Roderick Long

James Stacey Taylor, in his book Markets With Limits, argues that Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski, in their book Markets Without Limits, systematically mischaracterize the views of the anti-commodification theorists they are critiquing, attributing to them positions (e.g., semiotic essentialism and an asymmetry thesis) that they do not hold. Further, Taylor offers an anti-commodification hypothesis of his own to explain why talented academics like Brennan and Jaworski could fall into such systematic mistakes – namely, that the intrusion of market norms into academia incentivizes scholars to prioritize original arguments in prominent venues over careful fact-checking. I argue that Taylor is correct in charging that Brennan and Jaworski have gotten their opponents’ views wrong; and I show how their subsequent replies to Taylor’s criticisms have been unconvincing. I also argue, however, that Taylor may be over-hasty in identifying the likely causes of their errors.

In a Sentences Commentary written about 1250 the Franciscan Richard Rufus subjects Anselm’s argument for God’s existence in his Proslogion to the most trenchant criticism since Gaunilon wrote his response on behalf of the “fool.” Anselm’s argument is subtle but sophistical, claims Rufus, because he fails to distinguish between signification and supposition. Rufus therefore offers five reformulations of the Anselmian argument, which we restate in modern formal logic and four of which we claim are valid, the fifth turning on a possible scribal error. Rufus’s final conclusion is that the formulation in Proslogion, chapter 3, is convincing, but not that of chapter 2.

Neil Cocks’s collection Questioning Ayn Rand: Subjectivity, Political Economy, and the Arts engages Rand’s ideas from a standpoint that is philosophically postmodernist and politically adversarial; while the contributors occasionally make illuminating connections, their obscurantist style, their superfi cial engagement with Rand, and an impatience borne of hostility render the result disappointing. Claudia Brühwiler’s Out of a Gray Fog: Ayn Rand’s Europe, by contrast, provides a fascinating look at Rand’s European connections, her complex attitudes toward European culture, and the European reception of her ideas, which serves as a useful corrective to the conventional narrative of Rand’s hostility to Europe and Europe’s hostility to Rand.

In False Wisdom, Gary H. Merrill develops criteria for distinguishing genuine from pseudo-philosophy, and then applies his criteria to several case studies, including Ayn Rand, all of whom he finds to be pseudo-philosophers. While offering a mostly helpful overview of better and worse ways of doing philosophy, Merrill fails to motivate adequately his way of distinguishing pseudo-philosophy from mere philosophical vices, errors, or failings. He is inconsistent in his characterization of the criteria for pseudo-philosophy and his application of those criteria, harbors a narrow conception of what counts as philosophy, and displays a lack of interpretive charity toward several thinkers.

Fascinating and thought-provoking, this book shows how the methodology of Austrian economics can be justified and strengthened by grounding it in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Frege and Wittgenstein argued that whatever counts as thought must embody logical principles. Their arguments also support the conclusion that whatever constitutes action must embody economic principles. In this incisive text, the author shows that this confirms the claims of Austrian economists such as Mises and Hayek that the laws of economics are a priori rather than empirical

The author reviews Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand’s Political Philosophy, edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew, and finds it to be a rich and provocative anthology. However, the author is unpersuaded by the arguments, from a number of the contributors, for separating the prohibition on initiatory force as an ethical principle, from individual rights as a political principle—a separation that, on the ethical side, unduly discards the Aristotelean ethical approach with which Randian ethics claims affiliation, and on the political side, is employed to ground an unconvincing case for the legitimacy of the state.

This collection seeks to excavate the tradition of radical liberal class analysis, which predated and inspired Marx's reflections on class. Liberal class theory is distinctive because it regards relationship with the state as constitutive rather than just indicative of social class membership. Along with an introduction that frames the discussion historically and conceptually, Social Class and State Power provides readers with easy access to provocative texts from the early modern period to the present

Part One of Marx's “On the Jewish Question” is a communitarian manifesto, one of the finest and subtlest ever penned. But has it anything valuable to offer defenders of liberalism?I think it does; for in “On the Jewish Question” Marx points to a potential danger into which communitarians are liable to fall, and I shall argue that his discussion sheds light on an analogous peril for liberals. Specifically, Marx distinguishes between a genuine and a spurious form of communitarianism, and warns that a failure to recognize this distinction may lead communitarians to embrace liberal values in communitarian guise. Using Marx's analysis as a model, I hope to show that the same distinction may be found within the liberal tradition, posing a corresponding danger (communitarian values in liberal guise) into which contemporary liberalism has in large part already fallen.

Incompatibilism is the claim that a human choice, in order to be free and responsible, must not be causally determined. The thesis of this dissertation is that Aristotle, along with several of his successors, accepts an account of human free choice that is both incompatibilist and philosophically attractive. ;Part One begins by setting out Aristotle's account of potentiality; this account, it is maintained, endorses determinism for non-human phenomena, but leaves open the possibility of indeterminism in the case of human action. It is then argued that in De Coelo I. 12 Aristotle commits himself to the claim that whatever is true is necessarily true, and that in De Interpretatione 9 he escapes the deterministic implications of this claim by denying that every meaningful prediction is either true or false. Moreover, in Metaphysics VI. 3 Aristotle endorses indeterministic causation in order to avoid universal necessitation. ;In Part Two, it is argued that in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle draws a distinction between voluntariness, which is extended to all animals, and what is "up to us," which is restricted to rational agents and is the ground of moral responsibility. While the former is compatible with determinism, the latter is not; and the indeterminacy of actions that are "up to us" is made possible by the disjunctive character of rational potentialities, which produce their effects through undetermined acts of selective attention. It will be seen that Aristotle's treatment of incontinence coheres well with this account. ;Finally, Part Three examines the development and defense of Aristotle's ideas by several post-Aristotelean philosophers. Diodorus Cronus, Epicurus, and Alexander of Aphrodisias endorse Aristotle's argument that whatever is true is necessarily true; and Epicurus and Alexander, like Aristotle, respond to this argument by denying truth or falsity of certain predictions. Epicurus and Alexander likewise reject determinism in order to make room for moral responsibility, and identify selective attention as the locus of indeterminism in human action; and Alexander distinguishes what is "up to us" from what is merely voluntary, and restricts indeterminism to rational agents