Stephen R.C. Hicks's Blog, page 34

Rousseau: “the Homer of the losers”

Judith Shklar (1928-1992) was Professor of Government at Harvard University, the first woman to receive tenure in that department. Her perfect zinger capturing the essence and the appeal of Rousseau: My discussion of Rousseau is in “The Climate of Collectivism,” which is Chapter Four of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Barry Marshall, ulcers, and resistance to discovery

“The greatest obstacle to discovery,” argues Barry Marshall, “is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.” Marshall is the co-discoverer of Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, for which he won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine. But his hypothesis initially met with great resistance from the medical establishment, which was strongly committed […]

ANALYSTS OF THE SELF: SIGMUND FREUD and MARTIN HEIDEGGER. Lecture 2 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]

A world devastated by war. Sigmund Freud asserts “Man is a wolf to man.” Martin Heidegger — rejecting the Enlightenment and everything since ancient Greek philosophy — asks: “Are we allowed to tamper with the rule of ‘logic’?” Themes: The new psychology. Pessimism. Instinct and aggression. Logic as limiting. Emotions as accessing. Nihilism? World War […]

Ellsworth Toohey’s five strategies of altruism [repost]

[I use Ayn Rand’s classic The Fountainhead in my Introduction to Philosophy course, analyzing the five major characters as moral-philosophical types. Here is a digest of the novel’s brilliant-manipulator villain, Ellsworth Toohey.] The ethics of altruism holds that others are the standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests of […]

James Orr and J.D. Vance

James Orr is professor at Cambridge University, England. In conservative philosophical lineage, Orr is very much in the tradition of Edmund Burke and Roger Scruton. Prof. Orr and I did a one-hour oral debate in London last year, and a more detailed three-round written debate between us has been submitted for formal publication. Here is […]

John Stuart Mill on government capture

John Stuart Mill uses his crystal ball to predict our circumstance — and/or he learned from history: “When nobody, or only some small fraction, feels the degree of interest in the general affairs of the State necessary to the formation of public opinion, the electors seldom make any use of the right of suffrage but […]

Joseph Priestley’s significance

I did not know this about Priestley’s significance to two of the great American founding fathers: “In the 165 letters that passed between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the name Benjamin Franklin is mentioned five times, George Washington three times, Alexander Hamilton twice — and Joseph Priestley, a foreign immigrant, is cited no fewer than […]

John Dewey on education as socialization

John Dewey was one of the top two most influential philosophers of education in the twentieth century. Maria Montessori was the other. Dewey’s influence has been most strongly felt in the American public school system. In America, Montessori’s influence has mostly been grassroots and in privately funded schools. Montessori’s approach is highly individualistic and individualized. […]

Objectivity for Actual Human Beings | Open College No. 50 | Stephen Hicks

Episode 50 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series. Many rejections of objectivity assume from the outset an impossible standard for humans to achieve. Don’t do that. “It’s often said that we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, that nothing can be known with any certainty, and that we must give up notions […]

John Hale on Themistocles and the Athenian navy

Hale is a powerful writer — his opening two-paragraph description of a trireme's pulsing, relentless approach will make the blood surge in your own veins.