Well, Iâm speaking today with Dr. Stephen
Hicks, who is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Rockford University
in Illinois. Professor Hicks has written a bookâheâs written several booksâbut
heâs written one in particular that I wanted to talk to him about today called Explaining
Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, which was published
a fair while ago now, in 2004, but I think has become even more pertinent and relevant
today. I have talked a lot to my viewers about your
book, and so letâs talk about Postmodernism and its relationship with Neo-Marxism. So
maybe you could tell the viewers here a little more about yourself and how you got interested
in this. Well, I finished graduate school in philosophy
in the early 90s, originally from Canada, born in Toronto. At that point Pittsburgh
and Indiana had the two strongest philosophy of science and logic programs, and thatâs
what I was interested in at the time. And so upon a professorâs recommendation, I
ended up at Indiana, and it worked out very nicely for me. So most of my graduate work was actually in
epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, some cognitive science issues as well. So
a lot of the epistemological and philosophical/linguistic issues that come up in Postmodernismâthe
groundwork so to speak was laid for that. When I finished grad school and started teaching
full-time, came to Rockford University. I was teaching in an honors program, and the
way that program worked wasâit was essentially a Great Books programâand so it was like
getting a second education, wonderfully. But the way it was done was that each course was
taught by two professors to our honor students. So the professors would be from different
departments, so I was paired with literature professors, history professors, and so on.
And this was now the middle of the 90s. I started to hear about thinkers I had not
read. Iâd kind-of heard about them, but now I was reading them more closely and finding
that in history and literature and sociology and anthropology, names like Derrida and Foucault
and the others, if not omnipresent, were huge names. So I realized I had a gap in my education
to fill. So I started reading deeply in them. My education in some ways was broad in the
history of philosophy but narrow at the graduate school level and I had focused mostly on Anglo-American
philosophy, so my understanding of the Continental traditions was quite limited. But by the time
I got to the end of the 90s, I realized there was something significant going on coming
out of Continental philosophy. And thatâs where the book [published 2004] came out of.
When you say significant, what do you mean by that? Do you mean intellectually? Do you
mean socially? Politically? Thereâs lots of different variants of âsignificant.âWhen
you say significant, what do you mean by that? Do you mean intellectually? Do you mean socially?
Politically? Thereâs lots of different variants of âsignificant.â
At that point, âintellectually.â This was still in the 1990s so postmodernism was
not yet (outside of, say, art) a cultural force, but it was strongly an intellectual
force in that. At that point, young Ph.D.s coming out of sociology, literary criticism,
some sub-disciplines in the law (if youâre getting Ph.D. in the law), historiography
and so on, and certainly in departments in philosophy still dominated by Continental
traditional philosophy: almost all of them are primarily being schooled in what we now
call postmodern thinkers, so the leading gurus are people like Derrida, Lyotard, from whom
we get the label post-modern condition, Foucault and the others.
So maybe you could walk us through what you learned, because people are unfamiliar ... I
mean, you were advanced in your education, including in philosophy, and still recognized
your ignorance, say, with regards to postmodern thinking, so thatâs obviously a condition
that is shared by a large number of people. Postmodernism is one of those words like Existentialism
that covers an awful lot of territory, and so maybe we could zero in on exactly what
that means, and who these thinkers were: Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard, and what you learned
about them. Fair enough. Well, all of the thinkers you
just namedâthey think broadly, they think strategically, and they do have a very strong
historical perspective on their disciplines, and at the same time they are trying to assess
where they think we are culturally, politically, sociallyâand all of them are making a very
dramatic claim: that to some extent or in some way Modernism has either ended or it
has reached its nadir, or all of the ⌠kind of the pathologies and negative traits within
the modern world are reaching a culmination in their generation, and so itâs time for
us to both recognize that Modernism has come to an end, and that we need some sort of new
intellectual framework, a post-modern-like framework.
And the Modernism that theyâre criticizing, how would you characterize that? Thatâs
Enlightenment values? Scientific rationalism? How would you characterize it, exactly?
All of those would be elements of it. But then of course there are some discipline-specific
differences: so literature people and philosophy people and historians will use Modernism slightly
differently. But the idea at core is that if you look at the pre-modern worldâessentially
the world of the Middle Ages, sayâthat that was itself broken up by a series of revolutions:
the Renaissance, Reformation, Counter Reformation, early scientific revolutionsâand all of
this is going on in historically short chunks of time: 1500s and 1600s. And so if you look at both the intellectual
world and the social world, comparing, say, the 1400s with the 1700s, culturally and intellectually
youâre in a different universe at that point. So the features then of the modern worldânow
Iâm going to use my philosophical labels hereâare that we are now naturalistic in
our thinking. We are no longer primarily supernaturalistic in our thinking. So we might still be open
to the idea that thereâs a God or some sort of supernatural dimension, the way Deists
are, but first and foremost weâre taking the natural world as a more or less self-contained,
self-governing world that operates according to cause and effect, and weâre going to
study it in its terms. Weâre not seeing the natural world as derivative
of a âhigherâ world or that everything that happens in the natural world is part
of âGodâs planâ where we read omens and so forth into everything. So metaphysically then thereâs been a revolution:
Weâre naturalistic. Epistemologicallyâin terms of knowledgeâthere
also has been a revolution. How do we know the important truths? How do we acquire the
beliefs that weâre fundamentally going to commit our lives to? Well, by the time we
become Moderns we take experience seriously, personal experience. We do that more rigorously
and weâre developing scientific method (the way of organizing the data), weâre taking
logic and all the sophisticated tools of rationality and developing those increasingly ... And so our opposition then is: Either you
know something because you can experience it and verify it for yourself, or we've done
the really hard work of scientific method and as a result of what comes out of that,
thatâs what we can call knowledge or our best approximation to that. And thatâs also revolutionary because the
prior intellectual framework was much more intellectually authoritarian in its framework.
You would accept in the Catholic tradition the authority of the Church. And who are you
to question the authority of the Church? And who are you to mouth empirical-rational arguments
against the authority of the Church? Or, you take the authority of Scripture, or
you accept on faith that you've had a mystical revelation of some sort. So, in all of those cases you have non-rational
epistemologies that are dominating intellectual discourse. That is all by and large swept
away in the modern world. Okay, so prior to the emergence of the modern
world, weâll say, people are dominated essentially by their willingness to adhere to a shared
tradition and that shared tradition is somewhat tyrannically enforced. But thereâs no real
alternative in terms of epistemology [epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard
to its methods, validity and scope: the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from
opinion] letâs say. And then as the modern world emerges, people discover the technologies
of science and the value of rigorously applied method and the comparison of shared experiences
and that makes us technologically powerful in a new way and philosophically different
from what we were before. ] Yes, the shared tradition phrase that you
added there, thatâs an important one. So Iâd say in the early modern world thereâs
not necessarily a skepticism about shared traditionsâso there would be an acceptance
of shared traditionsâbut the idea is that you would not uncritically accept your tradition.
You may accept your tradition, but only after you've thought it through and made your own
independent judgment. Okay, okay, so youâre elevated to the status
of someone whoâs capable of taking a stance with regards to the tradition, and assessing
its presuppositions and so forth. Absolutely.
