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 »
Professor Kant taught an anthropology course yearly from the early 1770s until his retirement in 1796. The lectures were published in 1798[1], six years before his death in 1804. One nugget from his views on the differences between men and women: “It is easy to analyse man; but woman betrays her secrets even though she
Kant on the woman’s way of war Read More »
Updated for the new year: My collected posts on key thinkers from Homer, Socrates, and Augustine to Descartes, Kant, and Rand. Related: My Philosophers, Explained series.
Intellectual History page updated Read More »
A key exchange between 3:AM Magazine and scholar Frederick Beiser, author of The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte: 3:AM: But this is the question that German philosophers in the last decades of the eighteenth century started asking: as you put it, they asked, ‘what is the authority of reason?’ They were
Beiser on why the Counter-Enlightenment still matters today Read More »
Tim Black, a senior writer at spiked, has a good review discussion of “Why they’re really scared of Heidegger.” The “they’re” refers to many contemporary academics, and Black’s review is of Emmanuel Faye’s wave-making Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (Yale, 2009). Some key quotations from
Heidegger’s anti-humanism and the Left Read More »
One of my professors in graduate school argued that St. Augustine is the most influential philosopher in history. I’m not convinced, though a good case can be made. I recently re-opened Confessions and came across Augustine’s strong version of original sin. As he exclaims to his God, “no one is free from sin in your
St. Augustine on why babies are evil Read More »
Reprising this series of … errr … insights from my students, collected from exams and essays over the years. I offer you: A Student History of Philosophy (Being a compilation of student research, gently edited by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University) Is philosophy a waist of time? Ethical debates have been around for a long
Still learning from my students about the history of philosophy Read More »
Reviving this contest for readers: What is the longest sentence ever written by a philosopher? I mean the kind of sentence that, as you are reading it through — trying to hold the context and decipher the meaning — flows majestically onwards, or meanders along deceptively, with occasional side streams (and parenthetical remarks), until your cerebrum
Current champion in Philosophy’s Longest Sentences contest — Kierkegaard Read More »