Makhan, Tibor

Born in Budapest ^[2] . His father hired a smuggler to take his son out of Hungary when he was 14, and three years later Mahan came to the United States. In 1965 he graduated from the college in Klermont. He received a master’s degree in philosophy from New York University (1965–1966) and a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of California (1966–1971).

In 1970, together with Robert Poole and Manuel Klausner, he bought Reason magazine, which became the leading libertarian periodical in the United States. For two years, Makhan worked as an editor at Reason , and for 25 years edited Reason Papers , an annual journal devoted to interdisciplinary regulatory research.

He was a visiting professor at the United States Military Academy (1992-1993) and taught at universities in California, New York, Switzerland and Alabama. He gives lectures in Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Armenia and Latin American countries on topics of business ethics and political philosophy. He was an advisor to several foundations and factories of thought .

He lived in California. He was married three times, has two daughters and a foster son. In 2004 published a book of memoirs.

The central themes of Mahan's works are ethics and political philosophy , in particular, the theory of natural law . He developed Ayn Rand 's reasoning about the ethics of egoism , and also often writes about business ethics, the area in which he defends the neo-Aristotelian ethical position. His whole view of ethics is set forth in the work Classical Individualism: The Highest Value of Every Person (Routledge, 1998).

Makhan has works on epistemology . Here he argues with the thought that the statement “to know that P ” is reduced to a final, perfect, timeless and complete understanding of P. As an alternative, Makhan develops Ayn Rand's approach to human knowledge (outlined in Rand's book Introduction to the Epistemology of Objectivism), while approaching that understanding of the problem that can be found in J. Austin and G. Harman. The book Objectivity (2004), for example, is devoted to this. Makhan studied the philosophical problem of free will , having come to a secular and naturalistic , but not materialistic, understanding of human initiative.

Makhan spoke out against animal rights in his work “Do animals have rights?” (1991), and also in the book People above all: why we are the favorites of nature (2004), and also wrote about the ethics of handling animals in his book People Before total (2004). He is skeptical of alarming statements about global warming.

In 2011, at the invitation of the Libertarian Party of Russia, he took part in the 3rd Readings of Adam Smith in Moscow. He delivered a lecture on “Why a social contract contradicts freedom”.

• The Promise of Liberty (Lexington, 2009)
• Libertarianism Defended (Ashgate, 2006)
• Classical Individualism (Routledge, 1998)
• Generosity; Virtue in the Civil Society (Cato Institute, 1998)
• Capitalism and Individualism: The St. Martin's Publishing Co. & Harvester Wheatsheaf * Books, 1990)
• Individuals and Their Rights (Open Court, 1989)
• Human Rights and Human Liberties (Nelson-Hall, 1975)
• The Pseudo-Science of BF Skinner (Arlington House, 1973)
• The Libertarian Reader (Rowman & Littlefield, 1982)
• The Libertarian Alternative (Nelson-Hall, 1974)
• "Recent Work in Ethical Egoism," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1979, pp. 1-15.

• Individualism
• laissez faire
• Objectivism