New printing of *Explaining Postmodernism* — the fifteenth

A new printing of the expanded edition was published this month in a snazzy hardcover. Its theme: “The failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible. The failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary.” This is the fifteenth printing since its first publication in 2004. Samples from the scholarly reviewers of the first edition: “By the end of Explaining […]

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Discussion with Jordan Peterson on August 17 — update

On August 17 at 1 p.m. Eastern, Professor Peterson will host a discussion with me on the culture wars, postmodernism and its manifestations in university politicization, the pronoun mandates, and political correctness. The discussion will be recorded and later released on social media. Here are some earlier Peterson-Hicks intersections: (Here’s the mentioned Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism

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“Violence on many sides” claims and Hayek’s warning

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek noticed the many students who went to Europe (especially to France and Germany) to study in the 1920s and 30s: “Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they

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Charlottesville, Third- and Fourth-wave Postmodernism

Clashing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia — far right, far left, and others. Street violence and declarations of emergency by the governing officials. How did we get to this? First, how postmodernism evolved through three phases from high theory to coercive activism: Second, other anti-liberal and anti-rational movements learn and adopt the same strategies to their

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Nancy MacLean’s postmodern rhetorical strategy

[Republished from The Foundation for Economic Education.] Nancy MacLean has written a postmodernist book, while her libertarian critics are writing modernist responses. The critics point out the free-wheeling, fact-free, and conspiracy-tinged narrative MacLean has constructed, and they argue that logically her account does not fit the reality of James Buchanan’s life and writings. All good

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Hong Kong lecture: “NEO-ENLIGHTENMENT ART AFTER POSTMODERNISM”

Where does art go after postmodernism? My lecture in Hong Kong — in which I discuss the historical examples of Classical Athens, Renaissance Florence, the Dutch Golden Age, and nineteenth-century Paris — is at YouTube. Here also are the text in English (with images) and the condensed translation into Cantonese. Part 1: Part 2: Thanks

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Newberry reviews Feldman sculpture *The Future in Our Hands*

Stuart Mark Feldman’s The Future in Our Hands By Michael Newberry Stuart Mark Feldman’s sculpture group, The Future in Our Hands (1992, Reservoir Park, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is four life-size bronze statues placed around a large outdoor fountain. There are two males and two females, life-sized, each playing with a child. (To my knowledge, this is the

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