1. The Ayn Rand University press recently published Harry Binswanger’s 1975 doctoral dissertation, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts.
2. The ARU press also published a collection of essays by Binswanger, Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement and Other Essays. You can read the Philosophic Achievement essay here and here. I found this interesting:
Ayn Rand’s esthetics depends upon her entire philosophical base, from metaphysics through ethics. Yet her basic explanation of art is quite simple: “What an art work expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser aspects is: "This is life as I see it." ...
The history of esthetics is perhaps even bleaker than the general history of philosophy. The 2300 years stretching from Aristotle’s Poetics to The Romantic Manifesto is practically a void; philosophers of art have seemed to be discussing some mysterious, inaccessible entity — not art. Their sterile disquisitions on “the sublime and the beautiful” and their contrived theories of “art as play” or “art as pure form” bear no discernible relationship to the actual paintings, dramas, symphonies, and sculptures that constitute the history of art.
The history of esthetics isn’t my strong suit, but I doubt nothing useful was written for 2300 years and that no one ever said something to the effect that art expresses, “this is life as I see it.” Binswanger’s essay is rather abstract so it’s difficult to critique. Some years ago I did a series on Ayn Rand’s originality. See here, here, and here.
3. Objectivist Conference 2025 is happening in July in Boston.
4. James Valliant is interviewed about the Leonard Peikoff and Kira Peikoff situation.
-Neil Parille
