Reference
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource
Online philosophy encyclopedia, founded by James Fieser in 1995
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) ... was founded in 1995 to provide open access to detailed, scholarly, peer-reviewed information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia receives no funding, and operates through the volunteer work of the editors, authors, volunteers, and technical advisers. The Encyclopedia is free of charge and available to all users of the Internet worldwide. The staff of 30 editors and approximately 300 authors hold doctorate degrees and are professors at universities around the world.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Fixed (archived) editions available since September 1997 and updated quarterly; entries and substantive updates refereed by members of its Editorial Board
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines ... [A]s of Summer 2023, [it] has nearly 1800 entries online. From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up-to-date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. Consequently, our dynamic reference work maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research.
Bibliography
Philosophy - Online Library of Liberty
Over 170 titles, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Aquinas, Erasmus, Locke, Voltaire, Emerson, Adam Smith, Kant, Hume, J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer
What does it mean to be a human? What is the best life to live, and how can we live it? These questions, and the texts which explore them, have long guided humanity in its struggle to understand itself.
Articles
Government: Creator of Uncertainty, by
Sheldon Richman,
Freedom Daily, Jul 2000
Discusses economic subjectivism, the principle that different persons attach different values to things or events, as evidenced by the early 2000 stock market downturn
[W]hen it comes to economic phenomena, subjectivism reigns ... Subjectivism in economics should not be confused with subjectivism in philosophy. Philosophy attempts to discover ultimate truths about reality and the means by which we learn them. Economics studies the unintended consequences arising from exchange. Subjectivism in philosophy holds that truth in metaphysics and the good in ethics are determined by individuals or groups, making these ultimately arbitrary. Subjectivism in economics means that human choice is what drives "the economy."
Herbert Spencer's Theory of Causation, by
George H. Smith,
The Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1981
Discusses Spencer's epistemology, his views on causation and how it affects social interactions, concluding with his ethical theory and concept of justice
Philosophy, according to Spencer, represents "completely unified knowledge." By deriving principles of the highest generality, it seeks to integrate the "partially-unified knowledge" of the various sciences. But philosophy is possible only to a developed intelligence, and such intelligence is "framed upon certain organized and consolidated conceptions of which it cannot divest itself and which it can no more stir without using than the body can stir without help of the limbs." These indispensable conceptions ... are the axioms from which all reasoning-and therefore all philosophy—must proceed.
The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand: South Park and Libertarian Philosophy, by Paul Cantor, 4 Dec 2006
General discussion of
South Park with more detailed review and discussion of the season 2 "Gnomes" episode
[I]f one wanted to mount a high-minded defense of the show's low-minded vulgarity, one might go all the way back to Plato ... Toward the end of his dialogue Symposium, a young Athenian nobleman ... offers a striking image of the power of Socrates. He compares the philosopher's speeches to a statue of the satyr Silenus ... [I]n the middle ... the comic poet Aristophanes comes down with a bad case of hiccoughs ... Plato seems to be making a statement about philosophy–that it has something in common with low comedy. Both philosophy and obscene humor fly in the face of conventional opinion.
Objectivism as a Religion: Part One: Philosophical Passion, by
George H. Smith,
The Daily Objectivist, 30 Mar 2000
Excerpted from
Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (1991); an earlier version appeared in
Invictus in 1972
Intellectual passion is the creative engine of philosophy, indeed, of all abstract disciplines. Every philosopher, while etching ideas on that paper mirror known as the printed page, must make a decision: How much emotion should I inject into my arguments? Conventional academic wisdom dictates: none at all, especially if you wish to be published in a professional journal or by a university press .... Despite her fondness for pronouncements from on high, Rand's philosophy is just that—a philosophy, not a religion. She labored hard on her theories ...
A Philosophy Lesson [PDF], by A. Barton Hinkle,
Regulation, 2011
Argues, with various examples, that many current problems stem from the lack of proper (philosophical) reasoning, such as category errors (e.g., being unable to distinguish between stick drawings or plastic molds of guns and actual weapons)
Feelings aren't facts ... and acting as though they are is a sign of epistemological degeneracy. That last phrase raised eyebrows around the office ... Casting an eye afield, one can't avoid concluding many of the country's current ills derive from an insufficient grounding in ethics, metaphysics, and whatnot. Especially whatnot ... Category errors are especially common at airports and schools. Last January, Transportation Security Administration screeners confiscated cans of Play-Doh belonging to three-year-old Josh Pitney, whose grandmother had given them to him as a Christmas present.
Philosophy the Right Way, by Aaron Ross Powell, 21 Mar 2013
Discusses how some people reject a philosopher or political theory solely because they disagree with some aspect of the thinker or the arguments given and counsels in favor of keeping a broad mind and learning even from those with whom you may disagree
If you think you've found a philosopher who is 100% right on every issue, it's likely you haven't ... [V]ery nearly every question philosophers wrestle with was raised 23 centuries ago by Plato. Which means people have been arguing about these issues—and offering their answers to them—for over 2,000 years—without any truly settled ... Philosophical thinking has progressed, becoming (generally) more sophisticated, and (generally) jettisoning the outright bad arguments of the past. What it should do is make us skeptical that any new arguments, or any arguments we happen to favor, are airtight.
