Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
Scholargy Publishing, 2004.
The following scholarly reviews have been published:
Professor Gary Jason in Liberty
Professor Curtis Hancock in The Review of Metaphysics (and can be read online here)
Professor Marcus Verhaegh in The Independent Review
Dr. David Gordon in The Mises Review
Professor Max Hocutt in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
Professor Steven M. Sanders in Reason Papers.
[Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004, 2011). The full book is available in hardcover or e-book at Amazon.com. See also the Explaining Postmodernism page.]
You are the best. Thank God for people like yourself and the most excellent Dr Jordan Peterson who live a vocation that values truth and loving service to others so highly and generously. Thank you.
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I appreciate your comment, Paul. Thanks.
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Your book is absolutely essential. How come you made the choice to make it free and even produce your own audio book?
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Thanks for that, Dani. My primary goal is to get readers and listeners for that material.
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I would really love to purchase a physical copy. Do you know if this will ever be published again?
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Thanks for your interest, Derek. A new printing will be out early August and available at Amazon at the normal price. Now it is only available on Kindle or Audiobook at YouTube. If you email my publisher (ockhamsrazormedia@gmail), I’m sure they’ll be happy to send you print copies once the new printing arrives. Best, Stephen
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Maybe im am little bit to fast here because i have not read the book to the end yet, but i believe i have a theory for why the leftists are postmodernists instead of Marxists nowadays. My answer is because of the black socialist George Sorel who invented national socialism and was influencing Mussolis black socialist ideas when he created Fascism. Many bad ideas that the regressive left have now are very close to Sorels one hundre years old ideas. The power of myth, violence as a political tool, idealism, anti- science, anti- democratic, anti- elitistic, anti- capitalistic and identity politics. The ony idea that they normally dont like is his nationalism. Antisemitism is at least in Europe very common among them so there are they in line with Sorel too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Sorel
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Dear Stephen,
I Have just finished your excellent book. Thank you very much for writing ‘explaining post modernism’
You pose a question at the end of the book and I maybe I can contribute to the answer. I would like to send you a short letter with some thoughts and a reference book. I judge your work as very important and would therefore like to engage with the question you implied at the end of the book (‘completing the articulation and defence of those premises is therefore essential to maintaining the forward progress of the enlightenment vision and shielding it against postmodern strategies’). I will amongst other things be referring to the work of Sangharakshita and Nagarguna
Can you give me a postal address that I can use to write you and send a book?
Thank you
John
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Thank you, John!
My contact info is here: http://www.stephenhicks.org/biography/
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Do you distinguish between deconstructive post-modernism and conservative or constructive post-modernism?
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Yes, there are many variations on pomo’s general themes.
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sir/ i am M.PHIL scholar from Pakistan quetta .i need your book postmodernism.not available in quetta i will be thankful to you for sending the book
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Thank you for your interest, Mr. Khan. A pdf version is here: http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Hicks-EP-Full.pdf
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Thanks for the PDF. Your lecture “Explaining Postmodernism” is an excellent dissection of a complex concept. I find it instructive.
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Thanks, Huzaifa.
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My professor stumbled across this book and urged me to read it for my undergrad thesis, which is also on postmodernism. I appreciate the thorough and honest analysis you’ve done on the subject and am excited to write in light of what I’ve learned from it!
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Thanks, Sydney. Very glad to know it’s been helpful to you.
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Stephen,
I have just finished listening to your lectures on YouTube about Postmodernism (PM). I have learned a great deal, but I am confused about why definitions of PM apply only/primarily to leftists. I see many of the worrisome strains of PM on the right; the anti-science, creationism, the rise of feelings above truth (Trump and the Republican Congress). Aren’t there factions of PM on both sides of the political spectrum?
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Yes. The far left got there first, but now others are adopting the same strategies.
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Did you actually study any of the philosophies by modernist or Post-modernists ever? This book is just full of crap! You complete subversion of Immanuel Kant is laughable. You shouldn’t by an authority on anything but mockery. How anyone can proffer this nonsense as knowledge is beyond me! Oh, and I love hoe you included two radical feminists as member of the Post-modernists movement. I can’t wait for them to bring their lawsuits against you for that slander. You really know how to tell some whoopers.
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Hi CYF: Maybe these nine reviews — six very positive, two overall positive, and one mixed — by philosophy Ph.D.s will give you a sense for how professionals have evaluated the book: http://www.stephenhicks.org/2019/04/30/ph-d-philosophers-review-explaining-postmodernism/.
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Ayn Rand? That’s enough to tell me you are a reactionary fascist idiot. We will be dumping you in a lime pit soon.
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Excellent outburst of bullying ignorance, JRapp.
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You have explained so much. Why Nazi “National” and “Socialist.” How Rousseau and Kant influenced so many. How so much activity is really hatred of capitalism. Why identity politics arose. Why so many movies, books, and songs hate capitalism, Joe six-pack, and the CIA. You made me want to write the “What is still needed” at the very end of the book, but I think you should write it. Every day when I put on clothes and feel warmer, see the sun come up, and walk my dog, I see that Kant and all who follow him are simply wrong. I can trust my senses. I do see the real world. The Enlightenment ideas were and are correct. The scientific method does work and does describe reality. I hope this book spreads far and wide.
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Thank you very much for explaining what is at the core of what Douglas Murray calls “The Madness of Crowds” in his recently published book.
Of course you go into extraordinary depths to uncover the origins and development of both Socialism and its “child” Postmodernism and the link to the past and the present political movements and its explicit opposition and rejection of modernity.
It is now clear to me that we can only defeat Postmodernism with its own weapons and that is language.
As Murray stated in his book that the Social Justice movement is especially hard to oppose because they and their ideological heroes have successfully conquered our language and their rhetorical “toolbox” is far superior than that of the moderates on both the left and right of the political spectrum. I also think that we are only at the beginning of this movement. If we cannot stop it it will morphe slowly but surely in an oppressive authoritarian force which might equal the failed social experiments of the 20. century.
Thank you for fully opening my eyes. Maybe you can write a shorter version for students of our high schools and universities as a counter narrative to the postmodernist radicals.
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Thank you, Bernhard. A useful suggestion.
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A deep, comprehensive and satisfyingly neat set of ideas. While the rationalist in me is inclined to look for flaws in the argument and challenge my bias that leans smugly towards this, I’m nonetheless won over.
Have you considered a synthesis with the work of Jonathan Haidt to examine exactly how individual temperament predisposes people to certain ideas? It’s obvious that bad ideas can find purchase in people who have a high level of intelligence. These people seem able to not only create effective structures to enable their own cognitive dissonance, but also to add new layers of sophistry to the postmodern canon, allowing further metastasis. Haidt’s moral foundation theory (and neophile/neophobe construct) seems to fit in here.
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Thank you for being
a lighthouse for us.
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Thank you for that, Tirtsa.
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