Philosopher Lewis White Beck was selected to write the entry on “German Philosophy” for The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He wrote: “Immanuel Kant was to put almost every fundamental concept of the Enlightenment in jeopardy.” That is a striking claim, as it goes against a standard interpretation of Kant as a paragon of the Enlightenment. Immanuel […]
Why did Professor Beck say Kant is Counter-Enlightenment? Read More »
Episodes: The full playlist. 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 Poland.
Why education is a philosophical enterprise — taking a child and instilling the knowledge, character, and skills necessary for adult life. How major philosophies — Plato’s, Locke’s, Marx’s, Dewey’s, Rand’s, Foucault’s, and others’ — lead to dramatically different goals and strategies for education In real life the course is a 15-week lecture course, so the
My Philosophy of Education course online Read More »
The 20th century’s most famous philosopher addresses this question: Why do philosophy, if none of its questions are answerable? Related: Others in the Philosophers, Explained series: Catharine MacKinnon on censoring pornography as violence.Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on overthrowing capitalism. John Stuart Mill on free speech. Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile on the philosophy of
Bertrand Russell: Is Philosophy Valuable? | Philosophers, Explained by Stephen Hicks Read More »
[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Marxism and waiting for Godot First formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, classical Marxist socialism made two related pairs of claims, one pair economic and one pair moral. Economically, it argued that capitalism was driven by a logic of competitive
Marx’s three failed predictions [EP] Read More »
I’m re-reading Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (Harper Perennial, 2011). It’s a powerful history of the intellectually most powerful nation in Europe in the last three centuries. Watson introduces his theme and its scope this way: Between the publication of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s groundbreaking
Peter Watson on *The German Genius*, 1754-1933 Read More »
From Abraham Maslow’s Maslow on Management (Ann R. Kaplan, 1998): “The key question isn’t What fosters creativity? But is it Why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not Why do people create but Why do people not create
Maslow on natural creativity — quotation Read More »
The tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I (died 367 BCE), liked having intellectuals and creative types in his court. Plato the philosopher, Philistus the historian, and Philoxenus the poet were in his circle at various times. Yet the tyrant was capricious—especially when he thought his own literary accomplishments were under-appreciated. Philoxenus once voiced a negative opinion
Tyrants and Poets Who Have Integrity — anecdote Read More »