So thereâs an elevation of the individual and the critical intellect along with the
elaboration of the scientific method. Okay, so then we might note, perhaps, that thatâs
a tremendously effective transformation, although maybe it leads in a somewhat nihilistic direction
metaphysicallyâwe can leave that to the side. But itâs a very, very successful revolution,
because by the time, at least the beginning of the 20th century comes along, thereâs
this staggering (and of course before that, the Industrial Revolution), thereâs this
staggering transformation of technology and technological and conceptual power, and then
a stunning increase in the standard of living. And that starts at about 1890, to really move
exponentially in the 1890s, or at least to get to the really steep part of the exponential
curve. Okay, so that seems to be going well. So what is it that the postmodernists are
objecting to precisely? Just on those two issues: (1) the metaphysical
naturalism, and then (2) the elevation of kind of a critical empiricism and a belief
that we can, through scienceâeven not necessarily a science, but social scientists and so onâwe
can come to understand powerful general principles about humanity and social systems. Those two revolutions both are then subjected
to counter-attacks. And again, what happens in this case is there
is a revolution. Probably by the time we get to 1800âthe height of the Enlightenmentâthere
are the beginnings of more powerful skeptical traditions that come to be developed, so thinkers
are starting to say things like: Well, if scientific method at root is based on the
evidence of the sensesâwe observe the natural world: thatâs our first point of contactâand
then on the basis of that we form abstractions, and then we put those abstractions into propositions,
and then we take those propositions and put them in networks that we call theories, and
so onâso we start to critically examine each of the elements of scientific method,
and over time, weaknesses in the existing accounts of how all of those ârational operationsâ
work come to be teased out, and philosophy then starts to go down a more skeptical path. So if, for example, you take perception as
fundamentalâitâs you know, the individual subjectâs first point of contact with the
natural worldâthen you have to immediately deal with issues of perceptual illusions,
or the possibility that people will have hallucinations, or that the way you report your perceptual
experience is at odds with how I report my perceptual experience. Tell me if Iâve got this right. So, with
the dawning of the âEmpirical Age,â letâs say, thereâs this idea that you can derive
valid information from sense dataâespecially if you contrast that sense data rigorously
with that of othersâokay? So thatâs sort of the foundation for the scientific method
in some sense. But thenâI think this is with Immanuel Kantâthereâs
an objection to that, which is that, Well, you canât make the presupposition that that
sense data enters your cognitive apparatus, your apparatus of understanding, without a
priori structuring, and it seems to me that thatâs where the postmodernists really go
after the modernists. Itâs that, given that you have to have a very complex perceptual
structure (that modern people might say was instantiated as a consequence of biological
evolution), you canât make the case that what youâre receiving from the external
world is something like âpure informationâ: itâs always subjectâto some very-difficult-to-delimit
degreeâto âinterpretation.â And then you also have to take into account
the fact of that a priori structure and what it might mean for your concept of âobjective
reality.â And thatâs Kant, I think, if Iâve got that right. Right. Well, the postmodernists will use both
of those strategies: (1) the anti-empiricist strategy, and (2) the anti-rationalist strategy.
And whatâs important about Kant is that Kant is integrating both of those âantiâ
strategies. So in the generations before Kant, the skeptical arguments about perception which
were directed against the empiricists ⌠the empiricists want to say that everything is
based on observational data, but then if you donât have good answers about hallucinations
and relativity and illusions and so forth, then it seems like your intellectual structure,
whatever it seems to be, if itâs based on probabilistic or possibly faulty perceptual
dataâthen the whole thing is a tottering mess. [Empiricism: the theory stating that
knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. Empirical research, including
experiments and validated measurement tools, guide the scientific method.] And by the time we get to Kant, the Empiricist
tradition is largely unable to respond to those kinds of objections. And so Kant is
recognizing and saying: All right, weâve been trying now for a couple of centuries,
we havenât been able to do so successfullyâweâre not going to be able to do so. Now, you also nicely emphasized that one of
the other responses had been on the Rationalist side, which is to say, âWell, no you donât
start with pure empirical dataâinstead we do have perhaps some innate a priori structures
built into the human mindâhow they got there, maybe theyâre put there by God, maybe theyâre
put there naturalistically or whateverâbut what enables us to have legitimate knowledge
is that our empirical data comes in and it is filtered and structured by these pre-existing
cognitive structures as well.â Now the problem with that side of the lineâand
this is also well worked out by the time you get to the Kantiansâis to say: Well, if
youâre starting with in-built cognitive structures, and everything that comes in,
so to speak, goes through this structuring machine and youâre aware of the outputsâbecause
thatâs what is presented to your mindâwell how do you know those in-built structures
have anything to do with the way reality actually is out there? It seems like then what you are stuck with
is the end result of a subjective processing, and there is no way for you, so to speak,
to âjump outside of your headâ to compare the end result with the way the world actually
is, independently of how your mind has structured the awareness. So once again, youâre stuck in a rather
subjective place. And again, the importance of Kant here is
then heâs also looking at this more Rationalist tradition and heâs saying, Well look, again
weâve been trying now for a couple of centuries to work these things out from Descartes to
Spinoza, Leibniz and the others, and Rationalism also has reached a dead end, so weâre not
going to be able to do so. So Kant is, in effect, standing at the end
of these two traditions and saying, âYou know, the skeptics have it right on both sides:
both the Empiricist and the Rationalist traditions fail. There is no way for us to objectively
come to know an external reality. Weâre stuck in some sort of deep subjectivism.â Okay, so I donât know now whether to talk
a little bit about the American Pragmatic approach to that, or whether to ... Maybe
we should go ahead and continue our discussion of the postmodernists, because theyâre developing
these claims. Absolutely, and some of the postmodernists
do describe themselves as Neo-Pragmatists, like Richard Rorty for example. So yes, thatâs
exactly a direction thatâs worth going. Okay, okay. So my understanding of that, if
I was going to defend the Modernist tradition, letâs say, I would say that we have instantiated
within us an a priori perceptual structure thatâs a consequence of millionsâbillions
of years for that matterâof biological evolution, and it has emerged in tandem with continual
correction of its presuppositions by the selection process. But itâs still subject to error
because we have a very limited viewpoint as specific individuals, and not only are we
limited, but we can also make, you might say, moral errors, and Iâll get back to that,
that cloud our judgment. And so, in an attempt to âexpand our purviewâ
and rectify those errors, we do two things: (1) We test our hypothesis practically against
the world, which is to say, we say, âHereâs a theory of reality.â We act it out. If
the theory of reality is sufficiently correct, when we act it out, we get what we want, and
then thatâs sufficient proof for the validity of the theory. Itâs not absolute proof,
but itâs sufficient proof. And then the other thing we do (and I think this has been
paid attention to much less except by thinkers such as Piaget) is that: (2) We further constrain
our presuppositions about reality with the necessity of constructing theories that are
also acceptable to the people around us. So they have to be integrate-able within the
currently existing social contract, and they have to be functionally appropriate in the
external world. And thatâs a nice set of constraints, and
it seems to me that that, at least in some part, goes a long ways to answering the objections
to the limits of the scientific method that have been discussed historically, and which
you just summarized. All right, Iâm sympathetic to much of what
you just went through. In fact a five-point response to the kinds of arguments that have
been laid out, where youâre actually putting me in the position then of defending the postmodern
tradition about how it would undercut each of those components. So, if you take for example evolutionary epistemology
[epistemology: investigation into the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge],
and you gave a nice sketch of one standard evolutionary epistemological frame in which
you say: Maybe we have in-built a priori structures, but we can rely upon them because here we
are standing at the long end of hundreds of thousands or millions of years of evolution,
and they would not have survived or enabled us to survive had they not served some sort
of reliable cognitive role in accurately representing the way the world works. This is actually too early for the postmoderns,
although the postmoderns will agree with this. This is to say that all of that kind of begs
the question in a very deep way against the kind of skeptical objections that weâre
raising. Because in order to make that paragraph-long description of what evolutionary epistemology
is, what I have to do is take for granted basic assumptions, certain truths about the
world: that, for example, there is an external world; that we are biological creatures; that
we have in-built structures; that those structures are evolutionarily responsive and conditioned
by changing forces; and so forth. And if you take those assumptions to be true,
then as a consequence or as a conclusion, you can infer that therefore the intellectual
products that come out of our cognitive processing are reliable. But where did you get those four premises
from? How do you know that there is an external world? How do you know that we are biological
creatures? How do you know that evolution is true, with all of the historical knowledge
thatâs necessary to reach the conclusion that evolution is true? All of that presupposes
that we have legitimate cognitive methods to come to understand the world. But our having
legitimate cognitive processes to understand the worldâthatâs exactly what we are arguing
about in the first place, and you canât just assume that, for then the sake of coming
up with some premises that are then in turn going to validate those cognitive processes. So something like that they will say is a
big circle or a circular-reasoning problem that evolutionary epistemology finds itself
trapped in. Now I think that there are some responses
to that, and this is just the first âback and forthâ on that particular debate. But
that is the kind of response that would be there. The third and fourth response (if Iâm keeping
track accurately) is to say that we also have constraints with respect to ourselves: that
if we have a certain set of hypotheses or a certain set of theories and weâre testing
them out, we will accept those that give us âwhat we want,â what I want, so to speak. And Iâm also necessarily in a social situation
so what I need to do is check my results against the results of others: peer review, experiment
replication and so forth. [smiles] ... ability to live in the same household
... [laughs] Yes, absolutely, right? More prosaically,
âsharing our frameworks with others,â right? And so on... And so if, so to speakâand this is the more
Pragmatist orientationâif we then say we have a theory or a set of principles or guidelines
or whatever, and they do enable me successfully to navigate the world to get what I want,
or they do enable me to navigate my social world to get us what we wantâthen theyâre
reliable, true, or some sort of âsuccessâ label, epistemologically, that weâre going
to give to them. Okay, so let me ask you a question about that.
