Harry Binswanger

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Harry Binswanger (born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1944) is an American philosopher and writer. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in "Humanities and Engineering" from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he was instrumental in establishing the student group "Radicals for Capitalism") and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation, in the philosophy of biology, presented a new theory of the goal-directedness of living action, in opposition to the views of one of his dissertation advisers: Ernest Nagel. He taught philosophy at CUNY's Hunter College from 1972 to 1979 and at other New York City schools as well as at the University of Texas, Austin for a semester in 2002. Since 1997, he has operated a fee-based email discussion group on Objectivism [1].

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Binswanger was a friend of Ayn Rand, and his subsequent philosophical work has been done in the Objectivist tradition. He edited the new material in the second edition of Ayn Rand's book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1990 after her death (the first edition was published in 1979) and frequently contributes to Objectivist publications. He also compiled The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a mini-encyclopedia of Rand's views on some 400 topics in philosophy--now available online at Lexicon. His own book, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts, was published in 1990. Since then, he has given several lecture courses developing Objectivist theories in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. These include "Free Will", "Abstractions from Abstractions", "The Metaphysics of Consciousness", and "Consciousness as Identification."

From 1980 to 1987, he published and edited a bimonthly journal The Objectivist Forum (1980–87), which is now published as hardback collection: The Objectivist Forum.

Harry Binswanger is currently on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute, and is a Professor at its Objectivist Academic Center. He also, independent of the Ayn Rand Institute, moderates and regularly posts to an email discussion group on Objectivism, HBL.

Binswanger is a supporter of completely open immigration [2], maintaining the U.S. is underpopulated, and cites Ayn Rand herself (who emigrated to the U.S. from Soviet Russia) as the premier example of the benefits derivable from open immigration. In response to worries about Islamists immigrating to the U.S., he has argued that rather than impose immigration restrictions (and other limits on Americans), the U.S. should engage in total, offensive war to end the regimes that sponsor terrorism. He has long urged immediate regime change in Iran, the nation he regards as the mainspring of the Islamic terrorist movement.

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