A Critique of Stephen Hicks' "Explaining Postmodernism"

ever since i made a video on jordan peterson and postmodernism back in april people have been asking me to respond to this book explaining postmodernism by stephen hicks this is the main source of peterson's critique and he has publicly recommended this book i want to recommend a book first to everyone here it's called explaining post-modernism people told me that i'd do better responding to hicks instead of peterson as his account is more in-depth and systematic i initially wasn't going to do it because i was a bit tired of making videos defending postmodernism but when i started reading it i changed my mind that is because this book does not just misrepresent certain postmodern philosophers it misrepresents certain modern philosophers too and i think pointing out where it goes wrong is important considering the popularity it has had in online circles because of this i hope that you watch this video even if you have already decided that you have nothing but contempt for post-modernism even if you feel indifferent about postmodernism a critique of this book extends beyond that first of all i'm using the 2014 print of the expanded edition of this book you can find a link to it from the official stephen hicks website in the video description i'm going to be referencing the page numbers of this book in the corner of the video additionally whenever i reference a source or an attachment i'm going to show a number which corresponds to a source in the video description so let's begin explaining post-modernism has a main thesis the failure of epistemology made post-modernism possible and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary to show this hicks puts forth an admirably long historical account of postmodernism's origins starting all the way back at the enlightenment era this is why over half of the book is not about postmodern philosophers as such but about the philosophical and political events leading up to its genesis and this is why it covers a lot of thinkers kant hegel rousseau nietzsche and heidegger just to name a few as well as some political movements on both the left and the right the very first page of the first chapter lists what hicks takes to be the main postmodernist thinkers this is important and in my opinion a useful approach postmodernism as a label has been used to designate a large number of different thinkers and hicks listing who he takes to be the main ones gives us a working idea of the focus of his critique the four leading strategists that hicks names are foucault leotard and rorty at the very beginning however there's a problem he lists katherine mckinnon and andrea dwarkin as postmodernists now i knew that they are associated with radical feminism but i had never heard of them being associated with postmodernism before i thought well maybe they don't explicitly identify as postmodernists but do adopt some elements of postmodern theory after looking into it i found out that even that is not the case in fact andrea dworkin's book mercy has some implicit criticisms of postmodernism as she appeals to quote keen neutral and inescapable observations and analytical objectivity if that's not enough catherine mckinnon has been an explicit critic of postmodernism with her article that's in a pretty straightforward way titled points against postmodernism where she makes some very common criticism of postmodern theory quote part of the problem in coming to grips with post-modernism is that pretending to be profound while being merely obscure slathering subjects with words its self-proclaimed practitioners fairly often don't say much of anything on page four hicks says that quote dworkin and her colleague catherine mckinnon then call for the censorship of pornography on postmodern grounds the source he lists says no such thing in fact in the aforementioned article mckinnon explicitly rejects arguments made on post-modern grounds instead she distinguishes herself from postmodern feminists on the basis of the kind of a realist epistemology that hicks supports saying dwarkens and my proposed law that pornography be recognized as a practice of sex discrimination is based on the realities of the experience of women violated through the making and use of pornography under it women's testimony about their abuse through pornography would be recognized as evidence so that pornography is legally seen to do the injuries that it does in reality and further quote postmodernism vitiates human rights to the extent it erects itself on its lack of relation to the realities of the subordinated because it is only in social reality the human violation takes place can be known and can be stopped so already on the first page while listing what he perceives to be post-modernism's main theorists he with no explanation lists two women who are critics of post-modernism i looked into all of hicks's sources and none of them imply in any way that dwarkin and mckinnon are post-modernists so my only guess then if it's not just sloppy research on hicks's part is that he is willfully trying to conflate postmodernism with radical feminism this would also explain what happens on page 17 in describing postmodernist education he says that according to postmodernists quote postmodern education should emphasize works not in the canon it should focus on the achievements of non-whites females and the poor it should highlight the historical crimes of whites males and the rich and it should teach students that science's method has no better claim to yielding truth than any other method to support this claim he cites a work by chandra talpade mohanty now already such a sweeping claim would need more sources than the statements of a single quite marginal professor but what's more is i looked into her lectures and they have no connections with post-modernism she is a postcolonial feminist now even if hicks wanted to equate post-modernism with feminism he could have at least cited postmodern feminists but he didn't whether willful or not this can just be dismissed as a mistake but the sloppy scholarship doesn't end there already in the second page stephen hicks attributes this quote to foucault it is meaningless to speak in the name of or against reason truth or knowledge well fuco never said that todd may said that while talking about fuko but the quote is directly attributed to foucault i don't know maybe hicks just got confused because they're both bald men but that's not the only false quote on page 131 he attributes this quote to hitler basically national socialism and marxism are the same that's a straight up fabricated quote and i'll attach the full