“A free mind and a free market are corollaries,” Ayn Rand writes. What is the full connection between the value of reason and the value of capitalism? Would freedom be necessary, or even possible, if man lived not by reason, but by blind faith or by blind emotions? And what is the relationship, in practice, between our culture’s view of how the mind functions and its attitude toward the free market?

Mr. Schwartz examines the philosophic underpinnings of freedom. He discusses the liberals’ growing opposition to intellectual freedom, and the conservatives’ growing opposition to economic freedom—and explains how both stem from a rejection of the idea of man as a fully volitional being. This lecture shows why a proper defense of capitalism not only requires, but is, a defense of the free mind.