 the idea that the group is what matters. And of course the ultimate attack on reason. Individuals don't matter. Individuals don't think. Truth is revealed. It's revealed to somehow to this collective consciousness, which is the Polyterian, or the collective consciousness that is the Arian race. Now, since there isn't a collective consciousness, we know that, but don't tell anybody, right? We need a leader to be able to, a philosopher king, to be able to commune with this collective consciousness and tell us what it thinks. And that's how you get authoritarianism. But authoritarianists always say, I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for you. I'm just discovering the truth and communicating to you. And it turns out that we have to sacrifice a huge number of people in the world in order to satisfy the will of the Polyterian or the will of the Arian race. 20 million, 100 million, 200 million, the sky's the limit when it comes to sacrificing individuals. But that is the rejection of the Enlightenment. Communism and Nazism are the rejection of the ideas of individualism and of reason. They are the rejection of the ideas of Western civilization. They are not bad parts of Western civilization. They are the enemy of Western civilization. Nazism and Communism are not part of, they're the rejection of, as is the whole string of German philosophers that I mentioned, of which Communism and Nazism, in my view, is the logical outcome, the necessary outcome. Collectivism always leads to destruction and death. Now, we survived the Nazis, we survived the Fascists, and ultimately we survived the Communists. But we're badly wounded. We've lost, we know what we reject. We reject this particular form of collectivism. And we reject murder and slaughter for the most part. What are we for? Nobody in the West today knows. We live a life for the most part based on reason and individualism. We love technology, we love science still. We have a spectrum of technology and science. We try to be happy. If you go to any bookstore, I assume in France it's the same. You have aisles of self-help book. We all want to be better. We all want to achieve happiness somehow. But we can't name it. And indeed, remnants of the anti-enlightenment mentality, both from German philosophy, but also from Christianity, are still strongly embedded in this culture. It's still true that we hold this moral, not the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of individual fulfillment, flourishing of a statillion yedeminea, or, you know, Iran, egoism. What we value still morally, what we say we value, we might not live this way, is altruism, sacrifice, giving up for other people. Other people are more important than myself. And altruism, I don't mean altruism as being nice to people and opening a door and being polite. Egoists do that. I'm talking about altruism as viewing the purpose of your life to serve others. Mother Teresa, that's my image. She hated her life. She did it out of duty. She did it because she believed it was moral and just. That sense, which we all have deep inside if we grew up in this world, that was brought to us, I think, primarily by Christianity, but also by a great French philosopher, Augustine Comte, who encourages us to eliminate self for the sake of others. These ideas are deep inside of us, and we struggle with the ideas of the Enlightenment and these anti-Enlightenment ideas, these ideas that undercut Enlightenment thinking. Now, in my view, INRAND gives us the tools to finish the Enlightenment project. I think the Enlightenment was weakened. You could argue failed, but I don't think it failed because we're still living in an enlightened world even if it's in decline. INRAND gives us the tools to fully understand and justify reason. So I think that Locke and the rest of the French Enlightenment and the Scottish Enlightenment, while incredible people and it created enormous value, they didn't get to the heart, philosophical heart of reason. They couldn't completely articulate the case for reason. They didn't have a solid theory of concept and concept formation and how we understand the world and how we abstract and what it means to abstract and how we induce and they didn't have a complete theory of inducing knowledge from reality. INRAND does. At least she has the beginnings of one. She called it Introduction to Objective Epistemology because she still realized there was still a lot of work to do, but at least she gives us the tools to develop epistemology fully for a full, complete defense of reason, which is what I think is the most important thing that needs to happen today because as the attack on reason is again intensifying in the West. She gives us an understanding of individualism that never existed. Again, because I think even the Enlightenment figures, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment, the French Lesseaux, were so imbued with Christianity that they couldn't give up on Christian morality. They couldn't give up on sacrifices and ideal. They couldn't give up the idea that sacrifice was noble, that living for others was good, that the meek shall inherit the earth. They couldn't quite, even the founding fathers, couldn't quite give all that up. You know Thomas Jefferson took the Bible, the New Testament and cut it up and he threw away all the parts he didn't like, which is all the mysticism he didn't like. So he was a man of reason, but he kept the summoner on the mount because he viewed that as a moral philosophy. That is a really, really bad moral philosophy if you take it seriously. And it's a moral philosophy that imbues the West today and it's a moral philosophy that needs to be rejected. And there is no moral thinker that presents an alternative to the summoner on the mount other than Ayn Rand, I mean Aristotle and then Ayn Rand, Spinoza maybe a little bit in between. But there is no alternative in the world today other than Rand to the idea of sacrifice. Ayn Rand presents a moral theory, not just a little bit here and there, but a moral theory for living life. A moral theory for living life for oneself because who else should you live it for? It doesn't mean you treat other people like garbage. Other people are huge value to you. But it means that you're standard by which you make decisions is your own life, is your own flourishing, is your own value. It means that each one of us as individuals needs to strive to be the best that we can be as individuals, as human beings, as complete human beings, as reasoning animals, as rational animals. This small code I think is, you know since I don't really understand epistemology that much, this to me is what the heart of what Ayn Rand's ideas are. This to me is why I fell in love with Ayn Rand. I fell in love with Ayn Rand because for the first time somebody said to me, it's okay to live for you, for yourself. It's okay to aspire, to be happy. It's okay to live a complete and fulfilling life. The moral ideal is not Christ on a cross dying a painful, excruciating death for sins he did not commit, for sins other people committed. I can't think of anything more unjust than putting Jesus on the cross. No, life is to be enjoyed. Life is to be embraced. Life is to be lived fully. That's Ayn Rand's morality, you know, in a superficial, quick way. I encourage you all to read the virtue of selfishness. Her book isn't in French, which is in French. Because I think that's a revelation. Now all of the morality is in Atlas Shrug. Because Ayn Rand, the moral ideal is not Christ on a cross. It's John Galt. It's the man who felt no guilt, no unearned guilt, no original sin. The man who lives, lives for himself, asks no other man to live for him, but will not live for anybody else, but for himself. For the fulfillment of his own values and nobody's expense, but as a trader in win-win relationships with other human beings, with other people. So these to me are the foundational ideas. These two ideas of reason and individualism are the foundational ideas of Ayn Rand's philosophy. I believe she completes the Enlightenment project or at least adds significantly to it, for us maybe, to fully complete, to the extent that there's still philosophical work to fill in the defensive reason and defensive individualism. But Ayn Rand takes us a long way. Ayn Rand is primarily a philosopher, primarily has something to say about reason and individualism or egoism, capitalism as a political and economic system. I think the outcomes of that. If you are an individualist, that is you care about your own life and you are capable of knowing the world through your reason, you don't need mother government sitting on your shoulder telling you how much to pay your employees or how much to take as an employee, what soda you're allowed to drink and what food you're not allowed to drink, what drugs you're allowed to consume and what drugs you're not. I'm not talking about the healthy ones, but anyway, it's none of anybody's business. And if you, a real individualist, if you're an egoist, you don't want anybody telling you what to do. You want to discover truth by yourself. You want to go out there and try and experiment and learn and fail and succeed and learn from your failures and move in life. You don't need government regulations and controls and you certainly don't want government taking 50% of your money, which represents 50% of your time, which represents 50% of your life. It's yours because you're an egoist and you care about what your stuff is. Put aside all the economic theory and all that. At the end of the day, that's not what's important. I mean, it's all consistent, right? But at the end of the day, it's not about maximizing some utility function or maximizing the GDP of France. Who cares? It's about maximizing my freedom to live as I see fit so that I can pursue the values necessary for my life, for my happiness. And yeah, it turns out that GDP is maximized when you do that. But that's not a starting point and it's not, this is the big difference objectives have with libertarians. We don't start with economics. We end with economics. We end with politics. We don't start there. We start with reason and individualism. We start with the foundation, the philosophical foundations I believe of liberty. I believe of the enlightenment of any successful society. So France needs INRAN because the whole western civilization needs INRAN because we're in decline. These ideas are under attack. INRAN has the best answers out there for the attack. She is the best defense of western civilization that exists in the world today. The rise of collectivism, the rise of tribalism, the rise of emotionalism can only be dealt with through philosophy, through a philosophical attack on them and INRAN gives us the best tools to do that. But more than that, and I'll just end with this note. The most important thing in my view about INRAN's philosophy is not what it does for France. It's not what it does for western civilization. It's not what it does for any country or place or anything like that. It's what it can do for you as an individual and what it can do for them as individuals out there. At the end of the day, a life of unreason, a life filled with unearned guilt, a life filled with collectivistic ideas that you don't actually live or some people do live, but that constantly tugging at you is an unhappy, miserable, pathetic life. It's a life filled with angst, with anxiety. INRAN is the ultimate self-help. INRAN is the ultimate philosophy for living, a life free of unearned guilt, a life that makes possible, it makes it possible to flourish and to be truly happy, to truly achieve happiness in life. So at the end of the day, it's the individuals who need INRAN more than it is any civilization or any country or anything like that, because INRAN is primarily a philosopher of and for the individual. Thank you. Questions? First of all, sorry for my English accent. It's fine. Sorry for everyone. The accent is kind of cute. Thank you. Have you read the biography by INRAN of INRAN? And if no, I explain why. I have not. I ask the question because if you are French, there is not a lot of book translated in French about INRAN. Sure. You have some of her novels and maybe the only one book about INRAN is INRAN's book. And in the last two chapters, and INRAN will correct me if I say something wrong, what you learn about INRAN that she's not a real philosopher, that she has never read Kant or Nietzsche or Plato and that the influence of Aristotle may be a fraud and all stuff like that and stuff like that about her personality that she's like almost hysterical and stuff like that. And this is the image, the only image you can have in French when you read it. So I agree with all these I don't know the whole world in this book. So I am respectfully going to disagree. Certainly she read Kant, certainly she read all of those philosophers. I don't think there's any evidence she didn't read them and there is evidence she did. Evidence of people who knew her personally and who, you know, who knew philosophy because they studied it, they got PhDs in philosophy and who had conversations with her directly. So I disagree with that. I disagree with the idea of, you know, I don't understand, I guess the idea of Aristotle's influence as a fraud. She had a temperament. She was a passionate person. I think most geniuses are. I don't think she was, I don't make a big deal out of that. I don't think it's