Stephen Hicks: “Many problems in the academic world have their roots in postmodernism.”
Interview by Hypatia’s Dr. Astrid Elbers and published in Dutch in Doorbraak, April 2026. Un-edited English translation follows:
The American-Canadian philosopher Stephen Hicks is best known as the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, a book in which he uncovers the intellectual roots of postmodernism and links them to the crisis within the radical-left tradition. Hicks is in Flanders these weeks for a series of lectures at the University of Antwerp, organized by the Secular Service and the Humanistisch Verbond. In this conversation, we discuss with him the historical development of modernism, the rise of postmodernism, and its impact on today’s intellectual climate.
To begin with, could you explain what postmodernism is and how it differs from modernism?
Stephen Hicks: Postmodernism rejected the modernism that preceded it. That modernism emerged in the sixteenth century and brought about a profound transformation on several fronts. Major historical events, such as Columbus crossing the ocean, and innovative thinkers like René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and somewhat later John Locke, radically broke with the premodern worldview.
What mainly characterized modernism was a growing focus on nature and a rejection of purely supernatural explanations. Instead of faith and tradition, the emphasis shifted to reason: people were expected to think for themselves and to try to understand the world rationally.
In addition, the individual came to the forefront. People were no longer merely members of a feudal class, but became independently thinking, autonomous individuals. Religion itself became a battleground for this development: the emerging Protestantism emphasized that everyone could read and interpret the Bible for themselves.
This emphasis on nature, reason, and the individual had major consequences. Women increasingly came to be seen as rational individuals with moral responsibility, which led to demands for freedom and equality. Slaves, too, were increasingly recognized as human beings with rights, making slavery morally problematic. Politically, societies evolved away from feudal systems toward more democratic and republican forms, emphasizing individual rights, freedoms, and the idea of fundamental equality.
At the same time, scientific progress led to numerous innovations and ultimately to the Industrial Revolution.
Postmodernists rejected this entire legacy: naturalism, confidence in reason, the individual, and everything that followed from it.
“All truth is relative” is, according to you, a claim that stems from postmodernism. But can one really put it that sharply? The French postmodernist Michel Foucault, for example, did not deny the existence of truth. He argued that every society produces a “regime of truth,” shaped by institutions and power relations.
Postmodernism is, of course, a broad school with many thinkers, among whom there are considerable individual differences. Some thinkers go further than others in this relativism about truth. And Foucault’s views on truth also evolved throughout his works. But according to him, an individual could never know the truth objectively, because that truth is “mediated” by something else. In other words, there is always something in between truth and the individual. An individual views reality through the lens of a pre-existing conceptual framework, a language …
So it does not work in such a way that I see part of the truth from my position, you see another part from yours, and by combining our perspectives we eventually arrive at the full truth?
No, that is indeed not how postmodernism works. It assumes that you can never escape your own perspective.
When we talk about postmodernism, we usually think of philosophers active since the 1950s. Yet you trace its origins back to the Counter-Enlightenment, with Immanuel Kant as a key figure. Why?
I think that is the most controversial part of my book. Some see Kant as the “savior” of reason, others—including myself—believe that he abandons reason. Kant’s Copernican turn consists in the idea that we must give up the possibility of objective knowledge. According to him, there is indeed a reality outside us—the so-called noumenal reality. Alongside that is the phenomenal reality, the reality as it appears to us. And, Kant says, after two thousand years of philosophy, it has become clear that we have no means of building a bridge between the two. Therefore, we must stop speaking about the noumenal reality and acknowledge that the reality as it appears to us is shaped by subjective ideas, filters, and constructions of which we are not aware.
We thus reject objectivity and acknowledge that we are confined within a subjective reality. On that basis, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger later built, and still later the postmodernists. Foucault himself said that he was a Nietzschean.
All these prominent postmodernists—Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty—are radical left. Your hypothesis is therefore that postmodernism is the epistemological strategy of the academic radical-left tradition to deal with the crisis caused by the failures of socialism. Could you explain that?
These postmodern ideas are not necessarily radical-left in themselves. In theory, people across the political spectrum can be relativists about truth. But it is striking that in the 1950s and 1960s, a group of young, brilliant philosophers emerges who are not only academically innovative, but also strongly politically engaged and without exception radical-left.
By that time, however, it had become clear everywhere that socialism had failed. Marx predicted in 1848 that revolution was imminent and that capitalism would soon collapse. A century later, none of that had happened. On the contrary, the Soviet Union, long admired by left-wing intellectuals, had become a human rights catastrophe, with torture, disappearances, and the suppression of students and thinkers. Capitalism had already proven itself to be the superior system in practice.
The rational response would have been for those intellectuals to reconsider their radical-left convictions in light of these facts. But for many, that was extremely difficult. Instead, some turned to postmodern relativism as a strategy to evade criticism.
We also know that this happens in religion: people believe in something, but when that belief comes under pressure, they say it is all a matter of semantics or that there is no fixed truth. They then start, as it were, playing with language.
