Anyone over the age of 40 who has ever studied philosophy is likely to have on their shelves at least one edition of the mandatory student primer, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, first published in the mid-1950s. Its author, John Hospers, who has died aged 93, was emeritus professor in philosophy at the University of Southern California.
"I want to be remembered as a philosophical instructor who could clarify questions, and present good ideas clearly," he wrote. He will also be remembered as one of the founders of the individualistic, anti-government Libertarian party in the US, which had links to the laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Alan Greenspan. He wrote one of the party's key texts, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, and, in 1972, was the first Libertarian party nominee for president. Many contempories considered him to be the first openly gay candidate for President but since his death his family have strenuously denied that he was gay. His campaign photograph had the heading "Break free from Big Brother". Hospers and his vice-presidential nominee, Theodora Nathan, each won an electoral college vote from a renegade Republican elector. Hospers soon abandoned full-time politics for a return to academia.
He was born in Pella, a small town near Des Moines, Iowa. Pella had been founded by Dutch religious refugees in the 18th century, and Dutch was Hospers's first language, tulip gardens his aesthetic, self-reliance and Calvinism his religious codes. It was David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that later helped him struggle free of the Dutch Reformed Church and engendered his interest in philosophy.
His first boyhood love was astronomy. He would go to the nearby college observatory to view, and to show college students, the rings of Saturn and various double stars. When at college himself, aged 17, he was often delegated to replace the dean in giving astronomy classes to college seniors. After graduating with an MA in English literature from the University of Iowa in 1941, Hospers was offered a scholarship in philosophy at Columbia University, where he studied for a year under the British analytic philosopher GE Moore, who was a visiting professor. He got his PhD in 1944. His first book, Meaning and Truth in the Arts, published in 1946 while he was teaching at Columbia, was based on his dissertation.
He wrote extensively on ethics and aesthetics, and taught philosophy at Brooklyn College in New York, the University of North Carolina and the University of Minnesota. His libertarianism was inspired by Ayn Rand, the self-declared philosopher and cult hero of the free market, with whom he was, for a limited time, close friends.
Hospers encountered Rand in 1960 when she came to lecture at Brooklyn College. They met for lunch and were still avidly talking five hours later. That evening he "plunged into" her novel Atlas Shrugged, which was "heady wine" to him. He became infatuated with Rand and her scorn for altruism and state welfare. They would meet every two or three weeks and hold, till 4am or even 6am, talks that Hospers described as "among the most intellectually exhilarating of my life".
He was said to be the only person, bar one, who was able to debate amicably with the histrionic Rand. However, differences in opinion over determinism (she, unlike him, was a stern believer in unconditioned free will), the possible necessity of military conscription (which he, unlike her, advocated), and logic (which was not her forte), caused strains in their friendship, which she abruptly terminated in 1962 after he had publicly questioned her views on aesthetics. He never saw her again. Hospers continued to be influenced by Rand and to brood, often tearfully, over their relationship.
His students and friends described him as a warm and delightful conversationalist and a wonderful listener. He antagonised many Libertarians by opposing one of their tenets – the open borders policy – in a 1998 article excoriating unrestrained Mexican immigration, and by defending the Iraq war in his revised edition of Libertarianism in 2007. By then, he had left the party and been instrumental in setting up the Republican Liberty Caucus.
John Hospers, philosopher, born 9 June 1918; died 12 June 2011