Stephen Hicks

Introduction to Philosophy: Topics and Course Materials. Business and Economic Ethics: Topics and Course Materials. Also my Texts in Philosophy page, for additional readings.

1. Many politicians are dictatorial bastards, and resisting them is a healthy.2. Many commentators are lying manipulators, and exposing them is a virtue.3. And yet: Facts are facts, and acting on your own informed judgment by choice is more important.

Episode 53 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series is now out. Title: Morality without Gods?Publication Date: August 24, 2021Transcript: (Forthcoming) All audio versions of the podcast are available free at my website, YouTube, Bitchute, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud. Some transcriptions are available via my media page at thinkspot. Episodes coming soon to

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in a letter to James Boswell: “Sir, I have no liking for the world. I live here in a world of fantasies and I cannot tolerate the world as it is. … Mankind disgusts me.” On why Rousseau is now more important than Marx in explaining the substantial pathological elements in our intellectual

One must always interpret a comprehensive philosopher’s remarks on applied matters in the context of his philosophical system. Let me give an exaggerated, fictional example to stress this point about method. Suppose one reads … Chapter One of a philosopher’s book in which one finds affirmations that individuals should seek freedom and realize their true selves

Kieran Bhattacharya was expelled from the University of Virginia medical school. A journalistic account is here. The university claims his persistent questioning at a panel discussion and his follow-up resistance to the university’s orders violated “the school’s professionalism standards.” Professionalism cuts both ways at a university — both for students and for faculty/administrators — but

Nietzsche is often reductionist, so this aspirational mind-body integration claim is striking: “It is probable that in such perfectly well-constituted men, enjoyments of a wholly sensual nature are ultimately transfigured into allegorical reveries of the highest intellectuality; they experience in themselves a kind of deification of the body” The Will to Power, 1051