According to Ernst Cassirer, Immanuel Kant was “the man who introduced anthropology as a branch of study in German universities.”[1] And anthropologist W. E. Mühlmann calls Kant “the founder of the modern concept of race.”[2] All humans are members of the same species, Kant argues, since members of the different races are capable of interbreeding. […]
Kant versus racial interbreeding Read More »
The poet John Enright‘s “Kant and Abstract Art” takes up Ayn Rand‘s claim (in The Romantic Manifesto) that “the father of modern art is Immanuel Kant (see his Critique of Judgment).” Rand does not elaborate, and Enright notes that some scoff at the claim. Rand’s claim is a strong one, in part because it makes
Kant and modern art: quotations from artists and art critics Read More »
I did not know that in 1818 a younger Arthur Schopenhauer, aged 30, made a trip to Florence, Italy, where he pursued love. Unfortunately for Arthur, it didn’t go well. “After a number of rejections, he decided that ‘only the male intellect, clouded by the sexual impulse, could call the undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged
Schopenhauer in and out of love Read More »
I re-read Eric Mack’s “Blind Injustice” [updated link], an excellent overview and critique of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s book is the most influential work of academic political philosophy in the last half-century, and Mack’s essay is the best short analysis I know of. By contrast: The moral basis for Rand’s liberalism, in
Philosopher Eric Mack on John Rawls Read More »
Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Was Socrates disrespectful of the gods and corrupting the young men around him? And if so, did he deserve the death penalty? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at
Apology of Socrates | Plato | *Philosophers, Explained* by Professor Stephen Hicks Read More »
Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian
The Farsi translation was published in Tehran, Iran. Much thanks to the translator, Mohsen Mahmoudi, to the publisher, Bourgeois Publishing in Teheran — and to everyone else involved in making this project happen. Here is information about all editions and translations of Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Farsi translation of *Nietzsche and the Nazis* — cover image Read More »
When the expanded edition of Explaining Postmodernism: From Rousseau to Foucault was being published, I re-read several transition figures, i.e., those twentieth-century intellectuals who were important in preparing the groundwork for postmodernism. One is anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), whom I first read as an undergraduate. Lévi-Strauss formally studied philosophy and law, but because the bulk
Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology, and postmodernism Read More »