Stephen R.C. Hicks's Blog, page 46

Catharine MacKinnon on censoring porn [Philosophers, Explained series]

In making her influential case for limiting the First Amendment and censoring porn, Catharine MacKinnon uses a combination of egalitarian and postmodern arguments. Here is my guided tour of her Only Words (Harvard U.P.) One can also follow Professor Hicks on X (@SRCHicks). Related: The full series of Philosophers, Explained episodes:

Studio audience invitation for new Peterson Academy course: *Modern Ethics*

I will be at the Academy’s impressive studio in Miami to record a new eight-lecture course on the philosophy of ethics. Here is the invitation to join the live studio audience. We will cover thinkers who made ethics modern (and highly diverse) — and those who resisted the modernizing trends — including John Locke, Jean-Jacques […]

On The School of Innovation’s Advisory Board

A new university will open in Britain in 2025. I’m happy to announce that I have joined its Board of Advisors. “The School of Innovation is aspiring to become the first independent university in Northern England since 1964. Based in Manchester, which was voted the 3rd best city in the world, has one of the […]

Philosophy humor — The relativity of time

A woman is told by her doctor that she has six months to live. “Is there anything I can do?” she asks. “Yes,” the doctor replies. “You could marry a tax accountant.” “How will that help my illness?” the woman asks. “Oh, it won’t help your illness,” says the doctor, “but it will make that […]

The Communist Manifesto | Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels | *Philosophers, Explained* by Professor Stephen Hicks

Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian […]

Kant versus racial interbreeding

According to Ernst Cassirer, Immanuel Kant was “the man who introduced anthropology as a branch of study in German universities.”[1] And anthropologist W. E. Mühlmann calls Kant “the founder of the modern concept of race.”[2] All humans are members of the same species, Kant argues, since members of the different races are capable of interbreeding. […]

Nietzsche, according to Nazi ideologist Ernst Krieck

National Socialist ideologue Ernst Krieck had little patience for the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy was a forerunner of National Socialist politics. Frequently Nietzsche came up positively in Nazi speeches and writings. But Krieck scoffed: “All in all, Nietzsche was an opponent of socialism, an opponent of nationalism, and an opponent of racial thinking. Apart […]

Kant and modern art: quotations from artists and art critics

The poet John Enright‘s “Kant and Abstract Art” takes up Ayn Rand‘s claim (in The Romantic Manifesto) that “the father of modern art is Immanuel Kant (see his Critique of Judgment).” Rand does not elaborate, and Enright notes that some scoff at the claim. Rand’s claim is a strong one, in part because it makes […]

Were the Modernist painters especially misogynist?

Some initial evidence for your consideration: paintings from Picasso, Duchamp, Dali, and de Kooning. At a TRAC conference in Ventura, California, I heard an intriguing talk by Kay Kane, professor of drawing at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia. Kane’s talk was based partly on (and partly diverged from) Wendy Steiner’s Venus in Exile […]

*The Nietzsche Podcast* interview of Stephen Hicks

Interviewer: Keegan Kjeldsen. Topics 1. Beyond Good and Evil’s perspectival epistemology, 2. What the postmoderns took from Nietzsche, and 3. The individualist/anti-individualist contrasts between Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche. Show notes with timestamps just below: Note developed by @gingerbreadzak 00:00  Stephen Hicks recounts his academic journey and interest in Nietzsche, starting from undergraduate education to […]