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 »
The philosopher René Descartes in 1633: “I inquired in Leiden and Amsterdam whether Galileo’s World System was available, for I thought I’d heard that it was published in Italy last year. I was told that it had indeed been published but that all the copies had immediately been burnt at Rome, and that Galileo had
Descartes’ reaction to Galileo’s conviction Read More »
Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian
“Man’s Rights” | Ayn Rand | *Philosophers, Explained* series by Professor Stephen Hicks 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 »
Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power explanation for how the pathetic morality of the weak can prevail over the strong. “The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of leadership” (section 863). In the first essay of Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche raises a historical puzzle. He has contrasted
Nietzsche as public choice theorist 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 »
To what extent is bad writing style, particularly bad academic style, a result of (a) poor skill, (b) affectation, (c) imitation, or (d) a tool to conceal the meaning and implications of one’s ideas? Heinrich Heine here lambasts many of his fellow intellectuals: “Distinguished German philosophers who may accidentally cast a glance over these pages
Heine versus Nietzsche on obscurantism in philosophy Read More »