The Students for Liberty organization hosts conferences at colleges around the country. This year they’re having regional conferences at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Arizona State, and other campuses. I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Chicago conference on October 16 on the theme “What Is Liberty Good For? Political Activism and the Meaning of […]
My upcoming SFL talk at University of Chicago Read More »
This week we are starting Descartes’s Meditations in my Introduction to Philosophy course. One of the wonderful things about the Internet is its enabling us easily to see things like Descartes’s original handwriting. Here is a letter he wrote, dated 27 May 1641: The letter is in French and was written to Marin Mersenne about
A stolen Descartes manuscript Read More »
Should one be free to drive a taxi in Miami? Apparently not. The city government of Miami controls the number of taxi cabs and, as of 2002, had decided that only 1,856 taxi licenses shall exist. When a license becomes available, it is sold via lottery. But to participate in the lottery one must pay
Timothy Sandefur’s new book Read More »
Check it out (pdf). It’s a trifold design, with panels featuring my colleagues Matt Flamm, Shawn Klein, and me, the courses we teach, a list of famous philosophy majors in college, and more. Designed by Christopher Vaughan. (I want to live that library. Right now.)
Philosophy department brochure Read More »
Philippa Foot’s career at Oxford spanned much of the sprawling twentieth-century. Foot came to be a champion of neo-Aristotelian ethics, in contrast to the schools of deontology and utilitarian consequentialism that held sway in much of the Anglo-American philosophical world. Her Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) was her last contribution to the discussion. Here
Philippa Foot (1920-2010) Read More »
This is a very good book: Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz’s From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity. I found it an exciting read, in part because I teach business ethics and philosophy of economics and I’m used to being immersed in the mainstream perspective, much of which
From Poverty to Prosperity Read More »
For much of the twentieth century, poverty and stagnation characterized India’s economic life, yet India has transformed itself and prospects for its 1.1 billion people have improved dramatically. Economics professor Nimish Adhia recently spoke at Rockford College on how Bollywood films both signaled and contributed to the cultural shift necessary for India’s economic liberalization to
Interview with Nimish Adhia on Bollywood and the new India Read More »
This is an excellent overview of the politicized economics, by Peter Boettke and Steven Horwitz, along with an introduction by the excellent John Allison. The abstract: “The Great Recession (or the Great Hangover) that began in 2008 did not have to happen. Its causes and consequences are not mysterious. Indeed, this particular and very painful
The House that Uncle Sam Built Read More »