Stephen Hicks

Upcoming talk on How Liberalism Makes You a Better Person

Leave a Comment / News /

I’ll be participating in this fun-looking weekend conferenceat the University of Illinois, Springfield. My topic is: Does Free-market Liberalism Make You a Better Person? My abstract is: Advocates of free-market liberalism (FML) often emphasize how it increases people’s wealth and the many material benefits that wealth can bring—better nutrition, education, healthcare, artistic and cultural experiences,

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How Not to Donate Money in Honor of Your Intellectual Hero

2 Comments / Business Ethics /

[Last week I posted five quotations from Ludwig von Mises indicating his opposition to anarchism. Several commentators mentioned the Mises Institute’s drift toward anarchism. That reminded me of some personal history.] I arrived at Rockford University as a newly-minted Ph.D. in the early 1990s. In addition to the normal excitement of becoming an Assistant Professor

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Alexei Marcoux on moral partiality in business [video interview transcript]

Leave a Comment / Business Ethics, Philosophy /

Interview with Professor Alexei Marcoux, conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Part I Hicks: My guest today is Dr. Alexei Marcoux, who spoke at Rockford University on moral partiality in business practice. Dr. Marcoux is a philosopher by training. He teaches in the business administration program

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Qué nos pueden enseñar los emprendimientos acerca de la vida [Spanish translation]

Leave a Comment / Entrepreneurship, Español /

Por Stephen R.C. Hicks [This is a Spanish translation of my article “What Entrepreneurship Can Teach Us About Life,” originally published in English by The Wall Street Journal.] Tomar riesgos y experimentar son cosas que todos podemos hacer, y no sólo en nuestras carreras. A menudo pensamos en los emprendedores como personas más extraordinarias que el resto. Toman grandes

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Religion and the Verdict of History [Theist vs. Atheist series]

Leave a Comment / History, Philosophy, Politics, Religion /

[This column is a part of the Theist vs. Atheist series debate between Stephen Hicks and John C. Wright. This is Hicks’s response to Wright’s column. Here are the links to other columns in the series.] To evaluate religion’s track record we need to specify our evaluative benchmarks and identify whether we are evaluating religion generically

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Long on Kant and liberal politics [Cato Unbound Series]

Leave a Comment / History of Philosophy /

Professor Roderick T. Long has published his essay, “Kant: Liberal, Illiberal, or Both?”, in the Cato Unbound discussion series. Here is the abstract of his essay: Roderick Long offers a complex view of Immanuel Kant, who emerges as more often liberal in principle than in practice. Kant approved of taxation, a welfare state, and even

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Kant’s non-defense of classical liberalism — my article for Cato Unbound

Leave a Comment / History of Philosophy, Politics /

In the Cato Unbound series, my article “Does Kant Have a Place in Classical Liberalism?” is now up. Here, courtesy of editor Jason Kuznicki, is an abstract: Stephen R. C. Hicks argues that if our case for liberty comes from a mysterious other realm, then perhaps we have no case at all. He describes how

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Understanding Triggers and Microaggression as *Strategy* (Part 2) [Good Life series]

Leave a Comment / Philosophy /

Micro-aggression theory could be seen a sign of progress. The luxury of obsessing over tiny hints of racism or sexism implies that the problem of macro-aggressions has been solved. If your environment — to draw a parallel — is dirty and unhealthy, then you focus on the big messes first. Only when those are cleaned

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