[When a nation’s debt becomes unmanageable, what is the responsible next step?] The Greek mess is complicated, but in sorting through complex messes it’s useful to start with simpler cases and build up. All sides in the discussion are appealing to moral considerations about responsibility, fairness, and prudence. Part of the debate is over what […]
On Greek Debts and the Moral Thing to Do [Good Life series] Read More »
… in Zimbabwe dollars. I bought the pictured note on eBay for a buck (USD). Marginal Revolution University has the sorry story:
I’m a multi-millionaire … Read More »
Jagiellonian University is one of the ancient universities of Europe. 1364 was its founding year, and I am officially in residence — temporarily for my two guest lectures. Market square is huge and lively. Nicholas Copernicus was a student here, and Kraków has some smog issues, so this statue of Copernicus has a mask added
Jagiellonian University in Kraków visit Read More »
Interview conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Hicks: I am Stephen Hicks. Our guest today is Professor Terry Noel, who teaches Entrepreneurship and Management at Illinois State. He is here today at Rockford College speaking on the theme of the virtuous entrepreneur. Interesting title, but
Dr. Terry Noel on the Virtuous Entrepreneur [video interview transcript] Read More »
“Germany had the world’s strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three
Anti-smoking activists — historical anecdote Read More »
Professor Kevin Hill drew my attention to Auerbach’s review of Herman Philipse’s Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being (Princeton, 1998) and this excerpt from Philipse in particular: Heidegger’s individualistic notion of authenticity, according to which Dasein has to liberate itself from common moral rules in order to choose one’s hero freely, tends to collapse into a collectivist
Philipse’s book on Heidegger — David Auerbach’s review Read More »
The Decline of the West By Oswald Spengler Translated from the German by Charles Francis Atkinson New York: A. A. Knopf, 1918 Spengler’s Preface to the First Edition The complete manuscript of this book — the outcome of three years’ work — was ready when the Great War broke out. By the spring of 1917
Spenger’s Introduction to *The Decline of the West* [text] Read More »
University of Pittsburgh philosophy professor Robert Brandom: “I want to start going back and looking at the roots of American pragmatism in the German Idealist tradition. I think developments over the last four decades have secured Immanuel Kant’s status as being for contemporary philosophers what the sea was for the poet Swinburne: ‘the great grey
Robert Brandom: Kant as “the great grey mother of us all” Read More »