Reasoning on the Nature of Things, by
Clarence B. Carson,
The Freeman, Feb 1982
Discusses how natural law doctrines were repudiated by utilitarians, why natural rights are important from an economic viewpoint, how the rights to life, liberty and property can be construed and what the author understands as the "social contract"
Reasoning on the nature of things was part and parcel of a complex of ideas which are sometimes referred to as the natural law philosophy ... [It] was largely abandoned in the course of the nineteenth century. Its abandonment signified a major shift in thought. Natural law doctrines had been a staple of Western thought since the time of the Roman Stoics, and its antecedents go back even further than that ... [E]very revival of learning and renaissance ... brought renewed interest in natural law, up to and including the classical revival of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Related Topics:
Jeremy Bentham,
Government,
Law,
Liberty,
John Stuart Mill,
Property Rights,
Ronald Reagan,
Rights,
Adam Smith,
Socialism,
Society
Reviews
Individuals and Their Rights by Tibor R. Machan, by David M. Brown,
The Freeman, Jun 1990
Review of Tibor Machan's 1989 book
Individuals and Their Rights
What [Machan] has done is ground our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a broad philosophical framework of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics—that is ... in a theory of what reality is fundamentally like (metaphysics), how we can know anything about it (epistemology), and what choices we should make given what we know about ourselves and the outside world (ethics or morality). Once Machan has given us answers in those realms, he can then go on to apply his answers to political questions. The more fundamental levels of philosophy do matter for questions of public policy.
Introduction to Philosophical Inquiries, by Lester Hunt,
Reason, Sep 1977
Brief review of Tibor Machan's book
Introduction to Philosophical Inquiries (1977)
"Philosophy is not an idle game for the clever," nor is it a series of mind-building mental exercises. It is "essentially serious." Metaphysics is about the nature of reality, epistemology is about the nature of knowledge (not just: whether there ever is such a thing), ethics is about how we should live, political philosophy is about how communities should be organized. Since these matters touch all of us, everyone should familiarize himself with philosophy to some extent. It is not a luxury or an amusement for the few.
Interviews
Interview with John Hospers, by
John Hospers, Karen Minto,
Full Context, May 1998
Topics discussed include: intellectual influences, respected philosophers, determinism, David Kelley, Ayn Rand, philosophy and Objectivism in universities, the
Sense of Life documentary and
Atlas Shrugged
Hospers: ... [T]here is an emphasis on courses with popular titles that teach one very little about philosophical concepts ... Philosophy has to be done slowly and carefully, from the ground up, Oxford-tutorial style, with the teacher correcting the student at every step of the way. The large lecture-hall courses in philosophy don't begin to do that; they may give the student the delusion that something has been learned, and meanwhile a wonderful source of wisdom and guidance to living one's life is out there and the student never gets a hint that it's there.
An Interview with Robert Nozick, by
Robert Nozick, Julian Sanchez, 26 Jul 2001
Topics discussed include: ethics, science and philosophy, Karl Popper and the scientific method, Ayn Rand and epistemology, consciousness, relativism and the academic left, and Nozick himself
JS: This is a continuation of the method you set out in Philosophical Explanations.
RN: That's right. It is, from another angle, an attack on requiring proof in philosophy ... That's a significant part of what excites me about philosophy, in contrast to those people whose main motivation seems to be to exclude certain ideas, or even most ideas. They seem to want to be thought police. That's why, when these interesting conceptual ideas arise in the sciences, I think that they're continuous with philosophical ideas. They're interesting in the same way, shattering preconceptions.
Interview with the Vamp: Why Camille Paglia hates affirmative action, defends Rush Limbaugh, and respects Ayn Rand, by
Camille Paglia,
Virginia Postrel,
Reason, Aug 1995
Topics discussed include: NOW, affirmative action, the Clintons, libertarianism, capitalism, academic administrators, conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, television, Christina Hoff Sommers vs. Naomi Wolf, institutions, homosexuality, nostalgia and Ayn Rand
Paglia: ... Christina [Hoff] Sommers ... was out on the scene before my first book ... In the late '80s, she was ... fighting hand-to-hand in the professional philosophers association against the encroachment of a certain type of propagandistic feminism ... She's someone who believed when she entered professional philosophy that women should achieve at the highest levels that had been established by men ... She believes with me that the proper education for young women is exposure to ... the greatest that has been written or achieved in the history of the arts, in philosophy, and so on.
Books
Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World
by
Robert Nozick, 2001
Contents: I: The Structure of the Objective World - Truth and Relativism - Invariance and Objectivity - Necessity and Contingency - II: The Human World as Part of the Objective World - The Realm of Consciousness - The Genealogy of Ethics
A New Aristotle Reader
by J. L. Ackrill (editor),
Aristotle, 1988
Contents: Translations - Aristotle's Works - Introduction - Glossary - TEXTS: Logic - Natural Philosophy - Metaphysics - Practical Philosophy - Topics - List of Books
Philosophical Explanations
by
Robert Nozick, 1981
Contents: Introduction - Metaphysics: The Identity of the Self - Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? - Epistemology: Knowledge and Skepticism - Value: Free Will - Foundations of Ethics - Philosophy and the Meaning of Life
Philosophy: Who Needs It
by
Ayn Rand, 1982
Partial contents: Philosophical Detection - The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made - The Missing Link - Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World - Kant Versus Sullivan - Causality Versus Duty - Egalitarianism and Inflation - What Can one Do?
