Philosopher Eric Mack on John Rawls

I re-read Eric Mack’s “Blind Injustice” [updated link], an excellent overview and critique of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s book is the most influential work of academic political philosophy in the last half-century, and Mack’s essay is the best short analysis I know of. By contrast: The moral basis for Rand’s liberalism, in

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*Liberalism Pro and Con* A Primer [e-book version]

In this introductory volume, Professor Stephen R. C. Hicks makes the essential arguments for and against liberalism. Each argument is supported by quotations from the major thinkers—including Locke, Nietzsche, Plato, Hayek, de Maistre, Rand, Marx, and others—who have advanced or attacked liberalism. The Pro-Liberal claims: Liberalism increases freedom | People work harder in liberal societies | 

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The recurring socialism/fascism cycle — Mises observation

A reminder of this prescient remark from Mises’ Liberalism — a book published in 1927: “Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at infamies committed by the socialist and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program

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“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

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Galileo, free speech & censorship, religion and science

A re-post of my Galileo and the Modern Compromise: IN HIS OPEN LETTER to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Galileo offered a defense of science against the prevailing heavy hand of religious orthodoxy: “But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has

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Apology of Socrates | Plato | *Philosophers, Explained* by Professor Stephen Hicks

Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Was Socrates disrespectful of the gods and corrupting the young men around him? And if so, did he deserve the death penalty? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at

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