Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The play Streetcar won him a Pulitzer and the movie version, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, won several Oscars. From an article listing 71 things about the playwright Tennessee Williams, in honor of the 71 years of his life. Item […]
Tennessee Williams on the death penalty, determinism, and logic Read More »
Wisdom from a giant of the nineteenth-century — Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895): “Everybody has asked the question … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the
Frederick Douglass and self-respect Read More »
How did Beethoven become Beethoven? “The ‘personality’ of such a man as Beethoven is a slowly developed synthetic whole. It is formed by the gradual combination of its constituent elements into an organic unity. For the development of a personality a rich and profound inner life is necessary, and for that reason it is usually
Creative geniuses as selfish — Beethoven version Read More »
Wisdom about the challenge of learning from a great genius and then finding one’s own path. Here is Zarathustra: “Now I go alone, my disciples, You too, go now, alone. Thus I want it. Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. The man of
Geniuses and their followers Read More »
Pyrrhus, the great Greek general, is off to conquer the world — Italy, Sicily, Libya, Carthage, and beyond. Cineas, his eloquent adviser and ambassador, asks him: What will you do after you conquer the world? Pyrrhus answers that he will take his ease. Cineas replies, Then why not take your ease now? Source: Paraphrasing from
Cineas and the meaning of life Read More »
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 »