Philosophy for Living On Earth

Governments are taking unprecedented measures to restrict travel and shut down businesses in order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Politicians are justifying these measures by invoking emergency, even wartime, powers. What is the proper role of government during a health crisis like this one? What values should guide us in thinking about … Continue reading The Role of Government During a Health Crisis with Onkar Ghate and Greg Salmieri →

With the stock market now crashing and many people facing unemployment in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, governments are reacting with a variety allegedly aimed at stabilizing the markets and promoting economic security. What effects will these measures have on the economy? Will they address the root causes of the crash or might they … Continue reading The Pandemic and the Economy with Yaron Brook and Rob Tarr →

Most people think about morality as a set of commandments handed down by a god. Others believe we can get moral guidance by consulting our own feelings of sympathy for the needs and desires of other people. Are these the only two options? Does morality have to be based on faith in a higher dimension … Continue reading Is There a Rational Morality? by Ben Bayer →

The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses to it from both business and government are now dominating the headlines and overwhelming our lives. As we all begin to grapple with the wide-ranging effects of both the disease and the steps being taken to fight it, there’s a need to take a step back and survey the … Continue reading Thinking Philosophically About the Pandemic with Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri →

What explains the major developments and trends that have shaped our world through the ages? Human history is complex and, obviously, there are many factors involved. And some of the questions raised are these: Is there a fundamental cause that explains the big picture? Is there an ultimate cause that directs the overall sweep of … Continue reading What Drives History? by Keith Lockitch →

Most people believe that society has a moral obligation toward its poor and its needy—and that something must be done, politically, to help them. Is this the right way to think about the poor and society? Are these issues for the whole of society to decide? Are they political problems that need to have imposed … Continue reading What Should Society Do About The Poor? by Aaron Smith →

Many people believe that privilege—the idea that special rights or advantages are available only to a particular person or group—is a problem. While there are advantages, such as the wealth and location of one’s parents, that are not a choice, there are reasons to be skeptical about whether or not privilege is a problem. For … Continue reading Is Privilege Real? by Gregory Salmieri →

Abortion is an important issue consistently in the public discourse. What makes it so persistent? Should there be any legal limit on abortion? Much of the discussion about abortion revolves around differing views of when life begins. Is there something significantly different about an entity before and after it’s born? Join David Birnbaum as he … Continue reading Is Abortion Immoral? by Ben Bayer →

On the issue of legal, non-medical drugs, there are at least two common perspectives at odds in our culture today: one camp contends that some drugs can beneficially “expand” one’s mind—increasing creativity, decreasing anxiety, and otherwise providing benefits that should be explored. Another side regards using mind-altering “recreational” drugs as immoral or at least morally … Continue reading Is Doing Drugs Wrong? by Onkar Ghate →

Israel is talked about often in the media, but many Americans don’t understand why we are so preoccupied with this country. Often Israel is spoken of in a negative context: boycotts at universities, condemnations by the United Nations, and so on. What makes Israel worse than other countries? On the flip side, good defenses of … Continue reading Why Should I care About Israel? with Elan Journo →

Think about celebrities who tweet about their politics all the time, or think about companies who want you to buy their products because they’re supposedly eco-friendly. Some say that these are symptoms of an epidemic that’s coursing it’s way through social media and through our political discourse generally, an epidemic they call “virtue signalling”. Ben … Continue reading What’s Wrong with “Virtue Signaling”? by Ben Bayer →

In ethics, the question “Who ultimately decides what is morally right or wrong?” is commonly asked. Notice that in other areas of life there’s no issue of “who decides” what’s right or wrong. For example, if your car won’t start, you call a mechanic to inspect it. After he replaces the battery, the car works…

Every year droves of people make New Year’s resolutions, but polls suggest that four out of five people fail to keep them. One report even found that most resolutions last less than two weeks. So why are New Year’s resolutions so hard to keep? Are they just a joke and a waste of time? Are…

People are at odds with one another all the time (we have wars, personal animosities, etc.) and it is generally assumed that people’s interests conflict. We are often told that the only way to have any kind of peace is to compromise—to give up our interests in deference to other people. Ayn Rand rejects this…

At the turn of the millennium, two different polls were held. The question was: What’s the best English-language novel of the twentieth century? One poll questioned literary experts—they picked Ulysses by James Joyce. The second poll questioned internet users—their choice was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Is there any objective way to settle who is…

There’s a new campaign slogan among Democratic politicians: “Abolish Billionaires.” Nobody can honestly deserve a billion dollars, they claim, so they want to impose radical new taxes on the super-wealthy. Indeed, people are arguing that the very existence of billionaires is some kind of moral outrage. Wealthy people are being blamed today for all the…

