A Critique of Stephen Hicks' "Explaining Postmodernism"
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The book: www.stephenhick...
(1) Andrea Dworkin (1992) “Mercy”, Four Walls Eight Windows, p. 335-336 - the-eye.eu/pub...
(2) Catharine A. MacKinnon (2000) Points against Postmodernism in “Chicago-Kent Law Review, Volume 75, Issue 3: Symposium on Unfinished Feminist Business” - luceononuro1.f...
(3) Ibid. p. 693
(4) Ibid. p. 691
(5) Ibid. p. 711
(6) Todd May (1993) “Between Genealogy and Epistemology”, The Pennsylvania University Press, p. 2
(7) Adolf Hitler (1941) “Speech of February 24, 1941”, Munich, speech - www.hitler.org/...
(8) Ted Koppel (1992) “The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War”, ABC Nightline, July 1st - web.archive.or...
(9) Marian David (2015) "The Correspondence Theory of Truth" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - plato.stanford...
(10) René Descartes (2007) “Meditations on First Philosophy” in Some Texts From Early Modern Philosophy, p. 26 - www.earlymoder...
(11) Thomas Aquinas (1920) “The Summa Theologiæ” in New Advent, Online Edition - www.newadvent.o...
(12) John Locke (2008) “Second Treatise of Government” in Some Texts From Early Modern Philosophy, p. 4 - www.earlymoder...
(13) Robin Smith (2017) “Aristotle’s Logic” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - plato.stanford...
(14) Aristotle (1999) “Politics”, Batoche Books, p. 4-6
(15) Ha-Joon Chang (2003) “Kicking Away the Ladder: The “Real” History of Free Trade” in FPIF Special Report - www.personal.ce...
(16) Jack Reynolds, “Jacques Derrida” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - www.iep.utm.ed...
(17) Jacques Derrida (1978) “Writing and Difference”, University of Chicago Press, p. 84
(18) Rick Roderick (1993) “Derrida - The Ends of Man” in The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century - • Rick Roderick on Derri...
(19) Immanuel Kant (1784) “What Is Enlightenment?”, p. 1 - www.allmendeber...
(20) Immanuel Kant (1998) “Critique of Pure Reason”, Cambridge University Press - strangebeautifu...
(21) Matt McCormick, “Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - www.iep.utm.ed...
(22) Eric Entrican Wilson, Lara Denis (2018) “Kant and Hume on Morality” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3. - plato.stanford...
(23) Wayne P. Pomerlau, “Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a. - www.iep.utm.ed...
(24) Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel (1976) “Science of Logic”, trans. A. V. Miler, 413-14; Wissenschaft der Logik, 2 vols., vol. 1, 41-42
(25) Ibid, 415; WL 2: 44
(26) Arthur Holmes, “Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1” in “A History of Philosophy”, Wheaton College - • A History of Philosoph...
(27) Arthur Schopenhauer (2012) “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason” in "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Other Writings”, Cambridge University Press - assets.cambridg...
(28) David Gordon (2005) “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticisim and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, by Stephen R. C. Hicks” in Mises Review 11, No. 3 - mises.org/libr...
(29) Marcus Verhaegh (2005) “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault” in The Independent Review, Volume 10 Number 2 - www.independent...
Rest of sources are here, as they did not fit in the description: justpaste.it/5...
Thank you to traumaζein, Sean Oscar and Anna Hart for their help with Heidegger.
As well as (ﾟﾍﾟ), who I didn't get to list at the end of the video, and all other patrons.
Kant looks like he’s wearing a wig. Maybe he is also Foucault.
This made me laugh very hard. Thanks for making my day better
Nietzsche looks like he’s on a camera filter. Maybe he’s also Foucault
Thanks for the laughs
"maybe he just got confused because they are both bald men"
As a bald man, I always get asked if I am Foucault. It's a blessing
A likely story, Mr Foucault.
If I ask you if you're Foucault, I'm definitely hitting on you.
Kojack was better.
Has anyone else noticed that Jacques Derrida looks a lot like Joe Pesci?
For clarification, that's a good thing.
neteher
Foucault always got asked if he was me.....
I used to admire Ayn Rand. Then I turned 14.
You should become an adult to atleast understand, so you should wait. You're a kid and you just change mindlessly admiring and then going away, both not having a clue about anything
@@saichandu8554 that person is obviously not a child lol
@@saichandu8554 ya but the older you get the more you realize how much of a comedy Ayn Rand "philosophy" is
@@saichandu8554 many adults are just 'stable' kids not having a clue about anything
... I turned 14 and realized Stalin was the solution.
I would argue that badism is the superior -ism because of it's inherent nature of having the radical essence of badness. And to quote Kant, the anti-enlightenment, anti-reason, king of pop - "Because I'm bad, I'm bad come on, you know I'm bad, I'm bad come on, you know"
No to mention Foucault's immortal slice of wisdom- "You are a badist, and you are a badist, and you all are badists. The more I say it, the badister it gets."
