Nietzche and the Nazis by Stephan Hicks

#29 War on Socialism

William James was a leading American philosopher who lived at the turn of the 20th century. In his essay the Moral Equivalent of War, James describes himself as a socialist and pacifist and is very disgusted with the human history of war and is looking for a solution. This essay, while thoughtful and well argued is to my mind, highly objectionable. Here is why.

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EP #28 | Keynes Blame

Is Keynes to blame for everything? John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the 20th century. In the 21st century his theories are institutionalized. But how close is current Keyesnian practice to original Keynesian theory?

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#27 Money You Should Love

Money is one of the greatest inventions ever, just as books are one of the greatest inventions ever and for the same reasons. Books are collections of abstract symbols that represent abstract ideas. Writing enhances our thinking through portability, storage, precision and universality. Books enable everyone to communicate with one another. All of these points about books hold precisely for money.

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#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.

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#24 Does Power Corrupt?

Lord Acton said, “absolute power corrupts absolutely” but is this accurate? Abuses of social and political power are the ones we worry about the most. Social science data does seem too, on the surface, bare out Lord Acton’s claims. However, if you correlate the degrees of corruption with degrees of centralization the data suggests things are not quite so simple.

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EP #23 – Is Postmodernism Neo-Marxist? Yes, No & Sort Of.

Professor Jordan B. Peterson is perhaps most famous for the neo-Marxist label “Postmodern Neo-Marxism.” Although Dr. Peterson recommends Explaining Postmodernism by Dr. Hicks, their analysis on this issue differs in some important ways.

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EP #22 | Did Coffee Give Us The Enlightenment

As a contributing factor, coffee (and tea) certainly gets credit on physiological grounds. Also contributing was the development of European coffee house culture, the coffee houses bringing businessmen, artists, and scientists together for drinking and socializing.

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EP #21 | Censor The Hitlers

Extreme cases always test our commitment to a free society. A free society depends on our general confidence in the power of reason, that people have intelligence and good judgment enough to handle the cognitive demands of living freely.

Yet now our current concerns with social unrest, triggers, and inflammatory language and images has led some social-media giants curating speech. Some history teachers have found their online course lessons on German history blocked because they contain archival footage of Hitler giving a speech or a Nazi parade. Thus the censorship debate has now become main stream.

We must decide as a society, should dangerous ideas always be allowed so that they can be confronted openly? Is sunlight the best disinfectant?

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EP #20 | Sex Dolls: Why Not?

Sex Dolls, Artificial Intelligence, and the Real Thing. Newly-engineered materials and robotics have made the physical experiences closer to the real thing, and artificial intelligence has enabled robots to respond verbally and non-verbally more realistically. let’s set aside the politics and focus on the ethics: Is sex with robots a good thing? a bad thing?

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EP #19 | Stain of Slavery

In this episode of the Open College podcast, Professor Stephen Hicks talks about the issue of slavery: its history and current implications. Even though slavery has been prohibited in Western countries, its stains such as racism and discrimination still can be seen in our society. During the last decades, people of the civilized world have been reflecting on the causes and consequences of this tragic part of human history. The anti-slavery position, as Dr. Hicks asserts, became a part of our moral identity, but its mere presence is not enough for a proper moral judgment on “how to apportion credit and blame, pride and shame.” The issue of slavery must first be systematically studied in all of its complexity. By describing the history of the slave trade, its routes and origins worldwide and in North America in particular, Dr. Hicks lays out the necessary foundation for discussing why and how slavery came to be, what were the philosophical ideas behind it, who should be blamed for what has happened, and the causes of eventual abolition. Through historical evidence and data, he presents important facts about slavery that are often sidelined in current discussions and emphasizes the importance of the new Enlightenment individualistic way of thinking for eliminating slavery. Moreover, Professor Hicks warns against rash judgments and common misuses of group language. In order to objectively assign credit and blame, one should check the premises and strictly follow the principles that lie in the foundation of the opposition to slavery because without this philosophical consistency no justice can be achieved. In this episode of Open College Podcast, Dr. Hicks presents a proper systematic way of judging and responding to this human tragedy that stems from ideas of the independence of every human being and his/her individual rights.

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