From The Gay Science (1.3): “What distinguishes the common nature is that it unflinchingly keeps sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage is even stronger than its strongest drives; not to allow these drives to lead it astray to perform inexpeditious acts — that is its wisdom and self-esteem. In […]
Creative geniuses as selfish — Nietzsche version Read More »
By Professor Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University, USA. Lecture 7: What did the great Idealist philosophers believe and how did they apply it to education? The associated reading excerpts are here: Plato (https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/plato_republic-poe.pdf) and Kant (https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/kant_immanuel-poe.pdf). Previous lectures in the series: Part One: Introduction: What is the purpose of education, and what is philosophy’s relevance?
Idealism and Education: Plato and Kant [Lecture 7 of Philosophy of Education course] Read More »
“We naturally, even from our cradles, love liberty.” Lecture One: What Is the Meaning of Life? Themes: Traditional Hierarchy? Liberty and/or Equality. Six Deep Questions about Ethics. What is ‘Modern’? Texts: Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality About the Instructor Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy
He did say: “The majority of men … are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and … are not accessible to reason, but only to authority” (Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851) [Alternative translation here: “For the average man has no critical power of his own, and is absolutely incapable of appreciating the difficulty of
In this eight-lecture course, Professor Hicks takes us on a journey through the evolution of modern moral philosophy, from the Enlightenment to the 21st century. Major thinkers covered include: John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Auguste Comte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ruth Benedict, A.J. Ayer, and Philippa Foot. For each,
SYLLABUS for my Philosophy of Ethics (Modern) course [Peterson Academy] Read More »
“The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth.” Source: Georg Hegel, Philosophy of History [1830/1831]. Related: On the fuller context of Hegel’s provocative claim: Related: On Hegel’s place in the historical course of philosophy: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (print or e-book), or audiobook:
Hegel: “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth” Read More »
George Orwell in 1944: “The thing that strikes me more and more—and it strikes a lot of other people, too—is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time.” A perennial lesson: Useful political commentary is as much a matter of character as it is of informed intelligence. Source: George Orwell, “As I
The “viciousness and dishonesty” of our time’s political controversies Read More »
It would have taken me 30 minutes to write this. Grok did it in 20 seconds: Q: What is Stephen Hicks’s position on postmodernism? A: Stephen Hicks, a Canadian-American philosopher, is a prominent critic of postmodernism. In his book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (2004), he argues that postmodernism is a
Grok vs. Hicks on Postmodernism Read More »