This is a place where I got augured in very badly with Sam Harris when we were discussing
metaphysical presumptions. So you knowâand Iâm confused about this I would say to some
degree conceptually because Iâm a scientist and certainly operate most of the time under
the presupposition of an âindependent objective worldââbut then I also have some difficulty
with the idea that itâs objective truth within which all other truths are ânested.â
And thatâs something that Sam and the people that he represents in some sense are very
dead set on insisting. Now it seems to me though that the crux of
the matter is something like âthe method of proof.â And this strikes me as very important
because, âMy theory is correct enough if, when I implement it, I get what I wantâ
is not the same as the claim âMy theory is true because itâs in accordance with
some independently existing objective world.â I mean, both of those things could exist at
the same time, but I think the more appropriate claim to make with regards to human knowledge
is something like its âbiological functionality,â which is that your knowledge is of sufficient
accuracy (which is about the best you can hope for because of your fundamental ignorance)
if, when you implement it, it reliably produces the results that are commensurate, say, with
your continued existence. Now it seems to me that thatâs a reasonable
claim from a Darwinian perspective [Charles Darwin, 1809-1882] and it also seems to me
that itâs very much in keeping with the claims of the American Pragmatists. And I
mean, itâs not like they were radical postmodernists ... Right... ...because they werenât. But they were trying
to solve this problem to some degree of our fundamental ignorance and our inability to
be certain about the nature of the reality that surrounds us. Yes, okay. Letâs set aside Sam Harrisâs
version of this and focus on the Pragmatist tradition here. So, no, youâre absolutely
right. The Pragmatists, William James [1842-1910],
John Dewey [1859-1952], and the others, late 1800s, early 1900s; they are coming a century
after the Kantian revolution [Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804], after Hegelianism [G. W. F. Hegel,
1770-1831], and so forthâand so they are very much trying to solve this problem. One
wayâand this is kind of a very American wayâis like: Look, maybe the problem with
philosophy is that we have been too intellectualizing of cognition, that weâre not just disembodied
brains or disembodied minds that are trying to contemplate abstract truths in some other
realm. Maybe what we need to do is understand the mind and cognition as a naturalistic process
and that the purpose of knowledge is not to come up with these pure and beautiful Truths
that are going to be kind of museum pieces that we will admire, but rather the purpose
of knowledge is functional. The purpose of knowledge is to guide action. And so they
will then hearken back to the earlier Baconian tradition that knowledge is not an end in
itself. As Bacon put it, Francis Bacon [1561-1626]: Knowledge is power, and by its fruits, so
to speak, is how you know its worth. Right. And so what we then should do is to see that
the test of truth is not whether it meets purely intellectual standards of logic and
mathematics, but rather, when we put it into practice, when we act upon it, we actually
get good results, or we want the results we want, or I get the results I want. And it
can come in more individualistic form or more socialized form. Right, because then we can get on with things,
too. Like, despite our ignorance, in some sense. So there are two things which are being packaged
here, right? One is to say that knowledge is functional. And that part I think is important
and I think itâs a very nice correction by the Pragmatists. Itâs not original with
them but they are reemphasizing it in the 19th century. Knowledge needs to be put to
the test and its ability to enable us to be pragmatic in the real world, is its test. [28:59] Thereâs a coda to that as well.
And I think this is relevant to Thomas Kuhnâs [1922-1996] discussion of scientific revolutions,
because Kuhn is often read as positing a sequence of, in some sense, discontinuous revolutions,
and that the conceptual structure that characterized one âepoch,â letâs sayâlike the Medieval
epochâwas so totally different in its presuppositions from the conceptions that characterized the
next epoch ⌠that you can't even mediate between them in some sense. Now the reason Iâm bringing this up is because
Kuhn is at least read as hypothesizing that thereâs not any necessary âprogressâ
when you make leaps from one conceptual system to another. But if you take this pragmatic
approachâthe one that we've been outliningâit seems to me that you can say, Well, itâs
something like this: Your conceptions of the world are more tool-like than objective-truth-like,
and tools can have a greater or lesser range of convenience. And so if you come up with
a really good toolâwhich would also be something that would look objectively true, generally
speakingâthen thatâs something that you can use in almost every situation and it will
never fail you. And I would think of something like Newtonian physics in that regard, or
even more particularly, quantum mechanics, because itâs never failed us. And so it seems to me the Pragmatic approach
in some sense allows you to have your cake and eat it too. You can posit a hierarchy
of truths, moving towards absolute truth even, but also retain your belief in your own ignorance
and not have to beat the drum too hard about the âeternal accuracyâ of your objective
presuppositions. Okay. Again Iâm sympathetic I think with
about 80 percent of that. But let me put my skeptical hat back on and say how the postmodernists
or the critics of Pragmatismâcritics really of first-generation Pragmatismâwill respond
to that. So if we then say: All of these cognitive results ⌠Iâm going to rephrase that. Okay. So if weâre going to assess all of our cognitive
results or cognitive hypotheses in terms of their workability, or their âgetting what
I wantâ or âwhat we want,â well then the big question we have to turn to is to
say, How do we judge whether something works? Yes. Or how do I say that, âItâs good because
I get what I wantâ or âWe get what we want.â Well, what is a âwantâ? And where
did these âwantsâ come from? And why should we accept âwantsâ and âdesiresâ and
âachieving certain goalsâ as our bottom line, so to speak? Right, okay. Thatâs right. So you can start
to question the framework, the validity of the framework within which youâre constructing
the answer. Thatâs right. And at this point weâre
reading epistemology [epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its
methods, validity and scope: the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from
opinion] âneutrallyâ so to speak; and moving into normative issues, then the whole
status of normative goalsâends and the means that are going to enable us to reach those
endsâcomes into play. So if I want to say, âThe most important
thing is that IââIâll put it very baldly hereââI get what I want,â right? And
Iâm going to assess intellectual structures and beliefs and hypotheses in terms of, âDo
they give me what I want?â Well, that sounds already sounds like a fairly normatively subjectivistic
standpoint. Like, why should you take your âwantsâ as having some sort of high status
that everything has to be evaluated in terms of? Uh huh. And then philosophically we say: Where do
âwantsâ come from? And of course thereâs a long anthropological and psychological set
of literature here. Whatâs the source of our âwantsâ? Are they based in biological
drives? Are they instinctual? Are they acquired? Are they intellectual? Do they have any relationship
to our rational capacities? When I'm acting, should I act on my desires and my wants, and
so forth? So thereâs that whole tradition, and we
have to have a sophisticated theory about how all of that is going to work if weâre
going to say weâll solve all of these cognitive epistemological issues in terms of âwantsâ
or the satisfaction of âdesiresâ or the âachievement of goalsâ the way pragmatists
want us to do. And again, itâs fairly easy to imagine what
the skeptical argument is likely going to be. If itâs a matter of what I wantâwell,
isnât science supposed to be about coming up with general truths or maybe even universal
truths? Okay ⌠And if itâs immediately going to devolve
into whatever individuals want, well then weâre going to go in fairly scattered directions. Okay, so that also opens up a good point for
a segue into the potential link between Neo-Marxism, letâs say, and Postmodernism. Sure. Because maybe you could say: Once you've opened
the door to an admission that you can criticize the idea of âwantâ as a social construct,
