Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Episodes: The full playlist of Philosophers, Explained. 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 […]
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 »
National Socialist ideologue Ernst Krieck had little patience for the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy was a forerunner of National Socialist politics. Frequently Nietzsche came up positively in Nazi speeches and writings. But Krieck scoffed: “All in all, Nietzsche was an opponent of socialism, an opponent of nationalism, and an opponent of racial thinking. Apart
Nietzsche, according to Nazi ideologist Ernst Krieck 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 »
Some initial evidence for your consideration: paintings from Picasso, Duchamp, Dali, and de Kooning. At a TRAC conference in Ventura, California, I heard an intriguing talk by Kay Kane, professor of drawing at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia. Kane’s talk was based partly on (and partly diverged from) Wendy Steiner’s Venus in Exile
Were the Modernist painters especially misogynist? Read More »
Interviewer: Keegan Kjeldsen. Topics 1. Beyond Good and Evil’s perspectival epistemology, 2. What the postmoderns took from Nietzsche, and 3. The individualist/anti-individualist contrasts between Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche. Show notes with timestamps just below: Note developed by @gingerbreadzak 00:00 Stephen Hicks recounts his academic journey and interest in Nietzsche, starting from undergraduate education to
*The Nietzsche Podcast* interview of Stephen Hicks Read More »
How some political ideologies depend on the self-induced selflessness of their members. Here is Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism speaking of both Nazism and Communism: “How little the masses were driven by the famous instinct for self-preservation … . The fanaticism of members of totalitarian movements, so clearly different in quality from the greatest
Is everyone selfish? Hannah Arendt quotation Read More »
In 1959, Leo Strauss said: “the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.” The full, disturbing context for that statement: “All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power. One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophical positions which have been shown to be inadequate.
“The only great thinker in our time”: Leo Strauss on Martin Heidegger Read More »