In this review, two significant works published in e-book format demand the attention of Rand scholars: Roger E. Bissell's book How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics and Michelle Marder Kamhi's Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts. Covering wildly different territory, the two works make an important contribution to the literature.

In this essay, Seddon provides a brief rejoinder to Long's reply to his review of the monograph Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand. Despite his criticisms, Seddon maintains that reading Long's monograph will pay rewards for all those interested in the history of philosophy as it impacts Ayn Rand's thought.

FRED SEDDON provides a chapter by chapter examination of Greg Nyquist’s Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. Nyquist gives a detailed exploration of all of the major branches of Rand’s philosophy as well as Rand’s philosophy of history and her philosophical anthropology.

Fred Seddon answers Michael Huemer's reply, focusing on two central issues in ethics: foundationalism and relativism. On the latter, he argues that Huemer neglects Rand's metaethics and her relational notion of the good.

This paper analyzes the oft-quoted sentence from Immanuel Kant's first Critique of Pure Reason, viz., "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." Seddon argues that Kant is hardly the mystic mat Ayn Rand and many Objectivists have caricatured him as being.

Seddon echoes comments he made in his original Spring 2003 Journal of Ayn Rand Studiesreview of GregNyquist's book, Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. He argues that Nyquist's reply still does not grasp fully the Objectivist view of logic and the role of induction.

ABSTRACT In Exploring “Atlas Shrugged”: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus, Edward W. Younkins examines Rand’s 1957 novel as philosophy, literature, political economy, and business-education text. The book is constituted mostly by previously published essays. Despite some interpretive difficulties throughout, the introduction and appendix represent worthwhile additions to this collection.

Robert Mayhew has edited a series of books featuring essays examining the novels of Ayn Rand. This book is the third in the series, and it is a highly recommended collection. Among the best essays are those written by Shoshana Milgram, Jeff Britting, Tore Boeckmann, and Mayhew. The book does, however, suffer from a few scholarly lapses.

The reviewer looks at Roger E. Bissell's latest work, What's in Your File Folder? Essays on the Nature and Logic of Propositions. He considers a range of topics including propositions, syllogisms, the meaning of existence, the nature of entities and characteristics, axioms, causality, and logic, among others.

This paper attempts to answer Joseph B. McAllister’s critique o f the epistemology of F. S. C. Northrop. Toward this end an exposition of the essence of Northrop’s theory of knowledge is presented and a simple comparison with McAllister’s similar effort reveals the latter’s deficiencies. I also reveal how McAllister’s criticism of Northrop’s “supposed” realism depends on equating realism in general with one kind, direct realism. If this is so, then Northrop is neither a skeptic nor a moral or legal (...) relativist. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer Joseph B. McAllister’s critique o f the epistemology of F. S. C. Northrop. Toward this end an exposition of the essence of Northrop’s theory of knowledge is presented and a simple comparison with McAllister’s similar effort reveals the latter’s deficiencies. I also reveal how McAllister’s criticism of Northrop’s “supposed” realism depends on equating realism in general with one kind, direct realism. If this is so, then Northrop is neither a skeptic nor a moral or legal (...) relativist. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine F. S. C. Northrop's approach to Russian Communism via his analysis of (1) the fundamental types of all possible concepts and (2) how an exposition of the basic concepts of Russian Communism enable us to understand not only the past performances of the Soviet Union but also to predict what they are likely to do in the future. This goal is accomplished by an examination of three essays that Northrop penned over a (...) period of 14 years. Although a few critical remarks are tendered, my essay tends to be descriptive in an effort to introduce those unfamiliar with Northrop to the work of this vast mind. Readers of this journal will no doubt profit from exposure to Northrop's entire corpus. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine F. S. C. Northrop's approach to Russian Communism via his analysis of the fundamental types of all possible concepts and how an exposition of the basic concepts of Russian Communism enable us to understand not only the past performances of the Soviet Union but also to predict what they are likely to do in the future. This goal is accomplished by an examination of three essays that Northrop penned over a period of (...) 14 years. Although a few critical remarks are tendered, my essay tends to be descriptive in an effort to introduce those unfamiliar with Northrop to the work of this vast mind. Readers of this journal will no doubt profit from exposure to Northrop's entire corpus. (shrink)

This essay argues that Rand's conception of truth marshals all the strengths of the four theories of truth detailed by philosopher Nicholas Rescher: correspondence, coherence, intuitionistic, and pragmatic.