transcript of the 1941 hitler speech that the quote is attributed to so you could see for yourself that it says nothing remotely similar now it's not fabricated by stephen hicks so it's not necessarily the case that he did this deliberately but again it's a sign of at least sloppy scholarship it seems that hicks did not double check his citations and sources and it hangs over the book like a black cloud then right after that on page three we see the first instance of a very basic misreading quoting leotard on the equation of power and reason he says that quote postmodernism then becomes an activist strategy against the coalition of reason and power this misunderstands what leotard like foucault saying that power and knowledge are inseparable implies it's not that the coalition between reason and power must be fought against it is inevitable it is inherent to both knowledge and power and this is not an inherently bad thing in some cases it can be bad and in some cases good for a simple example in a school classroom a teacher has power over the student to assign readings homework to tell the student what the right answers are and the power to fail the student if one does badly however it is this very power that can transmit knowledge from teacher to student just like the transmission of knowledge from scientists to general public depends on certain powers one has over tools institutions and publication mechanisms to say that this implies a fight against the coalition of reason and power is completely false and even worse misreading appears on the very next page here hicks quotes leotard again where leotard says that quote saddam hussein is a product of western departments of state and big companies this of course refers to the fact that during the war between iran and iraq the u.s sent billions of dollars in economic aid to hussein's government and as was reported on abc in 92 the reagan bush administrations permitted and frequently encouraged the flow of money agricultural credits dual use technology chemicals and weapons to iraq however hicks interprets this as saying that quote hussein is a victim and a spokesman for victims of american imperialism the world over this can't even just be a misunderstanding on his part leotard never even calls hussein a victim or any equivalent let alone calling him a spokesman of victims the world over it's genuinely baffling how hicks even managed to come to this characterization from the quote he used unless he tried to misrepresent it deliberately i'm not actively trying to find things to nitpick here on the first four consecutive pages of the book we already find a misattributed quote a misreading and a miscategorization on their own each of these things could be overlooked but how common they are immediately diminishes the book's trustworthiness let's move on despite that hicks wants to define post-modernism by contrasting it with modernism and before doing that he wants to define modernism as ushered in by the enlightenment by contrasting it with medieval pre-modernism he does this in a chart people who have studied medieval philosophy will quickly see what's wrong with this chart notice the way hicks uses value-laden words without rigid philosophical meaning and distinguishing between movements he likes and movements he dislikes most people who have studied philosophy will know that there's no metaphysical theory called supernaturalism in epistemology he characterizes pre-modernism as based on mysticism and faith while modernism is based on experience and reason now i also thought that medieval philosophers didn't care about reason when i was reading richard dawkins in middle school but that's a myth in fact hicks seems to view the correspondence theory of truth as genuinely pro-enlightenment that is the theory of truth that posits that truth is the correspondence of our beliefs to external states in the world well that theory has some of its origins in medieval philosophers such as aquinas who said that quote a judgment is said to be true when it conforms to external reality but the problem i have is not just that hicks understates the importance of reason in medieval philosophy conversely he understates the importance of faith and enlightenment philosophy and he does this to bring his favorite enlightenment figures closer to his own beliefs three of the main enlightenment figures hicks lists that he sees as genuinely pro-reason are francis bacon descartes and john locke so how insignificant really is religious belief for these philosophers well descartes explicitly states that without god all other knowledge is literally impossible it is god or at least the idea of god that gives us the possibility of knowing anything with certainty now you could argue that this is different because descartes tried to prove the existence of god rationally however so did aquinas aquinas believe that god's existence is not self-evident to us and therefore constructed five arguments for the existence of god now what about the role of god and locke's philosophy well the starting point of locke's political philosophy is that god owns us as property and it is god that gives us our rights notice that these are not just examples of lox and descartes private religious beliefs their beliefs that are ingrained into and essential to their philosophies so i think that this caricatured and dichotomized account of history has problems when hicks on page seven says that quote modern thinkers by which he means bacon descartes and locke quote start from nature instead of starting with some form of the supernatural we can see that he's leaving out big parts of the picture he then characterizes the ethics of pre-modern philosophy as collectivism altruism and modern ethics as individualism same problem as before altruism is not an ethical theory neither is individualism some medieval philosophers viewed altruism favorably of course but it wasn't at the basis of their ethical theories and modern philosophers more often than not also viewed altruism favorably just as before hicks uses a philosophically vague term like individualism to distinguish between philosophers he likes and philosophers he doesn't like the problem with individualism a term that hicks often uses in contrast with collectivism is that if you don't specify what kind of individualism you're talking about it's pretty much philosophically useless on the one hand you have for example methodological individualism the idea that society is best made sense of as an aggregate of individuals with the individual being the starting point of one's analysis and methodological individualism goes back to hobbes who was an absolute monarch