Navigation

Tag Archives | Ethics

IOS Regenerates!

By on May 3, 2013 1

So, there is a new good thing in the world.

Ayn Rand

Back in 1990, in the wake of the Peikoff-Kelley split and Truth and Toleration, David Kelley founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies as an alternative to the rigidly dogmatic Ayn Rand Institute. (I assume I don’t have to explain to readers of this blog what the Peikoff-Kelley split was or why Kelley’s side was right; but I’ll be happy to do so if anyone asks.)

The Institute for Objectivist Studies changed its name to “Objectivist Center” in 1999, and then – as its focus shifted from academics to popular advocacy – to “Atlas Society” in 2006. (Strictly speaking, both the Objectivist Center and the Atlas Society date from 1999, with the latter beginning as a special project of the former, and in 2006 the two simply switched roles like substance and property in the Furth-Gill model of elemental change. Yes, there will be a test on this later.)

Now in 2013 my old friends Irfan Khawaja and Carrie-Ann Biondi (who also edit Reason Papers), have started up, with Kelley’s blessing (but no official affiliation), a new, more academically oriented outfit with the old name of Institute for Objectivist Studies, to uphold the banner of responsible Rand scholarship against the forces of ARIanism. Website here; blog here.

Congratulations and good luck to Irfan and Carrie-Ann! I won’t wish confusion to their enemies, because that’s the problem already.

Principle and Interest

By on March 17, 2013 0

This coming weekend I’ll be presenting my paper on title-transfer and interest for a panel on “Foundations of Libertarian Political Philosophy” at the Austrian Economics Research Conference or AERC (formerly the Austrian Scholars Conference or ASC, though the conference remains as open to non-economics contributions as ever; I guess they just wanted to make clear that “Austrian” refers to a school of thought and not a nationality). I’ll also be chairing a panel on “Libertarianism: Intellectual History and Applications.” Schedule here.

Sympathy for the Devil?

By on March 10, 2013 1

A question that Christian children sometimes (and Christian adults too seldom) ask is whether, if they should pray for their enemies, that means that they should pray for Satan – i.e., pray for Satan’s eventual reformation and redemption.

Sad Satan

The traditional answer is that angels’ mode of existence, between time and eternity, is such that their choices do not take place in successive sequence but rather permeate their entire existence and so are irrevocable; hence an angel who chooses sin has no possibility of redemption, meaning that praying for Satan would be pointless.

But what exactly is this mode (“aeveternity”) intermediate between time and eternity supposed to be? Aquinas reviews several accounts of aeveternity and proposes his own. The problem is that, perhaps apart from one option that Aquinas dismisses as incoherent, none of the accounts seems incompatible with angels’ choices being revocable. In any case, if one can petition God, whose choices are supposed to be timeless – and if Catholics petition saints, whose choices are supposed to be aeviternal – then apparently trying to influence the choices of nontemporal agents is kosher, so why should Satan’s nontemporal character be a bar to hoping for him to mend his ways?

This is a purely hypothetical debate for me, since I don’t believe in Satan (nor in the coherence of a timeless agent’s interacting with temporal events, for that matter), but it’s interesting nonetheless. (I implicitly took a side in a story I wrote in high school.)

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes