Tibor Machan: No ‘Continued Militarism’ in the West

Introduction: Tibor Machan is Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Alabama, and until last summer has held the R. C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University. He was until recently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Machan, who earned BA (Claremont McKenna College), MA (New York University) and Ph. D. (University of California at Santa Barbara) degrees in philosophy, has written numerous books and papers in the field of philosophy, including on issues surrounding the free market. Machan was selected as the 2003 President of the American Society for Value Inquiry, and delivered the presidential address on December 29, 2002, in Philadelphia, at the Eastern Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, titled “Aristotle & Business.” Parts of this interview were drawn from previous Machan editorials.
Daily Bell: Thanks for sitting down with us today. Any news? Any new books or projects?
Tibor Machan: My most recent book collects all the interviews I have given since about 1970.
Daily Bell: A recent editorial of yours that we posted was entitled, “A Bit of Nietzsche Will Help.” In it you concluded, “The neo-Aristotelian selfishness … acknowledges that human beings are social … and to strive for one’s own success in life must involve the social virtues as well as the personal ones – generosity and compassion, not only prudence and ambition. With such a morality at hand, the human race would be in far better shape than it is with all the scolding it receives for not being selfless enough.” It seems you are suggesting a balance between enlightened self-interest and social virtues. Can you expand on this?
Tibor Machan: Yes. I also pointed out that the original sin notion is without any foundation at all. How could a baby come into the world already guilty of having sinned? We don’t come into this world with some sort of bias toward selfishness or selflessness. We evolve in certain ways as we grow up, as I pointed out in several of my works, including Generosity (1998).

This post was published at The Daily Bell on Tibor Machan with Anthony Wile – October 26, 2014.