that significant. She had a temper, yeah. When she saw an injustice, she saw something wrong, she had a temper. She certainly didn't like certain people and she let you know when she didn't like them. But I don't know, I mean, I have not seen anybody say I meant wrong about Kant. Here's the reference. What she said about Kant and again, verified by philosophers who studied with her and studied philosophy as well. I think it's legitimate. You know, I also don't buy this notion and I know a lot of the biographies even in English present this of her being miserable and depressed and so on. Again, based on people who knew her, I just don't think that's true. Again, was she angry? Sure. Was she depressed when Alice Shrug didn't succeed the way she thought it would succeed? People didn't respond to it the way she thought, yeah. But she got back in her feet and started writing it on fiction. And she spent all the 60s and 70s writing and working into it. To the day she died, she was working. You know, on the week that she died, she was still writing, she was writing a television adaptation of Alice Shrug. From what I know, she was a happy person. She was a difficult person. She was a principled person. She was a passionate person. But she was not a miserable, depressed or nasty person as so many of other people's biographies. Again, I haven't read along so I can't comment, but other people's biographies are presented to her as. And I'm hoping there'll be a definitive biography coming out which will document what courses she took in college, what books she read. I mean, part of the thing is you can go to her library. We have the library and I read archives. And you can see the books she read and you can see her annotations on the books. Yes, but most French speak only French and they have the only book. And even in English, the two last chapters were very interesting. The image that we can have in France and also a fact that Alain Laurent just said that we have the virtue of selfishness in French. It's important to precise that it's just some chapter, just seven chapters on the 19th chapter. Does it have the main essay, the objective statics? Yes. Good. Well, that's the most important one. Did you want to comment? Yeah. Ah, I already can't read the hysterical word. I didn't say you had it in French. Ah, well, yes, that's what we could have understood. Second, you have to select passages where indeed I bring what they sometimes put into books by forgetting the rest. But then I come back to what I said earlier. I don't think it's worth considering Alain Laurent as a sort of saint who is human, very human and on the philosophical side, I hold on to what I said, in a philosophical approach we cite these sources. We cite the passages that we talk about and we refute them. What she never said, for a very simple reason, by the way, is that, unfortunately, she never published except the long speech of Jean-Paul. She has always said that she would do, but she has never done an opening where she would have developed long, patiently, and grossly these ideas. What she published out of these novels are articles, interviews, interviews, etc. that have a maximum of 15 pages. So, in fact, it explains that there she can't, in fact, rely on references. But I formally maintain that someone who wants to merit the title of philosopher has to argue by quoting entirely these sources, we refute them, etc. That's what's going on. By the way, there are many sources that also indicate in the United States that, in fact, often, she, without a doubt, on Aristotle because she read it in her youth as a student, but for others, obviously, she never read them. It's a second hand. And that's even fascinating. And I don't want, as an intellectual, to analyze an image that's quite fantastic in hand which, in fact, would have totally mastered the people who she talks to, especially when she would say a lot about it, even though often she has sometimes more reason than she thinks, but as it would be better if, in fact, it was long argumentated, sharpened with references. That's really why it's also possible for some others. And I don't believe at all, I'm dissatisfied with you, but I don't believe at all that it gives an image false and bad, of proof. I would just encourage you to make your own judgment. At the end of the day, you have to judge yourself and I encourage you to the extent you can read in English, but what's available in French is great. And then, you know, read the rest in English because there's a lot of things. There's a new book that came out called The Companion's Ayn Rand's Ideas. It just came out about a year ago by a number of scholars. Well, that's a hundred voices, but the real, this is good for her personality and for her life. It's a hundred different interviews with a hundred different people who knew her, but I think for the philosophy The Companion's Ayn Rand is written by philosophers, each one writing an essay from a different perspective on her analyzing it. So, I think it's the most valuable book out there written by about her available today. I also recommend Elena Picoff's philosophy, Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which I think is the definitive philosophical statement of her ideas, integrated into one book. It might be out there, but there it is. Any other questions? Yeah. Thanks for your speech. In the light of what you said about the embedded Christianity in all of us and the attacks on reason, it made me I think about my becoming a libertarian. Two things come to mind after what you said. It's when I discovered Pironism. It's like discrediting solo-medicines and things like that and arguing about the reason in medicine and in medical things. So, that was one of the first things in my life that was the defined reason for me. And the second thing was when I became an atheist. I was a hardcore passionate believer. I wanted to be a priest at one point. And then I flipped totally and I became a hardcore atheist because I read something that and these two transformations I think paved the way to my becoming a libertarian that came a few years after and when I recalled these moments it was incredible because my brain was actually I felt my brain really working without anchor it was like lighter and free and happy and that's I think that's why it paved the way to my becoming. Yeah, that's a great story and I think you've identified something really really important. Now, there'll be a lot of libertarians or Christians or Jews or Muslims or whatever. So, and I get into trouble all over the world you know, a lot of the lead thinkers today in the libertarian world are Christians but I'm not a libertarian in that sense I'm an objectivist and you know