letâs sayâwhich is one of the things that you intimated (not the only thing, obviously)âthen
you open the door to also making the claim that that social construct that governs the
âwants,â that governs the âtruth,â can be governed by âpower relationships,â
something like that, and then by âunfair power relationships.â Exactly. So you can spin off down that aisle. And thatâs the other thing I really want
to talk to you about, because on the one hand the postmodernists are following this intellectual
tradition of the critique of Western thinking, which is exactly in some sense what philosophy
should be doing. But in another way, they seem simultaneously to be introducing, almost
by sleight of hand, a kind of social critique that has its origin more in political revolution
and class-based theory, and they do that under the guise of pure philosophy, in some sense,
but with the intent and motivation of something like justifying the social revolution, or
continuing the Marxist analysis of power differential. It can go both ways, yes. Right? It is possible
to follow the road that weâve just been going down, to say, Well, you know, if itâs
a matter about âwhat works for you,â then that immediately starts to sound too relativistic
and subjectivistic and we donât have an answer to all the weirdos who want to do strange
thingsâbecause thatâs what they want to doâso we might introduce as a corrective
a socializing of the process. Right. So we might then say, No, itâs not so much
what you want as an individual, but rather what we want, and we have to achieve some
sort of a consensus here. So thatâs a slightly cartoon version, but
the difference between William James, who was more individualistic, and John Dewey in
the next generation who collectivized things a bit more. So then we have a corrective on
all of the individual weirdosâwho knows what their desires and goals are going to
be? Right. But anyway, of course we just confront the
same problem there, as soon as we start doing anthropology, because then if we say: Well,
if we relativize it to the social group, when we start looking at different social groups,
obviously different social groups have dramatically different wants and needs and desires, and
theyâve evolved very different traditions. And if itâs a matter of saying âWhatâs
true is what works for the group,â there is then no Ăźber group or highest group of
all groups that has status over all of the others. And if you doâand this is the second point
that you said exactly rightâthen youâre saying, Well, no, no, this groupâs norms
and its goals are better than that groupâs goals or norms ⌠Right. ⌠and so then youâre into what the critics
are going to call âimperialismâ of the inappropriate form ⌠Right, and so that leaves us with our current
political situation in some sense, because that idea has been taken to ⌠thatâs a
logical conclusion, and that logical conclusion has now been instantiated to a large degree
as an intellectual and political activist movement, I would say. Right, sure, absolutely. So it can start as
an intellectual movement and what weâre trying to do is some hard-core epistemology
[epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope:
the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion] and we go the Empiricists
and the Rationalists and the Kantian revolution and the Pragmatists, right? And now weâre
in the second-generation Pragmatism where we relativize into various cognitive groups
and then weâre just stuck in a kind of group relativism, and in the operational principles
socially then is going to be that each group so to speak should stick to itself and not
think that it can impose its ideas and its norms on any other group, right? All groups,
so to speak, are equal. Yeah, well, at least they have an equal claim
to their formulation of the truth. The problem with the postmodern conjunction with Neo-Marxism
to me seems to be the acceptance of the idea that thereâs an intrinsic moral claim by
the âdispossessedâ to the obtaining of status, and that actually constitutes a higher
moral calling in and of itself! So theyâre swallowing a moral claim in making it âuniversalâ
in some sense at the same time they criticize the idea of, say, âgeneral narrativesâ
or âuniversal moral claims.â Okay, now thatâs also right. Thatâs the
other way to say that. Rather than starting with epistemology and getting to a kind of
cultural relativism, you can start, of course, committed to a certain normative [normative:
implying, creating, or prescribing a norm or standard] framework or a certain ideological
framework (as Marxism is) where youâre very critical of one of those traditions, and then
the cultural relativism can be a part of that, that you use, to criticize the tradition âinternallyâ
so to speak. Now then weâre explicitly intoânot kind of âmeta-ethicsâ and asking where
do we get our ethical principles off the groundâbut where do they come from in the first place,
but kind of a robust ânormativeâ ethics where people have commitments to fairly strong
ethical principles and ethical ideals. This is where the debate between, say, Nietzsche
and Marx becomes relevant. This is a late 19th century debate. So suppose we say, as
both the Marxists do and the Nietzscheans do, letâs say: There is no âTruthâ in
any objective sense. All we have is subjectivity and relativity of various sorts, and we have
different individuals and different groups, and they are in antagonistic conflict relations
with each other, and that means thereâs not really going to be any rational and civil
resolution [40:04] of these discussions with each other; instead, it all comes down to
power. Yeah, and thatâs the strange sleight of
hand claim there too, because why it has to come down to power? Again that seems to introduce
the idea of ânecessary needâ âŚ. Okay, okay, yes, all right. Thatâs another
thing. Letâs set that aside just for a moment. Yep, okay. So then we say: Okay, so we have power. And
one thing that we can say is: While we donât think any one individual, or any one group,
has a better objective claim to truth or better ideals, it is nonetheless the case that some
individuals and groups have more power than others, and so then we have to make our allegiance
clear in this unequal power struggle: Are we on the side of those who have more power
or are we on the side of those who have less power? And thatâs where when we get then a Nietzschean
and a Marxian âfork in the road.â So the Nietzscheans, following Nietzsche, will say:
Look, itâs all about power. We can try on some crude evolutionary thinking here: Itâs
only by the exercise of power by the stronger, the fitter, the healthier, and so forth, who
are willing to impose their power on the weaker and use them for their own ends, that we as
individuals and groups are going to make any sort of progress toward the next best thing,
whatever that is. So in the power struggle there is no objective morality, no objective
truth. We just throw our lot in with the stronger, with the richer, with the more powerful, and
say: Whatever it is that they do to advance themselves, thatâs the normative best that
we can do. And of course thereâs a long kind of aristocratic tradition in normative
thinking that one can draw on to support that. And then the Marxists of course are just on
the other side of that equation, where their sympathies initially are going to be to say,
in any power struggle: âOur a priori commitments should always be to the weaker, to those on
the losing end of history, those who suffer,â and so forth, and itâs always the bad, rich
and powerful people who are oppressing and harming them. And so we throw our lot in with
the weaker and weâre willing to use power, whatever amount of power we have, on behalf
of the weaker. Right. And then weâre just into what I think of
as the major false alternative that really has driven much of 20th century intellectual
life: Are you a Nietzschean or are you a Marxist? Right, right. Well okay. So now we can get
to the crux of the matter here to some degree, because to even engage in that argument means
to accept the a priori position, which youâve made quite rationally compelling, letâs
say, that âItâs power. Itâs power. Because thereâs no other way of differentiating
between the claims of different groups, itâs power thatâs the determining issue.â Yes. But thatâs something that I really have
a problem with. And I think itâs of crucial importance. Because first of all I think thereâs
a big difference between power and authority and competence. Those are all not the same
thing, because you might be willing to cede greater status to me in some domains if there
are things I can do, that you value, that you canât do. And thatâs not power exactly.
