Michael Hickson received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in 2010. Before joining the Philosophy Department at Trent, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame (2010–2011) and an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in California (2011–2013). His research centers on early modern philosophy, with particular interest in skepticism, religious toleration, and freedom of conscience. Much of his work examines the writings of the French philosopher, historian, and critic Pierre Bayle—one of the most widely-read thinkers of his time, but now often overlooked by anglophone historians of philosophy. He enjoys thinking about all sorts of philosophical questions and sometimes builds new regular courses, or offers independent reading courses, around them. Lately, he’s been exploring big ideas through games, films, poetry, and Zen Buddhism.
Personal Website
Selected Publications
Book:
Pierre Bayle. Dialogues of Maximus and Themistius. Translated, edited, and introduced by Michael W. Hickson. Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History 256/18. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Seleced Articles, Chapters, and Entries:
“Pierre Bayle”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), [https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/bayle/].
“Illusory Checkmates: Why Chess is Not a Game.” Synthese 200, no. 5 (2022): 1-21.
“The Role of Skepticism in Bayle’s Theory of Toleration.” In Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought: A New Pan-American Dialogue, edited by Vicente Raga Rosaleny and Plínio Junqueira Smith, 161-76, Springer, 2021.
“Simon Foucher and Anti-Cartesian Skepticism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, edited by Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Steven Nadler, and Tad Schmaltz, 678-90, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“Pierre Bayle and the Secularization of Conscience.” Journal of the History of Ideas 79:2 (2018), 199-220.
“Varieties of Academic Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy: Pierre-Daniel Huet and Simon Foucher.” In Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, 320-341, edited by Diego Machuca and Baron Reed (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
“Belief and Invincible Objections: Bayle, Le Clerc, Leibniz.” In Leibniz et Bayle: Confrontation et Dialogue, edited by Christian Leduc, Paul Rateau, and Jean-Luc Solère. Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 43 (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015), 69-86.
“A Brief History of Problems of Evil.” In A Companion to the Problem of Evil, edited by Justin McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 3-18.
“Theodicy and Toleration in Bayle’s Dictionary.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 51:1 (2013), 49-73.
“The Moral Certainty of Immortality in Descartes.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 28:3 (July 2011), 227-46.
Popular:
“Why Canada Should Invest More in Teaching Kids How to Play Chess.” The Conversation. 13 October 2022.
With Paul Frost, Michael Epp, and Marguerite Xenopoulos. “Scientific Certainty Survival Kit: How to Push Back Against Skeptics Who Exploit Uncertainty for Political Gain.” The Conversation. 3 January 2022.
“How a Huguenot Philosopher Realized that Atheists could be Virtuous.” Aeon. 18 September 2018.