Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

The Crisis of Socialism [EP audiobook]

This is the fifth chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Chapter Five: The Crisis of Socialism [mp3] [YouTube] [74 minutes total]

Marx and waiting for Godot [mp3] [YouTube]
Three failed predictions [mp3] [YouTube]
Socialism needs an aristocracy: Lenin, Mao, and the lesson of the German Social Democrats [mp3] [YouTube]
Good news for socialism: depression and war [mp3] [YouTube]
Bad news: liberal capitalism rebounds [mp3] [YouTube]
Worse news: Khrushchev’s revelations and Hungary [mp3] [YouTube]
Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s ethical standard [mp3] [YouTube]
From need to equality [mp3] [YouTube]
From Wealth is good to Wealth is bad [mp3] [YouTube]
Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s epistemology [mp3] [YouTube]
Marcuse and the Frankfurt School: Marx plus Freud, or oppression plus repression [mp3] [YouTube]
The rise and fall of Left terrorism [mp3] [YouTube]
From the collapse of the New Left to postmodernism [mp3] [YouTube]

Previous:
Chapter One: What Postmodernism Is [mp3] [YouTube] [38 minutes]
Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes]
Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [50 minutes]
Chapter Four: The Climate of Collectivism [mp3] [YouTube] [102 minutes]

Forthcoming:
Chapter Six: Postmodern Strategy [mp3] [YouTube]

Related:
The Explaining Postmodernism page.

The Climate of Collectivism [EP audiobook]

This is the fourth chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Chapter Four: The Climate of Collectivism [mp3] [YouTube] [102 minutes]

From postmodern epistemology to postmodern politics [mp3] [YouTube]
The argument of the next three chapters [mp3] [YouTube]
Responding to socialism’s crisis of theory and evidence [mp3] [YouTube]
Back to Rousseau [mp3] [YouTube]
Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment [mp3] [YouTube]
Rousseau’s collectivism and statism [mp3] [YouTube]
Rousseau and the French Revolution [mp3] [YouTube]
Counter-Enlightenment politics: Right and Left collectivism [mp3] [YouTube]
Kant on collectivism and war [mp3] [YouTube]
Herder on multicultural relativism [mp3] [YouTube]
Fichte on education as socialization [mp3] [YouTube]
Hegel on worshipping the state [mp3] [YouTube]
From Hegel to the twentieth century [mp3] [YouTube]
Right versus Left collectivism in the twentieth century [mp3] [YouTube]
The Rise of National Socialism: Who are the real socialists? [mp3] [YouTube]

Previous:
Chapter One: What Postmodernism Is [mp3] [YouTube] [38 minutes]
Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes]
Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [50 minutes]

Forthcoming:
Chapter Five: The Crisis of Socialism [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Six: Postmodern Strategy [mp3] [YouTube]

Related:
The Explaining Postmodernism page.

The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [EP audiobook]

This is the third chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [50 minutes]

Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition [mp3] [YouTube]
Setting aside reason and logic [mp3] [YouTube]
Emotions as revelatory [mp3] [YouTube]
Heidegger and postmodernism [mp3] [YouTube]
Positivism and Analytic philosophy: from Europe to America [mp3] [YouTube]
From Positivism to Analysis [mp3] [YouTube]
Recasting philosophy’s function [mp3] [YouTube]
Perception, concepts, and logic [mp3] [YouTube]
From the collapse of Logical Positivism to Kuhn and Rorty [mp3] [YouTube]
Summary: A vacuum for postmodernism to fill [mp3] [YouTube]
First thesis: Postmodernism as the end result of Kantian epistemology [mp3] [YouTube]

Previous:
Chapter One: What Postmodernism Is [mp3] [YouTube] [38 minutes]
Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes]

Forthcoming:
Chapter Four: The Climate of Collectivism [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Five: The Crisis of Socialism [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Six: Postmodern Strategy [mp3] [YouTube]

Related:
The Explaining Postmodernism page.

