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Philosophy

Statue in a garden of a man thinking

Philosophy

Michael Hickson

Dr. Michael Hickson received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in 2010. Prior to joining the Trent Philosophy Department, Dr. Hickson was awarded a Research Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame (2010-2011), and was an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California (2011-2013). His recent research has focused on the history of seventeenth-century philosophy, especially Bayle, Descartes, skepticism, and the problem of evil. Increasingly, his research includes both historical and contemporary issues related to conscience and toleration.

Recent Publications:

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.

Hickson, Michael W.  "Pierre Bayle and the Secularization of Conscience."  Journal of the History of Ideas.  Accepted and forthcoming.

Hickson, Michael W. “The Immortality of the Soul.”  In The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, edited by Lawrence Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 686-690.

Hickson, Michael W. “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. 

Hickson, Michael W. “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. 

Hickson, Michael W.  “Theodicy and Toleration in Bayle’s Dictionary.”  Journal of the History of Philosophy 51:1 (2013), 49-73.

Hickson, Michael W. "Reductio ad malum: Bayle's Early Skepticism about Theodicy."  Modern Schoolman 88 (3/4): 201-221.

Hickson, Michael W. “The Moral Certainty of Immortality in Descartes.”  History of Philosophy Quarterly 28:3 (July 2011), 227-46.

Hickson, Michael W. “The Message of Bayle’s Last Title: Providence and Toleration in the Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste.” Journal of the History of Ideas 71:4 (2010), 547-67.

Hickson, Michael W. & Thomas M. Lennon.  “The Real Significance of Bayle’s Authorship of the Avis.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17:1 (2009), 191–205. 

Hickson, Michael W. & Thomas M. Lennon, “Pierre Bayle,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayle/ (I am responsible for the substantive revisions of 2008 and 2012, as well as forthcoming revisions).

Lennon, Thomas M. & Michael W. Hickson. “The Skepticism of the First Meditation,” in Descartes’ Meditations: A Critical Guide, ed. Karen Detlefsen, (Cambridge UP, 2013), pp. 9-24.