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 Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and several 20th century moral thinkers. Here is the full syllabus: Modern Ethics.
Also: I will be back in the studio late August to record a two-course series on the Philosophy of Politics. Stay tuned for an invitation to join the studio audience then.
My two previously recorded courses, Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Philosophy, will be released this year by Peterson Academy. Here are the syllabi:
Modern Philosophy
A course by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy
Eight lectures. Key philosophers and philosophies of the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Voltaire, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche. For each, Professor Hicks establishes the philosopher’s intellectual context, presents his or her most influential arguments, and quotes directly from the philosopher’s important books or essays. Other significant thinkers, ideas, and historical events from 1500-1900 CE included.
Lecture One: The Birth of the Modern. Francis Bacon
Themes: What is the Modern? 1500: Art. Science. Exploration. Religion. Economy. Politics.
Individualism of independent thinking, Individualism of identity, and Individualism of worth.
Galileo. Milton. Descartes.
Empiricism. Experimentalism.
Texts: Bacon: The Great Instauration. Novum Organon.
Lecture Two: Radical Doubt. René Descartes
Themes: What can I doubt? Rationalism. Unintended Skepticism? God? External world? Dualism.
Vesalius. Hobbes. Copernicus. Galileo. Pope Urban VIII.
Text: Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
Lecture Three: The Promise of Individual Empiricism. John Locke
Themes: Empiricism. Tabula rasa. Individualism. Liberalism. Toleration. Church and State.
Henry VIII. Shakespeare. Galileo. Descartes. Milton. Cromwell. Newton.
Texts: Locke: Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government, A Letter concerning Toleration
Lecture Four: The Philosophes and the French Enlightenment. Voltaire
Themes: Deism. Toleration. Anti-superstition. Anti-torture. Irreverence. Who are the greatest humans ever?
Augustine. Montaigne. Montesquieu. Diderot. de Gouges. Condorcet.
Bacon. Locke. Newton.
Text: Voltaire: Letters on England
Lecture Five: Counter-Enlightenment. David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Themes: Skepticism, Passions, Fideism. Critiquing the Enlightenment. French Revolution.
Lafayette. Voltaire. de Gouges. Robespierre.
Texts: Hume: A Treatise on Human Nature. Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality.
Lecture Six: Awakening from the Dogmatic Slumber. Immanuel Kant
Themes: The sorry fate of metaphysics. Limits to reason. Phenomenal versus Noumenal realities. Duty ethics.
Hume. Rousseau. King Frederick William II. Locke. Sulzer.
Texts: Kant: Critique of Pure Reason. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Lecture Seven: Resurgent Collectivism. Georg Hegel and Karl Marx
Themes: After Kant, reality or reason? Theodicy. Collectivizing the self. Dialectic and the march of history.
Napoleon. Goethe. Keats.
Texts: Hegel: Philosophy of History. Marx: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Communist Manifesto.
Lecture Eight: Liberal or Anti-Liberal? John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche
Themes: Darwinism. Utilitarianism versus Expressive Power. Liberty versus Slavery. Social philosophy as derived from basic philosophy. Continuing or rejecting the Enlightenment?
Pasteur. Darwin. Caesar. Christ.
Texts: Mill: On Liberty, Utilitarianism. Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals.
Postmodern Philosophy
A course by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy
Eight lectures. Key philosophers and philosophies since 1900 CE, with focus on the proponents and opponents of Postmodernism. Major philosophers covered includes Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Ayn Rand, Philippa Foot, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Derrick Bell, and Catharine MacKinnon. For each, Professor Hicks establishes the philosopher’s intellectual context, presents his or her most influential arguments, and quotes directly from the philosopher’s important books or essays. Other significant thinkers, key ideas, and historical events from 1900 to the present included.
Lecture One: Uncertain Prospects. Bertrand Russell and John Dewey
Themes: Disquieting inheritance: Entropy, Marx, Darwin. A century of war? Skepticism about knowledge. Enlarge your mind? Experiment?
Titanic. Picasso. Lenin. Edison.
Texts: Russell: “The Value of Philosophy.” Dewey: The Impact of Darwin upon Philosophy.
Lecture Two: The Analysts of the Self. Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger
Themes: The new psychology. Pessimism. Instinct and aggression. Logic as limiting. Emotions as accessing. Nihilism?
World War I. Darwin. Spengler. Arendt.
Texts: Freud:Civilization and Its Discontents. Heidegger: “What Is Metaphysics?”
Lecture Three: Absurdity and Meaninglessness? Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
Themes: The death of God? The reality of war. Depression and the Depression. The pointlessness of existence? Existence precedes essence. The meaning of life?
Kierkegaard. Nietzsche. Heidegger.
Texts: Sartre: “Existentialism Is a Humanism.”Camus: “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
Lecture Four: What the Women Ethicists Are Up To. Ayn Rand and Philippa Foot
Themes: Naturalism. Bio-centrism. Value and virtue. Intrinsic/Objective/Subjective. Facts and Values. Ought from Is. Reason. Trolley Problems.
Aristotle. Russell, Carnap, Horkheimer, Medlin, Moody.
Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgely, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.
Texts: Rand: “The Objectivist Ethics.” Foot: Natural Goodness.
Lecture Five: On the Objectivity of Science. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn
Themes: Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability. Paradigms. Indoctrination. Progress? Truth?
Kant. Schlick. Ayer. Feyerabend.
Texts: Popper: Conjectures and Refutations. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lecture Six: Deconstruction and Power. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida
Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism.
Tocqueville. Marx. Nietzsche. Heidegger.
Texts: Foucault: History of Sexuality. Derrida: “Cogito and the History of Madness”
Lecture Seven: Critical Feminist and Race Theory. Derrick Bell and Catharine MacKinnon
Themes: Feminism’s three waves. De Gouges, Wollstonecraft, de Beauvoir.
Critical Theory and Frankfurt School: Horkheimer and Adorno. Marcuse.
Anti-racism’s three waves. The Enlightenment, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Texts: MacKinnon: Only Words. Bell: “Racial Realism.”
Lecture Eight: Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern
Themes: Philosophy as three-way debates. Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Chart: Pre-modernism, Modernism, Post-modernism. What next?
About the Instructor
Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy and the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, Nietzsche and the Nazis, Entrepreneurial Living, Liberalism Pro and Con, and Eight Philosophies of Education. He has published in Business Ethics Quarterly, Review of Metaphysics, and The Wall Street Journal. His writings have been translated into twenty languages. He has been Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), Visiting Professor at the University of Kasimir the Great (Poland), Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College (Oxford University), and Visiting Professor at Jagiellonian University (Poland).