| Type | Title | Author | Date |
| Op-ed | Columbus Day: In Praise of Exploitation | Edward Hudgins | 10/10/2005 |
| Description: Columbus opened a whole new land for those who would tame nature and build a new, free and prosperous nation. We should celebrate the opportunity for America that he gave us—not apologize for it. |
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| Cultural Calendar | The Doctor as Lockean | Roger Donway | 9/1/2004 |
| Description: Thomas Sydenham, follower of Francis Bacon's methodology and close friend of John Locke, brought an intense empiricism to seventeenth-century medicine. As a result, the age of the Enlightenment dubbed him "the English Hippocrates." |
|
| Center News | Explaining Postmodernism published! | | 7/1/2004 |
| Description: Stephen Hicks’s book Explaining Postmodernism, written while a senior fellow at The Objectivist Center, has been published by Scholargy. The book traces postmodernism from its roots in Rousseau and Kant through its current adherents, such as Foucault and Rorty. |
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| Article | Rockefeller and the Muckrakers | Roger Donway | 7/1/2004 |
| Description: Throughout his long life of ninety-eight years, John D. Rockefeller Sr. heard the same lies told about him year after year, decade after decade, and generation after generation. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: Enlightenment Thought and Action | | 6/1/2004 |
| Description: The Creation of the Modern World:
The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment By Roy Porter; Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era By Jerome Huyler; The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World By Jenny Uglow; Self-Help By Samuel Smiles
|
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| Article | John Rennie: Enlightenment Engineer | Roger Donway | 6/1/2004 |
| Description: London Bridge—as every child used to know—was falling down. John Rennie was the man brought in to replace it. |
|
| Cultural Calendar | The Lovesong of Alexander Pope | Roger Donway | 5/1/2004 |
| Description: In one astonishing poem, a cool and witty Enlightenment Catholic made eternal a twelfth-century woman's cry for carnal love. |
|
| Article | Mozart's Don Giovanni: An Enlightenment Hero? | John Kerns | 5/1/2004 |
| Description: The greatest of the Enlightenment's composers chose as one of his chief protagonists the seducer Don Giovanni. Did Mozart mean to present the Don as a symbol of independent thinking and action? Or is he supposed to be a dissolute roué who gets his just deserts by being dragged down to Hell? |
|
| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: Human Accomplishment | | 4/1/2004 |
| Description: The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance By Anthony Gottlieb; Art: A New History By Paul Johnson; Music in Western Civilization By Paul Henry Lang;
A History of Invention: From Stone Axes to Silicon Chips By Trevor I. Williams, William E. Schaaf, and Arianne E. Burnette
|
|
| FrontReport | Report from the Front: Happy Birthday George Washington! | Edward Hudgins | 2/14/2004 |
| Description: George Washington’s achievements reflected his outstanding moral character and political legacy. |
|
| Article | Fortress Americanism | Roger Donway | 2/1/2004 |
| Description: Foreign ideas—mostly European ideas—are having a growing influence on American judges, lawyers, and political theorists. In principle, there is nothing wrong with this. As a nation of immigrants, America has thrived by importing the fresh perspectives of foreigners. But when the foreign ideas influencing U.S. elites are also alien ideas—alien to the fundamental philosophy of our founding—then they bring danger. |
|
| Cultural Calendar | The Victorian Atlas | Roger Donway | 2/1/2004 |
| Description: Henry Bessemer may have been the first person to make his career as an inventor selling in an open market. As a result of his restless, problem-solving mind, he created the inventions that began the Steel Age. Yet our culture's biographers, who expend decades writing the lives of artistic frauds and power-seeking politicians, have never turned their attention to this Atlas of nineteenth-century industry. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: Modernity | | 11/1/2003 |
| Description: The Empire of Reason By Henry Steele Commager; The Lunar Men
By Jenny Uglow; The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson By Daniel J. Boorstin; The Portable Enlightenment Reader Edited by Isaac Kramnick |
|
| Perspectives | The Battle for Toleration--and Its Betrayal | Roger Donway | 11/1/2003 |
| Description: According to Alan Charles Kors, “Voltaire’s deepest influence on Western civilization is the enshrining of toleration as a virtue.” Yet today the concept of toleration he promoted has been thoroughly perverted. |
|
| Article | The Party of Modernity | David Kelley | 11/1/2003 |
| Description: The values of modernity, which flourished in the Enlightenment, still animate much of American life. Yet people do not think of themselves as sharing an outlook, comparable to Catholicism or Buddhism. If the modernist perspective is once again to be a force in the culture, we must articulate it as a unique, coherent philosophy. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: Constitutional Philosophy | | 10/1/2003 |
