Stephen R.C. Hicks's Blog, page 11

News: Brazilian Portuguese translation of *Nietzsche and the Nazis*

I’m happy to announce that a Portuguese translation of my Nietzsche and the Nazis is in the works, to be published by LvM Editora out of São Paulo, Brazil. The contract has been signed; estimated date of publication is late 2025 or early 2026. Did the National Socialists misunderstand and/or misuse the philosophy of Nietzsche? […]

Real education — Katsenelsom example

From Vitaliy Katsenelson’s Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life: “I was in Israel with a group of friends. One of my friends offered to show us the biggest Yeshiva (orthodox Jewish college) in the center of Jerusalem, where he had studied years before. It’s called Mir Yeshiva. We went there at […]

Art: The Group of Seven and Lawren Harris’s account

The Group of Seven were an early 20th-century informal society of Canadian artists. The group formed in Toronto, Ontario, though expanded to include artists from Quebec and British Columbia, each of them focused on experiencing at the vast Canadian landscape, especially to the north, capturing and essentializing it with fresh eyes. Perhaps the most representative […]

Douglas Rasmussen on Philippa Foot

Douglas Rasmussen spoke at Rockford College on Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness. Dr. Rasmussen was Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York, and Dr. Foot (1920-2010) was a philosopher at Oxford and UCLA. Here is my interview with Dr. Rasmussen following his lecture: Dr. Rasmussen is the co-author (with Douglas J. Den Uyl) […]

Kant on imagination in education

Professor Kant first delivered a series of lectures on education in 1776/77. His views were influenced by and are often congruent with those of Johann Georg Sulzer, the leading (and scary) education theorist of the time in the German states. (Here’s an earlier post on Sulzer.) A re-reading of Kant’s On Education highlighted for me […]

Postmodernism and Education: Foucault, Giroux [Lecture 14 of Philosophy of Education course]

By Professor Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University, USA Lecture 14: What is postmodern philosophy, and how do the views of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and other postmodernists apply to education in practice? Previous lectures in the series: Part One: Introduction: What is the purpose of education, and what is philosophy’s relevance? Part Two: Reality: Metaphysics […]

BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM: FOOT. Lecture 8 of Philosophy of Ethics course [Peterson Academy]

“The way an individual should be is determined by what is needed for development, self-maintenance, and reproduction.” Lecture Eight: Biological Naturalism Themes: Trolley Problems. Is the “Naturalistic Fallacy” a fallacy? Hume. The question of objectivity. Aristotle and Rand. The moral philosopher as first a biologist. Concluding Chart. Text: Foot, Natural Goodness. About the Instructor Stephen […]

Walt Whitman on loving learning

Beginning My Studies Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther, […]

Frederick Douglass’s Letter to His Former Master

An open letter Douglass wrote in 1848 to Thomas Auld, his former master, on the tenth anniversary of his escape from slavery to freedom. The letter reflects the powerful impact of the moral rights reflected in the Declaration of Independence. In his speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” delivered on July 5, […]

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Johnson (1823)

Excerpt: “… The doctrines of Europe, were that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, except by forces physical and moral wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests …. “[Our goal], on the contrary, was to maintain […]