Many people have at least heard of a few of history’s great philosophers. Names like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—they ring a bell and maybe some of us have even taken a philosophy course in college or perhaps encountered books or podcasts that are espousing or offering some kind of philosophy of life—a philosophy for living. But…

We live in an age in which fabricated stories pulse through social media, fashionable startup companies are founded on swindles and, of course, politicians of all stripes routinely lie. Whatever happened to the idea that honesty is the best policy? Most people would recognize honesty as an obvious example of a moral virtue, but the…

Independence is the theme of Ayn Rand’s great novel The Fountainhead. Howard Roark, the novel’s hero, is the epitome of independence. He speaks of the need to have a self-sufficient ego and says nothing else is as important. What is a “self-sufficient ego”? What is independence and how does one preserve one’s independence in a…

Have you ever wondered what Ayn Rand’s philosophy—which she called Objectivism—is all about? Why is she such a controversial figure with millions of fans who love The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged but also with many, many critics who call her books and ideas evil? Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, discusses…

The question of whether there is or is not a God is certainly one of life’s big questions, and it’s one that almost all of us have had to grapple with at some point in our lives. Many of us were raised in a religious environment but have come to have doubts or questions about…

When we describe someone as a person of principle, it’s often meant as a compliment. We mean that the person has a solid moral compass and that his actions are grounded in time-honored rules of conduct. On the other hand, though, we sometimes view principles as being rigid and constraining, a bunch of rules that…

Maybe you’ve heard of something called “effective altruism”? It’s a recent movement that encourages people to do research to figure out the best way to give away as much of their own money as possible, allegedly in order to help out as many people as possible. Now one wonders if calling it “effective altruism” implies…

Compromise is widely seen as essential to success in life. To have healthy, meaningful relationships, we’re advised to find a middle-ground. In the workplace, we hear, it’s vital that we compromise. And in the words of one long-time politician, in Washington “if you want to get along, you have to go along.” At the same…

Register for the next live webinar: http://courses.aynrand.org/webinars/register Is free will an illusion? Today, most people would answer yes. It might seem like you make choices and face genuine alternatives in life, it might seem like you have the power to decide what road you will travel, but this is all an illusion, it’s claimed. Your…

The question “Isn’t Everybody Selfish?” is often asked cynically by people who think selfishness is a bad thing and that it’s impossible to avoid. Sometimes it is said by economists who think that selfishness helps to explain human action, and sometimes the question is posed skeptically to people, e.g., Ayn Rand, who say that everyone…

Join special guest Harry Binswanger for this entry in the series of Ayn Rand Institute webinars on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its application to current issues. His topic is the one principle on which our very lives depend: the principle of Individual Rights. This concept—which the United States of America was based upon—has…

Human beings desperately need guidance in life, but where should we seek this guidance? Should we seek it in what we can observe with our own five senses and what we can logically infer from that data? Or should we seek it from some higher authority, just because we feel what it tells us is…

If there is one thing that almost everyone agrees on today, it’s that selfishness is bad. From day one, we’ve been told, “don’t be selfish” or “selfishness is the root of all evil.” But what if the way we think about selfishness is completely wrong? What if our conventional understanding of what it means to be selfish is…

All of us have experienced clashes between our thinking and our feelings—between our “head” and our “heart.” The question we seem to face, in any given clash, is: Which one to follow—“head” or “heart”? On this Philosophy for Living on Earth webinar, ARI’s Aaron Smith discusses Ayn Rand’s perspective on this issue. Recorded live as part of…

What makes you who you are? Is it nature or nurture—or a bit of both? Or does that very way of framing the question leave out something very important, namely—you? Can you take credit for who you are? If so, how? We can’t and we don’t create ourselves out of nothing. Some people are born…

Is having self-esteem a good thing? Most people will say it’s part of living a good life. And we all know someone who lives with gnawing self-doubt, someone with little or no self-esteem at all. It really holds them back. But is self-esteem something anyone can attain, or is it just for the lucky few?…

Whether it’s the legality of abortion, the desirability of free speech, the power of social media companies, or the appropriateness of a president’s tweets, we seem to be increasingly divided by issues of value, by what we consider right and wrong,good and evil. But whichever side we take on these and other controversies, if we’re asked to…

Conflicts among priorities and values, big or small, come up in relationships all the time. Figuring out how to navigate them is critical to making the relationship work. If you look to any self-help or psychology website for advice on this topic, you’ll see articles with titles like: “7 things you should sacrifice for a…