Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault Kindle Edition

This is a superb, important book, one which I have begun recommending to friends and colleagues. It is a history of postmodernism that connects its relationship to history, the history of philosophy, leftist politics and even the ugliness of contemporary art. The overarching thesis is that “the failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary.” From the Anglo/French Enlightenment the left turned to Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger. By the mid 20th century it was clear that socialism was a grand failure, leaving the world awash in millions of dead bodies. Such straightforward Enlightenment tools as reason, logic and factual evidence made that clear. The result was that hard leftists such as Foucault and softish hard leftists like Derrida and Rorty (all born in very close proximity to one another) set out to destroy those Enlightenment tools, arguing that language does not reflect reality, facts are really fiction, there is no such thing as ‘human nature’, all comes down to questions of ‘power’, and so on. These strategies were ultimately designed to protect socialism from common sense criticism. This has not advanced socialism to any appreciable degree, but it has roiled our colleges and universities and served as a countercultural infrastructure for a vast machine of indoctrination, one that seeks to win a succession of tiny battles when it is clear that the larger war has long been lost.

Hicks’s conclusions are this stark but his arguments are detailed. He sees this as fundamentally a failure of epistemology that has been exploited endlessly. Kant’s ultimate subjectivism and his separation of subject and object have been decisive in opening the door both to postmodernism and to romanticism. Hicks does not pursue the latter; that would require another book, but one which I would very much like to see him write.

The book is one of the most lucid and accessible studies of the history of philosophy that I have ever encountered and it is particularly acute in its ability to connect the dots and trace the intellectual lineages and etiologies. If you want to see how the defense of affirmative action, speech codes, and global warming activism ultimately connects with Rousseau, Kant and Marx, et al, this is the book with which you should begin.

This expanded edition adds two relevant essays: “Free Speech and Postmodernism” and “From Modern to Postmodern Art: Why Art Became Ugly.” The latter is particularly incisive.

Highly recommended.

Hicks writes a beautifully distilled insight into what postmodernism is, why it exists, and why it is dangerous, applied in the wrong dose in the wrong place (as it frequently is in this day and age).

I had never understood the connection between Marxism and postmodernism, but Hick's makes the connection abundantly clear. If postmodernism does, indeed, make the claim that there 'is no truth' and that there 'is no reality' then how does this fit in with the idea of Marx? As Hick's demonstrates, if postmodernists indeed drank their coolade, one would find that their political affiliations were, at the very least, randomly distributed among the ideologies of our time. This is not the case, postmodernists are almost exclusively leftwing, and Hicks tells us exactly why, in a very compelling way.

He also traces the roots of postmodernism all the way back to the enlightenment era, and he systematically charts how the age of reason sewed the seeds of unreason that was to follow in the later centuries with Nietche and Hegel et al.

Hicks presents his thesis with beautiful, easy to understand explanations that burn with logic and common sense. I was riveted from start to finish. I have long wondered why it is that we hold the assumptions about the world that we do and this work provides one large piece to that puzzle, and has opened up a whole new world of enquiry for me.

My only (very small) criticism is that he observes correctly that the postmodernists (and their Marxist cousins) have shifted their support from failed communist ideology to causes like environmentalism. This is true, but it does not then follow that all environment issues are therefore invalid (as Hicks seems to come close to implying).

Lucidly written, clearly structured and replete with a wealth of footnotes and diagrams supporting his analysis, with this must-read book Dr. Hicks reveals the nefarious subterranean foundations of Postmodernism, from its Anti-Enlightenment beginnings in Rousseau, Kant, Herder, Fichte, Nietzsche and Hegel, to its recent and contemporary destructive applications in literary and social criticism, along with its nihilistic attack on the very objectivity of Reason and of every concept or value rooted in the validity of human perception, of rationality, or of any evidentiary methodology---without which no values or lives can be defined or consistently defended against the totalitarian impulses of such socialist or religious authoritarians (which thus becomes Postmodernists' unifying motivation).

If postmodernism, by systematically undercutting every individual pro-life value in favor of Nothing is the ultimate criminal syndicate busily sabotaging every field of academic enquiry less their arbitrary will to power be stymied, then Stephen Hicks by exposing the underlying motivations and cynical strategems of its founders, such leading voices as Marcuse, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida and Rorty, is the ultimate criminologist, a philosophic Hercule Poirot!

A superbly clear exploration of the origins and history of postmodernism. The use of charts and tables is particularly clever in making the argument easy the follow. The author has a strong grasp of the relevant intellectual and political history. The book could well be used as an introduction to modern philosophy. Highly recommended, including for those without a background in philosophy.