“Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism in a certain spirit of Marxism.” Source: Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. Related: On the fuller context of Derrida’s provocative claim: Related: On Derrida’s place in […]

Will the real Communists please identify yourselves? One reads of … * Communism as atheist scientific materialism. “The iron laws of historical development.” * Communism as fanatical religion: “The exploited shall inherit the Earth!” * Communism as angry envy-psychology: “Kill the rich!” My podcast at Open College: Related: “The Crisis of Socialism,” Chapter 5 of

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?

“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,