I share certain political principles with libertarians but I don't believe in a big tent and I think we're doing to lose the case for freedom if we anchored in religion religion is mysticism religion is Christian ethics and the Christian ethics and mysticism are incompatible with freedom nevermind libertarianism they're incompatible with freedom this is why when any civilization any civilization at any point in human history that has taken religion seriously and given religious authorities political power has always been a libertarian whether it's Old Testament Jews or whether it's the communities of Hasidic Jews which are basically a libertarian in their little communes or whether it's post Roman Empire or during Roman Empire Christianity once it became political whether it's a Catholic church to some extent to this day or whether it's or whether it's Calvin and Calvin's Geneva they were dictatorships and they have to be dictatorships there is no other way to handle it so now again I get into trouble with this so my religious libertarian friends will come and talk to you I'm sure but I don't I think those two are incompatible and at Montpelerin I don't know if you're familiar with Montpelerin Society at the last big meeting of the Montpelerin Society Classical Liberal Society they had a debate between me and a Catholic the moderator was a Catholic priest so it was two against one about whether religion is compatible with freedom or not and I strongly took the stand that it's not and in that sense I think Europe has an advantage over America because I think America has this two religion is way too embedded not that Americans take the religion really seriously but the more seriously they take it the more we move away from freedom the rise of evangelical Christianity has brought about the destruction of the Republican Party and they move away from freedom and it's no accident the evangelicals and I don't know what Ellen said about Donald Trump but I view Donald Trump as a big step backwards away from freedom and it's no accident the evangelicals supported Trump they support an element the element of authoritarianism in Trump Christian prohibitions and Richard Dawkins your leader well the problem with Christians and Dawkins as much as I respect their views on atheism is that they are Christians when it comes to their morality so they have internalized Christian morality and adopted and secularized it and accepted and as a consequence of accepting that morality they have accepted socialism basically so they've accepted statism but it's not that they start with statism they start with morality they start with the idea that the individual doesn't matter and Dawkins even has a genetic theory about why the collective matters and altruism is genetically coded and all this nonsense so he starts with the morality and then derives his socialism from that and unfortunately you know Sam Harris is tinged with the same thing although I think Sam Harris is better than Dawkins and Hitchens although you know you gotta love Hitchens sometimes when he goes after certain groups he can be incredibly articulate and amazing and Dawkins and Hitchens I respect this about Hitchens Hitchens is one of the few contemporary intellectuals who realized that Ein Rand was the enemy and spent significant amounts of time in his talks attacking him and I respect that most of them just ignore him so you got a question? yes you mentioned the case of Scandinavia I have a friend a socialist friend who is very passionate and is too born about it I've been trying to convince him that it wasn't really socialism that it wasn't that effective but it's not working so what do you think I should tell him? well I'm not sure I'm not sure you can tell him anything that'll work but I do have at least one video and maybe a couple of podcasts just on Scandinavia there's a lot of content about it but just a quick outline Scandinavia Sweden in particular from 1870 until 1955-60 was the most capitalist country in Europe maybe in the world and certainly and as a consequence went from being the poorest country in Europe in 1870 to the richest country in Europe in the early years after World War II partially it was the richest because World War II destroyed the rest of Europe and Sweden remained relatively unscathed but also before World War II it was a very rich country many of the biggest industries in Europe were based in Sweden as a consequence of the freedom that was allowed in 1960 they decided to go to socialism they took all their wealth that they had built up over 90 years or so and started redistributing it and they redistributed and redistributed and became poorer and poorer and poorer until in 1979 what was the largest income producing industry in Sweden? ABBA ABBA the rock world number two Johan Borg the tennis player so industry was gone big business was gone out of Sweden because it was too regulated it was too taxed too much and then by 1994 Sweden was grease of today Sweden was bankrupt Sweden couldn't pay their debts and since 1994 the government of Sweden has been reducing government spending reducing redistribution of wealth and dramatically reducing regulation so indeed Sweden today has less regulated business-wise than America's than the United States of America's and so Sweden today is not more socialist in any significant way than the United States of America's it's just got a different set of mixed economy all economies in the west are mixed some with more statism and less freedom some with more freedom and less statism but they're all mixed and most of them are mixed about the same place we all tend to spend a total about between 40 to 60% of GDP we're right in the middle the United States is close to 40 if you add up federal, state and local governments it's close to 40 Sweden is like close to 50 I don't know where France is I think it's close to 60 France but they're all between 40 and 60 right so I mean they're all status they're all government run basically gone are the days where the federal government spent 3.5% of GDP today the federal government spent 20% you can count government spending at the federal level by 80% and get back to the wonderful in my view economy of the 19th century so I mean that's just the beginning but you can go on in detail about the fact that Swedes always happy when you survey Swedes they're happy right and also happiness studies Swedes are very happy because when you go to Sweden and you ask Swedes are you happy you're supposed to say yes you know I'm Jewish in origin right when you ask a Jew if you're happy nobody says yes so it goes against everything you believe in to say yes you're happy I can be happy look at all the problems in life and everything