Stephen R.C. Hicks's Blog, page 27

How to cook and serve unicorn

In 2012, a medieval cookbook was discovered at the British Library. The book is ascribed to Geoffrey Fule of England and dated to the mid-14th century. The images are delicious (click to enlarge). But here’s the tricky part: How does one capture a unicorn in the first place? Fortunately, about a century after Fule’s cookbook, […]

CRITICAL FEMINIST AND RACE THEORY: CATHARINE MacKINNON and DERRICK BELL. Lecture 7 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]

Lecture Four: Have women and minorities made progress — or is that an illusion? Catharine MacKinnon argues that “Protecting pornography means protecting sexual abuse as speech” in order to maintain the subordination of women. Derrick Bell says “Racial equality is, in fact, not a realistic goal” and so blacks need a new strategy. Themes: Feminism’s […]

“Artificial Intelligence Means Entrepreneurial Education *Now*” [new Open College podcast]

My publisher, Possibly Correct Media (out of Toronto, Canada) and I have launched a new season of the Open College podcast. My question in this episode: What will be your comparative advantage in this new era of accelerating robotics and artificial intelligence? “Artificial Intelligence Means Entrepreneurial Education Now“ Episode Number: 56 Date: October 2024 About […]

Shining Path terrorism and Marxist Guzmán’s Kantian philosophy

The Peruvian guerrilla and terrorist group Shining Path was founded by a professor of philosophy: Abimael Guzmán, who died in 2021. Shining Path is a Maoist version of Marxism, believing in the inevitability of revolution and the bloody process necessary to see it through. Shining Path is estimated to have killed 11,000 civilians along the […]

On not telling other people what to do

This deep-truth-about-human-nature cartoon reminds me of two quotations from John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Locke on freedom of choice for students: “great care is to be taken, that [education] be never made as a business to him, nor he look on it as a task. We naturally, as I said, even from our cradles, […]

The Enlightenment Vision — updated flowchart

The Enlightenment of the long 18th century was an era of awesome intellectual and cultural transformation. This Enlightenment Vision flowchart is pitched at a high level of abstraction, showing schematically how the philosophical revolution of the 17th century led to the 18th-century revolutions in science, technology, politics, and economics — which in turn led to […]

“The Critical Function of Fiercely Independent Journals” published in *Reason Papers* journal

I contributed “The Critical Function of Fiercely Independent Journals” to the 50th anniversary issue of Reason Papers. My piece included anecdotes about the academic reception of independent thinkers such as Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Rand. The issue also includes: *Several brief Retrospective pieces, by Fred Miller, Aeon Skoble, Nicholas Capaldi, Doug Rasmussen & Doug Den Uyl, […]

Still learning from my students about the history of philosophy

Reprising this series of … errr … insights from my students, collected from exams and essays over the years. I offer you: A Student History of Philosophy (Being a compilation of student research, gently edited by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University) Is philosophy a waist of time? Ethical debates have been around for a long […]

DECONSTRUCTION AND POWER: MICHEL FOUCAULT and JACQUES DERRIDA. Lecture 6 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]

Lecture Six: Do claims to knowledge and morality merely mask power? Foucault argues that sex rhetoric has “a tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse, a technology of power.” And Derrida asserts that “the revolution against reason can be made only within it.” Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism. Alexis […]

Berman: From what ghastly depths come fascism and communism?

Via Edward Fox, a quotation from Paul Berman’s (recommended) Terror and Liberalism: “In the years around 1950, writers from several parts of the world set out to produce a new literature of political analysis, different from any political literature of the past, with the goal of describing and analyzing the totalitarian political passions of the […]