Power seems to be more that Iâm willing to use force to impose my interpretation of
the world to get my wants fulfilled on you, and it seems to me that where the Marxists
make a huge mistakeânot that the Nietzscheans arenât making mistakes as wellâbut where
the Marxists make a huge mistake is that they fail to properly differentiate between hierarchies
of interpretation that are predicated on tyrannical power, and hierarchies of interpretation that
are predicated on authority, competence, and mutual consent. The other issue that they fail to contend
withâand I believe this is a form of willful blindnessâis that it isnât obviously the
case that âevery society is set up equally to only fulfil the desires of the people who
are, in principle, situated at the pinnacles of the hierarchies.â I actually donât
think that thatâs fundamentally characteristic of the Western tradition, because it has a
very strong emphasisâweirdly enough, and this is how I think it âextractsâ itself
out of the conundrum which accepting a socialized version of truth presents to you: The West
does two things: (1) It says, We have a social contract that constrains our views of the
world and our actions in it, but (2) that contract is also simultaneously subordinate
to the idea of the sovereignty of each individual. And so the social contract then is bound to
serve the needs of each individualânot any privileged set of individuals, although sometimes
it works out that wayâand I donât believe that the postmodernists have contended with
that properly, with their criticism of âlogocentrismâ for example, which was something that characterized
Derrida. âCause I think that that ⌠âcause I
⌠It doesnât ⌠it never has seemed to me that what you had with Stalinist Russia
and the Marxist view of the world, and what you had on the side of the West, was merely
a matter of a difference of opinion between two equally valid socialized modes of interpreting
the world, you know? Thereâs something wrong about ⌠Thereâs something more to the
view of the West than whatâs embodied in the conflict between, say, capitalism and
socialism. Because it could have just been a matter of argumentation and opinion, but
I think that thatâs faulty. I thought this way in part because of Piaget
[Jean Piaget, 1896-1980], you know, because Piaget was interested in what the intrinsic
constraints were on a social contract, and he said ⌠and he was trying to address this
issue of the insufficiency of want as a tool to justify your claims to truth. Thatâs
when he introduced the idea of the equilibrated state. So, if youâre sophisticated, you
have to put forward your want and then meet it in a way that will meet it today, and tomorrow,
and next month, and next year, and in a decadeâso you have to iterate yourself across time,
and you have to take all of the iterations of yourself across time with some degree of
seriousness, and then you also have to do the same thing as you extend yourself out
into the social community. So it has to be âwhatâs good for me nowâ and repetitively
into the future in a manner thatâs simultaneously good for you now and simultaneously into the
future. Uh huh. And that starts to become ⌠and he thought
about that as âthe playable game,â something like that. The âvoluntarily playable game.â
And thereâs something deep about that, because it includes the idea of iteration, you know,
iterated interpretations into the equation, which strikes me as of crucial importance. Okay, yes, right? Again, I count about six
very interesting sub-topics built into that, and the latter part is a very nice statement
I think of a kind of Enlightenment humanism where weâre going to take power seriously,
but weâre going to constrain power in a way that respects the individual and simultaneously
enables individuals to form mutually beneficial social networks across time, and so on. And Iâm very sympathetic to that overall
construction. And that comes out of then the first part which is a taxonomy [taxonomy:
the science or technique of classification] youâre offering about the nature of powerâand
that taxonomy does differ significantly from both the Marxist and the Nietzschean ones. Now what Iâd say is that I think itâs
better to take power more neutrally so thereâs a continuity with what the physicists do.
And my understanding there is that power is just the ability to get work done. Uh hmm. So you can put that in tool and functionality
language: Power is what gets you from A to B. Right, right. Which is also ⌠I love that
description, because it fits very nicely in with the narrative conceptualization of being,
because narratives seem to be descriptions of something like âHow to get from point
A to point B.â Right. But it also doesnât say anything
about B and the status of B: How we choose where we should be going, what our ends are,
or what our goals areâso in that sense power is normatively neutralâitâs a means to
an end, and that means when we try to evaluate the uses of power, weâre going to be evaluating
power in terms of the ends toward which it is put, if I can end with that preposition
there. So now ⌠Then we say: Okay, well, power
comes in all kinds of forms. Iâm quite happy to say that thereâs intellectual power:
thatâs the ability to use our minds to address and solve certain problems. Thereâs muscular
power: the ability to move physical objects. Thereâs social power: people respect you
and are willing to spend time with you and divert resources to you voluntarily, and so
forth. Thereâs military power; political powerâand so we can have a whole set of
subspecies of power. And what they all have then in common is in each of those domains
there are goals, and having the power enables you to achieve your goals in those domains. Right, and we shouldnât fall prey to the
illusion that thereâs necessarily anyâlike, what would you call itââunifying matrixâ
that makes all those different forms of power importantly similar except for the terminology,
you know? I meanâand this is another thing that bothers me about both the Nietzschean
and the Marxist view, is that thereâs this proclivity to collapse these multiple modes
of power into power itself, and thatâs not reasonable because itâs reasonable to note
that many of the forms of power that you just described contend against one another, rather
than mutually fortify one another. Itâs like the balance of power in a polity like
the American polity. Yes, I think thatâs a deep point that youâre
making, and I think that both the Marxists and the Nietzscheans do end up collapsing
power into a unitary type, and thatâs a mistake. But itâs a mistake only if you
deny, as both the Marxists and the Nietzscheans do, that there is a deep individuality about
the world. So if you think, by contrast, about the kind of individual human-rights-respecting
Enlightenment vision that youâre articulating, and that I agree with as well: normatively
that wants to devolve social power to the individual, and leave individuals with a great
deal of self-responsibility and control over their own domain so to speak. And the idea
then is that if weâre going to form social relationships, or any sort of social interaction,
it has to be mutually respecting: that I have to respect your control over your domain and
you respect my control over my domain, but we agree to share domains, so to speak, voluntarily
to a certain point. It also meansâand this is a place where
I think the postmodernists are really open to, you might say, conceptual assaultâis
that you know, in order to have that freedom devolve upon the individual in that manner,
it also means that the individual has to take responsibility ⌠Right. ⌠for acting as a locus of power in the
world, actual responsibility, and cannot conceive of themselves or act in a manner that only
makes them an avatar of a social movement. And I think that part of the perfervid anti-individualism
of the radical Left is precisely predicated on that refusal to take responsibility, and
I think thatâs also reflected in the fact that, by temperament, theyâre low in âtrait
conscientiousness,â so itâs deep, itâs not merely an opinion; itâs an expression
of something thatâs even deeper than opinion. Okay, yes, that phrase âlocus of responsibility,â
âlocus of power,â âlocus of controlââyouâre right that the far Left in Marxist and Neo-Marxist
form does deny that, but you also find that in the far Right ⌠Yes, you find that among ideologues in general. Right. So this is a bit of cartoon intellectual
history, but then if you try to trace it to the Marxists on the Left and the Nietzscheans
on the Right, both of them do deny that individuals are loci of responsibility. Both of them in
their views of human nature have strongly deterministic views. What we can an âindividual,â
according to both of them, is just a âvehicleâ through which âoutside forces are flowing,â
so to speak. [Determinism: the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately
determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to
imply that human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for
their actions.] Right. Well, you can also see that in some
sense as a perverse consequence of the scientific revolution ⌠Yes. âŚbecause you still see this among modern
scientists: Itâs like, âOkay, what are the causal forces that regulate human behavior?