| Description: Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era
By Jerome Huyler; Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution By Forrest McDonald; Taking the Constitution Seriously By Walter Berns; Cato Supreme Court Review: 2001–2002
Edited by James L. Swanson
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| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: The Red Death | | 9/1/2003 |
| Description: Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum; The Harvest of Sorrow By Robert Conquest; Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism By Joshua Muravchik; The Black Book of Communism By Stéphane Courtois et al. |
|
| Commentary | How Chile Was Saved | Jose Pinera | 9/1/2003 |
| Description: Leftist legend says that Salvador Allende was a popular, democratic president ousted by a repressive military dictatorship. In fact, the revolution that overthrew him rescued Chile from the horrors of Marxist socialism and started the country on a path to genuine freedom. José Piñera sets the record straight. |
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| Article | Can There Be an ''After Socialism''? | Alan Charles Kors | 9/1/2003 |
| Description: Virtually every American knows that Nazi Germany brought death to six million Jews and perhaps six million other victims. But how many know that communism is responsible for seven to eight times as many deaths? Until the West has thoroughly confronted this horrific slaughter, writes Alan Kors, communism cannot belong to the past. |
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| Perspectives | The Industrial Revolution's Indispensable Entrepreneur | Roger Donway | 9/1/2003 |
| Description: Students of capitalist history too often imagine that it is merely the history of technology. The role played by Matthew Boulton in the development of the steam engine demonstrates how false that picture is. |
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| Cultural Calendar | Lives and Lessons for a Museum of Capitalism | Roger Donway | 8/1/2003 |
| Description: The lives and lessons that belong in a Museum of Capitalism |
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| Op-ed | What If There Were No America? | Edward Hudgins | 6/28/2003 |
| Description: On July 4th we celebrate the founding of the United States, the freest, richest country on Earth. To appreciate this country we can reflect upon what the world would be like if America had lost the Revolution, if there were no America. In this piece I argue that without idea of liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence, there would be no land of opportunity, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, created by immigrants who came here to live free and prosper, no refuge for the oppressed, and no military giant to oppose tyrannies. Fortunately, this land of liberty was established, and we each strengthen and renew it when we make the most of our freedom and respect the freedom of others. Fortunately, there is an America. |
|
| Perspectives | Of Courage Undaunted | Russell La Valle | 5/31/2003 |
| Description: May 14, 1804 was the beginning of one of America's greatest adventure stories: the Lewis and Clark expedition. |
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| Perspectives | The Enlightenment Spirit of Edward Jenner | Roger Donway | 5/31/2003 |
| Description: Celebrating the life-saving medical discovery (smallpox vaccine) of the scientist Edward Jenner |
|
| Cultural Calendar | April Cultural Calendar | | 4/29/2003 |
| Description: Honoring the birthdays of great achievers in history. |
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| Perspectives | The Life-Centered Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson | Robert Bidinotto | 4/29/2003 |
| Description: Because his focus was on human life itself, Jefferson was the central figure for the specialists who created the American Enlightenment. |
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| Review | The Founders' Father | Edward Hudgins | 12/18/2002 |
| Description: Historian David McCullough was recently asked why America's Founding Fathers seem so qualitatively different from today's politicians. His answer was simple and direct: "They didn't just read Cicero, Cicero was part of them." |
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| Review | The Parasites' Paradise | Howard Dickman | 10/1/2002 |
| Description: In Heaven on Earth, Joshua Muravchik gives us a history of the socialist movement since the late eighteenth century, told primarily through profiles of selected theorists, agitators, and leaders, each of whom exemplifies a critical stage or form in its evolution. A less-appealing crowd of bloodsuckers, congenital liars, airheads, and killers is not easy to imagine. |
|
| Commentary | From the Silk Trade Route to the World Trade Center | Neera Badhwar | 9/9/2002 |
| Description: Today’s predators do not want to steal wealth but, rather, to destroy it and
its source, our freedom. To preserve the spirit of the Silk Road and the
World Trade Center, we must affirm and celebrate their goals of prosperity
and peace. |
|
| Review | The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters—and Multiculturalists | Walter Donway | 8/31/2002 |
