Episode 50 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series. Many rejections of objectivity assume from the outset an impossible standard for humans to achieve. Don’t do that. “It’s often said that we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, that nothing can be known with any certainty, and that we must give up notions […]
Objectivity for Actual Human Beings | Open College No. 50 | Stephen Hicks Read More »
Philosopher David Kelley (Ph.D., Princeton) is author of The Evidence of the Senses, A Realist Theory of Perception (LSU, 1986), a work on foundational issues in epistemology, and The Art of Reasoning: An Introduction to Logic (W.W. Norton, 1st edition 1990, 5th edition 2020), a widely used textbook. He has published a new essay, “Concepts
David Kelley new essay on Concepts, Propositions, and Truth Read More »
The Laws is Plato’s last book. Its dialogue is set in Crete and led by an Athenian who is never identified. He converses with a citizen from Sparta and a politician from Crete. The politician has been given the authority to create laws for a new colony, so he asks the Athenian for advice, and
Plato on games and educating for rule-following 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
My essay “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” is a 43-page study published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2009). Text version. Audiobook version: Part One, Part Two. The abstract: “Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues
“Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” now online Read More »
In Britain and America in the 1700s, the most influential philosopher of education was John Locke, with his Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In France, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his Emile. But in the German states, it was Johann Georg Sulzer, with his 1748 An Essay on the Education and Instruction of Children. Sulzer’s fundamental
Obedience vs. freedom in education in 1700s Germany Read More »
Imperialism and colonialism are older than human history, and across the centuries virtually every culture in every part of the world practiced it. Until the Enlightenment of the 1700s. At which point a few voices began arguing that we should only trade with people rather than conquer them and take their stuff — and that
Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism Read More »
I came across this report of an “experiment at Harvard University’s School of Public Health in 1995. In it, a group of students and faculty were asked to choose between earning $50,000 per year while everyone else earned $25,000 — or earning $100,000 per year while others made $200,000. The researchers stipulated that prices of
Comparing yourself to others —experiment and anecdote Read More »