Postmodernists often clashed sharply with one another. The long-standing controversy between Derrida and Foucault is a good example: for nearly ten years, they debated Foucault’s reading of Descartes in History of Madness. Foucault argued that Descartes “silenced” madness, while Derrida maintained that this was a misinterpretation of the text. Is your interpretation—that they were driven purely by a radical-left position—still valid?
That is an important point. But you can compare it to religion. You have, for example, Christian thinkers. They do not always agree with one another at all. But that does not mean they are not Christian thinkers. The same applies to postmodernists. Also, do not forget that neither Foucault nor Derrida defended Descartes. Their attack on Descartes fit within their broader critique of modern thinkers.
Does postmodernism, in your view, have an impact on academic freedom?
Absolutely. Many problems in the academic world today have their roots in postmodernism.
Academic freedom is crucial for getting closer to the truth. That also means we must protect those “truth-seekers.” They should not be cancelled for expressing unpopular views. But if you no longer even believe that we can arrive at objective knowledge of the truth, then you undermine that entire system.
But can’t postmodern thinkers—especially Foucault with his analysis of power structures—be used to criticize woke ideology and defend academic freedom?
I can understand the temptation. You can indeed use postmodern arguments to undermine certain ideas and authoritarian claims. But that is at most a tactical move. Strategically, it is different: for postmodernists, freedom essentially does not exist. The idea that my mind is free, that I have control over it, that I can become autonomous and free myself from social pressure or my own prejudices is, for them, a myth. According to them, we are trapped: in our language, in our phenomenal reality, in social constructions, or in political regimes. From that perspective, academic freedom is a non-starter from the outset.
You argue that government funding poses a threat to academic freedom. Yet Belgium ranks in the global top 5—excluding self-censorship—out of 179 countries in the Academic Freedom Index, while its universities are heavily funded by the state. How do you explain that?
You are right to point out that the source of funding itself is not necessarily the main issue. What is crucial is the importance that the internal culture places on academic freedom. But of course, there is also the saying: whose bread one eats, his word one speaks.
But in Belgium, academic freedom is also strongly enshrined in law. Could that be part of the explanation for why things work relatively well here?
Of course. But laws are political decisions, and they can always be reversed. When such laws are also deeply embedded culturally—as seems to be the case in Belgium—that is obviously a positive thing. In the United States, the situation is quite different. There, we try to create an institutional separation between government funding and decisions about curricula and so on. But that is a struggle that has to be fought again and again: every year, every decade, every generation.
Ghent University recently appointed the philosopher Nathan Cofnas, who describes himself as a race realist and studies IQ differences between human races. His appointment led to strong protests. How should universities deal with that kind of research?
First of all, it is important that we are not afraid. You often see that unpopular opinions immediately trigger an instinctive fear response. People think that this line of reasoning is threatening and demands an immediate reaction. Whether it concerns race realism, a particular religion, or differences between the sexes—every generation has a few of these major issues, with defenders of positions that lie far outside the mainstream. And that is perfectly normal.
I am a strong supporter of viewpoint diversity
Second, we should think positively: consider the ideal of a university that offers liberal education. That is precisely what academic freedom is about. We want people who push boundaries, who re-examine and question foundations. That also applies to foundations we have long taken for granted. We should actively encourage that. It keeps researchers sharp and confronts students, generation after generation, with those foundations, with the arguments for and against them, and with the front lines of the debate.
I am a strong supporter of viewpoint diversity—the diversity of perspectives. Universities need everything: Marxists, proponents of critical theory, all kinds of feminists, advocates of political Islam, Afrocentric thinkers, and hopefully also many liberals like myself and defenders of the Enlightenment. All these people can then, hopefully, engage in sharp debate with one another.
A common anti-woke argument is that politics does not belong at a university, and therefore neither does viewpoint diversity, because it would interfere with objective research.
That is nonsense, of course. Talking about politics absolutely belongs at a university.
And can that diversity also lead to research topics—especially in the humanities—being approached from more different angles, ultimately improving the quality of research?
Absolutely.
When you look at the current intellectual landscape, do you think the influence of postmodernism is declining, increasing, or entering a new phase?
That is a difficult question. In my view, postmodernism is intellectually almost dead. Over the past twenty years, I have not read anything new of real substance in that area.
But I do think it is still institutionally alive. In education and in intellectual life, it remains deeply rooted. However, even there I think I see a shift over the past ten years. And we owe that to a number of excellent academics, such as the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, and Jordan Peterson. At a certain point, they said that something was fundamentally wrong with our higher education system. And they did not only say this within the walls of universities, but also in the public sphere.
Not only did universities themselves become aware of the problem, but that awareness also spread beyond them. Parents, for example, began to look more critically at what was being taught in their children’s schools. And in my view, that marked an important turning point.
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Dr. Astrid Elbers is a founder of Hypatia and a journalist for the Dutch Flemish platform Doorbraak (Doorbreek de bubbel – Doorbraak.be). The interview was conducted in English and first published in Dutch.