so these studies are silly and by the way Swedes in America are just as happy as Swedes in Sweden Swedes in America live longer or just as long as Swedes in Sweden Swedes in America live in bigger houses drive bigger cars have more wealth than Swedes in Sweden so when you control for variables suddenly you discover that all the Sweden is good effect go away they go away now there's a selection bias you could argue because the best Swedes went to America nowadays the statues of the works of William Brandon and the Anne-Ren Institute are his works promoted or ignored or criticized I'm asking this question because I'm a big fan of Anne-Ren and at the same time I like his works I read his autobiography the psychology of self esteem the psychology of Romantic love which I found really interesting I know that he was very criticized when he woke up with Anne-Ren by his friends so what do you think about him so he cited and his works are promoted from the period where he worked with Anne-Ren so from the psychology of self esteem which she edited it but was published after they split but she was involved in writing it all through all the books of essays which are selfishness, capitalism all have essays by Nathaniel Brandon and included in it and she wanted them to stay in the books and to continue to be promoted the existing work we do not promote the work that he did after for a couple of reasons one is I don't want to get into a big debate about this but I consider him a bad guy he might have been a good psychologist but I consider him a bad human being I think he did significant damage to the objectivist movement I think he led the objectivist movement unfortunately under Anne-Ren's guidance in a negative direction he was a nasty person he treated people he writes about psychology but it's weird how people who write about psychology tend to be angry nasty people but he was a nasty person he treated people on a one-on-one basis in a horrible way so we don't promote him after that because we don't want to promote a guy who we consider a bad person I do think his works written right after the split with Anne-Ren particularly the Psychology of Romantic Love I think are good so there's good work I think they're more further away from Anne-Ren he got and he started dabbling in mysticism and in men's rights and all kinds of weird things later on in life he did seances so that is later in life I think in the late 70's and going into the 80's so I'd say the early worker is best work and is good and I'm sure that in the future objective psychologists psychologists who study Anne-Ren will also study his work and refer to it I'm not a psychologist I'm a finance guy Is there any other famous Randian psychologist? Unfortunately no although I think that she has an influence on psychology the whole rise today of the cognitive psychology movement and even elements within the positive thinking movement although I think some of that is primacy of consciousness but the whole idea of cognitive psychology the idea that emotions are derived from ideas and what we think and the conclusions we come to all of that comes from the work of Anne-Ren and comes from the work of Nathaniel Brandon so I think she's had a profound impact that this particular psychologist read Anne-Ren and what the links are but you can see that the whole discussion of self-esteem really starts with Anne-Ren makes it a cardinal value one of the three cardinal values self-esteem was not a psychological term until really the 1906 until Nathaniel Brandon and then Nathaniel Brandon bring it in and then it gets distorted today it's nonsense but at least the discussion of the concept was Anne-Ren I'll say this just generally I believe Anne-Ren's had a profound impact on the culture already I think concept like self-esteem concept like capitalism capitalism in the 50s and 60s was a dirty word and the only two people who spoke up for capitalism in a popular way in a way that affected the culture are Anne-Ren and Milton Friedman in 1980 capitalism is okay by the time Reagan and Thatcher are elected they can talk about capitalism that's because of the work Anne-Ren so I think in many ways subtle ways not embracing the entire philosophy Anne-Ren has already had a substantial impact there's good evidence to suggest that the draft was eliminated in the United States because of people who associated with Anne-Ren and who brought her ideas in front of Nixon and got rid of the draft an important pro-liberty moment there's a lot of things I think that have happened we tend to be too pessimistic about the influence yeah in the back thank you for your talk what was the core of your talk I think was this idea of renaissance and enlightenment not being achieved fully fully manifest yeah and being under attack I agree with this idea I'm questioning the why and you say that what is under attack is individualism and rationalism and my personal feeling is that at some point in the process of enlightenment there was an idea which was really in the core of the right at that time was respublica respublica no translate somebody Latin rest is the thing publica is a common thing so this is the origin of republic rest many one it's the idea of general interest as a goal and the only non-negotiable thing being the world being governed for the general interest yes and at some point at least in France we stopped making any distinctions between respublica and demos kratos democracy which is absolutely not the same respublica was a goal to achieve a focus point it requires analysis it requires rationalism maybe it requires as a step to think individualism as well but once you stop confusing respublica and demos kratos demos kratos what is it what is democracy the rule of the mob it's not an objective it's a methodology so as soon as you stop confusing the objective the size the focus point an idea of methodology you're losing your way and then you cannot achieve enlightenment that's what my question is something I share with you to have your opinion on that and we do not have a system we have a religion because democracy is a religion with its own kind of bible which is human rights so as soon as you are in a religion with a bible you're not in analysis, individualism science you're a believer that's why I want to suggest I agree with you I agree with you but I would suggest that the points I made are more fundamental that what you're identifying which is true is the consequence of abandoning reason and abandoning individualism the consequence of abandoning those things we abandon the idea of a republic and the meaning of laws meaning of the rule of law and we embrace because we lost what that means because we lost I think we lost the concept