Stephen Hicks

The influential Jean-Jacques Rousseau was anti-Enlightenment, advocating censorship, collectivism, and the death penalty for non-believers. For an elaboration, check out this 4-minute clip from my discussion with James Lindsay and Michael O’Fallon: The full 1.5-hour video is here: Related: Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition).

“Knowledge is Power.” 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. Text: Bacon: The Great Instauration, esp. Novum Organon. About the Instructor Stephen R. C. Hicks,

Heidegger: “Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man.“ And: “German Socialism wants an order of merit based on inner confirmation and achievement: it wants the inviolability of service and the absolute honor of all labor. That is

Rachmaninov Is Reminiscent An interview with Rachmaninoff By Basanta Koomar Roy Published in The Musical Observer, May 1927 [Transcription] Among composers, Rachmaninov looms large. While it seldom transpires that one gains equal distinction as a composer, and a pianist, yet this may be said of Rachmaninov. In the course of the next hundred years or

Friedrich Nietzsche on the philosophical legacy from Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer: “The whole great tendency of the Germans ran counter to the Enlightenment.” Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak [1881], Section 197. Related: The context of Nietzsche’s provocative claim: Related: On Nietzsche’s place in the historical course of philosophy: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault

From Douglass’s 1848 open letter to Thomas Auld, his former master, on the tenth anniversary of his escape from slavery to freedom, which he accomplished on September 3, 1838. Sir: … When yet but a child about six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first mental effort that I now

Attributed to Paul Graham (via Philip HM Oliver). Related: How Great Artists became Great.