15 Facts About John Hospers

John Hospers was an American philosopher and political activist.

In 1972, John Hospers became the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, and was the only minor party candidate to receive an electoral vote in that year's US presidential election.

John Hospers was born to a Dutch-American family in Pella, Iowa, on June 9,1918, the son of Dena Helena and John De Gelder Hospers.

John Hospers graduated from Central College in 1939 before earning an MA in English from the University of Iowa in 1942 and a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University in 1946.

John Hospers conducted research, wrote, and taught in areas of philosophy, including aesthetics and ethics.

John Hospers taught philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Brooklyn College, California State College Los Angeles and at the University of Southern California, where for many years he was chairman of the philosophy department and professor emeritus.

John Hospers died in Los Angeles on June 12,2011, at the age of 93.

John Hospers appeared on radio shows with Ayn Rand, and devoted considerable attention to her ideas in his ethics textbook Human Conduct.

Rand's discussions with John Hospers contributed to her decision to write non-fiction.

John Hospers read Atlas Shrugged, which he considered an aesthetic triumph.

John Hospers disagreed with Rand about free will and conscription.

John Hospers adopted more conventionally conservative views in his later writings: in 1998, he wrote an article rejecting open border immigration, and in a 2007 revision of his book Libertarianism, he said he supported the Iraq War.

John Hospers was editor of three anthologies, and contributed to books edited by others.

John Hospers wrote more than 100 articles in various scholarly and popular journals.

John Hospers was editor of The Personalist and The Monist, and was a senior editor at Liberty magazine.