| Type | Title | Author | Date |
| Article | Multiculturalism and its Discontents | Bruce Thornton | 11/8/2005 |
| Description: Bruce Thornton explains how multiculturalism is a the root of the London bombings. And now France is suffering the same fate for the same reasons. |
|
| FrontReport | Scared of Halloween | Edward Hudgins | 10/31/2005 |
| Description: The politicalization of Halloween |
|
| Article | The Need for a New Individualism | Edward Hudgins | 1/1/2005 |
| Description: The political and economic manifestations of individualism—freedom and capitalism—cannot stand on their own; they require sound moral ideas of rational self-interest.
|
|
| Article | Honoring Ayn Rand | | 12/1/2004 |
| Description: Sixteen individuals—from the world of politics to the world of the academy, from the corporation to the think thank—pay homage to the philosopher and novelist on the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth. |
|
| Article | Demonize, Then Pulverize | Sam Kazman | 11/1/2004 |
| Description: Ten years ago, a new type of lawsuit was filed against the tobacco industry. It began by making the industry into a national pariah and then demanding huge payments in compensation for the expenses it had supposedly thrust upon the U.S. states. That pattern is quickly becoming the model for many other lawsuits |
|
| Article | Why Art Became Ugly | Stephen Hicks | 9/1/2004 |
| Description: Stephen Hicks shows that approximately a hundred years ago artists started down a road that has led them step by step to today's aesthetic dead-end. Hicks outlines the postmodern philosophy that underlies modern art, reviews famous pieces, and ends with a call for a new aesthetic that will be attuned to the realities of the twenty-first century. |
|
| Op-ed | Big Tobacco's Suicidal Detente | Andrew Bissell | 8/12/2004 |
| Description: Tobacco company Philip Morris is supporting a Congressional plan that would place on it even more regulations. But as Andrew Bissell argues in this op-ed, for too long tobacco companies have tried to make deals with anti-smoking zealots who want to shut them down, only to find such deals don't purchase peace but simply invite more attacks. Whether one is a smoker or not, one must recognize that consumer freedom is in danger when government can snuff out industries and products of which they disapprove. |
|
| Miscellaneous | July/August Soundings | | 7/1/2004 |
| Description: Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Tax Hikes; Rural Property Rights; Whom do Americans Trust? |
|
| 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. |
|
| Article | In Defense of Cowboy Capitalism | Roger Donway | 7/1/2004 |
| Description: Pro-capitalists need to offer a defense of big-business executives that is not undercut by libertinism, postmodern moral skepticism, religious morality, or utopian illusions. |
|
| Review | What Does Science Say about the Mind? | Robert Campbell | 6/1/2004 |
| Description: Owen Flanagan, author of The Problem of the Soul, has his heart in the right place. He wants to reject the religious view of the mind as an immaterial substance. But the scientific view, Flanagan insists, is a physicalist view and every experience is just a physical event. Despite that, Flanagan says that he believes mental processes are real. What does that mean for a physicalist? And what does it mean for free will? |
|
| Article | The Problem of Animal Rights | Shawn Klein | 6/1/2004 |
| Description: Americans overwhelmingly support some degree of legal protection for animals, and a quarter of those polled say that animals should have the same rights as humans. What arguments have philosophers made in favor of such legislation and how well do those arguments hold up? Could a philosophy of law that started from a valid of theory of rights justify extending some protection to animals? |
|
| FrontReport | Report from the Front: Cannes' Cultural Corruption | Edward Hudgins | 5/19/2004 |
| Description: The applause from a crowd of rich elites at the Cannes film festival for a movie bashing the rich is radical chic at its worse, and illustrating the need to reject an altruistic ethics. |
|
| 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. |
|
| FAQ | What Is the Objectivist View of Free Will? | William Thomas | 12/1/2003 |
| Description: Thomas explains Objectivism's understanding that volition resides in the exercise of reason, demonstrates that our knowledge of volition's existence has axiomatic status in the hierarchy of knowledge, and shows that any attempt to deny the existence of free will is therefore self-refuting. |
|
| Review | The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett | Eyal Mozes | 12/1/2003 |
| Description: In Freedom Evolves, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett defends the view called "compatibilism," the idea that freedom of the will should be redefined so that it is compatible with determinism. Yet his entire project is motivated by one assumption that he refuses to give up: the assumption that causality is a relation between events. |
|
| Article | Better Never? | Sam Kazman | 12/1/2003 |
| Description: The Precautionary Principle is the idea that society should permit no new technologies to be developed without the certainty that they will cause no environmental harm. But to stop technologies in their infancy may well mean stopping them dead. And given that so much of human survival and flourishing depends on new technologies, stopping technology means curtailing civilization. |
|
| 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. |
|
| 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. |
|
| Article | Is High Self-Esteem Bad for You? | Robert Campbell Walter Foddis | 8/1/2003 |
| Description: Recent studies that denigrate the value of self-esteem rely upon methodologies that fail to distinguish between genuine self-esteem and narcissism. |
|
| Review | Rousseau's Children | Roger Donway | 2/28/2003 |
