Texas Tech University

Visiting Scholars Program

The Free Market Institute (FMI) Visiting Scholars Program, made possible by a donation from the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, has brought research professors to Texas Tech University to collaborate with faculty, staff, and graduate students, and participate in Institute programming.


About the Program

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Fall 2020

Insights for Austrian Economics and Classical Liberalism: A Neo-Aristotelian-Thomistic Approach

Douglas Rasmussen, Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Douglas Rasmussen, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University, served as FMI Distinguished Visiting Scholar during the Fall 2020 semester. Prof. Rasmussen's areas of expertise include epistemology, ontology, ethics, political philosophy, and moral foundations of capitalism.

Prof. Rasmussen's seminar explored some basic issues concerning the foundations of economics, the nature of human good, and the justification for the basic, negative natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Special attention was given to the connection between a particular version of neo-Aristotelian-Thomistic thought (as advanced by Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl) and the approach to "Austrian" economics and classical liberalism taken by Murray N. Rothbard.

A complete reading list for the seminar can be accessed here:

Graduate Seminar on Insights for Austrian Economics and Classical Liberalism: A Neo-Aristotelian-Thomistic Approach - Fall 2020

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