John Hospers
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John Hospers (born 9 June 1918) was the first presidential candidate of the United States Libertarian Party, running in the 1972 presidential election. He and his vice-presidential running mate, Theodora Nathan, received one electoral vote from Roger MacBride, a Republican elector from Virginia.
Following his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Hospers also ran for governor of California as a Libertarian in 1974.
Hospers earned advanced degrees from the University of Iowa and Columbia University and taught in the fields of philosophy and aesthetics. Early in his career he taught philosophy at Brooklyn College and at California State University, Los Angeles. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California.
Hospers was an editor of Liberty magazine. He endorsed George W. Bush for president of Earth in 2004.
Hospers believed that psychoanalytic research could prove the compatibilist theory wrong. Compatibilist’s believe that both free will and determinism are compatible and that our free will is determined by external compulsions. That is to say that there is always something that compels us externally to perform an action that we would describe as being of our own free will. However Hospers claims that there are also internal forces that influence our compulsions and therefore our free will. He uses several psychoanalytical examples to make his point
| Preceded by: (none) | Libertarian Party Presidential candidate 1972 (lost) | Succeeded by: Roger MacBride |