Over the years I’ve enjoyed and learned from many of Carlin Romano’s articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He can do good philosophical reporting. So I picked up America the Philosophical, and I was disappointed. Romano’s thesis is that the United States is a nation of vigorous philosophical activity and — contrary to the […]
Carlin Romano’s America the Philosophical Read More »
Today I walked past a well-groomed old man driving an awesome Jaguar convertible. Jaguars are my favorite sports car, and I felt a twinge of envy. Later at a fast food restaurant, an energetic teenager before me in line was counting out his coins, unsure if he had enough to pay for a cold drink.
A thought about real wealth Read More »
My lengthy journal article entitled “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” [pdf] is now publicly available for free at the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies‘ site. 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
“Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” at JARS Read More »
Forthcoming in January 2012. Profiles in Liberty main page.
Profiles in Liberty — series trailer Read More »
Here is a simplified flowchart, developed for my business ethics courses, reflecting my understanding of subprime mortgages’ contribution to the crisis. Let me emphasize that this is only about the subprime contribution of the overall crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enabled much spillover into non-subprime mortgage sectors, government-set capital requirements and other regulations enabled
Subprime mortgage crisis — history flowchart Read More »
One of my talks at Francisco Marroquín University was on making sense of our mixed economy–an unwieldy combination of market and socialist elements. The 28-minute talk integrates themes from my intellectual heroes–Smith, Mill, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan, and Tullock–and connects market economics, politics, ethics, history, and public choice to explaining our semi-coherent mixed
Seminar: Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy Read More »
I like this paragraph from Michael Strong’s The Habit of Thought: “The effort of Socratic Practice is to develop students’ own standard of intellectual judgment by means of placing the onus of responsibility for understanding entirely on them and providing them with the tools and experiences necessary to develop their intellectual judgment. ‘Does it make
Michael Strong on Socratic teaching Read More »
I’ll be giving a talk at the 2011 APEE conference in April. My title is “Cameron Hawley, Henry Kitchell Webster, and Populist Capitalism in Literature.” Here is the abstract: In the early and middle part of the twentieth-century, Hawley and Webster were strong-selling authors of novels that dramatized themes of business ethics and political economy.
Populist capitalism in literature Read More »