then there is normative individualism which states that the primary unit of ethical significance is the individual but this does not directly translate to liberal politics the way that hicks assumes it does although there are liberal forms of political individualism there are also non-liberal forms such as individualist anarchism or other individualist forms of libertarian socialism by using the term individualism without qualifications hicks is able to give off the impression that the philosophers who don't agree with him are against individual freedom the reason i'm spending all this time on hicks's treatment of medieval philosophy is that although medieval philosophy is pretty far from postmodern philosophy this treatment already reveals some common flaws that are repeated throughout the book this kind of exposition for hicks is not without reason his general thesis in this chapter is that as he says on page nine individualism and science are thus consequences of an epistemology of reason hicks claims that liberal capitalism was a direct consequence of philosophers starting to value reason this is problematic for several reasons not only is individualism again undefined but as we've already seen medieval philosophers valued reason too by hicks's own admission ancient greek philosophers like aristotle valued reason as well but then why did that not lead to normative individualism and liberal capitalism after all aristotle the man who initiated the study of formal logic also justified slavery in his political philosophy already in the first 10 pages of the book one starts to see that this is not merely an explanation of postmodernism it's a highly ideologically charged book and in a pretty strong way hicks by claiming that his political stance emerged as a direct consequence of people starting to value reason is able to make the implicit argument that people who disagree with him politically simply don't care about reason and this is an argument that we see elements of in every chapter of the book that's not the only problem either hicks's claim on page 10 that quote with the development of free markets came a theoretical grasp of the retarding impact of protectionism and other restrictive regulations which he also sees as an outcome of the valuing of reason does not match a big chunk of historical data from his account of pre-modernism and modernism he then goes on to a general account of post-modernism and it's imperfect to say the least this is how he characterizes the constructive literary criticism quote the task of the literary critic accordingly is to deconstruct the text to reveal the author's race sex or class interests and further literary criticism becomes a form of subjective play in which the reader pours subjective associations into the text hicks doesn't provide any sources for these claims so i don't know where he got this from maybe he's referring to some deconstructive method i don't know about but that's pretty much the opposite of how deredah the father of deconstruction of course conceived of deconstruction a basic tenet of deconstruction is that you don't bring anything into the text from the outside instead you examine the internal logic of the text you find tensions in the text using only the tools provided by the text itself instead of critiquing it from the outside or from a bird's eye perspective you examine it from the inside the pouring in of subjective associations is precisely what this prevents as professor jack reynolds says in the internet encyclopedia philosophy the construction is committed to the rigorous analysis of the literal meaning of a text and yet also to finding within that meaning perhaps in the neglected corners of the text including the footnotes internal problems that actually point towards alternative meanings and darida himself identifies his deconstructive strategy with a quote desire to be faithful to the themes and audacities of a thinking later on page 190 hicks says quote deconstruction allows you to dismiss whole literary and legal traditions as built upon sexist or racist or otherwise exploited of assumptions it provides a justification for setting them aside this completely contradicts the deep respect dared i exhibited for the western canon and his entire bibliography emerged in dialogue with western classics this stereotype is generally strange because postmodern philosophers have often drawn from books within the western canon for insights and sources of inspiration often hicks puts forth misrepresentations and misreadings so common and cliched that you can watch decades-old lectures and feel like they're directly responding to stephen hicks on page 199 he says quote deconstruction has the effect of leveling all meaning and value if a text can mean anything then it means nothing more than anything else no texts are then great there is no interpretation that can bring interpretation to an end good books really great texts do not cut off interpretation they lead to multiple interpretations great examples of this would be the bible which i think is pretty obvious now the converse is the claim that people find outrageous but it's not made by narada that means since there's no the right way then anyways as good as any other now narada is not is not compelled to hold that view and he doesn't not every way to speak and or read is as good as every other and let me just put it simply no one holds that view we'll get back to post-modernism but for now let's go to chapter 2 where hicks starts his broad historical account of the counter-enlightenment starting with kant yes you heard me right the counter-enlightenment starting with kant this is where his gross misrepresentations of modern philosophy begin now if you are a cons caller or if you've studied khan formally or if you're just a fan of kant i warned that the following might make you frustrated stephen hicks flying in the face of all kinds and scholarship declares that kant is a counter-enlightenment philosopher this is very strange because most accounts of the enlightenment see kant as a great contributor to enlightenment philosophy in what is enlightenment kant wrote that the enlightenment is man's release from self-incurred tutelage the overcoming of man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another so on what basis does hicks consider khan to be a counter-enlightenment philosopher well he says that kant attacked enlightenment reason that kind concluded that objectivity must be abandoned and that our reason is limited to structuring our subjective creations now anyone who has read any book by kant will know how absurd these accusations are first of all saying that