Harry Binswanger

Harry Binswanger was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He is an heir to the Binswanger Glass Company, founded in 1872 by Samuel Binswanger.[1]

In 1965, Binswanger received his Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a brother of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.[2] In 1973, he earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy from Columbia University. His dissertation was in the philosophy of biology and presented a theory of the goal-directedness of living action. It was published in 1990 as The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts.[3] He has since taught philosophy at several universities, including the City University of New York, The New School, and the University of Texas at Austin.[4][5]

Binswanger was a friend of Ayn Rand in the final years of her life and has written his subsequent philosophical work in the tradition of Rand's Objectivist philosophy.[6] From 1980 through 1987, he published and edited a bimonthly journal called The Objectivist Forum, which was later published as a hardback collection.[7] He edited the new material in the second edition of Rand's book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1990 after her death.[note 1] He also compiled The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a compilation of Rand's views on various topics.[8] His book, How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation, was published in 2014.

Binswanger is on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute and is listed as a scholar at the Ayn Rand Institute Campus.[3] He also moderates and posts to a fee-based online discussion group on Objectivism, called "The Harry Binswanger Letter", which he has operated since 1998.[9] Binswanger was previously a contributor to Forbes and is currently a contributor to RealClearMarkets.[10] His television appearances have included Glenn Beck and Geraldo at Large.[11][12] He also appears in Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, the Academy Award-nominated documentary by Michael Paxton, and Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, a 2011 documentary by Chris Mortensen.[13]

Binswanger has been described as an "orthodox" Objectivist who is committed to ideas of his mentor Rand, whom he considers a "once in a millennium genius".[6] Binswanger expressed support for Israel on Glenn Beck and denied global warming in his Forbes column of April 3, 2013.[14] He calls for "absolutely open immigration" in a post on his website.[15]

• The Harry Binswanger Letter