A Painless (and Free) Way to Grasp Some of the Central Topics of Ethics

David Gordon is conducting a free online course, What Is Morality? The Ethics of Hazlitt.

David writes:

Henry Hazlitt is best known as an economist, in particular as the author of the brilliant Economics in One Lesson, but he was also an important, though neglected, ethical theorist. His outstanding book in the field is The Foundations of Morality.

I’m going to be offering a one-day course on the book; this will be held on Friday, June 1. In the book, Hazlitt contended that there was no fundamental opposition between morality and self-interest. Like his friend Ludwig von Mises, Hazlitt saw social cooperation through the free market as central to morality.

I’ll discuss the strengths of this way of looking at ethics and also cover Hazlitt’s sharp criticism of Kant’s ethics. As time permits, we’ll also examine what Hazlitt has to say about free will and determinism. Hazlitt’s book is written with his characteristic clarity and reading it offers an almost painless way to grasp some of the central topics of ethics.

Sign up here.