The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [EP audiobook]

This is the second chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes]

Enlightenment reason, liberalism, and science [mp3] [YouTube]
The beginnings of the Counter-Enlightenment [mp3] [YouTube]
Kant’s skeptical conclusion [mp3] [YouTube]
Kant’s problematic from empiricism and rationalism [mp3] [YouTube]
Kant’s essential argument [mp3] [YouTube]
Identifying Kant’s key assumptions [mp3] [YouTube]
Why Kant is the turning point [mp3] [YouTube]
After Kant: reality or reason but not both [mp3] [YouTube]
Metaphysical solutions to Kant: from Hegel to Nietzsche [mp3] [YouTube]
Dialectic and saving religion [mp3] [YouTube]
Hegel’s contribution to postmodernism [mp3] [YouTube]
Epistemological solutions to Kant: irrationalism from Kierkegaard to Nietzsche [mp3] [YouTube]
Summary of irrationalist themes [mp3] [YouTube]

Previous:
Chapter One: What Postmodernism Is [mp3] [YouTube] [38 minutes]

Forthcoming:
Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Four: The Climate of Collectivism [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Five: The Crisis of Socialism [mp3] [YouTube]
Chapter Six: Postmodern Strategy [mp3] [YouTube]

Related:
The Explaining Postmodernism page.

Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”

This week in Contemporary European Philosophy we are reading Martin Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?” In this recent survey (dominated by philosophers from the English-speaking world), Heidegger ranks as the 18th most-identified-with non-living philosopher. “What Is Metaphysics?” was first delivered in 1929 as Heidegger’s inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg.

Here is my summary of Heidegger’s distinctiveness and his contribution to postmodernism. Also two related posts: “Heidegger and National Socialism” (with quotations from Brüggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller’s How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich), and “Heidegger, Anti-humanism, and the Left” (which takes off from Tim Black’s sp!ked review, “Why they’re really scared of Heidegger”). Both posts probe the issue of how strong the connections are between Heidegger’s abstract philosophy and his disturbing social and political views.

Mussolini and Kant on war and the sacrifice of individuals

In his 1932 The Doctrine of Fascism, Benito Mussolini quotes approvingly historian Ernst Renan for his “pre-fascist intuitions”:

“The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature’s plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice the individual.”

In his 1784 “Review of Herder,” Immanuel Kant wrote: “nature allows us to see nothing else than that it abandons individuals to complete destruction and only maintains the type.” (37/53)

And in “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent” (1784), Kant wrote: “It appears that nature is utterly unconcerned that man live well, only that he bring himself to the point where his conduct makes him worthy of life and well-being.” (31/20)

Also this from Kant’s “Speculative Beginning of Human History” (1786): “this path that for the species leads to progress from the worse to the better does not do so for the individual.” (53/115)

So: A connection from 18th-century philosopher Kant to 19th-century historian Renan to 20th-century politician Mussolini. It’s important to note that between Kant and Mussolini stand Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, all of whom developed the sacrifice-individuals-to-improve-the-species theme.

Further, both Kant and Mussolini state approvingly that nature uses war to improve the species.

Here is Kant: “Man wills concord; but nature better knows what is good for the species: she wills discord.” (”Idea …” 32/21)

Kant again: “At the stage of culture at which the human race still stands, war is an indispensable means for bringing it to a still higher stage.” (”Speculative …” 58/121) Note the “indispensable.”

And again: “Thus, thanks be to nature for the incompatibility, for the distasteful, competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess and also to rule. Without them, all of humanity’s excellent natural capacities would have lain eternally dormant.” (”Idea …” 32/21)

Now Mussolini: “Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it.”

Again, between Kant and Mussolini were Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, all of whom urged violence and war as necessary steps towards human progress.

Sources:
The Kant essays are collected in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by Ted Humphrey (Hackett, 1983).
Here is an online version of Mussolini’s The Doctrine of Fascism, which was co-authored with Giovanni Gentile.
For more on the development of German political philosophy from Kant to the early 20th century, see “The Climate of Collectivism” and “The Crisis of Socialism,” which are Chapters 4 and 5 of my Explaining Postmodernism.