Okay, thereâs two primary sources: Nature/biology and culture.â So itâs the crude âNature vs. Nurtureâ
debate being played out through them, yes. Right! And so in my opinionâand Iâve derived
this conclusion from studying mythology, mostlyâthereâs a missing third element there which is whatever
it is that constitutes the active force of individual consciousness. And we donât have
a good conceptual schema for that. Right, self-responsibility and being an independent
initiator of power instead of merely a responder to other power forces, or a vehicle through
which those other power forces operate. Right. So yes, the individualism that is built into
Enlightenment humanismâyou start to see it developing in Renaissance humanismâis
to take seriously the notion that individuals have some significant measure of control over
their thoughts, over their actions, to shape their own character ⌠Right! ⌠to shape their own destinies, and that
that is fundamental to oneâs moral dignity as a human being. And so that view of human
nature is built into the ethics fundamentally, and then all of social relationships have
to be respectful of that individuality, and then, consequently, when we start to turn
to political theory and we talk about very heavy-duty uses of power, such as the police
and the militaryâwe want to have serious constraints on government power to make sure
that we are respecting individual sovereignty. Okay. And hereâs something perverse, too,
that emerges as a consequence of something you pointed out earlier in the conversation,
you know. You mentioned that when Modernism emerged out of Medievalism, that two things
happened. One was the elaboration of the conceptual frames that enabled us to deal with the external
world. But the other was the elevation of the individual to the status of valid critic,
predicated on the idea that there was something actually valid about individual experience
as such. Now the problem there, as far as I can tellâand
maybe this is part of the reason weâre in this conundrumâis that the elaboration of
the objective scientific viewpoint left us with the idea that it was either ânatureâ
or ânurtureâ that was the source of human motive power. But the missing element there is: Well, if
thatâs the case, then why grant to the individual to begin with the role of independent social
critic? Exactly. Like, on what grounds do you ⌠Itâs like
a residual belief in something like the autonomy of the soul, which you canât just sneak
in and not justify, without problems! Like the ones that we have now! Yes. Now thatâs well put. And I think itâs
fair to say that we still are in the infancy of the psychological sciencesâyou can speak
to this better than I canâbut as someone in philosophy, I think weâre still at the
beginnings. And we are still in the grip of early and crude versions of scientific understandings
of how cause and effect operates. So what we are starting with is very mechanical understandings,
and we can understand how people then are pushed around by biological forces. We can
understand to some extent how theyâre pushed around by external physical and mechanical
forces. But we do not yet have a sophisticated enough understanding of the human brain, the
human mind, human psychology, to understand how a volitional consciousness can be a causal
force, a causal power in the world. Right. Thatâs perfectly well put. So, I
do a detailed analysis that some of the people who watch me are familiar with, of this movie
âPinocchio,â and Pinocchio has got a very classical mythological structure, and it basically
introduces three elements of being: so thereâs (1) the element of being thatâs associated
with Geppetto; and also (2) the evil tyrannical forces that are kind of patriarchal in nature,
and thatâs sort of the âconceptualization of societyââa benevolent element and a
malevolent element, say. And then thereâs (3) the introduction of this other causal
factor and itâs personified in the form of the Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy is a manifestation
of Mother Nature, and she animates Pinocchio. So Geppetto creates him, and then sets up
a wish for his independence, and then Nature appears in the guise of the Blue Fairy and
grants that wish. So you have âcultureâ and ânatureâ conspiring to produce a puppet
that could in fact disentangle itself from its strings. But the movie insistsâand it
does this on profound mythological groundsâthat the puppet itself has a causal role to play
in its own ⌠what would you call it ⌠in its own capacity to transcend the deterministic
chains, the deterministic processes which have given rise to it, that also enslave it. Um hmm. You know in all of our profound narratives,
I would sayâand this is part of the way that they differ from the scientific accountâthereâs
always that third element. Thereâs always the autonomous individual who is, in some
sense, you know, lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. Yes⌠And I donât think itâs a problem that
science is unable to account for, but itâs a very big problem when scientists who are
unable to account for that deny that it exists, because they canât explain it. That becomes
extraordinarily dangerous. Right. Yes. Once you stop looking, you stop
trying, right? Then youâre left with an impoverished account. So in a way, thereâs
a kind of hubris built into the skepticism that says, âI know that this is a problem
that we just canât solve, so Iâm not going to try anymore.â Yeah, well thereâs a performative contradiction
as well, which is much worth pointing outâbecause on the one hand, the scientist might well
claim, âAs far as Iâm concerned, from an epistemological perspective, the only two
causal forces are ânatureâ and âculture.â But then Iâll go about my actions in the
normative world, as an existential being, acting in the world, and I will swallow whole-heartedly
the proposition that âeach individual is responsible for his own actionsââbecause
thatâs how I constantly interact with everyone in the world. And I get very irritated if
they violate that principle.â Yes, right. So how you live with your skepticism
or your relativism in a way that doesnât ensnarl you in tensions and contradictionsâthatâs
a hard project itself. Well, it does seem to me, I think itâs reasonable
to point out that itâs not possible to find a person who acts as if he or anyone else
is âbiologically or culturally determined.â We just donât behave that way in the real
world. We act as if weâre responsible for our own actions, and the consequences of those
actions. Right. So then we have a tension between what
our âintellectual theoriesâ are telling us, and what our kind of âempirical dataâ
is telling usâwe donât have a way to put those two together, and then what you as an
individual do in response to that tension between theory and practiceâthatâs a whole
other can of things to explore. Right. But to back up to our discussion about powerâ
Itâs interesting that the way our discussion, up to that point, then integrates three things:
(1) We started talking about truth, and then (2) we started talking about goals and normative
ends and ideals, and then (3) we talk about power. So there weâve got already the big three:
Truth, Ideals, and Power. Our discussion about Truth took us into epistemological
issues in philosophy; our discussion about Ideals takes us into ethics and meta-ethics
issues and also into philosophy; and our discussion of Power takes us into issues about human
nature, all of which traditionally comprise a branch of philosophy and its sub-disciplines. So we already have to have a theory of epistemology
[epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope:
the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion]; a theory of human nature;
a theory of ethicsâand we can sometimes try to integrate thoseâand postmodernism
is going to be an integration of certain views that develop in philosophical traditions in
all three of those areas. So maybe one way to put it is this: If you
contrast it to kind of aâagain, taking the Enlightenment as our touchstoneâI think
weâre both fans of the Enlightenmentâwe say: All right, weâre fine with power. Knowledge
is power, and we want to empower the individual. We want to eliminate slavery and empower people.
We want to eliminate old-fashioned sexism and empower women. So power is⌠Yes, we actually want to remove arbitrary
and unnecessary impediments to the expression of proper power. Thatâs right. So there are illegitimate
uses of power that are stopping and disempowering people. So itâs the double-edged sword.
And as long as power is properly directed or properly located, then we are confident
that, by and large, people individually and socially will use their power to put together
useful lives, build successful economies and societies, and so forth. So itâs actually a very optimistic overall
assessment about power. But power is then structured as a means to an end: we want to
empower people cognitivelyâteach them how to read, teach them how to think, so that
they themselves can understand the truth and discover new truths. So âpower leads to
truth.â But we also then want people to be free to
act on the basis of their power, because then we think that if people are respected as individual
agents, theyâre going to be happier and so they will achieve good goals, and they
will mutually work out together fair agreements and dealsâ a kind of âjustice,â right?
Society will get better and better, and so forth. So power is in the service of just social
relations, and power is in the service of truth. Yes, so now thatâs a great âjustification,â
say, for the Enlightenment viewpoint, and it seemsâI donât want to stop you from
pursuing thatâbut it also seems to me that, to the degree that thatâs true (a valid
description of the Enlightenment aims), and to the degree that that has actually manifested
itself in reality in the current state of human affairs, that itâs perhaps unwise
of us to allow our Marxist or our Nietzschean presuppositions to take too careless a swing
at that foundation, given that itâs actually âŚ
Absolutely right, and thatâs why the Enlightenment articulation âPower is good if itâs in
the service of truthââ or âPower is good if itâs in the service of justiceââthen
weâre fine. And weâre optimistic enough about human beings, cognitively and morally,
that we think that âempoweringâ themâ giving them lots of freedomsâ is going to
increase the net stock of truth, and itâs going to increase the net stock of justice.