kant rejected objectivity is really strange considering his entire epistemological project was an attempt to ground objective knowledge in the face of hume's skepticism to say that kant is against reason makes no sense considering to what extent he utilized reason and clarified its conditions and praised it in his words and to say that for kant our reason is limited to structuring our subjective creations is flat out false because kant very clearly stated that what our categories of understanding structure is not subjective creations but sensory data given to us by the thing in itself which is khan's term for external things outside of relations to human subjects on page 41 he says that quote the key point about kant is that he prohibits knowledge of anything outside of our skulls again this is flat out wrong our skulls as well as the empirical world in which they exist are possible objects of experience and therefore for kant are subject to scientific empirical and objective inquiry kant made it pretty clear that he was an empirical realist it seems that hicks does not understand one of the basic points of khan's critique and the way in which kant critiqued reason it's not that khan criticized reason as a whole far from it he placed it on a very high pedestal one must simply read the title of his first critique critique of pure reason by pure he means reason detached from empirical observation for kant reason is able to rationally structure empirical experience but when detached from empirical experience it can lead to all kinds of contradictory conclusions the critique was partially an attack against fuzzy empirically insensitive philosophy on page 108 hicks even says that quote kant blamed mankind for having chosen to use reason when our instincts could have served us perfectly well just what a common criticism of khan's ethics is the opposite that they are too based on cold reason and detached from sentiment it's a very very basic and foundational aspect of kant's moral philosophy that morality is based on universal practical reason hicks says that the reason kant adopted anti-reason views is because of religious motivations quote he saw the beating that religion had taken at the hands of the enlightenment thinkers so he realized that we need to decide which has priority reason or religion kant firmly chose religion again just mind-boggling it would have been more accurate to say that kant was the one doing the beating against religion at least the way it was conceived in theology at the time some of the main targets of khan's critiques of pure reason were rationalistic arguments for the existence of god and the existence of the soul kind believed that those arguments were invalid because they were detached from possible objects of experience he was commonly criticized by theologians for trying to destroy the foundations of religion in fact it was for this reason that he was famously termed the all destroyer to reduce his extremely detailed grand fascinating and influential philosophy to anti-reason motivated by religious belief is i don't know a philosophical crime if that's not enough hicks with his account of kant even contradicts himself on page 26 praising enlightenment philosophy he says the individual is an end in himself the enlightenment thinkers taught not a slave or servant of others well you know which enlightenment thinker taught that none other than kant man as an end in himself is kant's specific and unique formulation and yet in the very next page hicks lists kant as a philosopher of the counter enlightenment pix's account of kant is probably the most mind-boggling and frustrating part of the book and that's saying a lot i can understand people misunderstanding or misrepresenting postmodern philosophers they are relatively recent and came from a time when philosophy was becoming increasingly less prized in society but to misread kant this badly is much worse not only is kant one of the most influential philosophers of all time he is also one of the biggest contributors to liberal political theory that's so dear to hicks and one of the biggest contributors to moral philosophy whatever your political or philosophical views chances are that the theorists you read or follow will to some extent have been influenced by khand when i read hicks's account of kant only one thing became clearer previously in my videos especially on my video on jordan peterson i have seen comments making really strange claims about modern philosophy like that kant was counter enlightenment or hegel was not a modern philosopher or hume was a relativist initially i would get confused about what led them to believe this i would just assume that maybe they misheard someone misunderstood someone or just misremembered after all no academic philosophers or enlightenment historians ever reached such conclusions now i realize that all those claims are coming from this one book by one person and it's kind of sad he then goes on to hegel a noticeable thing here is that he claims that hegel's dialectical philosophy rejects aristotle's principle of non-contradiction in case you don't know aristotle's law of non-contradiction is a basic law of logic which states that something cannot be both a and not a at the same time and in the same respect in other words something cannot have contradictory qualities or properties hicks claims that hegel rejects this basic logical law and by claiming this he's able to portray hegel as a continuation of kant as another anti-reason counter-enlightenment philosopher the only problem is that this accusation is just another cliched and generic misrepresentation hegel in fact not only says that the law is trivially true he says it's self-evident now some people have said that hegel with his dialectic thesis antithesis synthesis denies the law of non-contradiction i can only say they've never read hagel's logic because explicitly he doesn't deny it he simply says it's trivial it's trivial because if you're dealing with a historical process you're not dealing with things at the same time but at different times so the thesis applies at one time and at a subsequent time the antithesis may apply you see on page 49 after a superficial account of hegel's dialectic hicks even ends the paragraph by smugly saying whatever that means i guess he said that to imply that hegelian philosophy is meaningless but really only imply that he is unable to understand some of its most basic tenets it doesn't end there hicks won't rest until he misrepresents every philosopher dear to western history unless they are his three favorites of course on page 51 he says that schierkegaard schopenhauer and nietzsche