Well… It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been rather busy what with the three graduate-level classes that I am taking, another class that I am teaching, and the fact that my clunker of a car went belly up so I’m looking for a new, cheap replacement.
In any case, my three classes are going well…aside from the fact that I have to do an empirical quantitative analysis research paper in my international conflict class. Not sure what I’ll do the paper on yet.
My seminar on the metaphysics and morals of death (from an analytic philosophy perspective) is proving interesting. We are primarily looking at the fundamental questions of whether death (as opposed to the process of dying) is a harm, and whether the dead can be harmed. The answers to both questions, particularly the latter though, have important implications for ethical and political theories. If the dead cannot be harmed, then why should we respect their interests, wills, contracts, etc.? I plan to write a paper on these issues from a neo-Aristotelian virtue-ethics approach. I’m also going to apply for an IHS Summer Graduate Research Fellowship to develop it for publication.
And my seminar on Austrian philosophy, formal ontology, and realist phenomenology goes well. I’m finding I still agree with Barry Smith that the Austrian economists can benefit from studying the Austrian philosophers (the Brentano School, Husserl, Reinach, Wittgenstein). The last vestiges of Kantianism need to be shed from praxeology. Rothbard began this process, but did not complete it. Namely, it needs to be recognized that rather than the whole corpus of economic theory being implied in, and deduced directly from, the action axiom in some analytical and tautological sense, there exist a vast web of synthetic a priori propositions from which praxeological theory is woven around the central action axiom. (If my meaning here isn’t clear, I can elaborate in future posts.) However, I think both the Austrian philosophers and economists can benefit from studying Ayn Rand. And all three can benefit from returning to the great Aristotle himself. Accordingly, I am thinking of writing my paper for this class on “Ayn Rand, the Austrians, and Aristotelian Apriorism,” which I could then expand into a thesis for my second M.A. (in philosophy).
My class, introduction to political theory, is going well (I think). I’m almost done discussing Plato’s Republic. I can’t wait to move on to Aristotle’s Ethics (in its entirety) and Politics (selections).
Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Libertarian political philosopher, writer, editor, and web designer. He is the founder of the