Happy 90th Birthday


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Here's what I emailed to Barbara shortly before noon today (Saturday June 7), not long after chatting with her on the phone and giving her a heads-up that our tribute to Dr. Hospers would shortly be on its way...reb

Our warmest greetings and congratulations to Dr. Hospers on his 90th birthday. We wish we could be there to join in the festivities and celebration of this happy occasion, and to share our tribute in person.

As fellow Iowa natives, coming from small home towns as did Dr. Hospers, we are pleased to see someone who shares our own varied interests attain such heights in his long, distinguished career.

We salute him for his pathbreaking work in the Libertarian movement and Party and are grateful for his contributions to clarifying Libertarian ideology in his work on the Party Platform and his wonderful book Libertarianism.

We also express our deep appreciation for his many essays and books on philosophy, including his Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, which is a model of clarity of exposition and an introduction for many to some of Ayn Rand's most important ideas in epistemology and ethics. We also appreciate Dr. Hospers books on aesthetics, as well as his reviews of recorded music, which are very charming and informative.

Another very important accomplishment of Dr. Hospers is his years at the helm of The Personalist. Under his editorship, a number of important young Objectivist and Libertarian scholars were afforded the opportunity to publish challenging, probing essays in ethics, political science and metaphysics, among them Douglas Rasmussen, Eric Mack, and Bill Dwyer.

We also want to say how much we appreciate and admire Dr. Hospers for how he comported himself in his all-too-brief relationship with Ayn Rand. He showed great persistence and integrity, as well as much kindness and patience in dealing with someone who can only be described as a very challenging person to disagree with. It's apparent from Dr. Hospers' recent comments that some of her most potentially troublesome confusions about the nature of "the objective" were at least somewhat resolved through their discussions.

Finally, we simply want to express our enjoyment of having gotten to know Dr. Hospers in the all-too-few occasions on which we spent time with him personally. He is a gentle, kind, intelligent, good man, and we again congratulate him on having reached this milestone.

Best wishes always,

Roger & Becky Bissell

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In the early 1970s, I was discovering why I was different from other conservatives and why I was considered a "liberal" conservative. One of the first books I got after reading Rand that clarified my identity was Hosper's Libertarianism. It was clear, to-the-point, and very useful to me.

Prof. Hosper, you were born while World War I still raged, the result of not only political but also economic (nationalist, protectionist, imperialist, non-free market) and moral (collectivist, tribalist) irrationality. You have done so much to promote an integrated rational, individualist, and free-market philosophy that we call should be grateful.

Happy Birthday John Hospers!

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  • 2 years later...

Happy Birthday!

This reminds me, I've had a copy of An Intoduction to Philosophical Analysis on my shelves since college. It's about time I read the thing through... Well, after the next dozen or so books maybe... mellow.gif

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