| Description: In his book Life at the Bottom, psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple describes how his patients at a hospital and prison in the slums of Birmingham, England, got to their pathetic condition. He does not blame their environment, or their genes, or even, chiefly, their upbringing. Rather, he says, these people—and the underclass generally— have reached "the bottom" because of the worldview they have adopted. |
|
| Commentary | Vandal Chic | Heather Mac Donald | 8/30/2002 |
| Description: Graffiti is metastasizing again throughout New York City. But if the New York Times’s culture critics are to be believed, New Yorkers should be thrilled. Every few months, the paper of record disgorges itself of an article breathlessly celebrating graffiti vandalism as a vital urban art form. |
|
| Op-ed | Jihad comes to Harvard | Tal Ben-Shahar | 6/12/2002 |
| Description: Harvard’s Commencement speech was inappropriate and damaging. |
|
| Commentary | Two Cheers for John Tierney | Roger Donway | 2/28/2002 |
| Description: Why is the New York Times better on Tuesdays and Fridays than it is on any other day? Because on those days the paper's Metro Section prints 'The Big City,' written by the libertarian columnist John Tierney. |
|
| Op-ed | The Toxic Fallout on Campus | Damon W. Root | 10/3/2001 |
| Description: Anti-American sentiments spreading in U.S. colleges
|
|
| Commentary | The Assault on Civilization | David Kelley | 9/13/2001 |
| Description: David Kelley, Executive Director, comments on destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists on September 11, 2001 as an attack on the symbols of the values of civilization. |
|
| Commentary | Faith and Funding: What Is the Root of the Stem Cell Controversy? | Patrick Stephens | 8/10/2001 |
| Description: The current debate over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research raises two basic questions: “Is it morally and legally proper to use human embryos for such research?” and “Should government funds be used for this research?” Patrick Stephens, TOC’s manager of current affairs, sorts out the issues. |
|
| Op-ed | Anti-globalism and Nihilism | William Thomas | 7/25/2001 |
| Description: The recent surge of anti-globalism protests are examples of nihilism in practice. |
|
| Review | Postmodern Medicine | James Lee Brooks | 5/1/2001 |
| Description: Psychiatrist Sally Satel has compiled a “horror file” of postmodern philosophy’s effects on medicine: PC, M.D. Reviewer James Lee Brooks says the harms exist, but reality will probably win in the end. |
|
| 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. |
|
| Commentary | Cloning: Toward a New Conception of Humanity? | Patrick Stephens | 4/1/2001 |
| Description: Though science has not progressed to the point where a human can be safely cloned, things are quickly moving in that direction. And the debate over whether a human should be cloned, says Patrick Stephens, TOC’s manager of current affairs, will help shape the future definition of humanity. |
|
| Article | Objectivist Ethics in the Information-Age Economy | Nathaniel Branden | 2/1/2001 |
| Description: In a world of rapidly advancing technology, a capacity for independent thought is the quality employees need most. Because of that, says Nathaniel Branden, the virtues of Objectivism are becoming key factors in the workplace. In this article, Branden traces the history of work, and demonstrates how Objectivist ethics are used more than ever on the job. |
|
| Commentary | Support the Media's Right To be Disgusting | Roger Donway | 2/1/2001 |
| Description: Many recent Hollywood productions have little or no redeeming value, observes Navigator editor Roger Donway. Nevertheless, the media's right to produce and distribute violent and vulgar films must be defended uncompromisingly. |
|
| Letters | Letters: The Moral Argument for the Death Penalty (Feb 2000) | | 2/1/2000 |
| Description: Letters concerning The Moral Argument for the Death Penalty. |
|
| Article | The Lessons of Littleton: A Letter to Teens | David Kelley | 6/1/1999 |
| Description: A letter to teens regarding what lessons we should learn from the incident at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. |
|
| Review | Of Water Buffaloes and Kangaroo Courts | Christian Robey | 6/1/1999 |
| Description: A review of Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses by Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate |
|
| Miscellaneous | Soundings, February 1999 | | 2/1/1999 |
| Description: Conformity in society; Political behavior as extortation; Racial Preferences; Thomas Kuhn |
|
| Interview | Stephen Hicks on Post-modernism | | 2/1/1999 |
| Description: An interview with Prof. Hicks on the topic of Postmodernism, covering the role of Hume, Rousseau, Kant , and Heidegger, how the belief in science was destroyed in the eyes of Western philosophers and how that fostered post-modernism, and Hicks's surprising explanations for the popularity of post-modernism. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Soundings, January 1999 | | 1/1/1999 |
| Description: Hollywood vs. Truth; House of Mao; Bad analogy; WIC and brand names; judge blocks business |
|
| Miscellaneous | Soundings, September 1998 | | 9/1/1998 |
| Description: Defending Contradictions; Faith and Reason; Pre-Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment; Clarence Thomas; Libertarians and Conservatives. |
|
| Miscellaneous | Soundings, April 1998 | | 4/1/1998 |
| Description: Alliance of Christian Right and multiculturalists; New organization for profressional historians; Hawaii Cruises monopoly; Benefits of Global Warming; Packard's fortune |
|
| Audio | Postmodernism Audio | Stephen Hicks | |
Description: Audio Excerpt. Offering a systematic analysis and dissection of the post-modernist movement, Dr. Hicks outlines the core Objectivist tenets needed to rejuvenate the Enlightenment spirit.
Buy the audiotape at The Objectivism Store |
|
