One of my professors in graduate school argued that St. Augustine is the most influential philosopher in history. I’m not convinced, though a good case can be made. I recently re-opened Confessions and came across Augustine’s strong version of original sin. As he exclaims to his God, “no one is free from sin in your […]
St. Augustine on why babies are evil Read More »
In 2006, Professor Smith published Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge University Press). In 2007, I reviewed it for the journal Philosophy in Review. Here is an audio version in MP3 format or at YouTube. Eight minutes: And here is a PDF version. Related: My review of David Kelley’s The Evidence of the
Review of Tara Smith’s *Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics* — audio version Read More »
How well do entrepreneurial success traits (creative rationality, initiative, courage, perseverance, and so on) map onto virtue ethics? An audio edition [mp3] of my 2009 essay “What Business Ethics Can Learn from Entrepreneurship” [pdf], first published in Journal of Private Enterprise. Or at YouTube: Abstract: Entrepreneurship is increasingly studied as a fundamental and foundational economic
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Mao Zedong on the ethical requirements of communism: “A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless
Mao on selflessness, altruism, and collectivism Read More »
The ethics of altruism [from the Latin, alter-ism or other-ism] holds that others are the standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests of others first, acts to achieve their interests, and, when necessary, sacrifices one’s interests for their sake. In The Fountainhead, Ellsworth Toohey is the major strategist of
Toohey’s five strategies of altruism Read More »
A good example of how political philosophy is driven by ethics. Here is Engels, Karl Marx’s collaborator in writing The Communist Manifesto and other works, criticizing liberals — despite nineteenth-century liberalism’s great accomplishment in reducing war and promoting peace between nations: You have brought about the fraternisation of the peoples – but the fraternity is
Friedrich Engels against liberal peace Read More »
[I use Ayn Rand’s classic The Fountainhead in my Introduction to Philosophy course, analyzing the five major characters as moral-philosophical types. Here is a digest of the novel’s brilliant-manipulator villain, Ellsworth Toohey.] The ethics of altruism holds that others are the standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests of
Ellsworth Toohey’s five strategies of altruism [repost] Read More »
My essay “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” is a 43-page study published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2009). Text version. Audiobook version: Part One, Part Two. 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
“Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” now online Read More »