“Go into the London Stock Exchange—a more respectable place than many a court—and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to their church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.

What's New?

For Australia's Quadrant magazine, here is Michael Warby's review of my Explaining Postmodern- ism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. The book, now in its eighth printing, is available from Amazon, The Objectivism Store, and Barnes & Noble. The second printing of the hardcover edition is also available.

Libertarianism My essay "The Enlight- enment" has come out in editor Ronald Hamowy's The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, now listed at Amazon and Sage Publications. Looks like a wide-ranging and high- powered collection of essays.

Henderson My essay “Ethics and Economics” appears in editor David Henderson's The Concise Encyclo- pedia of Economics, available from Amazon. CEE is the second edition of The Fortune Encyclo- pedia of Economics, which was published to acclaim in 1993, and includes essays by "Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker and George Stigler, former presidential economic advisors, financial columnists, and economists such as Armen Alchian, Don Boudreaux, Deepak Lal, Anna Schwartz, Lawrence Summers, and Murray Rothbard." Thanks to Liberty Fund, the entire encyclopedia is now also available for free online, including my "Ethics and Economics".

An experiment in the new media: Here is an MP3 format reading of my Wall Street Journal op-ed, Global Problems Are Too Big for Little Kids. The text of the short essay is also available in German translation (PDF).

FSP cover My Free Speech and Post- modernism is now available in a 26-page monograph edition at Amazon. It has been also translated into Korean and German. (both are PDF.) The original essay was published in English in Navigator in 2002.

What caused the horror that was Nazism? How philosophical were the National Socialists? And to what extent was Nietzsche a forerunner of the Nazis? My 2:45-hour video documentary has over 400 images and is now in its second printing and available at Amazon, Ockham's Razor, and Netflix. Here is the 38-chapter Scene Selection Menu. Here is Professor Tibor Machan's review. And the first several minutes of Nietzsche and the Nazis can be seen at YouTube (sometimes it takes YouTube two attempts to find it, for some reason).

JAEPP My essay "Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics" is now available in Korean and German. (Both are in PDF format.) The original essay was published in English in The Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy and is also available online at the Social Science Research Network and in a 40-page monograph edition from Amazon.com.

Updated to include images of the major mentioned art works: My short essay on “Post- Postmodern Art” is featured in the Aesthetic Commentary section of Michael Newberry’s site. It's also available here with pictures in PDF format.

BES “Objectivism”: My article was published in Sage Publication's five-volume, 2592-page reference work, Encyclopedia of Busi- ness and Society, edited by Robert W. Kolb, professor of finance and applied ethics at Loyola University Chicago.

Why Art Became Ugly My essay on “Why Art Became Ugly,” first published in Navigator, is now also available in German translation by Anja Hartleb-Parson and Korean translation by Ryan Chul Han Park, both with links to the relevant art images.

Current Projects

I finished an essay on "What Business Ethics Can Learn from Entrepreneurship" for Spring 2009 issue of The Journal of Private Enterprise.

My “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” is scheduled to come out in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies in 2009. Here is the abstract: "Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism."

I am working with David Kelley on the third edition of our Readings for Logical Analysis, to be published by W. W. Norton & Co. in 2010.

I am working with artist Michael Newberry on a longer project on the modern and postmodern art worlds. The working title is But Is It Art? An Irreverent History of Modern Art. Fascinating aesthetic and philosophical stuff. Completion date: Don’t ask.

My longer-term book project, The Fate of Art Under Capitalism, is about three-quarters done. (I miss my sabbatical already.)

Flashback: Read the article: Nietzsche and Objectivism by Stephen Hicks.

Worth Reading:

1/6 This year's Economic Freedom of the World has been released, and the USA has slipped to eighth place in the rankings. Lots of reasons for that. Is one reason a cultural shift - Rich Karlgaard raises an excellent question (though he speaks of "jealousy" when he means "envy"): to what extent is politics driven by judgments of others' achievements - those on the left leaning to envy while others leaning to respect and admiration?

1/4 Google and Life magazine have teamed up to present Life's photo archive: "Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google." (Via Grant McCracken.) And here are National Geographic's top ten photos of 2008. A fascinating "elbowed" and immensely long-legged squid is caught on video by a Shell Oil deep-water remotely operated vehicle. And a Guardian series on special places: writers' and composers' rooms.

1/2 Let's also keep in mind all the positive indicators for the new year. Radley Balko rounds up some of the good news. On the medical front, pioneering efforts in cell regeneration. (Thanks to Karen for the link.) In surgery, the first face transplant in America. And even on the political-economic front, The New York Times reports on China's slow evolution away from socialism: in the late 1970s, "after decades of isolation and outright hostility to capitalism, China suddenly began loosening state controls over the economy and encouraging its citizens to get rich. What followed was three decades of roaring growth and a export-oriented wealth boom that the World Bank says has lifted 400 million people out of poverty." (Thanks to Bob M. for the link.)

12/28 When absurdist humor is almost real: Dave Barry's 2008 year in review.

12/23 A collection of photographs of beautiful, beautiful libraries from around the world.

12/19 Jeff Jacoby on the vast increase in financial regulation during the Bush II years.

12/17 Noah Brier reflects on the human capacity for evil: For example, was Hitler "abnormal", or was he a person with normal capacities who chose an evil path? And speaking of evil: a report on the trafficking in young Nepalese girls for the sex trade in India. (Via ifeminists.)

12/15 A fine pair of quotations from Robert Heinlein and Thomas Macauley on the win-win relationship between economics and natural beauty. On the other hand, let this be a warning to beavers about breaking environmental laws.

12/13 Is the art market in a classic bubble state? And what's up with big money being thrown at sharks in formaldehyde and other oddities? Reason's Nick Gillespie looks at the curious economics of contemporary art. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)

Archives: Worth Reading 2008, Worth Reading 2007, Worth Reading 2006, Worth Reading 2005, Worth Reading 2004, Worth Reading 2003.