From a 2020 interview: Jennifer Grossman [47:15]: What is your perspective, Professor Hicks, on reparations, a claim that current society must repay current racial minorities for wrongs done in the past? Stephen Hicks: My view is: Absolutely not. Reparations comes out of a kind of tradition of justice. Justice is absolutely important. If an individual wrongs […]
Against Reparations for Slavery [interview excerpt] Read More »
The influential Jean-Jacques Rousseau was anti-Enlightenment, advocating censorship, collectivism, and the death penalty for non-believers. For an elaboration, check out this 4-minute clip from my discussion with James Lindsay and Michael O’Fallon: The full 1.5-hour video is here: Related: Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition).
Banish printing presses and tear down the theaters — Rousseau Read More »
“Stephen Hicks, a professor of philosophy at Rockford College, has produced a clearly written, concise book explaining just what postmodern philosophy is and how it arose, and he has done so in an admirable way.”
Professor Gary Jason’s review of *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) on why innovation first takes failure. “Unless you have a tolerance for failure, you will never experiment. If you don’t experiment you won’t innovate, and if you don’t innovate you won’t succeed.” So a key question for educators: How do we teach successful failing? Especially since kids often learn to fear
Nvidia CEO Huang on how failure leads to success Read More »
“Knowledge is Power.” Lecture One: The Birth of the Modern. Francis Bacon Themes: What is the Modern? 1500: Art. Science. Exploration. Religion. Economy. Politics. Individualism of independent thinking, Individualism of identity, and Individualism of worth. Galileo. Milton. Descartes. Empiricism. Experimentalism. Text: Bacon: The Great Instauration, esp. Novum Organon. About the Instructor Stephen R. C. Hicks,
Heidegger: “Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man.“ And: “German Socialism wants an order of merit based on inner confirmation and achievement: it wants the inviolability of service and the absolute honor of all labor. That is
Rachmaninov Is Reminiscent An interview with Rachmaninoff By Basanta Koomar Roy Published in The Musical Observer, May 1927 [Transcription] Among composers, Rachmaninov looms large. While it seldom transpires that one gains equal distinction as a composer, and a pianist, yet this may be said of Rachmaninov. In the course of the next hundred years or
1927 interview with Sergei Rachmaninoff Read More »
Friedrich Nietzsche on the philosophical legacy from Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer: “The whole great tendency of the Germans ran counter to the Enlightenment.” Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak [1881], Section 197. Related: The context of Nietzsche’s provocative claim: Related: On Nietzsche’s place in the historical course of philosophy: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
Nietzsche: “The whole great tendency of the Germans ran counter to the Enlightenment.” Read More »