Culture And Society

Achieving Happiness: An Interview with Tara Smith

What is happiness? And how can we achieve it? In this interview with Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, we learn about the link between philosophy and happiness; the need for purpose and self-esteem; how to discover what will make you happy; whether money will buy you happiness; and other topics.
Culture And Society

Onkar Ghate on Selfishness

In this episode of Selfish for Success, Steve Orma, a psychologist specializing in insomnia and anxiety, interviews philosopher Onkar Ghate. In the interview they discuss typical confusions about selfishness; the objective conditions for a flourishing life; the need to critically question conventional morality; and, the nobility of businessmen.
ARI News

Top 5 Blog Posts of 2016

Voices for Reason is a blog that covers a wide range of topics, including philosophy and its application to current events, programs of the Ayn Rand Institute and the ideas of Objectivism. Looking back on the year, here are 2016’s most-read blog posts (along with edited versions of the introductions that accompanied them at time of publication).
ARI News

Introducing Ayn Rand’s Ethics to European Philosophers

Aaron Smith, a philosopher at ARI, recently published “Ayn Rand: A New Concept of Egoism,” an essay introducing Rand's unique approach to self-interest, in De Filosoof (“The Philosopher”), the quarterly magazine of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Culture And Society

Yaron Brook on The Rubin Report [Video]

On May 6, 2016, David Rubin on Ora.TV’s The Rubin Report interviewed ARI’s executive director, Yaron Brook. In this extensive interview Dr. Brook discusses topics such as the life, works and philosophy of Ayn Rand, the failure of our public education system, the meaning of rational selfishness, the value of free trade and labor-saving machines and the cause of cronyism and government controls.
Culture And Society

Ayn Rand on Love

This Sunday is Valentine’s Day, a holiday on which we celebrate romantic love. But, what exactly is romantic love? According to Ayn Rand, “Love is a response to values. . . . One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul — the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness.”

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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