From Peter Gay’s brief biography, about the terrible brevity of life in Mozart’s time. Wolfgang Mozart “was born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756, the seventh and last child of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart. Of his siblings, five died in infancy, and only one sister, four years his elder, survived … . This appalling […]
Appalling infant mortality rates, then and now Read More »
I will be at the Academy’s impressive studio in Miami to record a new eight-lecture course on the philosophy of ethics. Here is the invitation to join the live studio audience. We will cover thinkers who made ethics modern (and highly diverse) — and those who resisted the modernizing trends — including John Locke, Jean-Jacques
Studio audience invitation for new Peterson Academy course: *Modern Ethics* Read More »
The man has an ambivalent legacy—those who claim him for the Enlightenment and for the Counter-Enlightenment. I’m in the latter group. On the Counter-Enlightenment turn: Kant’s epistemology (Ch. 2), his connections to modernist and postmodernist art, his views on education for duty and obedience, his mix of liberal and illiberal politics. By contrast: here is
Kant’s 300th birthday, April 22, and some are celebrating while some are not Read More »
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 »
A debate from 2014, I believe, between Andrew Bernstein and Dinesh D’Souza, hosted at the University of Texas. Arguments about religion typically fall into three categories: 1. Philosophical arguments about supernaturalism, faith and reason, the source of morality, and so on.2. Scriptural arguments about passages in the religion’s core texts.3. Historical arguments about the record
Christianity: Good or Bad for Mankind? Bernstein and D’Souza Read More »
From the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s 1913 The Tragic Sense of Life, on how Kant first destroys rational belief in the existence of God but then resurrects that belief on moral grounds. Or: how Kant’s head says No to God but his heart says Yes. Or: how mortal man cannot find God but the
Unamuno on Kant on God in the first two Critiques Read More »
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 University in Poland.
How did the ideas of liberty prevail in the modern world? What stands behind humanity’s enormous progress in very recent centuries? Stephen Hicks answered these questions at an international conference hosted by ARCE. Related: Professor Hicks’s book on the anti-Enlightenment origins of Postmodernism, Wokism, and Cancel Culture.
Love and Hate in Uncertain Times [Stephen Hicks lecture in Belgrade, Serbia] Read More »
How academic theory becomes university classroom becomes schooling becomes culture: “What do these hateful ideologues do after obtaining their diplomas? To find out, we searched for the career histories of a sample of 300 former campus radicals identified by Canary Mission. More than a quarter of them are in higher education, either as graduate instructors
What careers do campus activists pursue? Read More »
Below is the recording schedule for each lecture in my two courses, which will be presented live before a studio audience in Miami. For those in the area (or planning to be), free registration is here: Hicks Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Philosophy Two courses by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy Schedule for studio