Text of a talk delivered October 6, 2007 in Washington D.C., in celebration of Atlas Shrugged’s 50th Anniversary sponsored by the Atlas Society.

This is a timely review of Andrew Bernstein’s 1995, 8.5 hours long, 7 tape, audio course, The Philosophic and Literary Integration in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

A social system such as capitalism is a system of relationships and cannot be moral or immoral in the sense that a person can be—only individuals can be moral agents.

What can we learn from a survey of political and economic philosophies throughout history?

Unlike Rasmussen and Den Uyl, prominent philosopher of human flourishing, Tibor R. Machan, approaches the derivation of natural rights by way of ethical egoism.

Natural law is an older concept than the idea of natural rights. John Locke and his predecessor, Hugo Grotius, are frequently credited with ushering in the modern concept of natural rights. Historically, the doctrine of natural rights appears to have developed either within, or at least consonant with, the framework of the natural law tradition.

This essay surveys and revisits the intellectual heritage of a free society.

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) was a major political and intellectual figure in pre- revolutionary France. He was a man of wide-ranging intellectual interests and is considered to be a symbol or exemplar of the Enlightenment. A.R.J. Turgot was a well-respected social philosopher and political economist despite having written no books. He was a man of letters who was actively involved in pubic life. Turgot’s breadth of interest, enormous erudition, and powers of analysis and synthesis were of the highest order.

In 1986, James M. Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics for his efforts to study the public sector within the same microeconomic analytical framework that is used to study private economy. Buchanan applies economics to understanding how individuals interact in the public square to formulate collective decisions. His Public Choice research program offers a foundation for understanding and analyzing the behavior of persons in public choosing whether they be voters, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, or other public servants. Buchanan’s contributions to this field can be found primarily in his The Calculus of Consent (1962) with Gordon Tullock, The Limits of Liberty (1975), and The Reason of Rules (1985) with Geoffrey Brennan.

Lao Tzu (Laozi), an older contemporary of Confucius, lived in the 6th century B.C., and is thought to be the founder of Taoism. The conjectured years of his life are 604-531 B.C. The legendary Taoist philosopher, whose name can be translated as the “Old Master,” wrote a manual of self-cultivation and government, as well as a metaphorical account of reality, called Daodejing (a.k.a. Tao te Ching) translated as “Book of the Way and Its Power” and recognized as a masterpiece in Chinese philosophy.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British philosopher and sociologist, was a prominent, late 19th century defender of individual freedom and critic of state violence and coercion. A Lamarckian, rather than a Darwinian, pioneer in evolutionary theory, Spencer believed in inevitable human progress that develops naturally when people are free. He contended that well-being flourishes in moral societies where equal freedom is the ultimate principle of justice. According to Spencer, moral rights to life and liberty are requirements to happiness. It follows that people in societies in which moral rights are protected are happier and more successful. He held that to flourish there must be as few unnatural restrictions on individuals as possible. Progress is attained only through the free use of human faculties. This implies that the only legitimate function of government is the policing and protection of individual rights. The sole purpose of the state is to protect its citizens against external and internal aggression. Spencer’s ideas are developed in a number of works including Social Statics (1851), Principles of Psychology (1855), Principles of Biology (1864), The Study of Sociology (1873), The Man Versus the State (1884), and The Principles of Ethics (1892).

If one mentions the name Spinoza, he is likely to get a response something like “Oh, wasn’t he the pantheist philosopher who lived around the time of Hobbes and Locke?” Of course, he was but he was also much more than that. Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza (1632-1677) promulgated a deductive, rational and monist philosophy that exhibited a mathematical appreciation of the universe and that held that things can only be understood when viewed in relation to a total structure. Spinoza’s thought is still extremely relevant to 21st Century thinkers in areas such as methodological individualism, value theory, ethical naturalism, self-perfectionism, and political philosophy. For example, many of Spinoza’s ideas are reflected in the works of contemporary philosophers such as Douglas Den Uyl, Douglas Rasmussen, and Tibor Machan.