Stephen Hicks

“Black people will never gain full equality in this country.” Critical Race Theory is based in part upon a pessimistic, anti-progress view of race relations. Derrick Bell, one of CRT’s founders, thus urged a rejection of Martin Luther King’s “’We Have a Dream’ mentality”, to be replaced with a strategy “to harass white folks.” Here […]

Following up on a series of posts about Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Liszt. From Frederic V. Grunfeld’s very good Rodin: A Biography, the answer in the case of August Rodin is education and self education. Rodin was born into a French culture in which the large majority of the population was illiterate or semi-literate. The fact

The allegory is a full philosophical illustration of a dualistic metaphysics, a “purified” cognitive theory, a pessimistic assessment of (most) humans’ ambitions, and a justification of compulsion in education and politics. The full series:

Philosopher Lewis White Beck was selected to write the entry on “German Philosophy” for The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He wrote: “Immanuel Kant was to put almost every fundamental concept of the Enlightenment in jeopardy.” That is a striking claim, as it goes against a standard interpretation of Kant as a paragon of the Enlightenment. Immanuel

The 20th century’s most famous philosopher addresses this question: Why do philosophy, if none of its questions are answerable? Related: Others in the Philosophers, Explained series: Catharine MacKinnon on censoring pornography as violence.Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on overthrowing capitalism. John Stuart Mill on free speech. Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile on the philosophy of