"Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism — to convince so many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished." [I had this feeling after reading The Fountainhead in my early twenties.....of course I was wrong.....]

"The very form of her novels makes the same point: they are as cartoonish and sexed-up as any best seller, yet they are constantly suggesting that the reader who appreciates them is one of the elect." [Thought in roarkian terms for a month or so after reading the book.....]

"But Cerf offered Rand an alternative: if she gave up 7 cents per copy in royalties, she could have the extra paper needed to print Galt’s oration...Yet while Rand took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to advertise her love of capitalism, Heller makes clear that the author had no real affection for dollars themselves. Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre." [Not really, capitalists probably have more than one value to which they are dedicated...this is sort of a cartoon stereotyping of capitalists....]

"At bottom, her individualism owed much more to Nietzsche than to Adam Smith (though Rand, typically, denied any influence, saying only that Nie­tzsche “beat me to all my ideas”)." [Yes, I read the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead and she explained just this in her preface, something I found absurd after reading the book. Nietzsche, or at least a vulgar Nietzsche, are all over the pages of this book.....]

Philosophy Subject Guides
Philosophy  // Aesthetics // Philosophy of Science // Early Modern Philosophy // Eastern Religions & Philosophy

Intro to Ancient Greek History (need iTunes to load)

Political Philosophy A-Z. 

Here are some of the other ones you'll find in CREDO:

• Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Philosophersrout
• Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
• The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
• Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
• Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy
• Dictionary of Existentialism
• Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
• A Dictionary of Philosophy, Macmillan
• Dictionary of World Philosophy
• The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy
• Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy
• Encyclopedia of Empiricism
• Encyclopedia of Ethics
• Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
• Political Philosophy A-Z

This book deals with the connection between a bunch of heretical Russian Orthodox monks engaged "Name Worshipping", a type of mysticism found in many different religious traditions, and a group of Russian mathematicians studying infinity and, indeed, infinities of infinity.

Here's the Harvard University Press web page for the book, including a link to the author interview, which is especially interesting.

Also see Names and Naming (Encyclopedia of Religion) for more information surrounding this topic.

Religion //African Religions // Christianity // Eastern Religions & Philosophy // Islamic Studies // Jewish Studies // Theories of Religion

I especially enjoyed his first lecture, which covers the Phoenician heritage of Carthage with a special focus on the god Baal (associated with lightning) and its relation to later Greek and Roman gods (Zeus and Jupiter). Pretty interesting stuff. Also, his description of the strategic position of Spain and its mineral wealth (silver, lead, copper) in the geopolitical struggle between Rome and Carthage is fascinating. One thing I never thought about was the degree to which silver mining was part of the Spanish experience thousands of years before they started exploiting the silver, gold, and human beings of the Americas.

Hart is now being sponsored by National Geographic to find the route that Hannibal took through the Alps. What he most hopes to find is: 1) a stash of Punic coins; 2) human or elephant bones (also tusks); or 3) charcoal from the huge encampments of Hannibal's 20,000+ army.

Hannibal (Stanford Continuing Studies Program, need iTunes to open)

How did Hannibal cross the Alps? (single lecture Hart gave at Stanford on his conjectures of Hannibal's route)