That's the genius philosophy of a... smooth criminal.
Only the badism is able to deal with the bad in the world. Whjat does the goodism understand. Only the badism can have a good understanding to the world. Those goody two shoes goodists dont see the badness that makes the world run.
massive lol
As a goodist I want all you badists to know that I am wagging a stern judgmental finger at you, wherever you are. Wagging all over the place, just to be sure.
Frank I watched that other video, he just seems to have a hard time sticking with the overall argument. He reacts to specific examples of Hicks' errors as if each step of Cuck's argument is supposed to blow him away or something. Not how philosophy works.
The sentence "The counter-Enlightenment, starting with Kant..." legitemately gave me an aneurism.
shinjinobrave me too, the entire Kant segment flung me into a manic laughter fit and I sent this video to everyone I know who can understand it
shinjinobrave When he said that Kant was counter to individualism then characterized individualism as regarding individuals as "ends in themselves".
That genuinely made me angry.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment
@Ryan, why are you linking a Wikipedia article that doesn't even mention Kant? We know what "Counter-Enlightenment" means
Read Quentin Meillassoux - After finitude. Of course Kant is the Grandfather of postmodernism
"These deconstructionists keep projecting their ideological biases onto the texts," he projected ideologically
Every single person in the world "projects biases onto texts". Projecting, when debating, is almost the human condition.
@@mark4asp Projection is a daily part of human existence, not just when debating or reading.
That book cover is very gRaPhic desiGN iS My PaSSion
Martine Harrison 🤣
just like all post modern art.
o fuck its honestly disgusting thank you for drawing my eyes to this problem and then
curse you for making me look
Speaking as a graphics designer, it's total garbage. It confuses the legibility of the text and therefore does the exact opposite of what it should.
I think it's intended to illustrate the fundamental ugliness that is postmodernism.
This was literally a revelation. I just happened upon Hick's audio version of this book - and have been listening to it on my longer bike-rides. Not having a background in philosophy, I took him at his word - given his reputation in some circles. I found myself buying into what he was saying - and many times getting angry about these 'stupid-Post-Modernists'. This video came up in my feed - and I was interested in hearing 'the other side'. I'm glad that I did. Though I must admit, it is painful to realize that I have to go back to square one. Lol !! I'm very interested in learning about the 'evolution of Philosophy' and would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks for taking the time to do this video.
Hicks is at best a second rate philosopher, but the guy who is doing this critique has nothing to do with philosophy. He has missed the essence of philosophy entirely and is nitpicking at irrelevant definitions without addressing the issue that has been raised in the book.
Congrats on making that decision so soon, I spent almost a year hating “neo-marxist post-modernists” because of Jordan Peterson and my non-existent knowledge of philosophy. Actually making the effort of reading the philosophers they criticize is a blessing.
Nieverst Thrax What are you talking about? The creator of this video is a master's student in philosophy, and as a master's student in philosophy myself, it is clear how Hicks is fundamentally wrong. I mean, his critique of Kant alone would make every academic philosopher roll their eyes.
Brilliant, short, and accessible book: Deconstruction, Theory and Practice by Christopher Norris
This is a constant for philosophy (going back and forth and end up on square one). I'd appreciate if that happened more often on other fields too.
Hicks saw the title "A Critique of Pure Reason" and thought he meant Kant was critiquing reason itself, then wrote the chapter 🤣🤣 amazing!
He probably also doesn't like Tolstoy. How can there be war AND peace? This story makes no sense!
Wait till he finds out about the Gay Science.
Vídeo is full of shit, made by pseudo post modernist militant who got brutalized by the light of truth.
This is just another example of what post modernism is, and how it's creation of current identity politics is a result of what this pseudo philosophical fad:
Postmodernism, Identity Politics, and Other Political Influences
in Political Psychology
Peter Suedfeld
"In the last couple of decades, humanists and to some extent social scien- tists have experienced increasing pressure from colleagues who, under the label of postmodernism, have rejected the possibility that objective truths can be discovered, or even that such truths exist, in the domains of these disci- plines. Instead, they argue that all truth is “construction,” a function of his- torical, cultural, and geographical context interacting with demographic categories such as sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. One hallmark of this view is the use of derogatory quotation marks around the word “truth” wherever it appears.
Each of these demographic groups supposedly has different “truths,” and should insist that only their own members can understand (and, a fortiori, teach or write about) any aspect of the group (“particularism”). Regressing to earlier racist and sexist assumptions, they argue that members of differ- ent groups have mutually incompatible ways of learning, thinking, and behavior. Therefore, they need special and often separate courses, read- ings, professors, students, advisors, dormitories, campus centers, et cetera, whose primary task is to advance their group’s recognition and agenda through political as well as intellectual means (“identity politics”). Identity politics is an offshoot of postmodernism in its denial of universal, objective truths (and of the position that Wnding such truths is the goal of scholar- ship), but many researchers have accepted the implications of constructiv- ism without knowingly subscribing to it as a general philosophy of science.
