The audiobook edition of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault at YouTube, now with timestamps for easy navigation.
This audiobook edition of Explaining Postmodernism is read by the author. To listen to a specific chapter of the audiobook, visit its YouTube site. To download MP3s of the audiobook or for more information, visit Dr. Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism page To purchase the book on Amazon.
Timestamps: 00:00:00 EXPLAINING POSTMODERNISM 00:00:25
CHAPTER ONE: What Postmodernism Is 00:02:22 The postmodern vanguard: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Rorty 00:09:22 Modern and postmodern 00:12:22 Modernism and the Enlightenment 00:22:50 Postmodernism versus the Enlightenment 00:25:06 Postmodern academic themes 00:29:51 Postmodern cultural themes 00:33:17 Why postmodernism?
CHAPTER TWO: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason 00:38:12 Enlightenment reason, liberalism, and science 00:40:20 The beginnings of the Counter-Enlightenment 00:47:05 Kant’s skeptical conclusion 00:50:57 Kant’s problematic from empiricism and rationalism 00:57:36 Kant’s essential argument 01:05:27 Identifying Kant’s key assumptions 01:10:55 Why Kant is the turning point 01:17:37 After Kant: reality or reason but not both 01:22:22 Metaphysical solutions to Kant: from Hegel to Nietzsche 01:27:50 Dialectic and saving religion 01:35:55 Hegel’s contribution to postmodernism 01:37:28 Epistemological solutions to Kant: irrationalism from Kierkegaard to Nietzsche 01:48:50 Summary of irrationalist themes
CHAPTER THREE: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason 01:50:09 Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition 01:55:56 Setting aside reason and logic 01:59:44 Emotions as revelatory 02:05:17 Heidegger and postmodernism 02:09:21 Positivism and Analytic philosophy: from Europe to America 02:15:15 From Positivism to Analysis 02:18:55 Recasting philosophy’s function 02:22:06 Perception, concepts, and logic 02:29:37 From the collapse of Logical Positivism to Kuhn and Rorty 02:31:27 Summary: A vacuum for postmodernism to fill 02:34:35 First thesis: Postmodernism as the end result of Kantian epistemology
CHAPTER FOUR: The Climate of Collectivism 02:40:50 From postmodern epistemology to postmodern politics 02:44:56 The argument of the next three chapters 02:50:21 Responding to socialism’s crisis of theory and evidence 02:55:26 Back to Rousseau 02:57:27 Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment 03:05:45 Rousseau’s collectivism and statism 03:14:58 Rousseau and the French Revolution 03:22:53 Counter-Enlightenment Politics: Right and Left collectivism 03:27:13 Kant on collectivism and war 03:34:45 Herder on multicultural relativism 03:41:15 Fichte on education as socialization 03:55:50 Hegel on worshipping the state 04:04:25 From Hegel to the twentieth century 04:07:16 Right versus Left collectivism in the twentieth century 04:17:12 The Rise of National Socialism: Who are the real socialists?
CHAPTER FIVE: The Crisis of Socialism 04:23:25 Marx and waiting for Godot 04:25:33 Three failed predictions 04:28:51 Socialism needs an aristocracy: Lenin, Mao, and the lesson of the German Social Democrats 04:35:23 Good news for socialism: depression and war 04:38:16 Bad news: liberal capitalism rebounds 04:41:11 Worse news: Khrushchev’s revelations and Hungary 04:49:42 Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s ethical standard 04:51:47 From need to equality 04:56:12 From ‘Wealth is good’ to ‘Wealth is bad’ 05:03:22 Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s epistemology 05:09:30 Marcuse and the Frankfurt School: Marx plus Freud, or oppression plus repression
CHAPTER SIX: Postmodern Strategy 05:20:53 Connecting epistemology to politics 05:22:43 Masks and rhetoric in language 05:30:16 When theory clashes with fact 05:32:15 Kierkegaardian postmodernism 05:38:13 Reversing Thrasymachus 05:40:51 Using contradictory discourses as a political strategy 05:44:50 Machiavellian postmodernism 05:46:18 Machiavellian rhetorical discourses 05:48:15 Deconstruction as an educational strategy 05:54:41 Ressentiment postmodernism 05:57:56 Nietzschean ressentiment 06:02:11 Foucault and Derrida on the end of man 06:09:25 Ressentiment strategy 06:13:50 Post-postmodernism
Great book and great audiobook!!
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