I was interviewed by philosopher Michael Robillard, Ph.D.. We covered six questions:
1.) Can you tell us a bit about who you are, as well as your academic background? Did you always want to be or envision yourself as a public intellectual?
2.) In your influential work, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, you offer a unique account of what you refer to as ‘”Machiavellian postmodernism.” I find this to be the most cogent explanation of postmodernism. What do you mean by Machiavellian postmodernism?
3.) As an analytic philosopher, I was always told that the postmodernists were soundly defeated by the Sokal Hoax and that these nonsensical and pernicious ideas had been banished to the margins of lit crit and sociology departments, never to be taken seriously. I fear that the analytics were wrong in celebrating too early, and that the present ‘woke’ take over of academia (and society at large) has shown itself to be a great win for the postmodernists. Have the postmodernists won? Is Gramsci’s long march through the institutions complete?
4.) Folks like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, etc,, have been championing free speech, reasoned debate, and classical liberalism as antidotes to pernicious, far Left Wokeism. That said, how do you persuade someone in a debate or mutually reciprocal discussion when they have already been convinced that dialogue, truth, logic, evidence, validity, argumentation, polite civil discourse, etc., are just expressions of power and systems of oppressions?
5.) What does the present woke/intersectional moment mean for free speech and western liberalism in general in the coming future?
6.) Recently Catholic ‘post-liberal’ thinker, Patrick Deneen, at Notre Dame, along with other ‘integralist’ types (Vermeule, Pappen, Amari) have argue that the foundations of classical liberalism themselves have logically taken us to Woke far-left intolerance. Do you agree? What’s the classical liberal response to such a view?
Here’s the link to the discussion: https://player.fm/series/the-patriot-philosopher/episode-7-beyond-woke-academia-with-dr-stephen-hicks.