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Harry Binswanger (; born 1944) is an American professor and author. He is an Objectivism and a former board member of the Ayn Rand Institute. He was an associate of Ayn Rand, working with her on The Ayn Rand Lexicon. Binswanger is the author of How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (2014). His most recent book is Ayn Rand's Philosophic Achievement (2024). His blog and (fee-based) membership site is HBLetter.com.
In 1961, Binswanger entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having had a keen interest in science in general since early childhood, and later in theoretical physics in particular.
But after becoming aware of and then studying Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, he chose philosophy as his major and neuroscience as his minor. In 1965 he received a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Engineering (XXI-B).
As an undergraduate, Binswanger argued for Objectivism in philosophy courses taught by some of the field's leading figures, including Philippa Foot, Hubert Dreyfus, and Hilary Putnam. During his senior year, he helped start a campus Objectivist group, the M.I.T. Radicals for Capitalism, and he published a mimeographed periodical on Objectivism, initially named The Atlantis Review.
In June, 1965, he came to New York City to pursue a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University and to be in the city that was then the center of Objectivism, where Ayn Rand and her associates gave frequent lectures. Through the 1960s and 1970s, he got to know Ayn Rand, and in her final years, they became good friends, meeting once or twice a week to discuss ideas--and play Scrabble.
Binswanger's own philosophical work is solidly in the tradition of Rand's philosophy. From 1980 through 1987, he published and edited a bimonthly journal called The Objectivist Forum, which was later published as a hardback collection. He edited the new material in the second edition of Rand's book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1990 after her death.The first edition was published in 1979. He also conceived and created The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a compilation of Rand's views on some 400 topics in philosophy and cognate fields. His book, How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation, was published in 2014.
Binswanger was on the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute for 36 years. He also moderates and posts to a fee-based online discussion group on Objectivism, called "The Harry Binswanger Letter", which he has operated since 1998. Binswanger was previously a contributor to Forbes and RealClearMarkets. His television appearances have included Glenn Beck and Geraldo at Large. He also appears in , the Academy Award-nominated documentary by Michael Paxton, and Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, a 2011 documentary by Chris Mortensen.
In 1986, Binswanger and John Ridpath participated in a debate on Socialism vs Capitalism against John Judis and Christopher Hitchens. In this debate he argued for the merits of capitalism as compared to socialism from an Objectivist perspective. During the debate, Binswanger stated "Colonialism is the best thing that ever happened to the colonies," and "We view the colonialization of India and the rest of the world ... as the extending of wealth and civilization to backward regions."
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