22 points from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals

This week in Contemporary European Philosophy we finished our discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1887 Genealogy of Morals, which is an essentialized and more systematic presentation of themes from his 1886 Beyond Good and Evil.

Here is my digest of the main line of argument of Genealogy’s first essay:

1. Evolution and psycho-biology: Humans are an evolved bundle of inbuilt drives that assert themselves.
2. The most basic drive is the will to power.
3. Humans divide into two basic types: those whose drives are strong, and those whose are weak.
4. Humans also divide into those who drives are focused, and those whose drives are diffuse.
5. The strong/focused types exhibit master psychology. The weak/diffuse type exhibit slave psychology.
6. Masters are energetic, adventurous, fearless, delight in self-expression, etc.
7. Slaves are passive, fearful, envious, etc.
8. Moral codes are conscious formulations of one’s needs and interests.
9. So one’s morality is an expression of one’s psycho-biological type.
10. So there are two basic types of morality.
11. Master morality affirms pride, ambition, independence, assertiveness, danger.
12. Slave morality affirms dependence, safety, passivity, humility.
13. Life is essentially conflict and expropriation.
14. Masters are confident in the face of conflict, so the master morality embraces using others for one’s own ends.
15. The slave morality is fearful of conflict and expropriation, so it condemns them.
16. The battle between the master and slave moral codes is of long genealogy.
17. Historically, the master morality dominated first.
18. But the master morality declined and slave morality ascended.
19. Currently the slave morality is winning.
20. The major symptoms of this are the cultural dominance of socialists, democrats, Judeo-Christian priests, egalitarians, and the like.
21. The slave morality’s dominance is a threat to the advancement of man.
22. So master morality or a new form of it must be rejuvenated.

Related:
Journal article: “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” [pdf] and Professor Lester Hunt’s rejoinder [pdf].
Book: Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Blog post: Nietzsche as public choice theorist.

Why I am not a Platonic philosopher

Personal question: Do I have what it takes to be a philosopher-king?

Maybe not, according to Plato. In Republic Book 6, Plato describes the true philosopher’s character. A real philosopher (as opposed to a sham one) —

1. Will love the pursuit of truth [485b],
2. Will be indifferent to the pleasures of the body [485d],
3. Will not be interested in money [485e],
4. Will not think human life is anything of great importance [486a], and
5. Will not be concerned with dying [486b].

After much soul-searching, I confess that I am strong on point 1, but it is all downhill from there.

Part of Plato’s description of the true philosopher is driven by his metaphysics and epistemology. Truth is not to be found in this imperfect material world of “generation and decay,” so the questing philosopher must turn his back on this distracting lower realm and through pure reason seek the higher world of eternal truth and reality.

But part of Plato’s motivation is also political. Plato, as is well known, thinks the best political rulers will be philosopher-kings [473c, 540a]. Such rulers will be invested with great power — but they will have the wisdom and the character to wield it justly. Great power can be corrupting, and major sources of corruption are our desires for pleasure, wealth, and living the good life in the here and now. Consequently, the best character comes from conformity to points 1 through 5 above: such characters are less likely to be corruptible.

One more qualifying character trait should be added to the list. The true philosopher —

6. Will not want political power.

Those who do not want to rule are less likely to abuse power when they have it. Perhaps out of a sense of duty, Plato urges, the philosopher will assume political power over people [519-520], but in any case those qualified must be forced to rule “whether they want to or not” [499b]. The conscripted philosophers will live communally [458c], their sex-and-reproductive lives will be directed by the State [458d-e], and they will not know who their children are [460b-d], thus removing nepotism as motive for political corruption.

So a disquieting thought: I like free people who pursue their own conceptions of the good life, and I have no desire to rule people — but according to point 6 that makes me an attractive candidate for compulsory philosopher-kingship. But I am a happy failure on points 2 to 5 above, so I am pretty sure I’m off the hook and free to pursue my liberal Aristotelian ways.