Announcing Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement and Other Essays: A New Book by Harry Binswanger

We are happy to announce that a new ARU Press book published on June 1: Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement and Other Essays by Harry Binswanger.

This incisive collection of nine essays was originally printed on the occasion of Dr. Binswanger’s retirement from ARI’s board of directors, celebrating his “sixty years of writing about and teaching the philosophy of Objectivism.” The book was given to donors at ARI’s 2024 Gala. To bring it to a wider audience, ARU Press is now making it available for purchase by the public.

The collection offers abundant evidence of the breadth of Dr. Binswanger’s scholarship. From reflection on the foundations of morality to the analysis of key concepts in metaphysics and epistemology to commentary on literature and politics, Dr. Binswanger’s philosophic insight on timeless and timely issues has ranged across the board.

Consider the essay “The Possible Dream,” which examines how and why the conventional meaning of the concept “perfect” is rooted in mysticism and ultimately destroys self-esteem. But there is a rational need for such a concept and Dr. Binswanger provides a rational, this-worldly conception of “perfection,” showing how it applies in ethics, politics, and epistemology. (Three essays have previously been published in New Ideal: “The Possible Dream,” “Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement,” and “A Tale of Two Novels.”)

In another essay, “Life-Based Teleology and the Foundations of Ethics,” Dr. Binswanger argues that all actions of biological organisms, whether conscious or not, are directed toward goals while inanimate entities are not. Drawing on Rand’s philosophy (particularly “The Objectivist Ethics”), he shows how this thesis helps provide the factual basis for value concepts and the basic premises of a rational ethics.

Dr. Binswanger also analyzes important political debates. In debates about capitalism, we often hear that corporations wield tyrannical power over workers and markets, and so need to be regulated by the government. Dr. Binswanger argues that this charge involves a basic equivocation between economic power and political power. As he explains in “The Dollar and the Gun,” the former means the ability to offer value through voluntary transactions, while the latter means the ability to threaten actual, physical force.

Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement and Other Essays is available in paperback and Kindle, with audiobook coming soon.