all shared a contempt for reason again no source for this claim of course no matter that schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation was on the four-fold root of the principle of sufficient reason in which he tried to clarify the necessary conditions of reason which he saw all knowledge as subject to whether empirical logical geometrical or psychological anita was of course a brilliant philologist and scholar apparently he somehow achieved this with contempt for reason and if you're suspecting that i'm criticizing hicks's account of the history of philosophy because of some ulterior political motives you can look even at the two reviews of this book from the right libertarian mysis institute which is in line with hicks politically david gordon called hicks's account of kant not only disputable but altogether mistaken and aspects of his account of history eminently questionable while marcus verheg i'm sorry i have no idea how to pronounce that calls his historical account too caricatured and sacrificing code too much for a simple on-message presentation you might be wondering at this point if hicks manages to misrepresent almost every philosopher he mentions how did this book even get published don't we have mechanisms to prevent this kind of stuff well legitimate academic publishers do but this book was published by the independent scholar g the same publisher they gave you classics like complete guide for horse business success most likely then this publisher has no peer review process and even if they do it's certainly not peer-reviewed by professional philosophers i can only assume that hicks was not even able to find an academic scholarly institution willing to publish his book it was then reprinted by ocam's razor publishing ocam's razor that sounds more academic maybe that was peer-reviewed more reliably well ocam's razer publishing is stephen hicks's own business okay i'm not saying that the merits of a book depend on who it's published by but it does explain how this book could contain so many mistakes that could get you a failing grade even in an undergrad philosophy course so far i've been pointing out a lot of specific instances of things that hicks gets wrong and there's no shortage of them that i still haven't mentioned but i'd like to get to my first general point about a flaw that extends throughout the whole book what hicks really means when he says that someone has a contempt for reason or is anti-reason is that they either don't see reason as foundational or that they believe that reason has limits but there's a big big step between believing that something has limitations and rejecting it outright for example every logician will tell you that aristotle's logic has limitations after all it can't even account for the simplest proofs in euclidean geometry but this is not the same as rejecting aristotle's law of non-contradiction it's strange to make this equation without any explanation or attempt at justification because a lot of thinkers believe that reason has limitations there are many influential thinkers who were not post-modernists but very effectively criticize modernity for its reductive view of social phenomena and human life which ends up contributing to the disintegration of our sense of meaning in addition to this hicks equates all and non-realist philosophical theories with the counter-enlightenment and anti-reason again a completely unwarranted equation by making this equation hicks effectively condemns the majority of western philosophers as being anti-reason the history of western philosophy then appears to him as almost one big continuous attack on reason and objectivity one even wonders then why hicks criticizes postmodernists supposed disrespect for the western canon when he doesn't seem to have much love for it himself this is also why it's actually strange that jordan peterson recommended this book first of all two of peterson's main influences are nietzsche and young both thinkers who believe that reason does not exhaustively explain or make sense of the world additionally peterson has explicitly said that he subscribes to a pragmatist theory of knowledge which is a non-realist theory because of these two things then stephen hicks's standards would definitively place peterson in the anti-reason anti-objectivity enlightenment camp and just so you get an idea of how many things hicks rejects in this way here's some philosophical movements and theories that on stephen hicks's account then become anti-reason all forms of idealism existentialism all types of dialectics pragmatism is somology most forms of phenomenology coherentist epistemology most analytic philosophy after logical positivism mythical theory is like intuitionism and emotivism critical theory all non-realist developments in philosophy of science and most aesthetic theories just to name a few have you noticed what stephen hicks has managed to do here under the guise of simply explaining postmodernism or giving a historical account of its development he actually smuggles in very specific opinions on metaphysics epistemology history and politics as the only ones that are pro-reason and pro-objectivity he has managed to do this while still having the people he implicitly terms as anti-reason promote his book therefore not only is this book politically charged as i said earlier it attempts to promote a very narrow conception of what is reasonable in philosophy and of course what is reasonable coincides with everything that stephen hicks believes this ties into my second general and closely related criticism of the book in categorizing different theories within philosophy hicks often does not use the kind of terms that are used in formal philosophy or by serious scholars terms that try to neutrally categorize different theories instead his terminology is very vague theoretically but very specific in the positive or negative value associations it's meant to evoke when distinguishing between philosophical theories he supports and ones that he rejects he uses dichotomies like objectivism and subjectivism rationalism and irrationalism individualism and collectivism naturalism and supernaturalism such dichotomies are usually not used in philosophy because they're very theoretically poor terms but it's clear why they're being used here the former immediately evokes a positive association while the latter evokes a negative one of course i want to be objectivist not subjectivist naturalist not supernaturalist rational and not irrational but unfortunately philosophy is not that simple it cannot be dichotomized into people who are pro-reason and people who are anti-reason unless you're doing