A discussion question, after a series of linked-to posts on Immanuel Kant: On women — e.g., “woman betrays her secrets even though she is unable to keep those of others (owing to her love of gossip). Man is fond of domestic peace and submits easily to its governance so as to be unmolested in his […]
Was Kant an Enlightenment liberal? Read More »
This is the second chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes] Enlightenment reason, liberalism, and science [mp3] [YouTube] The beginnings of the Counter-Enlightenment [mp3] [YouTube] Kant’s skeptical conclusion [mp3] [YouTube] Kant’s problematic from empiricism and rationalism
The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [EP audiobook] Read More »
I came across this short piece on some connections between Adam Smith, David Hume, and the American founders. Hume writing to Benjamin Franklin in 1762: “I am sure America has sent us many good things; gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc., but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters
Scottish Enlightenment and Franklin and Jefferson Read More »
Stephen Hicks discusses the Enlightenment vision of the eighteenth-century. This is from Part 14 of his Philosophy of Education course. Clips 1-3: Previous: What modernism is. Next: Post-modernism’s themes. Return to the Philosophy of Education page. Return to the StephenHicks.org main page.
The Enlightenment vision Read More »
The Enlightenment of the long 1700s was an era of intellectual and cultural transformation. This Enlightenment Vision flowchart is pitched at a high level of abstraction, showing schematically how the philosophical revolution of the 17th century led to the 18th-century revolutions in science, technology, politics, and economics — which in turn led to the dramatic
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I’m reading Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air, which is primarily about the Joseph Priestley, the great chemist and adviser to the American founding fathers. Along the way, Johnson quotes historian Tom Standage: “The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of
Coffee and the Enlightenment Read More »
Chapter Two of my book is now available online. This chapter traces the decline of epistemology from Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” to the dominance in the nineteenth-century of speculation and irrationalism, setting the stage for the collapse of reason in the twentieth century, which is the subject of Chapter Three.
The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason Read More »
A spot more cultural history following up on my “80%” comment about British culture–in response to a line from Nigel Farage saying “everything in our country and culture is based on Judeo-Christian values.” Consider the education of future British leaders from the 1600s through the 1800s, the formative years for modern British culture. In modern
British culture as 80% based on Greco-Roman — another datum Read More »
Hugh Trevor-Roper was known for his biting polemical style. In a youthful essay he described Rousseau’s Confessions this way: “a lucid journal of a life so utterly degraded that it has been a bestseller in France ever since.“[1] Of course, Confessions has also sold well in the English-speaking world (I see at least eight editions
Double insult — Rousseau and the French Read More »
What Moves History? An Introduction to the Philosophy of History By Stephen R. C. Hicks Topic Outline: Introduction: Why Rome’s Collapse, Renaissance, Modern Revolutions? History and Philosophy of History Philosophy of history’s three types of questions: 1. Metaphysical Questions about History Divine Causation? Materialist Causation? Volitional Causation? Individual or Collective Causation? Does History Have a