So that entire âEnlightenment packageâ is precisely what the Counter-Enlightenment
attacks. It attacked very fundamentally so that by the time we get two to three generations
laterâ to the generations of Marx and Nietzscheâ it has been hollowed out.
So on the epistemological side we donât believe that there is such a thing as âtruthâ
anymore. So itâs not the case that âpowerâ is in the search of âtruth,â because we
donât believe that human beings are capable of getting to any sort of objective truth
anymore. So weâre just left with âpower.â And also on the normative side, we donât
believe in âjusticeâ anymore. We donât believe that any sort of normative principles
or ethical ideals can be objectively grounded. And so then, once again, maybe weâre left
with subjective desires and so forth, but weâre just left again with âpower.â So power in the service of Truth; power in
the service of Justice: that goes away. All that we are left with is Power. Okay, so then we could mount a psycho-analytic
critique of that set of objections. Because I could say, Okay, hereâs some reasons.
Letâs assume youâre doing something simple and easy instead of complicated and difficult
with your objections. And so hereâs the simple and easy explanation: You want to dispense with the idea of âjusticeâ
and âtruthâ because that lightens your existential load because now thereâs nothing
difficult and noble that you have to strive for, and you want to reduce everything to
âpowerâ because that justifies your use of power in your pursuit of those immediate
goals that you no longer even have to justify because you donât have to make reference
to any higher standards of, say, âjusticeâ or âtruth.â And so I would say: Thatâs
a deep, impulsive and resentful nihilism thatâs manifesting itself as a glorious intellectual
critique. [Nihilism: a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that
existence is senseless and useless.] Now, I understand as well that there is the
history of genuine intellectual critique that youâve been laying out, which is not trivialâ
but those things have to be differentiated, you know. Itâs certainly not reasonable
either for those who claim that âall there is is power,â that theyâre not themselves
motivated equally by that power. Sure. So in one way, all right, what you can
always say, in effect, is that philosophy is autobiographical. In many cases philosophers
will put their pronouncements in third-person form, or in generalized form, but if you always
put it down to third-person formulations, it can be profoundly self-revelatory. So if you say, for example, âHuman beings
are scumââthere you have some sort of a pessimistic assessment of the human condition.
Well, built into that then is the idea that I, if I âfirst-personalize it,â that âI
am scum.â What youâre really doing is a first-person confession. And itâs always
then an illegitimate move to exempt yourself from the general principle. Right. Or: âEverything just is âpower relationsâ
and âpeople imposing their agendas on other people.â Then what youâre saying is: âWell,
my fundamental commitment is power, and I just want to impose my agenda on other people.â So I do think youâre rightâ that it can
go both ways: It can of course be that you have people who, for whatever reason, have
a predisposition to nihilistic, amoral power seeking, and when they become adults and âintellectual,â
they latch onto theories that indulge them, that enable them to rationalize their predispositions. And so in many cases, yes, a lot of Postmodernism,
in some of its manifestations, is disingenuous in that form. People donât necessarily buy
into the postmodern philosophical framework, but rather, in kind of pragmatic form, Postmodernism
as a set of âtoolsâ is useful for them to advance their own personal and social agendas,
whatever those happen to be. Okay. So letâs switch a little bit. Letâs
switch over into that a little bit. Iâve found our discussion extremely useful on the
philosophical end, but now I would like to make it a bit more personal, if you donât
mind. Youâre written this book Explaining Postmodernism:
Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. And itâs a fairly âpunchy,â
letâs say, critique of Postmodernism and its alliance with Neo-Marxism. And youâve
done a careful job of laying out the historical development of both of those movements and
their alliance. (1) What was your motivation for doing that;
and what have you experienced as a consequence (1) of writing the book, and (2) as a consequence
of being a professor whoâs in the midst of an academic society thatâs basically
running on postmodern principles? [laughs] Yes, thatâs a good trio of questions
there. Well, my motivations for writing the book were: One, as an intellectual exercise:
here was a movement that was complex, many philosophical and cultural strands coming
together, and I enjoy intellectual history very muchâso it was a pleasure for me to
read back into the histories and to tease out all of the lines of developments, and
how things were packaged and repackagedâso that the postmodern synthesis (as it came
together in the second third of the 20th century) came into being. As a purely intellectual
historical enterprise, I found that fulfilling. Partly also this was the 1990s, late 1990s,
itâs end of the Cold War. One of the things I had doneânot professionally, but just
out of personal interestâwas read a lot of political philosophy, read a lot about
the Cold War and the intellectual developmentsâand call it political developmentsâthat had
gone on there. So I had a very good, Iâd say, amateur working knowledge, before I started
researching the book, about the history of Marxism and the history of Cold War geo-politics. And sort of one of the big questions on everyoneâs
mind of course in the late 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the
Cold War is: Whatâs going to happen next? So whatâs the new geo-political alignment
going to be? Then from my academic position, the big question
inside the intellectual word is: Since far-left politics had been so prominent and that for
generations, intellectuals inside the academic world had largely given the benefit of the
doubt to far-leftist experimentsâeven going out of their way to be fellow travelers, and
so forthâthat by the time you get to the end of the Cold War, basically everybody,
except for a few true believers, is rethinking. So what does this mean forânot necessarily
left politics more broadly, but certainly for far-left politics? And so even the far-leftists
of the leftists are recognizing that theyâre going to have to come up with some sort of
a new strategy in order to remain intellectually respectable, and some sort of a new strategy
in order to become culturally and politically feasible. So I did have a kind of a cultural/political
interest in what the thinking was on the far left about what theyâre going to do now
that the Soviet Union has collapsed and the whole world is shifting more toward a market
liberalism or to some sort of âthird wayâ centrism. Yeah, and now that all the corpses have floated
up on the beach, so to speak ⌠Right. Yes! So you have a huge then amount
of empirical data that you have to confront andâŚNow, I think this is going to be part
of the postmodern package, but thereâs a lot of denial of the relevance of empiricism;
thereâs a lot of denial of the relevance of logic and social-scientific statistical
methods of aggregating that data and reaching normative conclusions on the basis of that.
So we can understand the temptation on the part of a lot of people to find psychological
devices that will enable them to deny the Gulag and the various other horrible things.
By the time the 90s ⌠Right. When the facts, as even you [of the
left] would have construed them, are stacking up viciously in contradiction to your theory,
itâs time to mount an all-out assault on what constitutes a âfact.â Okay, thatâs one strategy, and thatâs
again one of the sub-strategies I think that postmoderns will use. So, if you then have
philosophers and social scientists, and people who are up to speed in their epistemology,
who are telling you, Well, you know, there are just different narratives that are out
there, and there are no such things as objective facts, and logic does not necessarily point
us in one direction: there are âpoly-logicsâ or âmultiple frameworksââthen if you
have one âframeworkâ that says, âNo. There are objective facts and the logic is
all going against your version of political idealism,â then itâs going to be very
tempting for you to say, âWell, I can just dismiss that as just one narrative way of
constructing the historical facts: I can come up with a different narrative that softens
or denies altogether âŚâ And certainly some of the bad-faith postmodernists
do go down that road very much. So in part that was my motivation for writing
the book. And in part I did feel that I was in a good
position intellectually to do so because my Ph.D. work had been in logic, philosophy of
science and epistemology, so I was up to speed on the entire history of epistemology from
the modern world on through the way things were in the 80s and the early 1990s. So I
was reading the same people that Rorty had. I have to say I learned an enormous amount
from reading Richard Rorty. Heâs first rate, even though I end up disagreeing fundamentally
with him about everything ⌠Foucaultâs Ph.D. also was in philosophy; he also had
a Ph.D. in psychology. Derridaâanother philosophy Ph.D. Lyotardâanother philosophy Ph.D. So,
not necessarily putting myself on the same stature intellectually, but all of us, so
to speak, are first-rate educated in epistemology. So I know where theyâre coming from and
where all of that is going. At the same time, my undergraduate and masterâs
degree at Guelph (just down the road from you) in history of philosophyâso I had a
long-standing passion for how arguments and movements develop over time, so I thought
I was in a good position to see how postmodernism had evolved out of various other earlier movements
that had developed over timeâand I am enough of a political animal to be interested in
political philosophy. And I believe that abstract philosophical theory, when it gets put into
practice, makes life-and-death practical differences ⌠So the stakes are high. So I was motivated
then to put it all together: How does the history and the philosophy and the politics
all come together in Postmodernism? So I wrote the book. Now, yes. How it has affected me personally
in academic life. Well, let me see. In one way I think I was fortunate that I had tenure
by the time the book was published, and my university is by and large a tolerant place.