the dichotomizing for very obvious ideological reasons you don't do it to give people a clear understanding of philosophical history i'd like to point out that objectivism wasn't used to describe epistemological theories until ayn rand came along and it still really isn't used by professional philosophers with very few exceptions because rand was not formally trained in philosophy she presumably did not know how complicated the history of philosophy really is and so she thought that theories of knowledge could be simply dichotomized into objectivist ones and subjectivist ones but that's not how it works you don't just have philosophers who think everything is subjective arguing against philosophers who think everything is objective it's not that simple it actually takes a pretty high level of arrogance to come up with a philosophy and call it objectivism having the term itself inherently imply that your theory is almost by definition universally valid it's like if someone developed a theory of ethics and called it goodism don't you want to be a follower of my ethical theory goodism are you really going to choose badism instead this is also related to hix's common use of the word relativism to describe philosophers he doesn't like another term that without qualifications is philosophically useless and a term never used by postmodern philosophers in describing themselves in fact dereda says as for the relativism they are supposed to be worried about well even if this word has a rigorous philosophical meaning there's not a trace of it in my writing and as the great rick roderick puts it very succinctly philosophers call someone a relativist by which they mean it's a person that holds that any views as good as any other view my simple response to that is this that is a straw person argument no one in the world believes it or ever has believed it no one deredah or anyone else believes that every view is as good as every other view that's only a view we discuss in freshman philosophy class in order to quickly refute it then on chapter 3 he goes on to talk about heidegger now i haven't studied heidegger much so i asked some people who have about what they think of hicks's account now i could again go through all the ways in which hicks's account is less than perfect i mean just to name one hicks concludes that for heidegger the ultimate revelation is of the truth of judeo-christian and hegelian metaphysics this is at the very least questionable considering that heidegger saw metaphysics as a dead end which he wanted to resist throughout his entire philosophical career but instead of going on about that i'll just leave the notes that people gave me in the video description if you want some more in-depth explanations of where hicks gets high to go wrong instead i'll mention another general flaw that became very apparent with this chapter imagine if for example a marxist wrote a book called explaining christianity and in it they wrote about how all branches of christianity are merely forms of false consciousness emerging from society's economic mode of production this would be an explanation of christianity from a marxist framework but it wouldn't be an explanation of the christian framework itself and so wouldn't be a satisfactory explanation for people who actually want to learn about christian doctrine this is the problem with hicks's account as well heidegger believed that we have strayed too far from being and for that reason wanted to provide us with a new framework and new terminology to approach philosophy with establishing a new approach was his goal however hicks instead of letting this new approach emerge continuously tries to force it into his own framework and when this fails he concludes that it's heidegger's fault this is a problem that extends all the way from hicks's account of kant to his account of the postmodern philosophers as my friend traumazine explains as for who we are pace hicks heidegger does not merely swap out the term design for subject as if he's pouring old wine into new skins heidegger explicitly denies that the sign is a subjectum this is why hicks fails in this summary we cannot enter into a good faith exploration of heidegger's thought his understanding of being and a sign with concepts such as self-identity or subject or man already in hand if we do we're missing the entire point hicks hasn't made an effort to think being in a new key or manner he's still thinking it on the basis that heidegger is urging him to abandon and that's why again hicks isn't really explaining post-modernism explaining it would involve actually letting the frameworks that these philosophers developed speak for themselves instead from the very beginning of the book hicks is already operating from within his own framework not really even an enlightenment framework but a framework of a certain unpopular and narrow contemporary interpretation of the enlightenment namely the randian objectivist one every philosopher he looks at he views through this narrow framework and when the frameworks that other philosophers use are incompatible with his he thinks that's their fault for a more simple and visual explanation hicks is basically picking up a square shaped piece and trying to fit it through a round hole and when this doesn't work he blames the piece so we're far into the video and we haven't even reached post-modernism in hicks's historical account so how did he do there well criticizing his account is difficult not because he provides good arguments but because his most damning conclusions end up being basically slander with no sources on page 90 following four full pages of ranting with not a single source hicks characterizes the postmodern left like this that is only logic and evidence logic and evidence are subjective you cannot really prove anything feelings are deeper than logic and our feelings say socialism okay i'd like someone to find me a single source of any major postmodern philosopher saying that logic and evidence are irrelevant that you can't prove anything and that only feelings matter i swear because i have looked into many different kinds of post-modern theory and never have i heard anyone say anything remotely similar hell even on the mess that is internet discourse i've been in postmodern circles and not even there have i ever heard anyone say that logic and evidence don't matter i mean i might have missed it but hicks has no sources so this amounts to middle school level slander that even middle school me would be embarrassed by i believe in logic my opponents don't i believe in evidence my opponents don't i am rational my opponents aren't how did people think that this