“The young man who has drunk for the first time from that spring is as happy as if he had found a treasure of wisdom; he is positively enraptured. He will pick up any discourse, draw all its ideas together to make them into one, then take them apart and pull them to pieces. He […]
On falling in love with philosophy — quotation from Plato Read More »
Read this WSJ article reporting on Attorney-General Bob Barr’s speech at the University of Notre Dame, and then ask: Are these the premises shared by both left and right? 1. People need morality. 2. Morality can come only from either Church or State. The current right then argues that the government’s doing a bad job,
Either God or the State?? Read More »
A cliché response to calls for a fully free society: But who will build the roads?!? Road networks seem an obvious case where only governments can (a) envision an infrastructure project of national scope, (b) tax millions of people to get the capital needed, and (c) compel or confiscate land from recalcitrant owners to put
Friedrich Engels answers: Who will build the roads? Read More »
Joanna and her son had a rough relationship, and both spoke their minds. From a letter she wrote to young Arthur Schopenhauer toward the end of 1807: Source is here. More letters from his parents here.
Letters from Schopenhauer’s parents Read More »
A New Yorker article explains “Why thinkers of every political persuasion keep finding inspiration in the philosopher.” That’s a long way to come for a philosopher who in his lifetime was dismissed as a non-philosopher by the official philosophers of the day. Biographer Marianne Cowen reports that Nietzsche’s colleagues told their students not to take
Nietzsche’s astonishing breadth of influence Read More »
My purpose at thinkspot will be to tackle the big questions and engage with with my fellow thinkspot members. Here’s two minutes with me on some of the issues I’ll be addressing. The site will be launching in October, and there are currently hundreds of thousands of people on the waitlist to join the site.
Answering the big questions: thinkspot trailer Read More »
I’m excited to be joining some very bright minds at thinkspot. The site will be launching in October, and there are currently hundreds of thousands of people on the waitlist to join the site. If you use my promo code “Hicks” when signing up, you will be bumped to the top of the waitlist.
An open question to me is whether the anti-liberals of both left and right are a noisy minority only or a numerous and well-entrenched many. We don’t have good demographics yet. From the reasonable left, Helen Pluckrose here offers her assessment and a strategy.
Pluckrose: How bad is this illiberal moment, actually? Read More »