History of Philosophy – Page 23 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Facial hair and philosophers

6 Comments / History, History of Philosophy, Humor / Stephen Hicks

“In Athens haircuts and hairstyles had social and political implications. Aristocratic horsemen still wore long braids and gold hairpins. The common man (and the politicians who spoke for him) preferred a short cut, though not quite a crew cut. The customer sat on a low stool, his body draped in a sheet to catch the shorn locks. The barber then cropped and curled the hair, anointed the head with scented oil, and trimmed the beard to a neat point. (At Athens any man with a long unkempt bead ran the risk of being mistaken for a philosopher).”

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The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason

History of Philosophy, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Chapter Two of my book is now available online. This chapter traces the decline of epistemology from Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” to the dominance in the nineteenth-century of speculation and irrationalism, setting the stage for the collapse of reason in the twentieth century, which is the subject of Chapter Three.

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Hayek and Rand on reason

2 Comments / Economics, History of Philosophy, Objectivism, Politics / Stephen Hicks

I am organizing a session for the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference to be held April 11-13, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme is “Reason in Hayek and Rand.” Here we have two giants of twentieth-century thought, but few comparative studies have been done. So as a start I have chosen Reason as

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“Nietzsche and the Nazis” update

49 Comments / Economics, Education, Entrepreneurship, Ethics, Fruits of the Enlightenment, History, History of Philosophy, Objectivism, Philosophy, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Since its 2006 publication, my 2:45-hour documentary on Nietzsche and the Nazis has been available from Amazon, Netflix, and other venues. Beginning this summer, Netflix has made the documentary available via video-stream, which has led to a healthy uptick in feedback — including gratifying praise, interesting new angles, thoughtful disagreement — and a smattering of

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Bibliography [EP]

2 Comments / History, History of Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Politics / Stephen Hicks

[This is the Bibliography from Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Bibliography Abrams, M. H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Fifth edition, Volume II. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1986. Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth, and Logic [1936]. Dover, 1946. Ayer, A. J., editor. Logical Positivism. Free

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Sandefur reviews Anne Heller on Ayn Rand

1 Comment / Ethics, History of Philosophy, Objectivism / Stephen Hicks

. . I haven’t read Anne Heller’s book, but Timothy Sandefur’s review makes me want to. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.) . . .

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Philosophy’s longest sentences, part 4

1 Comment / History of Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

My fourth and final contribution to contest, my earlier three being from John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Aristotle. I am surprised that we have no entries from Hegel, Fichte, or Heidegger, noted for their why-say-it-in-eight-words-when-sixty-are-available tendencies. But to my knowledge, the longest sentence written by a philosopher is the following 309-word original from the

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Philosophy’s longest sentences, Part 3

2 Comments / History of Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

My third contribution to the contest to find the longest sentences ever published by a philosopher, my first and second contributions being a 161-word contender from John Stuart Mill and a 163-word heavyweight from Immanuel Kant. We turn now to Book 1 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: “Now if the function of man is an activity

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