Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Defining postmodernism

Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both.

Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its formulation and most vigorous activity.

[This chart is from Chapter 1 of 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.]

Postmodern Strategy: Chapter 6 of Explaining Postmodernism

At the Explaining Postmodernism page, Chapter Six of my book is now available online. This final chapter integrates the epistemological material from chapters two and three with the political material from chapters four and five to show how the distinctive contemporary postmodern strategies follow.

Here are the chapter’s sections and page numbers:

Chapter Six: Postmodern Strategy [pdf]

Connecting epistemology to politics 174
Masks and rhetoric in language 175
When theory clashes with fact 178
Kierkegaardian postmodernism 179
Reversing Thrasymachus 182
Using contradictory discourses as a political strategy 184
Machiavellian postmodernism 186
Machiavellian rhetorical discourses 187
Deconstruction as an educational strategy 188
Ressentiment postmodernism 191
Nietzschean ressentiment 193
Foucault and Derrida on the end of man 195
Ressentiment strategy 198
Post-postmodernism 201

[This is an excerpt from 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.]