Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks

Hosted ByDr. Stephen Hicks

Dr. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Canadian-American philosopher who teaches at Rockford University, Illinois. He has had visiting positions at Oxford University (England), Kasimir the Great University (Poland), and has lectured at universities across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He specializes in modern European philosophy and politics, and has written extensively on Kant, Marx, including his two books, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault and Nietzsche and the Nazis.

#25 Thales’ Revolution

The standard claim is that philosophy begins with Thales. Why did philosophy come into being in a clusters of cities on the coasts of Asia minor? Ascribed to Thales by Aristotle: “The first principle and basic nature of all things is water, ”and “All things are full of gods.” Why do historians of philosophy get worked up over these lines?
To see their significance, let’s set a context by going back to the worldview of the awesomely great Homer. So brush up on The Iliad, which I want to use as our pre-philosophy-worldview contrast object.