Fellow and Director of Content
Ayn Rand Institute
Why The Right to Abortion is Sacrosanct (Expanded edition, 2025).
“Why Scientific Progress in Ethics Is Frozen”
January 2021.
“Why Champions of Science and Reason Need Free Will”
June 2019.
Ben Bayer is fellow and director of content at the Ayn Rand Institute. He teaches at ARU, lectures and gives interviews for ARI. He writes for and is a managing editor of ARI’s online publication, New Ideal. Dr. Bayer holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and his writing focuses primarily on the application of philosophy to contemporary cultural and political controversies. In 2022, he published Why the Right to Abortion Is Sacrosanct.
Dr. Bayer brings to ARI more than a decade of experience in teaching a wide range of philosophy courses at colleges and universities across the United States. He was a visiting assistant professor at Loyola University New Orleans for seven years, and previously taught at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado College, Loyola University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
In his time as a professor, Dr. Bayer’s research focused on epistemology and metaphysics (especially, free will and determinism). He has published scholarly articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, Philosophia, and Acta Analytica, among others. He has also contributed essays to Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology and Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
Bayer was one of the two co-founders of the student publication The Undercurrent, for which he served as an editor and contributor between 2005 and 2016. He edited checkyourpremises.org, the blog of the Ayn Rand Society (a professional association affiliated with the American Philosophical Association), from 2016 to 2017.
Dr. Bayer received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He also completed the program of coursework in ARI’s Objectivist Graduate Center between 1997 and 2006.
Ayn Rand Institute
2022 – Present
Ayn Rand Institute
2017 – 2022
Loyola University New Orleans
2010 – 2017
Colorado College
2008 – 2009
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Spring 2010
Loyola University Chicago
2007 – 2008
“The Real Problem with Plagiarism,” May 2024 (published in Quillette).
“Debunking the Supernaturalism That Haunts Secular Ethics,” October 2024.
“The Old Morality of the New Religions,” January 2023.
“Ayn Rand on the Welfare State’s Real Villains,” July 2021.
“Why Scientific Progress in Ethics Is Frozen,” January 2021.
“The Dishonesty of ‘Real Socialism Has Never Been Tried’,” August 2020.
“We Can Protect Liberty While Combating Pandemics,” June 2020 (published in the Orange County Register).
“Why Champions of Science and Reason Need Free Will,” June 2019.
“Ayn Rand on Moral Virtue and Moral Character,” in Ayn Rand and Aristotle, Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies, Vol. 4, Salmieri and Lennox (eds.), University of Pittsburgh Press (forthcoming).
“The Revolutionary, Secular Concept of Individual Rights,” OCON 2024.
“The Moral Foundations of Capitalism,” Ayn Rand Conference Latin America, Buenos Aires, April 2024.
“Augustine’s War on Earthly Pride,” OCON 2023.
“Why There is an Individual Right to Abortion,” University of Texas at Austin, 2023.
“The Morality of Life,” Ayn Rand Conference Latin America, Tecnologico Universitario Naucalpan, Mexico City, November 2022.
“Ayn Rand’s Genealogy of Altruism,” OCON 2022.
“‘What For?’: How Atlas Shrugged Dramatizes the Struggle for the Value of Purpose,” OCON 2021.
“That Radiant Selfishness of Soul: the Virtue of Pride,” OCON 2021.
“Reason vs. Faith and Emotionalism,” Ayn Rand Conference Latin America, Buenos Aires, September 2019; Ayn Rand Conference Brazil, Porto Alegre, 2019; AynRandCon, Atlanta, October 2019.
“The Evil of Altruism,” Ayn Rand Conference Latin America, Buenos Aires, September 2019; Ayn Rand Conference Brazil, Porto Alegre, 2019; AynRandCon, Atlanta, October 2019.
“Better Living Through Concepts,” Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, September 2019.
“The Subtheme of Free Will in Atlas Shrugged,” OCON 2019.
“The Romanticism of Atlas Shrugged,” OCON 2019.
“Free Will and Individualism,” AynRandCon Europe, Prague 2018.
“Tribalism in Politics,” AynRandCon, Atlanta 2018.
“Ayn Rand’s Philosophy for Living on Earth,” OCON 2018.
“Thinking Like an Individualist,” OCON 2018.
“Being Objective about the News,” OCON 2017.
“Spreading Objectivism by Living It,” OCON, Las Vegas, NV, July 2014.
“History of the Concept of Free Will,” OCON, Chicago, IL, July 2013.
“Understanding Twentieth-Century Philosophy: The Case of Quine,” OCON, Boston, MA, July 2006.
“Understanding Twentieth-Century Philosophy: The Case of Quine,” OCON, Boston, MA, July 2006.
Objectivism Through Ayn Rand’s Fiction
“The Atlas Project” (with Greg Salmieri), Fall 2017 — Spring 2018
Philosophical Themes in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
Epistemology (Introductory and Intermediate)
Free Will and Determinism (Introductory and Intermediate)
Making Moral Decisions
History of Analytic Philosophy
History of Modern Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Logic (Formal and Practical)
Teaching Philosophy with Atlas Shrugged: Francisco vs. Hume on Reason and Emotion, April 2, 2016.
Recent Work on Epistemic Possibility and the Burden of Proof, February 22, 2016.
Response to Cummins on Rand at PBS, February 16, 2016.
Teaching Philosophy with Atlas Shrugged: Aristotle and Francisco on Ultimate Ends, February 9, 2016.
Updates to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Ayn Rand, January 24, 2016.
The History of Objectivity in Light of Rand’s Epistemology and Ethics, January 9, 2016.
“The Elusiveness of Doxastic Compatibilism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 52(3), 2015.
“Internalism Empowered: How to Bolster a Theory of Justification with a Direct Realist Theory of Awareness,” Acta Analytica, December 2012.
“A Role for Abstractionism in a Direct-Realist Foundationalism,” Synthese, June 2011.
Other scholarly articles
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