Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book isn't an introduction to postmodernism (PM). There are several introductions to PM on Amazon if that's what you want. Rather, its task could be described as turning some of the techniques of academic PM on its founders - Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, & Co. The title could have been "Unmasking Postmodernism" because Hicks does so with devastating effect.

I have read several hundred books on philosophy from Plato to the present and I cannot think of one that I consider to have been more clearly written than this. The exposition is admirably jargon-free and straightforward, although some terms might be unfamiliar to some folks. This is the only book in many years that I began re-reading and marking up as soon as I had finished reading it the first time - I think it's that good.

It's important to distinguish between PM in the arts, which is largely an aesthetic trend, and academic PM, which exists almost exclusively in some humanities departments in the universities and identifies with particular epistemological and linguistic assumptions. This book is concerned with the latter group and Hicks provides a well documented case for the following historical sequence:

1) Leftist socialists had traditionally believed that reason and facts would show the superiority of socialism - theoretically, morally, and economically.

2) Academic PM's creators were all leftist socialists around the time that leftist socialism was failing - theoretically, morally, and economically (1950s on).

3) The reaction of leftist academic socialists to this wasn't to accept that they had been wrong. Instead, they availed themselves of recent developments in epistemology and linguistics as a pretext for dismissing reason and facts.

4) They then proceeded to impose leftist socialism on students from behind this mask.

This reaction parallels the Counter Enlightenment movements beginning over 200 years ago that were trying to save room for faith against the advance of science.

I was particularly interested to see Hicks point out the similarities between the tactics of creationists (anti-evolutionists) and PMs. I've been engaged in a running debate in print with a group of creationists for over a year and the similarities are striking and revealing. Academic PM definitely has a cult aspect to it; the movie "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" comes to mind. American philosopher John Searle once remarked that French PM philosopher Jacques Derrida's work is the kind of stuff that gives bulls**t a bad name.

Some people will say that Hicks is a Randist and that he's merely criticizing PM from that perspective without understanding it. That's a knee-jerk PM tactic - if you disagree with us, you don't understand us. I'm not a Randist, nor am I particularly sympathetic to Rand, yet I didn't feel a Randist presence in the text other than to the extent that Randists still think reason has value and that all opinions are not created equal.

Hicks ends appropriately by telling us that because the Enlightenment project remains unfinished the PMs will be able to carry on as though that project has failed. It could be that the final refutation of academic PM will entail a significant advance in the completion of the Enlightenment project, although it will almost certainly be an updated conception of that project.

There is a lot more value in this book than what I'm reporting here, including a wonderfully illuminating account of the philosophical trends that led to PM and an inventory of the rhetorical tactics used by PMs, so I strongly recommend getting it in your hands ASAP.

Just finished reading this book. It took me about a week of very leisurely reading. The book is about 200 pages. This is how philosophy should be written, brief and to the point. People like me do not have a lot of time on our hands to pour through thick philosophical tomes hoping to discover one grain of wisdom in a sea of verbiage. What makes this book special is that every page, every word counts. This is not some superficial popularization, but a serious book filled with important ideas and serious implication for the modern world.

This is intellectual history written like a novel, and it reads like a novel. It's a dark novel, unfortunately, but there is reason for hope. The story it tells is of how postmodernism evolved from its dual roots of socialist utopianism and counter-enlightenment philosophy to become the dominant intellectual force in today's universities.

Beyond being just an intellectual history, the book represents a call to action for all those who value their Enlightenment heritage to articulate and defend the premises upon which the Enlightenment was built, but which were never fully articulated. In this book, Enlightenment doesn't remain some historical abstraction, but a great movement that has brought us individualism, science, technology, capitalism and all the fruits of the progress in all these fields. It's something that's worth defending, and I hope this book is read widely enough to make an impact in that direction.

I'm not a philosopher, I'm a retired scientist. So I'm probably not the best reviewer for this book. However, I did enjoy it. That in itself is unusual when I read philosophy.

In all fairness, I suspect this book probably would not be considered to be an "academic level" philosophy book, at least for the advanced undergraduate philosophy major. But it does take one through a history of philosophical thinking from the Enlightenment to the postmodern present.

I had done some prior reading about postmodernism. I enjoy reading about the subject for the same reason I like going to public aquariums - the denizens are so strange and alien that one is astonished that such odd creatures exist at all. Of course, behind the scenes in the aquarium are vast engineered systems to provide anm environment that will support the inhabitants. For the postmodernists, universities serve as that vast engineered system. This book explains why the postmodernists need such a system to survive in a world that doesn't focus on pickle slices, hot meat and trans-fats.

The book also does a good job of explaining in more-or-less plain English the vacuity of postmodern thought. If you aren't impressed and awed by the kind of self-congratulatory dense prose one often gets from philosophical writers, and you want a readable overview of the development and blossoming of dead-end thinking, this is the book for you. If you're a real philosopher, though, I'm sure you'll find it so accessible as to be beneath contempt. And if you're a postmodernist, stay away at all costs. It will be dangerous reading for you. Your trope might trip.