Imagine that this is your life story: You are born in Africa, possibly in Ethiopia or perhaps Chad, but as a child you are taken by Arab slavers and sold in Constantinople to the Sultan of Turkey, before long catching the eye of a Russian diplomat and spy, who acquires you and smuggles you out […]
Gannibal, “dark star of the Enlightenment” Read More »
The line is from Martin Heidegger’s resigned and despairing Der Speigel interview, shortly before his death in 1976. At Rockford University we hosted a showing of Jeffrey Van Davis’s film on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and his disturbing relationship with National Socialism. After the showing, we had a panel discussion featuring director Van Davis, professors David
“Only a God Can Save Us” documentary Read More »
A debate from 2014, I believe, between Andrew Bernstein and Dinesh D’Souza, hosted at the University of Texas. Arguments about religion typically fall into three categories: 1. Philosophical arguments about supernaturalism, faith and reason, the source of morality, and so on.2. Scriptural arguments about passages in the religion’s core texts.3. Historical arguments about the record
Christianity: Good or Bad for Mankind? Bernstein and D’Souza Read More »
I’m re-reading Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (Harper Perennial, 2011). It’s a powerful history of the intellectually most powerful nation in Europe in the last three centuries. Watson introduces his theme and its scope this way: Between the publication of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s groundbreaking
Peter Watson on *The German Genius*, 1754-1933 Read More »
A favorite from Jacob Burckhardt’s great The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860): In the Middle Ages, “Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation — only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of
Burckhardt quotation on the birth of individualism in the Italian Renaissance Read More »
Professor Piotr Kostyło of University of Casimir the Great reviewed the Polish edition of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Here’s an English translation of Kostyło’s review: “Do We Know What We Advocate? Stephen Hicks’s Defence of Individualism” [pdf]. The original Polish: “Czy wiemy, za czym cie opowiedamy? Stephena Hickss obrana indywidualizmu”. The review was published in
Kostyło’s review of *Nietzsche and the Nazis* Read More »
A fun anecdote from the history of medicine. (Fun in hindsight, though not necessarily fun for those who lived through the medical history.) The late-medieval Iatrochemists believed that progress could be made by uniting medicine with alchemy. Their intellectual leader was Paracelsus (1493-1541), a Swiss physician whose goal was to reform medical chemistry by rejecting
Iatrochemists: why iron salts cure anemia Read More »
Why accurate translation and skilled editing are important: Bloodletting was a common practice in medieval medicine and did not die out until the nineteenth century. The practice was encouraged by the belief that the excellent Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen practiced it. Most phelobotomists followed the Persian genius Avicenna‘s editions of the Greek texts, which
The great Renaissance medical bloodletting controversy Read More »