of individual rights as Locke understood it maybe France never had it there's a possibility France never had it completely and Britain ultimately says individual rights are nonsense on stilts super nonsense so already in the 19th century they're chipping away at the idea of individual rights I think once you lose that then what's left what's left is whatever the majority wants and what is the majority wants whatever they feel and that's emotion and that's a loss of individuals and the whole idea of inalienable individual rights is the idea that the majority can't take it away from you and that's what the American Republic has built on is the idea of the individual sovereignty and that the government is not there to and this is partially the understanding of Republic common good I think there is no such thing as the common good all there is is the good in the individual what is in the common good in the proper sense is to protect the individual and not to think oh when we aggregate individuals what good do we get that thinking is a wrong thing it leads to collectivism and leads ultimately to democracy so I think even the concept of Republic was perverted that's why as soon as we stop thinking in terms of republic and republic but you see I think we stop thinking in terms of individuals and in terms of reason and then as a consequence we stop thinking in terms of republic if you lose the word you lose the idea instead of that word instead of the idea you replace it by an idea which is collectivism then the process is nothing else then you lose the way to achieve this enlightenment process I agree with you and I agree with your characterization of democracy as a religion I think it certainly is today I mean you can criticize almost anything today but if you criticize democracy people flip out they think you're the devil and it's the worst thing in the world and they don't realize there's an alternative they think democracy is authoritarianism those are the options and they don't realize there's a third alternative in the world or organization where you are pursuing general interest that are not democracies like Singapore or like a family a family is not or a corporation or many others corporation is not a democracy I run what is moral or not I mean I run test to decide what is moral or not the moral is that which supports human life which that is good for human life the immoral is that which threatens human life it's that which is bad for human life and then she says now it's a scientific question let's look at the world and see what things support human life and what things threaten human life and if you read the objective aesthetics and the virtue of selfishness and that essay is in French look it's in she then articulates well what she thinks is the most important thing that supports human life and for her the most important thing that supports human life is to use your mind is to think that all human values are the creation of human thought of human reason everything and therefore to her the number one value the thing to act to gain or keep the thing you want the reason and the number one virtue the action to take is to be rational and then she articulates a whole system of what she believes are the principles that are consistent with life are consistent with success in life and those which are consistent with failure those would be vices, failures vices and those who are successful are virtues so to her it's a science what's good for human life nutrition right a doctor in nutrition says these foods are good for you these foods are bad for you and it's hard to tell and nutritionists disagree but they agree on the standard all nutritionists agree that the standard is human health the difference is that in ethics we don't agree some people think the standard should be other people and Ayn Rand says the standard should be you your well being as a human being should be about what constitutes human well being Aristotle and Ayn Rand would disagree about what constitutes human well being but the standard of virtue the standard of morality is your well being your life, your survival your ability to flourish as a human being in life if you want to jump in I'll jump in but I like the YouTube you won't be the first one the first one I would like you to explain the Trump paradox because he says to be very influenced by Ayn Rand sure so there is there's no way where Trump claims to be influenced by Ayn Rand there's not a single place where he claims that what he said the only quote I know that he mentions Ayn Rand he said that Fountainhead is one of his novels so what Victor or 93 is one of my favorite novels doesn't mean I agree with Hugo about everything and doesn't agree with Hugo as a socialist I'm not a socialist but I love his novels so Trump, red fountain head maybe it's because it's about architecture and he's a developer who knows what he got out of it I have a very low view of Trump I don't think he's very smart and I doubt that he finished the fountain head and I really doubt he understood it philosophically I think very few people understand the fountain head and I certainly don't think Trump is one of them nothing he says no policy he holds no belief that he has is consistent with Ayn Rand he generally wants a deregulate economy fine but he doesn't really he doesn't know what he wants no philosophy, he has no ideas he has no beliefs, he has no system so he absorbs you know somebody said somebody did a little research how he came up with drain the swamp somebody suggested draining the swamp sounds good Trump said yeah let me try that and he went on speech and he said drain the swamp and everybody went yeah we want to drain the swamp and he said okay that works I'm going to keep saying he is a marketer he is good at marketing he has his name on all his hotels Trump everywhere he is good at marketing and that's what he did he looked at the election and he said what can I say that I'll get people to vote for me does Trump really believe trade is bad I don't know I don't think he cares but he knows that at this moment in history Americans are suspicious anxious, afraid of China and of trade does he really hate immigrants his wife is an immigrant he is married to an immigrant but everything he does suggests he hates immigrants no again there is a moment in American history right now sad all these are sad I'm not people hate immigrants not just illegal ones they say they hate illegal immigrants and they love legal immigrants but when you push them they hate immigrants period so he capitalized on that and used that as a marketing campaign he saw that before everybody else that there is a real frustration and anger in America and that these are ways to and