Jean-Paul Sartre

“Existentialism is a Humanism” | Jean-Paul Sartre | *Philosophers, Explained* by Stephen Hicks

Episodes: The full playlist, including Kant, Nietzsche, Rand, Locke, Heidegger, and others. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian University in […]

“Existentialism is a Humanism” | Jean-Paul Sartre | *Philosophers, Explained* by Stephen Hicks Read More »

Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology, and postmodernism

When the expanded edition of Explaining Postmodernism: From Rousseau to Foucault was being published, I re-read several transition figures, i.e., those twentieth-century intellectuals who were important in preparing the groundwork for postmodernism. One is anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), whom I first read as an undergraduate. Lévi-Strauss formally studied philosophy and law, but because the bulk

Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology, and postmodernism Read More »

Jean-Paul Sartre and “Existence precedes essence”

Stephen Hicks discusses Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous phrase “existence precedes essence” and its implications for the Existentialist view of human nature. This is from Part 11 of his Philosophy of Education course. (See also my episode on Sartre’s essay “Existentialism Is a Humanism’ in the Philosophers, Explained series.)

Jean-Paul Sartre and “Existence precedes essence” Read More »

Wolin’s *The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s*

Reprising this worth-reading piece on the Maoism of Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault and other fellow-travelers: Alan Schrift’s critical discussion, in Philosophy in Review, of Richard Wolin’s The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, which is now out in a second edition. Excerpt: “For young leftists—and this

Wolin’s *The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s* Read More »

“My white skin disgusts me”

Lesson: The groundwork for this generation’s militant “antiracist-but-not-really” wokism was prepared by my generation.  “My white skin disgusts me” was my introduction to Robin Morgan’s autobiographical The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism, published in 1989, recounting her journey through the New Left, Marxism, postmodernism, left feminism, racialism, and flirtations with revolutionary violence. The

“My white skin disgusts me” Read More »

Nuestro problema con el Che Guevara

por Stephen Hicks  [This is a Spanish translation of “Our Che Guevara Problem”, first published in English at EveryJoe and then translated into Portuguese at Portal Libertarianismo.] Es muy probable que alguien que conozcas tenga una camiseta del Che. Versiones románticas del rostro barbudo de Ernesto Guevara Lynch son muy populares en los campus universitarios y

Nuestro problema con el Che Guevara Read More »