More precisely: Who is the most loathsome philosopher in his or her personal life? Let me set the bar high by naming my top two candidates. 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who fathered several children and had them abandoned to orphanages, and of whom David Hume wrote in a letter to Adam Smith: “Thus you see, he […]
Who is the most loathsome philosopher in history? Read More »
A key exchange between 3:AM Magazine and scholar Frederick Beiser, author of The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte: 3:AM: But this is the question that German philosophers in the last decades of the eighteenth century started asking: as you put it, they asked, ‘what is the authority of reason?’ They were
Beiser on why the Counter-Enlightenment still matters today Read More »
David Hume topped the 2009 PhilPapers survey of most influential and admired philosophers (scroll down to bottom of the page to “Non-living philosophers most identified with”). Aristotle came in second and Kant third. I’ve been thinking much about Nietzsche and Heidegger recently: eleventh and eighteenth, respectively. Overall, the list was still dominated by thinkers in
David Hume’s current influence Read More »
Interview conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Part I Hicks: I’m Stephen Hicks, executive director of CEE, and our guest today is Dr. William Kline, an expert on David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. He spoke today at Rockford University in the Ethical Theory
Dr. William Kline on David Hume — video interview transcript Read More »
As far as we know, Hume never fathered a child — but imagine how the arguments would go at a paternity lawsuit.
David Hume’s paternity suit? Read More »
I came across this short piece on some connections between Adam Smith, David Hume, and the American founders. Hume writing to Benjamin Franklin in 1762: “I am sure America has sent us many good things; gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc., but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters
Scottish Enlightenment and Franklin and Jefferson Read More »
Professor Kline visited Rockford College on Tuesday to give a talk on four major thinkers — Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith — who in large part established the intellectual framework for our modern business world. Kline is a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, Springfield. Here is my seven-minute follow-up interview with Kline
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Part of a work-in-progress in philosophy of economics, here is the video of a seminar I led on “Economics as a Value Science.” Part of my argument is that there is a large, problematic gap in economic theory about the relationship between economic facts and economic values. Along the way I discuss Friedrich Hayek, David
Seminar on “Economics as a Value Science” Read More »