| Description: In his new collection of essays, Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist, sociologist Paul Hollander probes the connections between two apparently disparate questions: Why has the collapse of the Soviet Union (unlike the collapse of Nazi Germany) not produced academic studies of the relationship between totalitarian theory and practice? And: Why do Western intellectuals find their own societies intolerably unjust, given the totalitarian states that have flourish around the world in this century? |
|
| Review | The Life and Mind of John Adams | Roger Donway | 5/31/2002 |
| Description: David McCullough's John Adams prompts our admiration for this Founding Father's work and character. C. Bradley Thompson's John Adams & the Spirit of Liberty prompts our respect for the man's merit as a political thinker. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Suggested Readings: John Adams | | 4/30/2002 |
| Description: America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, John Adams, John Adams And The Spirit of Liberty, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. |
|
| Interview | The House of Adams | | 4/30/2002 |
| Description: Richard Brookhiser's new book, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918, examines the family that gave America four generations of great men. In this exclusive Navigator interview, Brookhiser points out what virtues made them great and what vices beset them. |
|
| Review | The Decline of the East | Roger Donway | 3/31/2002 |
| Description: In What Went Wrong? Bernard Lewis—the leading American scholar of Islam—recounts Muslims' desperate quest, over the last three hundred years, to discover the causes of their civilization's decline. |
|
| Interview | David Mayer Puts Lincoln on Trial | | 3/21/2002 |
| Description: David Mayer, a professor of history and law at Capital University, discusses his forthcoming summer seminar lecture, “Lincoln: Hero or Villain?” |
|
| Commentary | The Intellectual as Barbarian | Roger Donway | 1/11/2002 |
| Description: Roger Donway writes that the Western assault on civilization can be traced all the way back to Rousseau's first Discourse, in 1750. But Norman Mailer's remarks on September 11 displayed both the continuing influence of that work and its cultural consequences for the West. |
|
| Article | Romanticism is Dead! Long Live Romanticism! | Michelle Fram-Cohen | 1/11/2002 |
| Description: Victor Hugo wrote Ninety-Three to revive Romanticism. A century later, Ayn Rand wrote The Romantic Manifesto for the same purpose, and she included her "Introduction" to Ninety-Three as a key chapter. Michelle Fram-Cohen explains why it was the perfect choice. |
|
| Review | The Roots of the West | William Thomas | 12/1/2001 |
| Description: In this review of Greek Ways and The Dream of Reason, William Thomas tracks the creation of Western civilization from classical Athens to the Renaissance. |
|
| Review | What is the West? | Roger Donway | 9/1/2001 |
| Description: David Gress's From Plato to Nato, disputes the old account of Western progress as a series of "Magic Moments" leading twentieth-century liberalism. But it disagrees even more strongly with the West's postmodern critics. |
|
| Article | Automobility and Freedom | Sam Kazman | 9/1/2001 |
| Description: The car has dramatically enhanced our ability to realize the fundamental human attribute of self-directed action. As a consequence, writes, Sam Kazman, it has also opened new roads to liberty, knowledge, and economic opportunity. |
|
| Commentary | Postmodernism and the Jefferson-Hemings Myth | David Mayer | 5/1/2001 |
| Description: After sitting on a commission that set out to examine the Thomas Jefferson–Sally Hemings matter, TOC advisor David Mayer comes to several conclusions about how postmodern philosophy has corrupted the study of history. |
|
| Interview | The Roots of the Great Depression | | 1/1/2001 |
| Description: Many economists and political scientists have worked to present an objective view of the causes of the Great Depression. In this interview, noted scholar Richard Timberlake explores the way in which government helped cause and prolong the Depression by manipulating the money supply. |
|
| Interview | The Restoration of Market Thinking | | 10/1/2000 |
| Description: An interview with John L. Kelley, author of Bringing the Market Back In, is a professor of history at Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio. |
|
| Interview | The New Deal's War against Economic Recovery | | 7/1/2000 |
| Description: Interview with Gary Dean Best about the New Deal and economics. |
|
| Article | The Embattled Life of Moreau de Maupertuis | Roger Donway | 7/1/2000 |
| Description: This article, which looks at the career of Maupertuis himself, indicates that the eighteenth century, though it may have been an era of light, was not always an era of sweetness, and not merely because it was divided into pro- and anti-Enlightenment factions. Sometimes, there were political divisions among the supporters of the Enlightenment. |
|
| Interview | The American Enlightenment's Other Side | | 6/1/2000 |
