Philosophy

In 1882, when Helen Keller was nineteen months old, an illness left her blind, deaf, and consequently dumb. But she would go on to live a life of success and happiness. How?

George Lucas says that selfishness puts one on the dark side, but it’s really the other way around. Selfishness, properly understood, is the rational concern for one’s own interests. It is the light.

If we want to understand and protect the values on which human life and liberty depend, we need clear understandings of the terms we use in thinking about them. Toward this end, it is helpful to understand the fallacy that Rand called “package-dealing” and the nature of what she called “anti-concepts.”

Adam Smith and Ayn Rand are widely considered to offer merely different flavors of pro-capitalist thought. But their differences are greater—and far more consequential—than their similarities.

William Kingdon Clifford was a 19th-century English mathematician and philosopher. In this essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” originally published in 1877, he argues that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

Living for Pleasure is a fun and much-needed introduction to the ideas of one of the world’s greatest philosophers. Epicurus’s teachings about reason, desire, and tranquility are as important now as they were twenty-three hundred years ago.

My debate with Stephen Hicks about whether Objectivism is a closed system or an open system has been posted on YouTube. Check it out—and if you find it clarifying, share it with people you think might appreciate it.

Babylon 5 is a unique science-fiction series that tells an epic story rich in philosophic ideas and moral messages. These make it timeless and well worth watching for anyone interested in complex drama.

Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine, Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, all published in 1943, launched the modern American liberty movement. Freedom’s Furies by Timothy Sandefur is the first book-length exploration of these women's relationships and context.

Knock at the Cabin depicts the vile notion that it is moral to sacrifice the person you love most—your highest value—for the benefit of others and/or to appease God.