Check Your Premises: August 2012

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, nicely summarizes Rand's influence on libertarians conservatives including Mitt Romney's VP choice, Paul Ryan, in Ayn Rand's Long Journey To The Heart Of American Politics | The New Republic.

About this blog

In 1968 when I was a freshman in college I discovered Ayn Rand’s writings, first reading The Fountainhead then Atlas Shrugged. This lead to an intensive period of study through the 1990s. In the 1980s and 90s I wrote for publications like On Principle, The Thomas Jefferson Review and The Objective American.

In the meantime I also read other philosophers such as John Kekes, David Norton (Personal Destinies), and Ken Wilber. Norton and Kekes fall into the Aristotelian tradition that has seen a recent rebirth in the form of the virtue ethics movement. Wilber, on the other hand, belongs more to in the Buddhist, Eastern tradition but this doesn’t nearly capture the depth and uniqueness of his thinking. Reading these philosophers sharpened my thinking while exposing me to different viewpoints. While I accept the basic principles of Objectivism, I constantly apply her advice of “check your premises” to Objectivism itself. This blog offers my thoughts on where this approach has taken me.

Check Your Premises

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Ayn Rand's Long Journey To The Heart Of American Politics | The New Republic

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