is a worthwhile critique the dunning-kruger effect is accelerating here so drastically that i don't even know how much more i can take same on page 184 he lists five contradictions that post-modern philosophers supposedly believe in i have never heard a single major post-modern philosopher argue for any of these contradictions for all we know neither has hicks because again there are no sources there's not even enough substance here in order for something to be criticized and it's not just post-modernism that he slanders against characterizing the environmental left on pages 153 to 155 he says that they went from believing that wealth is good to believing that wealth is bad characterizing this movement he says quote capitalism since it is so good at producing wealth must therefore be the environment's number one enemy again just slander even anarcho-primitivists who go as far as rejecting civilization itself do not say that wealth is bad instead they criticize our organizational structures again there's no source here other than a smug quote from ayn rand surely that's how scholarship works right on page 157 he says that quote frankfurt school theorizing had suggested that marxism was too wedded to reason that reason led to major social pathologies again no source so i can only guess that he's referring to the frankfurt school's criticism of instrumental reason which if that's the case hicks completely misunderstands the reason they critiqued instrumental reason was not because it was too rational but because it was not rational enough it led to irrational outcomes it was a matter of rational means leading to irrational ends as a quick example you can think of how we have mcdonald's using completely rational means to make their burger production as fast productive and cost effective as possible then you have people buying burgers for completely rational reasons they don't have enough time to make their own food and they don't have enough money to buy something better however all this instrumental rationality ends up leading to irrational outcomes mass consumption of low quality food and the massive society-wide health problems that it leads to to say that the frankfurt school simply wanted to be less rational is silly also talking about the frankfurt school on page 141 he says that in the 30s quote large segments of the radical left had come to agree with what national socialists and fascists had long argued that socialism needs an aristocracy socialism was before the people but it cannot be by the people the people must be told what they need and how to get it preposterous again there are no sources if anything western marxism since the 1930s saw an increasing number of anti-authoritarian strands yes there are anti-authoritarian forms of marxism ones that are anti-state and even anti-party there are libertarian marxists autonomous marxists the situationists etc etc not to mention non-marxist forms of socialism like different forms of anarchism their very existence puts a hole in hicks's historical account of the left not only that some of the frankfurt school theorists even explicitly argued for a more pronounced individualism in marxism to say that they believed socialism cannot be by the people contradicts everything they believed i mean there seems to be an aura about it of disappointed hopes disappointment with the marxist theory disappointment perhaps even with the working class itself for failing to be an effective instrument of revolution was there something disappointed or disillusioned or pessimistic at the center of your approach in those days well if a disappointment means as you formulate a disappointment with the working class i would decidedly reject it none of us has a right to blame the working class for what it is doing or what it is not doing so this kind of disappointment certainly not time to get to general flaw number four hicks doesn't really show the arguments that the philosophers he criticizes made hicks himself says that quote post-modernism mounts powerful arguments against all of the essential elements of modernism well if there are powerful arguments why not talk about them reading hicks you get the impression that postmodern arguments amounted to everything is subjective reason doesn't matter so only our feelings matter which really isn't very powerful at all not to mention something that no one ever said you know richard rorty didn't gain legitimacy as a philosopher by just going right into claiming that we should kill all white males he kick-started his career with the book philosophy and the mirror of nature a very rigorous book with clear argumentation that engaged with the analytic philosophy of its time why not engage with its arguments well hicks doesn't really have to instead he implicitly discredits the philosophers he talks about in a two-fold manner by making claims on what their motives were and what the consequences were for example he criticizes kant as being counter-enlightenment but doesn't really engage with kant's arguments instead he claims that kant only believed things hicks doesn't agree with because he tried to justify his religious faith similarly he doesn't engage with arguments from postmodern philosophers but simply claims that they only held the views that they did to justify their leftist politics then he makes claims about the consequences of their views on page 133 he bafflingly claims that because people in early 20th century germany were raised on the teachings of kant hegel marx and nietzsche they saw national socialism as a moral ideal of course the claims he makes aren't true but they are useful to him because in the eyes of many of his readers he has discredited these philosophers by showing both their supposed causes and their supposed effects all without having to engage with any of their arguments i'm saying all this as a preliminary intro to one of the final moments of the book where in his regular tactic of trying to show how other beliefs lead to bad consequences he tries to show how postmodernism leads to nihilism and even a hatred of mankind and he does this with possibly the worst and most laughable misreading in the entire book on page 195 he says foucault extends his desire for effacement to the entire human species at the end of the order of things for example he speaks almost longingly about the coming erasure of mankind man is an invention of recent date that will soon be erased like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea yes i'm not making this up hicks thought that fuco is some kind of anti-natalist or whatever to make a misreading this bad hicks must have not read anything else in the order of