Description: “Andy Schmitt and Stephen Hicks on the evolution of Western philosophy, especially the transition from modern to postmodern thought. They begin with fifteenth-century globalization unleashed by Columbus, Gutenberg’s press, and Martin Luther’s insistence on individual Scripture reading, through the emergence of scientific reasoning and the radical individualism of the Quakers.
“They examine how postmodern thinkers—Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Lyotard—dismantled both religious and scientific claims to objective truth, ushering in an age of skepticism, expressive subjectivism, and cultural fragmentation.
“Hicks argues that this upheaval has resulted in a three-way debate—between modernist, postmodern, and revived pre-modern perspectives—and contends that renewed engagement with philosophy can help us overcome today’s ‘culture wars’.”
Related: Professor Hicks’s MODERN PHILOSOPHY course.
