The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship hosted Douglas Rasmussen to speak on Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness. Dr. Rasmussen was Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York, and Dr. Foot (1920-2010) was a philosopher at Oxford and UCLA. Here is my interview with Dr. Rasmussen following his lecture: Dr. Rasmussen is the co-author […]
Douglas Rasmussen on Philippa Foot Read More »
My “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” was published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Here is the abstract for my 43-page study: “Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in
Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand Read More »
Re-posting this classic from Rudyard Kipling, which is also on my Quotations page: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to
Kipling on the individual and the tribe Read More »
From The Gay Science (1.3): “What distinguishes the common nature is that it unflinchingly keeps sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage is even stronger than its strongest drives; not to allow these drives to lead it astray to perform inexpeditious acts — that is its wisdom and self-esteem. In
Creative geniuses as selfish — Nietzsche version Read More »
Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1887 Genealogy of Morals is an essentialized and more systematic presentation of themes from his 1886 Beyond Good and Evil. Here is my digest of the main line of argument of Genealogy‘s first essay: 1. Evolution and psycho-biology: Humans are an evolved bundle of inbuilt drives that assert themselves.2. The most basic drive
22 points from Nietzsche’s *Genealogy of Morals* Read More »
Robert Heilbroner was the most famous American socialist intellectual of the 20th century. His The Worldly Philosophers sold millions, making it the second-best-selling economics textbook of all time. In my Business and Economic Ethics course, we read and discuss one of his articles. Here is Heilbroner, writing in 1980, about who owns what under socialism:
Robert Heilbroner on socialism’s mandatory labor Read More »
More precisely: Who is the most loathsome philosopher in his or her personal life? Let me set the bar high by naming my top two candidates. 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who fathered several children and had them abandoned to orphanages, and of whom David Hume wrote in a letter to Adam Smith: “Thus you see, he
Who is the most loathsome philosopher in history? Read More »
Here is an example of a phenomenon that has long puzzled me: Nasty in-group fighting. In The Rise of Neo-Kantianism, Klaus Christian Köhnke asks: What can “explain one of the most distressing features of the neo-Kantians: the fierceness and bitterness of their polemics, the nastiness of their ad hominem arguments, which destroyed personal friendships and
Movement in-fighting and schisms — psychology Read More »