things it was enough for him to just find the single out of context spooky quote to see hicks's failure you only have to read the paragraph right before the one he quotes where foucault says quote one thing in any case is certain man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area european culture since the 16th century one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it here foucault is very clearly distinguishing between humans that is the human species and man that is the concept man the abstraction the idea of man that is at the core of humanist thought it's obviously not the human species that he talks about being effaced but a certain conception of what man is then as further proof of postmodern nihilism he quotes dereda where he talks about quote a birth in the offing only under the species of the non-species and the formless mute infant and terrifying form of monstrosity somehow hicks interprets this as darida saying that we as both modernists must bring forth monsters heralding the end of mankind what he's actually saying is that the future as that which cannot be predicted which is alien and unfamiliar and not yet conceptualized is always in a certain sense monstrous this isn't an imperative to bring forth monsters it's a descriptive claim about the nature of the future the alien the unfamiliar both of these ideas to an extent date back to nihilism's greatest critic nietzsche his idea of the overcoming of man and the idea of life as that which must always surpass itself so i have read through this entire book a book which certain jordan peterson fans claimed was a better version of peterson's criticism and in some ways it's worse peterson misrepresents darudine foucault sure but at least he doesn't try to misrepresent most of western philosophical history before them it's full of misreadings technical problems misrepresentations misattributed quotes intellectual confusions historical caricatures and straight up slander once you take all those away there's barely anything left and the book lacks basic academic standards what's amazing about this book is that while claiming to be an explanation of postmodernism not only is it actually a rough polemical attack on post-modernism it's also an argument for an extremely specific and narrow view of which philosophers are pro-reason and rational the view is so narrow that you'd think most people wouldn't agree with it however most people reading this book are people who are not well-versed in philosophy and do not even notice what is being done in my last video on the moral landscape by sam harris i said that i had never read a philosophical book that messy well this one might have actually surpassed it at least while sam harris doesn't hide the fact that he's unfamiliar with the history of philosophy hicks acts like an expert on it only to then provide us with a series of misrepresentations you know if you want to criticize post-modernism for being too polemical ideologically motivated and lacking academic standards that's fine and i'm sure you'll find lots of targets to critique but don't do it using a book that's polemical ideologically motivated and lacking academic standards hicks wasn't even able to publish the book academically and this is why it is either not known or not taken seriously among academics the only reason people read it in the first place is either because they are followers of rand like hicks is or because of certain public figures who recommended it as marcus verhag of the mises institute correctly says in his review students with little knowledge of modern philosophy who are likely to be swayed by hicks's readings of key modern figures are decidedly not a proper audience for this work however those are precisely the people who read this work and this is why it's so sad they're taking his word for it and adopting distortions of what key modern figures argued for see people who are already well-versed in philosophy will either easily see the flaws in hicks's account or find his account too superficial to be valuable on the other hand people who are beginners in philosophy could have potentially found this book valuable because of its broad scope and accessible language but that possibility is destroyed because they are the very people who won't be able to easily distinguish between what is true in hix's account and what is not now i'd like to bring up a term that although not used in this book is often brought up in comments on my videos by fans of stephen hicks and jordan peterson hierarchies of competence first off let's just get this out of the way no major postmodern philosopher has ever argued against hierarchies of competence not only that they performatively supported those hierarchies with the insane amount of research that they would do to be able to competently write works of philosophy i'm mentioning this term because i'd like to end with a genuine plea to fans of stephen hicks if you truly believe in hierarchies of competence like you say you do then please uphold those hierarchies of competence in philosophy also and even when criticizing things you don't like don't take stephen hicks's word for it don't take jordan peterson's word for it don't take my word for it either if you're interested in philosophy read up on actual academic peer-reviewed sources actual scholars they are not difficult to find and almost any academic source you will come across will more likely than not be way more reliable than explaining post-modernism by stephen hicks finally i'd of course like to thank my patrons einzigi stardust lucy pearson sawn esketix sean oscar bad dreams sean brocklehurst ben kalziki eric coronado tom marino mary of magdala comfy acre man den chaplin ilya pippa jason bourne aperture 413 criminally vulgar cattle last azzy the mazzy homeless nail donald e strong jr noah trapolino cancer pigeons simon cook yavin arba arc stanton space smile pistol pete stephen z aiden williams elizabeth ward joseph patron bat horn choir quantum computation rooftop korean industrial robot kelly rankin john drumm no yvonne jinsu-an gibbering idiot carrie juan chavez tim or mar numu andrew burns michael doherty d lang sinabi isabel abdullahi robert phillips adam johns tendes123 john beatles and susie o thank you

Channel: Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy

Views: 444,030

Keywords: stephen hicks, explaining postmodernism, jordan peterson, postmodernism, poststructuralism, derrida, foucault, lyotard, richard rorty, kant, hegel, nietzsche, kierkegaard, marx, heidegger, intellectual dark web

Id: EHtvTGaPzF4

Length: 52min 45sec (3165 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 11 2018