Talk:Stephen Hicks

Reads more like a subtle PR piece

Stephen Hicks is not the clean-cut academic the article makes him out to be - that's the image of himself he likes to cultivate, but a Wiki article shouldn't just accept the image a living person creates of himself unquestioned. For example, only people who already know that Objectivism is one of the most discredited "philosophical" systems in history, and who knows that "Business Ethics" can also be a dogwhistling term will understand from this article how political (and questionable) Hicks' work actually is. It is a bit like an article about somebody who "teaches astronomy and wrote on several related topics, including UFOs, chemtrails and alien abductions" (to exaggerate a bit, but you get my point). I suspect certain parts of the article were written by somebody close to Hicks or to his cause, and the text would probably reflect the truth much better if we had a rewrite by somebody familiar with much of his writing but who looks at it from a more nonpartisan position.VividImpression (talk) 23:07, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

You wrote that comment, shortly before writing a biased WP:COI article about your former supply teacher friend and calling him a "historian"... Carlsberg don't do irony Anarcho-authoritarian (talk) 10:56, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I do note a lack of disagreement, criticism. I'm not sure how notable a critique has to be for Wikipedia to grant it legitimation ( a Post-Modern term ), but there is a critique of one of his works at the Mises institute : https://mises.org/library/explaining-postmodernism-skepticism-and-socialism-rousseau-foucault-stephen-r-c-hicks JohnAugust (talk) 05:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Shouldn't the main question be if his work is basically solid? I, for one, am a priori sceptical of anglo- american and/or communist "interpretations" of Naziism. --Ralfdetlef (talk) 07:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Maybe you are commenting on an earlier version of the article, but as it stands, it just lists what he studies without further comment.

But your criticisms are bizarre regardless. How can a philosophical system be 'discredited'? Nobody could 'prove' that Neo-Platonism is true (or defend it against the charges of being bullshit), but it's not been discredited. To the contrary, Plato is the most influential philosopher of all time.

You seem to be treating philosophies as though they were scientific theories, which can be tested and refuted. You can believe the Randians are selfish and myopic, and that the philosophy is stupid and grandiose (I do), but it has not been 'discredited'. I'm not sure how it could be.

And 'Business Ethics' is a dogwhistle to whom? Free marketeers? If we're going to use a term as silly as 'dogwhistle', maybe we should stick to hurling it against racists, not people who support the free market.

Hicks has published six books, he has a Ph.D, he teaches at a college, etc. You can dislike the political implications of his work, but he's an academic. Though maybe I'll agree with you to this extent: most professors write total bullshit. So, the bar he has to clear is very low. 2001:1970:5D5F:600:CC41:2560:C263:10B (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Saying that Objectivism is "discredited" is perfectly fine (and true). Discredited is not a synonym for "disproven".

Here's the start of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Ayn Rand, for instance: "For all her popularity, however, only a few professional philosophers have taken her work seriously. <...> We discuss the main reasons for her rejection by most professional philosophers in the first section. <...> It is not surprising, then, that she is either mentioned in passing, or not mentioned at all, in the entries that discuss current philosophical thought about virtue ethics, egoism, rights, libertarianism, or markets." 92.255.135.103 (talk) 07:26, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Hussein

The criticism of Hicks may be correct, but Hussein was not, as Lyotard thinks (on which "basis" besides his ideology?) a "product" of the state dept etc.; obvious leftist bs.--Ralfdetlef (talk) 07:37, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Here's Lyotard's full quote from the link provided:

“Saddam Hussein is a product of Western departments of state and big companies, just as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were born of the ‘peace’ imposed on their countries by the victors of the Great War. Saddam is such a product in an even more flagrant and cynical way. But the Iraqi dictatorship proceeds, as do the others, from the transfer of aporias [problems] in the capitalist system to vanquished, less developed, or simply less resistant countries.” (pp. 74-75)

TL:DR: Lyotard says exactly what Hicks claims he said. McManus is guilty of the exact bad faith which he attributes to Hicks.

Longer: It's obvious that Lyotard is not talking about Saddam receiving funding from the US government, at least not in this quote. His point is that other nations and companies are transferring their problems to Iraq, not subsidies. And Lyotard makes a direct parallel between Saddam, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Hitler obviously wasn't receiving funding from the US, nor Mussolini (don't know about Franco). In fact, it was France and the other Allied powers who imposed terms upon Germany and (arguably) helped Hitler's rise to power — for instance, through his promise to stop paying reparations, which was an extremely popular idea among Germans then. So, even when Lyotard is referring to governments, it's not always the US.

Besides, Lyotard mentions 'big companies', so it's obviously not only the US government that he has in mind here. It seems like he is blaming the market more than the state, when you consider that the problems described are the result of the 'capitalist system' exporting problems to 'less [economically] developed' countries.

So, in this quotation, Lyotard is making the exact point Hicks claims he is. Hicks is arguing in good faith.

This particular criticism of Hicks is nonsensical and obviously motivated by McManus' desire to protect his academic turf and/or his dislike of Hicks' politics. And goddamn is this a lazy attempt at character assassination on McManus' part. Should we assume that McManus' analysis of Hicks is as badly done throughout his review as it is done here? 'These interpretive problems immediately make one suspicious that this book may be less about...' what Hicks says, and more about the fact that McManus doesn't like him.

This whole section should be deleted. Criticisms are fine, but not when they're stupid. Real clever how he cut off the quote three words before the mention of Hitler et al. 2001:1970:5D5F:600:CC41:2560:C263:10B (talk) 21:55, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I second this. As the article stands now, it seems intentionally tilted towards criticism of Hicks without fair representation of his ideas. 2601:CF:80:5220:BDD1:2C34:D9A7:229A (talk) 08:06, 3 April 2024 (UTC)