Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk

Kathleen Touchstone is an independent scholar.

Kathleen Touchstone uses economics, game theory, and probability theory in the arguments assembled herein concerning enduring issues in theory of ethical value and virtue and individual rights. What aspects of human life commend which standard of ethical value? Is one’s moral scale singular or multidimensional if it accords with that standard? Is certainty of mortality under uncertainty of end date required for taking life as a whole as ultimate value? For having meaningful chosen values at all?Are there reasons answering to life as a whole, as ultimate value, for bringing children about and up? Why follow ethical principles uniformly? What are the relations of civic norms and individual ethical virtue? What makes rightness in inheritance and in charity? Rightness in risking life and limb for moral principle?Thinkers arrayed and employed in major ways—and often challenged—in this theory of rational ethics: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Aristotle, David L. Norton, Douglas Den Uyl, Douglas Rasmussen, Lawrence Becker, David Kelley, and Tibor Machan. Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk puts the reader at high risk of light and delight.

• Chapter 1: Freedom to FlourishChapter 2: FlourishingChapter 3: Life as the Ultimate ValueChapter 4: VirtuesChapter 5: On Giving: Decisions under “Certainty”Chapter 6: On Decision-making under UncertaintyChapter 7: On the Concept of ProbabilityChapter 8: Risk-takingChapter 9: Final Thoughts