After my talks at the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, I received a gift from Professora Ilona Błaszczyk: a book on Seneca on education. Professora Błaszczyk is a scholar of classical thought who has translated Seneca’s work into Polish. A striking feature of the book, though, appears on the title page: a Third […]
Third Reich stamp in Seneca book Read More »
Jagiellonian University is one of the ancient universities of Europe. 1364 was its founding year, and I am officially in residence — temporarily for my two guest lectures. Market square is huge and lively. Nicholas Copernicus was a student here, and Kraków has some smog issues, so this statue of Copernicus has a mask added
Jagiellonian University in Kraków visit Read More »
The Decline of the West By Oswald Spengler Translated from the German by Charles Francis Atkinson New York: A. A. Knopf, 1918 Spengler’s Preface to the First Edition The complete manuscript of this book — the outcome of three years’ work — was ready when the Great War broke out. By the spring of 1917
Spenger’s Introduction to *The Decline of the West* [text] Read More »
From January 6-16 I’ll be giving a total of eight talks in Poland: Bydgoszcz, Chojnice, Warszawa, and Kraków. Several of the talks are tied to the newly-published Polish edition of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. The Polish translation by Piotr Kostyło and Katarzyna Nowak was published as Zrozumieć postmodernizm. Sceptycyzm
Lecture tour in Poland, January 2017 Read More »
In these days of cultural sensitivity, consider the saga of syphilis. Syphilis is thought to have been brought back from America by Christopher Columbus’s fellow travelers. In Europe, it first manifested in Naples and so came to be called “the disease of Naples,” though most Italians called it the “French Pox.” As it made its
Syphilis and friendly ethnic relations — updated Read More »
[Below is the text of Richard Wagner’s 1849 essay “Art and Revolution” (and here is a PDF version).] Richard Wagner “Art and Revolution” Almost universal is the outcry raised by artists nowadays against the damage that the Revolution has occasioned them. It is not the battles of the “barricades,” not the sudden mighty shattering of the pillars
Richard Wagner’s “Art and Revolution” text Read More »
The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe: “I am quite the international trader, it turns out. “Earlier today I put on my made-in-Argentina jacket and my new made-in-India shoes and got into my made-in-Japan truck. I stopped for gas at a British petroleum station and chatted with its owner, a guy from Mexico. To
Free Trade Makes You a Better Person [new The Good Life column] Read More »
Professor Piotr Kostyło of Casimir the Great University in Bydgoszcz, Poland, published a review of Nietzsche and the Nazis. The text of the review follows: Do We Know What We Advocate? Stephen Hicks’s Defence of Individualism The forty-five years of communism in Poland (1944-1989) were marked by the government reminding society of the atrocities committed during
Piotr Kostyło’s review of *Nietzsche and the Nazis* Read More »
[I wrote the following in 1999 in response to several people who wrote to me with objections to my and others’ use of The Will to Power in interpreting Nietzsche.] Dear [ ]: Every word in The Will to Power was written by Nietzsche in his notebooks of 1883-1888. Some of the notes were his
On the legitimacy of Nietzsche’s *The Will to Power* Read More »
In English, here is Magdalena Wędzińska’s review [pdf] of the Polish edition of Nietzsche and the Nazis. The review is forthcoming in Polish in Forum Oświatowe, a leading Polish education periodical. Here is more information about other editions and translations of Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Wędzińska’s review of Nietzsche and the Nazis Read More »