The author responds to Michelle Marder Kamhi’s reply to his review of her book, Who Says That’s Art? He takes her to task on a few issues, but largely sees this as a mere skirmish between two colleagues who agree on many fundamentals.

Seddon provides a chapter by chapter examination of Greg Nyquist's Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. Nyquist gives a detailed exploration of all of the major branches of Rand's philosophy as well as Rand's philosophy of history and her philosophical anthropology.

This essay offers a critical review of Robert Mayhew's translation oí Plato: I aws 10, Chris Matthew Sciabarra's monograph, Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human I iberation, and Roderick T. Long's monograph, Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand. Seddon finds especially questionable Long's treatment of Plato.

This essay reviews a recent book in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series: A Companion to Ayn Rand, edited by Gregory Salmieri and the late Allan Gotthelf. The author expresses his discontent with the volume's exclusion of many contributors who are not affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute. He is displeased, as well, by the lack of any essays of a critical nature, which is a hallmark of other Companion-type works. His review focuses on six key essays in this volume: (...) Gregory Salmieri on both values and epistemology; John David Lewis and Salmieri's discussion of Rand's political and cultural commentary; Allan Gotthelf on the morality of life; Harry Binswanger on aesthetics; Jason Rheins on the Objectivist metaphysics; and James Lennox on Rand's view of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This article reviews the first two works featuring essays derived from talks given before the Ayn Rand Society, an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. The books are both edited by the late Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, each dealing with a different aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy. The first is a study in Ayn Rand's normative theory and the second offers reflections on Rand's theory of knowledge.

This essay provides a review of Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, edited by Robert Mayhew, who has edited three other books, each devoted to one of Rand's novels. This collection offers 22 essays on a variety of topics.

This essay reviews three books in the ethics literature of interest to contemporary Rand scholars: Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics by Tara Smith; EthicalIntuitionism by Michael Huemer; and Is Virtue Only a Means to Happiness? by Neera Badhwar.

n this book, Fred Seddon critically examines the views of Ayn Rand and some of her fellow Objectivists on several of the major figures in the history of philosophy, viz., Plato, Augustine, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche. There is also a chapter dealing with Rand's aesthetics, as well as three appendixes, two on Plato and one detailing the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

This is a response by the author of Ethical Intuitionism to criticisms raised by Fred Seddon (Jars, Spring 2007). Among other things, Huemer observes that his attack on ethical reductionism does not depend upon excluding relational properties from consideration at the start; that he does not claim that all philosophers are intuitionists; and that Objectivism is susceptible to the general arguments he discusses against the possibility of deriving an "ought" from an "is".

In reply to Seddon's charge that Long's analysis in Reason and Value rests on a mistaken reading of Plato, Long both defends his interpretation of Plato and argues that nothing in Reason and Value depends on Plato interpretation in any case.

This commentary is in response to Fred Seddon’s review of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. In addition to answering objections raised in the review about such matters as whether “abstract art” and photography should qualify as “fine art,” it aims to show in what respects the book was influenced by Rand’s thought.

This book strives to deal with Hegel's thought by means of a thorough, unitarian and logical approach and to enforce the idea that philosophy is rigorous as far as it is able to consistently tackle the question of self-consciousness. It results that the logic underlying every philosophical interest traces back to the self-referring investigation about life in the mode of self-consciousness, by which social practices and their history can be grasped. Once we assess that self-consciousness is life through the concept, (...) we would be able to realize the logical structure underlying its historical outcomes. (shrink)