look he acted and if you again I've done some podcasts on this where I really analyzed Trump but he acted like an authoritarian this is what authoritarians do step one tell people the world is ending the world is falling apart they should be really really afraid right easy because there is some element of truth but exaggerated right he would say there is carnage in the streets of America you know what carnage is really I mean not in my streets I mean if you look at crime statistics in America we live in one of the most peaceful periods in all of American history crime is up a little bit significantly in Chicago crime but that's it you know I live for all intents and purposes there is no crime I remember in 70's and 80's going to New York City and being afraid to leave my hotel at night today you can walk in the streets of New York City at 2am nobody is afraid and yet you know carnage in the streets so we start out and you are losing your jobs factories are empty all over America unemployment is 4% which is not bad you know we produce in America more stuff than ever in history double what we produced when the maximum amount of people working we have less people working we produce more technology we are more producing more stuff more real things than ever in American history but oh America is producing nothing it's all gone to China it's nonsense every single one of these things he said to scare us has an element of truth which he blows up out of proportion so part one you scare people part two who do you blame it's not your fault no Americans are good people hard working people they believe God and country and everything is going to be fine who's fault is it it's the other fill in the blank if you are a European authoritarian it's Jews or maybe today it's Muslims element of truth but blown out of all proportion it's Jews now in America you can't say that particularly if you want to win an election so you say it's the Chinese it's the Mexicans it's the Koreans, it's the Germans it's anybody we trade with and of course it's immigrants because they are the ultimate other they're closer to being the Jews of Europe because they're in your country and they look different so it's immigrants and it's foreigners and then how do you solve the problem there's a problem life is terrible it's other people's fault how do you solve the problem you build a wall and the ultimate authoritarian trust me I ran a business I know how to fix things don't worry trust me that's the playbook of every authoritarian in history scare them find a scapegoat and then tell them to trust you and that's what Trump did is he an authoritarian? no because the system in America is robust and authoritarian but is he in his blood an authoritarian? absolutely he says to the Republicans do away with the filibuster there's a reason there's a filibuster because the founders didn't like democracy so they wanted 60 votes they didn't want 51 for everything they wanted people to really believe in something before they passed the law so he wants to undo all that because he doesn't care he wants to win at any cost so that's my now quick analysis of Trump yes well middle class she wasn't upper class she was middle class she owned a pharmacy that's not upper class so this is a question that's broader than I meant what makes us who we are the environment in which we're raised option 1 our genes option 2 and then psychologists say it's a mixture of both and of course they ignore option 3 which I think is the most important which is the choices we make the the free will that we all have over our own lives the decision and choices we make and people ignore that completely it's as if we're automatons and genes which is ridiculous in my view and all you have to do to discover how ridiculous it is is look inside yourself introspect a little bit and you can discover your own will I think Einwand is mostly the third part and I think all of us are mostly the third part I think we are mostly creations of ourselves I think she was 150 million Russians probably more than that lived under communism there's only one Einwand so 150 million were exposed to those ideas, only one Einwand millions and millions of millions lived before Russia with a great 19th century and none of them are Einwand so she took that, that was all material for her no question and she wouldn't have said than being exactly the same person if not for those, right her genes who made her a genius her environment that gave her the information the evidence but it's her choices her mind that did what it did with it that came out she would have come up with this philosophy I think even if she wasn't in the Soviet Union but it would have been different it would have been the focus and the orientation probably would have been somewhat different but she's not a product of nobody is a product of the environment unless you shut yourself down if you don't think for yourself then you become a product of other people she was obviously not that so I think she, that's part of it you know being born at the beginning of the 20th century at the late 19th century gave you a certain spirit that I don't think being born today you could have a certain optimism a certain joie de vie you know, love of life a certain, you know, life is good pre-World War I there was this attitude in Europe think about them music in Moscow or Japan or Ibrahim enough today it's just not in the psyche we're cynics we have punk rock that's what we love, right? not me, but you know, I'm still a romantic but romantic music is impossible today I was at the Dosei Museum today and nobody can sculpt like that not because they don't have the technical skills but nobody believes in that nobody believes in human beings being heroic and beautiful in the 19th century we just don't we think, yeah, human beings come so we make them into abstraction so we can't God forbid, identify that there's a human being there now this is a beautiful, amazing I mean, particularly for you French I mean, God to be in Paris in the 19th century was culturally I can't think of another era, maybe other than Greece of cultural vibrancy and optimism and you had to go and sit at the coffee shop together I mean, that just blows your mind blows my mind anyway so that's, I mean so being born during that period matters to your sense of life I think the biggest tragedy we have today is, I know libertarians don't think these ways, but this is how I think is the lack of that kind of art, that kind of view of the world that kind of beauty, again we got punk rock that's ugly I mean, whatever you say you might get into it, but it's ugly it's not beauty in the heroic man and wonderful great stuff I don't know, punk rock stuck in my mind or