I will be back in the studio late August to record a two-course series on the Philosophy of Politics. Stay tuned for an invitation to join the studio audience then.

In other news: My two previously recorded courses, Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Philosophy, will be released this spring and summer. Here are the syllabi:

Modern Philosophy

A course by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy

Eight lectures. Key philosophers and philosophies of the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche. For each, Professor Hicks establishes the philosopher’s intellectual context, presents his or her most influential arguments, and quotes directly from the philosopher’s important books or essays. Other significant thinkers, ideas, and historical events from 1500-1900 CE included.

Lecture One: The Birth of the Modern. Francis Bacon

Themes: What is the Modern? 1500: Art. Science. Exploration. Religion. Economy. Politics.

Individualism of independent thinking, Individualism of identity, and Individualism of worth.

Galileo. Milton. Descartes.

Empiricism. Experimentalism.

Texts: Bacon: The Great Instauration. Novum Organon.

Lecture Two: Radical Doubt. René Descartes

Themes: What can I doubt? Rationalism. Unintended Skepticism? God? External world? Dualism.

Vesalius. Hobbes. Copernicus. Galileo. Pope Urban VIII.

Text: Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy

Lecture Three: The Promise of Individual Empiricism. John Locke

Themes: Empiricism. Tabula rasa. Individualism. Liberalism. Toleration. Church and State.

Henry VIII. Shakespeare. Galileo. Descartes. Milton. Cromwell. Newton.

Texts: Locke: Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government, A Letter concerning Toleration

Lecture Four: The Philosophes and the French Enlightenment. Voltaire

Themes: Deism. Toleration. Anti-superstition. Anti-torture. Irreverence. Who are the greatest humans ever?

Augustine. Montaigne. Montesquieu. Diderot. de Gouges. Condorcet.

Bacon. Locke. Newton.

Text: Voltaire: Letters on England

Lecture Five: Counter-Enlightenment. David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Themes: Skepticism, Passions, Fideism. Critiquing the Enlightenment. French Revolution.

Lafayette. Voltaire. de Gouges. Robespierre.

Texts: Hume: A Treatise on Human Nature. Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality.

Lecture Six: Awakening from the Dogmatic Slumber. Immanuel Kant

Themes: The sorry fate of metaphysics. Limits to reason. Phenomenal versus Noumenal realities. Duty ethics.

Hume. Rousseau. King Frederick William II. Locke. Sulzer.

Texts: Kant: Critique of Pure Reason. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Lecture Seven: Resurgent Collectivism. Georg Hegel and Karl Marx

Themes: After Kant, reality or reason? Theodicy. Collectivizing the self. Dialectic and the march of history.

Napoleon. Goethe. Keats.

Texts: Hegel: Philosophy of History. Marx: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Communist Manifesto.

Lecture Eight: Liberal or Anti-Liberal? John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche

Themes: Darwinism. Utilitarianism versus Expressive Power. Liberty versus Slavery. Social philosophy as derived from basic philosophy. Continuing or rejecting the Enlightenment?

Pasteur. Darwin. Caesar. Christ.

Texts: Mill: On Liberty, Utilitarianism. Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals.

Postmodern Philosophy

A course by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy

Eight lectures. Key philosophers and philosophies since 1900 CE, with focus on the proponents and opponents of Postmodernism. Major philosophers covered includes Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Ayn Rand, Philippa Foot, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Derrick Bell, and Catharine MacKinnon. For each, Professor Hicks establishes the philosopher’s intellectual context, presents his or her most influential arguments, and quotes directly from the philosopher’s important books or essays. Other significant thinkers, key ideas, and historical events from 1900 to the present included.

Lecture One: Uncertain Prospects. Bertrand Russell and John Dewey

Themes: Disquieting inheritance: Entropy, Marx, Darwin. A century of war? Skepticism about knowledge. Enlarge your mind? Experiment?

Titanic. Picasso. Lenin. Edison.

Texts: Russell: “The Value of Philosophy.” Dewey: The Impact of Darwin upon Philosophy.

Lecture Two: The Analysts of the Self. Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger

Themes: The new psychology. Pessimism. Instinct and aggression. Logic as limiting. Emotions as accessing. Nihilism?

World War I. Darwin. Spengler. Arendt.

Texts: Freud:Civilization and Its Discontents. Heidegger: “What Is Metaphysics?”

Lecture Three: Absurdity and Meaninglessness? Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus

Themes: The death of God? The reality of war. Depression and the Depression. The pointlessness of existence? Existence precedes essence. The meaning of life?

Kierkegaard. Nietzsche. Heidegger.  

Texts: Sartre: “Existentialism Is a Humanism.”Camus: “The Myth of Sisyphus.”

Lecture Four: What the Women Ethicists Are Up To. Ayn Rand and Philippa Foot

Themes:  Naturalism. Bio-centrism. Value and virtue. Intrinsic/Objective/Subjective. Facts and Values. Ought from Is. Reason. Trolley Problems.

Aristotle. Russell, Carnap, Horkheimer, Medlin, Moody.

Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgely, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.

Texts: Rand: “The Objectivist Ethics.” Foot: Natural Goodness.

Lecture Five: On the Objectivity of Science. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn

Themes:  Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability. Paradigms. Indoctrination. Progress? Truth? 

Kant. Schlick. Ayer. Feyerabend.

Texts: Popper: Conjectures and Refutations. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Lecture Six: Deconstruction and Power. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida

Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism.

Tocqueville. Marx. Nietzsche. Heidegger.

Texts: Foucault: History of Sexuality. Derrida: “Cogito and the History of Madness”  

Lecture Seven: Critical Feminist and Race Theory. Derrick Bell and Catharine MacKinnon

Themes: Feminism’s three waves. De Gouges, Wollstonecraft, de Beauvoir.

Critical Theory and Frankfurt School: Horkheimer and Adorno. Marcuse.

Anti-racism’s three waves. The Enlightenment, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Texts: MacKinnon: Only Words. Bell: “Racial Realism.”

Lecture Eight: Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern

Themes:  Philosophy as three-way debates. Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Chart: Pre-modernism, Modernism, Post-modernism. What next?

About the Instructor

Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy and the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, Nietzsche and the Nazis, Entrepreneurial Living, Liberalism Pro and Con, and Eight Philosophies of Education. He has published in Business Ethics Quarterly, Review of Metaphysics, and The Wall Street Journal. His writings have been translated into twenty languages. He has been Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), Visiting Professor at the University of Kasimir the Great (Poland), Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College (Oxford University), and Visiting Professor at Jagiellonian University (Poland).