Five quotations from Ludwig von Mises from five works on his opposition to anarchism: “Society cannot do without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., without state and government.” The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, p. 90. “There are people who call government an evil, although a necessary evil. However, what is needed in order to attain […]
Mises on Anarchism Read More »
“Conservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae or aims. Its essence is inarticulate and its expression, when compelled, skeptical.” My close reading of Scruton’s The Meaning of Conservatism, first published in 1980 and then in an updated edition in 2014, a few years before his death. In the Philosophers, Explained series: Related: John Stuart
Roger Scruton’s Conservatism [Philosophers, Explained series] Read More »
Conservatives on the ‘right’ will say “Statecraft as soulcraft,” by which they mean that a function of government is to shape or instill moral virtue in its citizens so that they will live according to the government’s laws.[1] Note the parallel with the ‘left.’ Here is one of the original ‘left’ activists, St-Just: “The legislator
“Statecraft is soulcraft.” Shared ‘left’ and ‘right’ premises Read More »
By Professor Stephen R.C. Hicks, Rockford University, USA. Lecture 4: Free Will and Determinism, Reason and Emotion, the Mind and the Body. How are anthropology, biology, and psychology important to education? Previous lectures in the series: Part One: What is the purpose of education, and what is philosophy’s relevance? Part Two: Reality: Metaphysics and Education.
Lecture Five: Science and technology have accomplished wonders since the Enlightenment. But, as Karl Popper asks, how do we “distinguish between science and pseudo–science“? Thomas Kuhn suggests that scientists are less-than-objective and more “like the typical character of Orwell’s 1984.” Themes: Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability.
Robert Heilbroner was the most famous American socialist intellectual of the 20th century. His The Worldly Philosophers sold millions, making it the second-best-selling economics textbook of all time. In my Business and Economic Ethics course, we read and discuss one of his articles. Here is Heilbroner, writing in 1980, about who owns what under socialism:
Robert Heilbroner on socialism’s mandatory labor Read More »
John Dewey: “we have an explicit fear of the hampering influence of a state-conducted and state-regulated education upon the attainment of these ideas. But in less than two decades after this time, Kant’s philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated the idea that the chief function of the state is educational; that in particular the regeneration
From Kant to compulsory state education [Dewey quotation] Read More »
A good interview with philosopher of science Noretta Koertge. She was a student of Karl Popper’s at the University of London and became editor of the academic journal Philosophy of Science. She was also a member of my Ph.D. dissertation committee at Indiana University. Upon the publication of this excellent collection of articles — A
Koertge and the mis-uses of science Read More »