerational equity as a policy issue necessitating governmental intervention to manage “social saving and investment” for the benefit of the least advantaged generation.
In this paper, I take up the long-overdue task of constructing the foundation for an a priori theory of international relations. For, contra Morgenthau and the legions of empiricists who have followed him, it would not only be possible to construct an a priori theory of international relations, the foundation for such a theory already exists.
The aim of this article is to resolve the putative contradiction between Hayek’s “legal framework of general and abstract rules” and the concepts of “twin ideas of evolution and of the spontaneous formation of order”.
“The Broken Window,” An essay written by Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), was the first of a dozen short essays compiled under the heading, What is Seen and What is Not Seen (1964). In these essays, Bastiat cautions us by saying that to accurately evaluate the full outcome of an event, we must account for all effects of that event, namely, the obvious (that which is seen), and also the not so obvious (that which is not seen). “The Broken Window” is the most famous of these instructive essays and is often cited by libertarians as a precise lesson in critical economic analysis.
Three decades ago, I published “Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?” The answer I gave is that we do not, that government only substitutes one kind of anarchy for another. In this paper I revisit the eponymous question, drawing on Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, as well as several contemporary scholars, for support.
In attempting to promote the libertarian viewpoint, particularly in its anarchic variety, one is faced with a variety of problems. Some problems are theoretical and are well treated in the comprehensive literature; other problems, however, are practical or rhetorical and, while the theoretical problems (and their solution) are intrinsically the more important, it is vital that the practical/rhetorical problems be overcome if the theoretical points are to get a fair hearing. As human beings, we perceive and understand in accordance with our needs, our desires and our interests.
