History of Philosophy – Page 4 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Christianity: Good or Bad for Mankind? Bernstein and D’Souza

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

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 […]

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The Fountainhead’s Gordon Prescott—Heidegger’s disciple?

Architecture, History of Philosophy, Literature, Objectivism, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Re-reading The Fountainhead made me wonder: Is the character Gordon Prescott based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy?

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The scientific mind, according to Aristotle

3 Comments / History of Philosophy, Science / Stephen Hicks

One of my all-time favorite passages from Aristotle is in his Parts of Animals (Book 1, Chapter 5).

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Socrates’ two bad arguments for not escaping

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

In the Crito, Socrates is in prison awaiting execution for impiety and corrupting the youth. His impiety was judged to be a matter of questioning and possibly disbelieving the traditional gods, and his corrupting the youth was a matter of his teaching them to do the same. (See Apology.) Crito arrives at the prison, having

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Marx’s three failed predictions [EP]

25 Comments / Economics, History of Philosophy, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Marxism and waiting for Godot First formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, classical Marxist socialism made two related pairs of claims, one pair economic and one pair moral. Economically, it argued that capitalism was driven by a logic of competitive

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Thales and the Origin of Philosophy | Philosophers, Explained by Professor Stephen Hicks

Leave a Comment / History of Philosophy, Philosophy / Fermin Elizalde

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 University in Poland.

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Shoes and wisdom

5 Comments / History of Philosophy, Humor / Stephen Hicks

There is wisdom in shoes: “Once I was sad because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.” Your problems are not as bad as they could be. “Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” Knowing the other’s context puts you in a better position to

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Sidney Hook on growing up poor in New York

1 Comment / History, History of Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

I re-read some of Sidney Hook’s autobiographical Out of Step. I disagree with Hook about most things philosophical — he was a pragmatist and a Marxist of varying sorts — but I do respect that Hook was one of the first to reject and criticize the lockstep Party-mentality and slavish following of all things Soviet

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