Philosophy

James Orr defends “the conservative’s instinct for the particular over the universal, the empirical over the rational, the concrete over the abstract, the pragmatic over the ideal.” That is from Dr. Orr’s opening essay in this Reason Papers three-round debate with Dr. Stephen Hicks. Orr advocates and defends Conservatism; Hicks does the same for Liberalism.

George Orwell in 1944: “To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. It is this habit of mind, among other things,

Year 1500 context: 50 years earlier Gutenberg had developed his printing press, eight years earlier Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, Michelangelo had just finished his Pietà, Luther was in school, and Copernicus was in university. Fewer than 10% of Europeans were literate. Source: Robert C. Allen, Global Economic History, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 26.

“The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of

Description: “Andy Schmitt and Stephen Hicks on the evolution of Western philosophy, especially the transition from modern to postmodern thought. They begin with fifteenth-century globalization unleashed by Columbus, Gutenberg’s press, and Martin Luther’s insistence on individual Scripture reading, through the emergence of scientific reasoning and the radical individualism of the Quakers. “They examine how postmodern

Description: Join Dr. Stephen Hicks, philosopher, professor, author and Mark Michael Lewis as they discuss the philosophies of Postmodernism and Marxism and their strange union in modern woke politics—and the Objectivist contrast. Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction to Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Its Application 02:50 – Cultural Conversations: Postmodernism vs. Modernism 06:06 – The Impact of Postmodernism on Society 09:01 – Historical Perspectives on