We have some issues here, but by and large my colleagues are reasonable, decent people,
and at least I was able to get tenure on the strength of my teaching abilities and my publication.
And so it wasnât that I was going to lose my job over this. But of course there is blowback. I did have
difficulty getting the book published in the first place. Actually I finished writing the
book by the year 2000. I had taken a sabbatical from 1999-2000 and wrote the book then, but
I was not able to get the book published until 2004, and the reason for that was a number
of âdesk rejectionsââyou know, the editor just sends a form letter back. I got a few
of those. But, more seriously, what happened three times, possibly four times, I donât
remember exactly now, was it would get past the editor at the press, and then it would
be sent out to two or three reviewersâand in each case what happened was I would get
split and polarized-split reviews. One would come back and say, âThis is a really good
book; heâs done his homework, itâs a good argument, itâs a fresh argument ⌠I donât
necessarily agree with all of it, but this really ought to be out there as a bookâ;
and then the other review on the other side would be equally savaging: âThis is a terrible
book; he doesnât know his history of philosophy, heâs butchered this that and the other thing,
and I strongly recommend that you donât publish this book.â And then almost always
in that situation, the editor just says, âNo.â So it wasnât until late 2003, early 2004,
that Scholargy Publishing, which was then a small press working out of Arizona, took
the book on, and Iâm happy to say that after it was published, itâs been in print consistently
since then. Yes, thatâs remarkable. Thatâs remarkable. Yes, so Iâm very happy about that ⌠For any book, let alone an academic book. Yes, and then multiple translations, and those
continue, so Iâm happy about that. Now Iâd say the scholarly responses have
been from moderate liberals: so kind of traditional ⌠donât necessarily want to use the word
âtraditional,â but from rational, naturalistic, liberal thinkers, conservatives and libertarians:
the reviews have all been strong, and strongly positive. But I have not received any formal reviews
from any of the postmodern or far-left journals, so Iâm not sure what that means, but there
is, at least at some level, an unwillingness to engage ... Well, it might be a sign of respect. Well there is one sign of respect that comes
out, and that is that every⌠Iâd say once a year or so ⌠probably a dozen times since
the book has been published, Iâve been asked by the editor of a postmodern or close fellow-traveler,
critical-theory-type of journal, to be a second reviewer on one of their articles. So Iâm
âin their Rolodex,â so to speakâto use the old-fashioned labelâwhen they are actually
looking for someone who is likely to give an objective but critical perspective on some
article thatâs been submitted to the journalâonce in a while my name floats up and theyâll
send it out to me, so Iâll just do the standard thing of reading it and giving my professional
opinion of it. So I think they are aware of me, but there
hasnât really been any direct intellectual engagement, which is kind of sad. Right. Yes. So now when you set yourself up
to write the book, were you thinking of writing a critique of postmodernism, or were you thinking
of conducting an exploration of postmodernism? Well, right now Iâm working on the critique.
The first book endsâI donât want to say abruptlyâbut it does end with the door open
to saying: How then do we respond to this dead end of Counter-Enlightenment thought
in postmodernism? So weâre at a point culturally where the meaning of postmodernism has now
infected the academy and you see problems there, but itâs also left the academy, and
so thoughtful people outside the academy are seeing the results. And so the big question
is: What do we do next? So I am actively working on the sequel to
Explaining Postmodernism now. And I did go back and forth in the writing of it. My first
purpose was to write a straight diagnosis and intellectual history of postmodernism,
and thatâs where I ended up leaving it, because in one sense this was a bit artificial,
but I really like 200-page books. Itâs long enough for you to get into a subject deeply
enough and to make a good, pointed, integrated argument and then stop. And so I realized if I wrote the sequel then,
it would be a 400-page book, and I thought it was more important to get this self-contained
intellectual history of postmodernism out there. So I brought things to I think a logical
conclusion where I ended the book, and now Iâm working on the next. Whatâs the next one called? The working title ⌠it changes every few
months or soâsometimes I think about, The Fate of the Enlightenment or something to
do with Neo-Enlightenment orâit wonât be thisâbut Post-Postmodernism or After
Postmodernismâsomething like that. Okay. Weâve been struggling with terminology
as well with the people Iâm been talking with about such things. Itâs a very hard thing to do, because as
weâve seen philosophically, Postmodernism is multi-dimensional: itâs a metaphysical
critique, itâs a normative critique, itâs a political critique, itâs an epistemological
set of views. And so the alternative then also has to be integrated philosophically.
There has to be an entire philosophical packageâso what label is going to capture all of that
and at the same time make a connection to postmodernismâand also, Iâm basically
an optimistic positive guy, so I want something that has a positive ⌠Yes, illuminates the pathway forward. Yes, thatâs right, yes. Making the world
a better place Right. Exactly, exactly. So lookâI think
an hour-and-a-half interview is approximately the equivalent of a 200-page book. So weâre done. Why donât we end with that, and what I would
like to propose is that we have another discussion in a couple of months about what youâre
thinking about with regards to what youâre writing now. So, like, weâve covered the intellectual
territory; weâve covered the historical territory; and done a reasonably good job
I think of both âjustifyingâ postmodernism in this discussion, and also pointing out
its pitfalls and dangers. Sure, yes. We havenât outlined much for an alternative
vision except making tangential reference to the potency of individual capacity, but
that would seem to be reasonable grounds for the next discussion. So ⌠What else would be worth, next time we chat,
talking about are the current culture war issues. You know, one of the things Iâm
very interested in is younger people in particular who are in the front lines in universities,
so to speak, and theyâre surrounded and bewildered and angry, and in some cases, intimidated
by all of this âmicro-aggressionsâ and so forth, and in some cases the indoctrination
theyâre getting ⌠But Iâm actually kind of glad that we didnât
talk about the more political end of it today, because it enabled us to have a conversation
that was almost entirely philosophical in nature, and I really think thatâs the right
level of analysis, because the battle thatâs occurring in our culture is actually occurring
at a philosophical level. I mean, thereâs other levels as well, but thatâs even more
important than the political level as far as Iâm concerned. Well said. I agree one-hundred percent. Nicely
put. All right. Well, it was a pleasure speaking
with youâit was very much worthwhile. For me too, thanks much. You have a remarkable capacity for tracking
the content of conversations and keeping them on point, so thatâs quite amazing to see,
because we did branch out in a lot of different directions, more or less simultaneously, and
it was quite helpful in keeping the conversation on track that you could so rapidly organize
the ⌠You know, it was almost like you were putting a paragraph structure in the conversation
as it occurred, so that was something that was really interesting to see. So, anyways, it was a pleasure meeting you,
and thanks very much for talking with me. Iâll obviously put a link ⌠Iâve been
recommending your book like ⌠My pleasure. Much respect for the work youâre
doing. Thanks for having me on your show, and will be happy to talk again. Great. Good. Weâll set that up. All right. Thanks Jordan. Bye. See you. Yep. Bye bye.
This is unbelievably brilliant.