How different are Stephen Hicks’s and Jordan Peterson’s views on the origins of the Enlightenment? Was Christianity essential or a hindrance?
“A difference with Jordan Peterson on Enlightenment foundations” [Five-minute excerpt] Read More »
For use in my courses, additions to my Texts in Philosophy page. Bible, “Sodom and Gomorrah” and “Lot and His Daughters,” Genesis 19:1-38 (c. 500s-400s BCE). Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794). Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism” (1941).
Texts in Philosophy — early-2021 additions Read More »
I’d like to know what was in his mind at that moment. Bathysaurus ferox (literally meaning “fierce deep-sea lizard”) lives by “burying itself on the deep seafloor, 3,300 to 8,200 feet (1,000 to 2,500 m) below the water’s surface. When unsuspecting prey swims by, B. ferox darts out of the sediment and snatches up the meal in its formidable
On the fifth day, God created the fierce deep-sea lizard Read More »
A reader asked: “@SRCHicks: can you point to any examples where the greatest haters are priests, as Nietzsche claims? I find this fascinating but aside from the Inquisition and a litany of sexual assault cases against the weakest members of society (children) I can’t tangibly put this together.” The Nietzsche claim is from Genealogy of
On “The truly great haters in world history have always been priests” Read More »
Following up on two posts on the achievements of modern anatomy (“The Knife Man” and “Anatomy and Philosophy”), here is St. Augustine (354-430) disapproving of the practice: “With a cruel zeal for science, some medical men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of sick persons who have
St. Augustine against anatomy and science Read More »
Let me tell you a bed-time story that involves humans and gods and present a philosophical question dating back a few thousand of years: The story of Arachne and Athena …
Arachne vs. Athena: Moral Philosophy Begins [Open College podcast] Read More »
We’re now posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the seventeenth: C. S. Lewis said forthrightly: “A Christian society would be what we now call Leftist.” If we were to imagine, he asks us, a real Christian society, we would see that “its economic life was very socialistic.” Audio versions of
Christian Socialism and C. S. Lewis [Open College transcript] Read More »
Episode 39 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series is now released. “God is said to be the perfect creator of the world. So why does the world contain serial killers, venereal disease, and hurricanes (… and mosquitoes)? Can the theodicy problem be solved — or should we conclude that God is
God? The “Evil” Argument [Open College Podcast] Read More »