Stephen Hicks
Professor of Philosophy, Rockford University
Executive Director, Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship
Phone: 815.394.5181
Address: 5050 E State St
Rockford IL
61108
Executive Director, Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship
Phone: 815.394.5181
Address: 5050 E State St
Rockford IL
61108
less
Uploads
Books
Tracing postmodernism from its roots in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant to their development in thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty, philosopher Stephen Hicks provides a provocative account of why postmodernism has been the most vigorous intellectual movement of the late 20th century. Why do skeptical and relativistic arguments have such power in the contemporary intellectual world? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why has a significant portion of the political Left -- the same Left that traditionally promoted reason, science, equality for all, and optimism -- now switched to themes of anti-reason, anti-science, double standards, and cynicism? Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.
In this two hour and forty-five minute documentary containing over 400 images, Professor Stephen Hicks asks and answers the following questions:
* What were the key elements of Hitler and the National Socialists’ political philosophy?
* How did the Nazis come to power in a nation as educated and civilized as Germany?
* What was Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy—the philosophy of “Live dangerously” and “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”?
* And to what extent did Nietzsche’s philosophy provide a foundation for the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis?
Dr. Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, Illinois, and a member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society and the North American Nietzsche Society. He has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio. He is also the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004), The Art of Reasoning: Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), and articles in academic journals such as The Review of Metaphysics and other publications such as The Wall Street Journal.
Special focus is given to the common assumption that conflicts of interest, either because of innate human badness or because of scarce resources, are fundamental to the human condition.
That assumption is rejected in Rand's system, based on her emphasis on the power of human reason to shape one's character and beliefs and its power to develop new resources and cultivate win-win relationships.
This is a reprint edition of an essay first published in the Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-26, Winter 2003.
In this essay, Professor Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.
This is a reprint edition of an essay fist published in Navigator.
Papers
Yet on the other side, Kant is depicted as the saboteur of reason and launcher of the Counter-Enlightenment. Philosopher and theologian Moses Mendelssohn, Kant’s contemporary, identifies him as “the all-destroyer,” fearful that Kantian philosophy cuts off all access to true reality. In the next generation, University of Berlin philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer identifies Kant as “the most important phenomenon which has appeared in philosophy for two thousand years” and drew from his work as the grounding for his own irrationalist and nihilist views, ...
In this essay I focus on two mistakes that regularly plague thinking about objectivity. One is the mistake of seeing two only options (intrinsicism and subjectivism) when in fact there are three. The second is making assumptions that implicitly demand omniscience or a view from nowhere—and taking the failure of human cognition to live up to those impossible standards as making objectivity impossible.
Instead, we should start with actual human beings and discover how their cognitive capacities work and why objectivity arises as a need for them to strive for.
Tracing postmodernism from its roots in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant to their development in thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty, philosopher Stephen Hicks provides a provocative account of why postmodernism has been the most vigorous intellectual movement of the late 20th century. Why do skeptical and relativistic arguments have such power in the contemporary intellectual world? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why has a significant portion of the political Left -- the same Left that traditionally promoted reason, science, equality for all, and optimism -- now switched to themes of anti-reason, anti-science, double standards, and cynicism? Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.
In this two hour and forty-five minute documentary containing over 400 images, Professor Stephen Hicks asks and answers the following questions:
* What were the key elements of Hitler and the National Socialists’ political philosophy?
* How did the Nazis come to power in a nation as educated and civilized as Germany?
* What was Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy—the philosophy of “Live dangerously” and “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”?
* And to what extent did Nietzsche’s philosophy provide a foundation for the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis?
Dr. Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, Illinois, and a member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society and the North American Nietzsche Society. He has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio. He is also the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004), The Art of Reasoning: Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), and articles in academic journals such as The Review of Metaphysics and other publications such as The Wall Street Journal.
Special focus is given to the common assumption that conflicts of interest, either because of innate human badness or because of scarce resources, are fundamental to the human condition.
That assumption is rejected in Rand's system, based on her emphasis on the power of human reason to shape one's character and beliefs and its power to develop new resources and cultivate win-win relationships.
This is a reprint edition of an essay first published in the Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-26, Winter 2003.
In this essay, Professor Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.
This is a reprint edition of an essay fist published in Navigator.
Yet on the other side, Kant is depicted as the saboteur of reason and launcher of the Counter-Enlightenment. Philosopher and theologian Moses Mendelssohn, Kant’s contemporary, identifies him as “the all-destroyer,” fearful that Kantian philosophy cuts off all access to true reality. In the next generation, University of Berlin philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer identifies Kant as “the most important phenomenon which has appeared in philosophy for two thousand years” and drew from his work as the grounding for his own irrationalist and nihilist views, ...
In this essay I focus on two mistakes that regularly plague thinking about objectivity. One is the mistake of seeing two only options (intrinsicism and subjectivism) when in fact there are three. The second is making assumptions that implicitly demand omniscience or a view from nowhere—and taking the failure of human cognition to live up to those impossible standards as making objectivity impossible.
Instead, we should start with actual human beings and discover how their cognitive capacities work and why objectivity arises as a need for them to strive for.
What explains these very different attitudes toward the very same fact -- mortality?