Human Nature

Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand

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 […]

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Liberal versus gender feminism: McElroy’s *Sexual Correctness*

In my Ethics course, we cover the arguments for and against banning pornography. One of our readings is from Wendy McElroy’s Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women. McElroy takes up the gender-feminist arguments against porn and contrasts them with liberal individualist forms of feminism. The following updated* chart of contrasts is a work in

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Kant versus racial interbreeding

According to Ernst Cassirer, Immanuel Kant was “the man who introduced anthropology as a branch of study in German universities.”[1] And anthropologist W. E. Mühlmann calls Kant “the founder of the modern concept of race.”[2] All humans are members of the same species, Kant argues, since members of the different races are capable of interbreeding.

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Philosopher Eric Mack on John Rawls

I re-read Eric Mack’s “Blind Injustice” [updated link], an excellent overview and critique of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s book is the most influential work of academic political philosophy in the last half-century, and Mack’s essay is the best short analysis I know of. By contrast: The moral basis for Rand’s liberalism, in

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