Mill: “The majority … may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other abuse of power.”
About the Course
In this eight-lecture course, Professor Stephen Hicks takes us through the development of political philosophy from the late 18th to the early 20th century, focusing on key thinkers and movements that shaped the modern world. We examine the Conservative response to the French Revolution, the rise of German Nationalism and Marxism, the defense of Liberalism in England during and after the Industrial Revolution, and the emergence of Pragmatism in America. The course concludes with an analysis of the philosophical foundations of Fascism and Nazism and the competing economic Interventionist and Free-Market theories that arose in response to the Great Depression.
About the Instructor
Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., has been Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois; Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Visiting Professor at the University of Kasimir the Great, Poland; Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College of Oxford University; and Visiting Professor at the Jagiellonian University, Poland.
Dr. Hicks is 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.
In 2010, he won his university’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
Course trailer and enrollment options at the Peterson Academy site. Professor Hicks’s other courses — Modern Philosophy, Postmodern Philosophy, Philosophy of Politics: From the Cold War to After 9/11, and Philosophy of Ethics — are available at Peterson Academy.