| Description: Richard Brookhiser has emerged as the person most responsible for bringing about a popular awareness of the Federalists. He is the author of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington and Alexander Hamilton: American. In this interview, Brookhiser discusses the importance of the Federalists to the American Enlightenment. |
|
| Article | Benjamin Franklin: Enlightenment Archetype | Roger Donway | 2/1/2000 |
| Description: An article celebrating the achievements of inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin. |
|
| Article | Cato and the Enlightenment Mind | Stephen Miller | 12/1/1999 |
| Description: George Washington had it performed
at Valley Forge to inspire the troops. The most memorable words of
Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale are but allusions to its lines. Yet
Joseph Addison's Cato is now all but forgotten. Stephen Miller,
formerly editor of a newsletter on Soviet and East European Affairs
(published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), tells the story of
the drama's rise and fall. |
|
| Excerpt | Liberty — and the Business of Government | | 12/1/1999 |
| Description: Excerpts from one of Cato's Letters, by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. The authors' thesis, which reflects the high value that the Enlightenment placed on (small-r) republican virtue, deals with the role of citizenship in the preservation of liberty. |
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| Article | What Objectivists Can Learn from Young Jim Hill | Roger Donway | 11/1/1999 |
| Description: Objectivists should remember Jim Hill not only as building a transcontinental railroad, but for his other achievements too. |
|
| Interview | How Lockean Was the American Revolution? | | 5/1/1999 |
| Description: In this interview Huyler explains the coherence of John Locke's philosophy and how this philosophy influenced America's Founding Fathers. |
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| Miscellaneous | Soundings, December 1998 | | 12/1/1998 |
| Description: Kennedy administration and antitrust, email as legal liability, Russian and Soviet history, Dennis Vacco. |
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| Review | Delenda est Carthago | Roger Donway | 10/1/1998 |
| Description: A brief review of hree historical novels about Carthage |
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| Letters | Letters: Aristotle as a Scientist (April 1998) | Susan Dawn Wake | 4/1/1998 |
| Description: An exchange between professors Susan Dawn Wake and Alan Charles Kors following Kor's interview The Philosophy of the Enlightenment |
|
| Interview | Fulfilling the Enlightenment | | 4/1/1998 |
| Description: An interview with David N. Mayer, a professor of both law and history at Capital University, in which he fields questions on the moral basis of the ideals of the Founding Fathers, which authors they relied on when seeking guidance on fundamental political issues, and many more. |
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| Article | Honoring Jefferson: A Life-Centered Philosopher | Robert James Bidinotto | 4/1/1998 |
| Description: A celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday with a focus on his most distinctive accomplishment. |
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| Review | The Beacon at Alexandria, By Gillian Bradshaw | William Thomas | 12/1/1997 |
| Description: William Thomas recommends a novel set in the late Roman Empire and featuring a heroine who disguises herself as a eunuch in order to become a physician--'an exciting tale that celebrates individualism, courage, and professional competence. |
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| Review | The Last of the Wine, By Mary Renault | Roger Donway | 12/1/1997 |
| Description: Mary Renault brings Plato's dialogues alive in The Last of the Wine. |
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| Interview | The Philosophy of the Enlightenment | | 11/1/1997 |
| Description: Alan Charles Kors, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the West's most rational and individualist era. How did the age view God, free will, reason, self-interest, liberty, and the arts? What did the Enlightenment think of the Renaissance and of Aristotle? |
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| Article | The Forgotten Essentials of Jefferson's Philosophy | David Mayer | 4/1/1997 |
| Description: An article by David Mayer of Capital University on Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy |
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| Audio | Origins of the Constitution and Bill of Rights | David Mayer | |
Description: Audio Excerpt.Dr. Mayer discusses the origins of the Constitution and Bill of Rights—placing the philosophical foundations of America's founding documents in historical context and showing how they are still important means for limiting the power of government and preserving individual liberty.
Buy the audiotape at The Objectivism Store |
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| Audio | The Declaration of Independence as a Literary and Philosophical Work | David Mayer | |
Description: Audio Excerpt. Citing Jefferson's "Summary View of the Rights of British America," Dr. Mayer shows how the American philosophy of government is one premised on individual rights.
Buy the audiotape at The Objectivism Store |
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