Philosophy

The recurring socialism/fascism cycle — Mises observation

A reminder of this prescient remark from Mises’ Liberalism — a book published in 1927: “Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at infamies committed by the socialist and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program […]

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“Existentialism is a Humanism” | Jean-Paul Sartre | *Philosophers, Explained* by Stephen Hicks

Episodes: The full playlist, including Kant, Nietzsche, Rand, Locke, Heidegger, and others. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian University in

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Galileo, free speech & censorship, religion and science

A re-post of my Galileo and the Modern Compromise: IN HIS OPEN LETTER to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Galileo offered a defense of science against the prevailing heavy hand of religious orthodoxy: “But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has

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Apology of Socrates | Plato | *Philosophers, Explained* by Professor Stephen Hicks

Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Was Socrates disrespectful of the gods and corrupting the young men around him? And if so, did he deserve the death penalty? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at

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*Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand* [audio-book version]

Audio version of my 42-page journal article “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand.” Table of Contents: Part One: On Critiquing Altruism [MP3] [YouTube] [64 minutes] Three Nietzsches and Ayn RandSome Intellectuals on Nietzsche and RandEgoism, altruism, and “selfishness”A Nietzschean sketch: * God is dead * Nihilism’s symptoms * Two bio-psychological types * Psychology and morality *

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Napoleon’s German admirers

From Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven: “For Beethoven’s German and Austrian contemporaries, the Napoleonic image was especially potent: Bonaparte’s admirers included Kant, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin, Wielan, and Klopstock. Grillparzer, in his Autobiography wrote, ‘I myself was no less an enemy of the French than my father, and yet Napoleon fascinated me with a

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