History – Page 4 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

On the private affairs of public figures: Nietzsche’s uncle on Goethe

Leave a Comment / Ethics, History / Stephen Hicks

Wisdom from the grave: “Friedrich Nietzsche’s grandmother had some private letters in her possession from the circle surrounding Goethe. These letters came into the possession of Nietzsche’s aunt and uncle—who destroyed them. The uncle’s reason was this: ‘The brutal revelation of private relations upset him deeply. He did not grant the public any right to […]

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Thomas Jefferson on the old doctrines of Europe

Leave a Comment / History, Politics / Stephen Hicks

“The doctrines of Europe, were that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, except by forces physical and moral wielded over them by authorities independent of their will …. We believe that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of

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Is commerce rendering war obsolete?

2 Comments / Business Ethics, Economics, History, Politics / Stephen Hicks

In his essay “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” Kant wrote that “the spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state.” Yet Kant was not a friend of the spirit of commerce, which he associated with the Jews, whom he despised as “immoral and vile”

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How the Enlightenment solved all of our problems

1 Comment / Fruits of the Enlightenment, History, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Reprising this chart on the Enlightenment of the long 1700s and it self-conscious grasp it its own significance. Related: My “Enlightenment Vision” flowchart and other posts and lectures on the Enlightenment. The chart is from Chapter One of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

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Fashion: white teeth — or black?

2 Comments / History / Stephen Hicks

In Henry the VIII’s time, sugar became widely available in England. Those who could afford it used it on just about everything, and too much sugar causes one’s teeth to become black. But sugar was still expensive, so having black teeth came to be a symbol of wealth. Soon many of the English, women especially,

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Empires of conquest and empires of commerce

1 Comment / Economics, History, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Reposting this question: In this post-colonial era, what explains the dramatically different levels of prosperity in nations after they become independent of their colonizing powers? Why, for example, has the prosperity of North America been consistently higher than that of Central and South America? Both are rich in natural resources, both involve nations started from scratch,

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Kuhn on the Greeks and scientific culture

8 Comments / History, Medicine, Philosophy, Science / Stephen Hicks

A striking quotation from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: “Every civilization of which we have records has possessed a technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws, and so on. In many cases those facets of civilization have been as developed as our own. But only the civilizations that descend from Hellenic

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Syphilis and friendly ethnic relations

Leave a Comment / History, Medicine / Stephen Hicks

Syphilis is thought to have been brought back from America by Christopher Columbus’s fellow travelers. In Europe, it first manifested in Naples and so came to be called “the disease of Naples,” though most Italians came to call it the “French Pox.” As it made its way across Europe and then Asia, syphilis acquired a

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