the abstract art that we have today which is mostly ugly and meaningless, it doesn't mean a thing it's post-modernism on canvas, no truth no reality, nothing that to me, we're poorer in that regard than anything economically the economy we can still all manage, given the socialism that we have, but the lack of great authors, the lack of great novels the lack of great, you know maybe you have a few decent movies, but even there Luc Besson is declining dramatically you haven't asked yet finished 30 minutes it wasn't wonderful I'm one of the few people here that I'm sure I understand but I want to come back to the concept of pre-world the whole philosophy, the whole system if we discover that pre-world doesn't exist the whole tower falls and you mentioned Sam Harris and you I'm sure you know that he's not a huge fan of the concept of pre-world he's even an applicator of the whole book about that and the whole field of neuroscience today is working actively and making progress about the fact that we start to understand the brain better and for now and so now the evidence seems to suggest that indeed, pre-world is really hard to look at and so again, I'm a huge fan of Irand and the philosophy but it appears that pre-world is indeed then who cares then this discussion is meaningless then why am I here then it doesn't, nothing I say matters I mean to me, the idea we don't have pre-world is so bizarre it's so ridiculous and with all due respect to the scientific information, we're still at the very very beginning of understanding how the mind works to make declaratory statements based on research that suggests that they see something happen before you raise your arm or all the stuff that I've read about is absurd, it's ridiculous we're at the beginning of the science, there's still 100 years before we fully understand how the mind works at least newer scientists that I talk to who are familiar with philosophy say that the science has almost nothing to say about free will I, not anything I could do off the hand if you send me an email I could ask around I'm not an expert, but to me it's ridiculous science will never tell us that we don't have free will let me make that clear science will never tell us that we don't have free will, any more than science can tell us that reality doesn't exist that's the level at which free will is at it's a difficult concept, I'm going to find free will as the ability it's the choice to focus your mind to be in focus, to initiate contact with the world, or to not focus or not to focus, it's not about whether it's my hand right now or not it's primarily about the issue of are you in focus or are you not are you activating your mind or are you not activating your mind and you, something is activating that mind that is not that is not what do you call it, billiard ball causality related and she defined causality different than David Hume defined causality she defined causality as the thing acting based upon its nature, not the thing acting because something else acted on it and the nature of consciousness of human consciousness is to have free will it acts based on its nature and you cannot undo a philosophical concept like that with science, science ultimately will tell us how it all works once free will is there but it won't explain it won't explain away it cannot explain away free will any different than science can explain away reality science will never explain away the existence of this glass no, we accept that, but because I see it that's why it can't explain because I see it, it's right here I see it, there's no question you can see your free will there's nothing special about your senses that your introspection doesn't have I don't, you know quantum physics has not made me change my mind about this glass no science that you come up with will make the question, the existence because I see it of my free will I know that I'm choosing to be here in the sense of to be engaged and I know that and that's knowledge, the same kind of knowledge that's seeing this glasses it's the same philosophical, epistemological those are the same types of knowledge the problem with science the scientist today, not the problem with science is that they they have a corrupt philosophical understanding of these concepts and therefore undermining you know, the science the philosophy is undermining the real science what they're discovering is not correlated with what they think they're discovering philosophical it's the same problem I think they have with quantum mechanics quantum mechanics is an observable reality what's going on there is real but how you interpret it that's a question of philosophy of science how you interpret the results the neurological results is a question for philosophy of science and the question of whether you have free will is not a scientific question it is a observational question it's an axiomatic question, it's something you observe directly, just like this glass it's the best I can do not my expertise you know, I'm not in epistemology but that's I think that's what I meant thank you thank you for your book thank you Alain Aron impressive speeches tell them about Saturday's events several things first of all, I know that the Alain Institute thanks a lot the ALEPS the MRS working for the ALEPS thank you again thank you thank you Stoff for helping organize this thank you unfortunately we have quite a few books so in fact I ask you not to use them direct orders so you have for the especially the works of the R&B which are released on a small file which is there on the other hand for the students for the course we have enough and we will still have enough for Saturday and for students for liberty we have these two books which are translated into French and it's a bit the end we have so if you do not have them yet, do not hesitate to take them not to be long, I will send an e-mail to all those who came here because I have their address tomorrow to talk about the events which take place Saturday near Bastille from 10 to 17 o'clock so we will talk about feminism and liberalism and then we will write songs on the central bank and in the morning we will have three interventions on everything that touches the politics of the fight finally, politics against drugs everything that touches the work and then we have protectionism and protectionism thank you all again and then through the the liberal life there was a social service in France and here in Paris no, not in Paris in a similar way not necessarily in France we bought the university we do not have what you do yes, I do I will keep it are we going to dinner now? yes do we have a dinner? yes we are we are late we are late that's fine I will see you I will see you I will see you