[My name is Lawrence Black. The founder and principal content creator for Order from Chaos is my younger brother. He has graciously offered me the opportunity to pen the occasional opinion piece for his blog. We are both Objectivists, but we do not always hold the same opinions on every subject. Thus, this Disclaimer: The opinions presented in this essay are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Order from Chaos, it’s employees or affiliates. Any errors,
Each week I present a round-up of the podcasts I listen to. These podcasts are all centered around the theme of looking at current events through the lens of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. The goal is not to provide all the information they talk about, but rather to highlight the things I found interesting in the hope that it will intrigue others to take a listen.
In this week’s edition:
In this episode of Yaron’s Chicago radio broadcast, he discusses the morality of Ayn Rand’s
In this short video, approximately 45 minutes of introductory lecture and 30 minutes of Q&A, Leonard Peikoff provides a great, if brief, introduction to the fundamentals of Objectivism. He discusses the 5 branches of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics – and how they form an integrated whole.
Dr. Peikoff presents a more complete discussion of Objectivism in a 32 hour lecture series, which can be found on the
Yaron Brook gives a passionate talk on applying the morality of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to the concept of war and how war should be fought. While no philosophy can properly specify tactics, the specific means and methods used in fighting a way, it can provide the basis for deciding from what pool of possibilities these tactics can be drawn from.
In the early part of the talk Yaron discusses “just war theory,” the theory that in part says a country should not go to
An excellent introduction to major topics in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism presented by Onkar Ghate from 2003. The video includes a Q&A session with Onkar Ghate and Yaron Brook. Topics include: Individualism vs Collectivism, What are rights?, Proper role of government, Egoism vs Altruism, Ethics, Mysticism vs Reason and more.
The Q&A session is particularly interesting. Many of the folks had challenging questions which resulted in some great answers. I was somewhat surprised
This is a somewhat edited and greatly expanded version of a comment I posted to Peter Schwartz’s Washington Post article, “Objecting to the ‘season of giving’.” You can find my posted comment here. 2000 characters was just not enough space to get across fully what I wanted to say in support of his article in the face of the vast majority of comments that had been left. Or at least I didn’t have the time to make my comment that short.
I would like to thank Peter
I’ve been getting caught up with my podcasts and reading this week, which has been quite a challenge really.
Peikoff.com Episode 326 – After missing last week, this podcast is back with Yaron Brook answering questions on:
Philosophy in Action Radio Chat: Responsibility and Luck chapter 3 – Dr. Diana Hsieh continues her podcast series discussing her book Responsibility and Luck: A Defense of
Here are the podcasts that I have been able to listen to this week. They give examples of applying objectivist, rational principles to issues of every day life.
Philosophy in Action – Each week Dr. Diana Hsieh and Greg Perkins spend an hour going in depth on applying rational principles to 2 or 3 (rarely 4) questions from every day life. This week the questions were:
Each week I try to listen to a couple of podcasts which apply rational principles to issues of everyday life.
Philosophy in Action – This week Diana Hsieh and co-host Greg Perkins answer questions in-depth on whether an egoist should be willing to torture others to benefit himself, whether juries should be present during trials (as opposed to say receiving transcripts of all the accepted testimony), and
Each week I try to listen to a couple of podcasts which apply rational principles to issues of everyday life.
Philosophy in Action – Dr. Diana Hsieh and Greg Perkins discussed questions on weak vs strong atheism, weak being the view that evidence of God fails while strong is view that God cannot exist by its very nature, and the rationality of dating someone with psychological problems. One interesting