Paradoxically, practitioners of postmodernism and identity politics criti- cize the adherents of traditional scientiWc objectivity for not having lived up to their ideals, and simultaneously argue that objectivity is inherently impossible to attain and, anyway, morally wrong. They have suggested that the primary purpose of research and teaching should be to reshape society for the beneWt of particular groups (Gross & Levitt, 1994; Searle, 1993- 1994), and that research that might hamper such social change should (a) not be conducted, (b) if conducted, not be published, and (c) in any case, certainly not taught.1
@@Fidelio116 What do you think spamming a random excerpt from a random text will accomplish? ENgage with anything brought forth in the video or shut up.
@@cire837 I vote for the second one!
1:33 Thesis of Explaining Postmodernism.
1:44 Postmodern Origins
2:11 Chapter 1, Vanguard
3:05 Andrea Dworkin
3:28 Catharine MacKinnon
Sloppy Scholarship
5:04 Hicks mentions non-postmodernists within the Vanguard
6:18 Hicks Misquoting people
7:16
8:22 Misreading/misunderstanding
7:45 Inherent relation between knowledge and power.
10:34 The Correspondence Theory of Truth
11:03 Enlightenment Thinkers
Hicks fails to see Reasoned thinkers had faith too. (Bacon, Locke, Descartes)
12:55 Individualism
14:10 General Chapter Thesis
15:41 Constructive Literary Criticism
th-cam.com/video/-kA8zi10cjo/w-d-xo.html
Stephen Hicks reponse this video..
11:03: "Enlightenment Thinkers
Hicks fails to see Reasoned thinkers had faith too. (Bacon, Locke, Descartes)"
@Mark Pawelek
It's not just that they "had faith" It's that they explicitly root their philosophy in it. Lock begins with people having rights due to God's ownership of his creation. God is not a separate concept that Locke merely pays lip service to; his whole philosophy is explicitly rooted in the idea of an intelligent, intentional creator and every argument he builds on that foundation and they all collapse without it
5.04: Good point. Hicks should tell us that Dworkin and MacKinnon were not pomos
Q: But why does Hicks mention non-postmodernists within the "Vanguard"?
A: Because once upon a time, there was an accepted way the left debated. Good arguments on the left were considered "materialist". Postmodernism is a kind of anti-materialism. By materialist, I don't just mean Marxist. For example, much feminism before Dworkin and MacKinnon related to the actual circumstances of women's life. Pomo undercut those old leftist concerns about the actual conditions under which people lived and opened the gates for a new kind of criticism. The writing of Dworkin and MacKinnon were very much in the tradition of pomo - even though neither Dworkin and MacKinnon wrote pomo, both were enabled by pomo. "They are, the bastard children of pomo" - as the phrase once went.
Did you really think that Hicks was trying to implicate Dworkin and MacKinnon as "Vanguard" pomos?
7.45: These is no inherent relation between knowledge and power. Pomo is precisely wrong on that. Given that was one of pomos central claims the lie is of crucial importance. Furthermore, this lie did much to deform and maim modern politics - with all sorts of daft, wacky, leftists thinking that if they censor their critics they've gained power by controlling knowledge.
11.03: "Hicks fails to see Reasoned thinkers had faith too. (Bacon, Locke, Descartes)"
@@mark4asp Where is 'pomo' saying that the lie is of crucial importance? I am interested as to what text you extracted this reading and from which selection of 'pomo' authors. Otherwise, I am seeing a bevy of claims out of left field; that 'pomo' undercuts 'old leftist' concerns about the actual conditions under which people lived- as if all 'pomo' inspired texts do not also seek to ameliorate the lives of individuals. 'Actual conditions under which people lived' most certainly is benefited by the criticisms of essentialism which (based on my limited reading) 'pomo' makes. Not to mention that umbrella of so-called queer people and the like. Not to say you cannot both show interest in worker's rights and things you liberally call post-modernist.
And in what way is it anti-materialist? Why should there be 'one, acceptable' way the left debates? What examples are there of 'daft, wacky, leftists' thinking if they censor their critics that they've 'gained power?' Aside from your bloviating and reading into things, I see no sign that these leftists are trying to control knowledge, usually they appeal to psychological damages and perpetuation of false beliefs, not some crass censorship. In other words, 'concerns about the actual conditions under which people lived'- only not the people you are interested in, I suppose, considering you sound like a class-act fogey.
Where is it said that the 'lie' is of crucial importance? What the devil do you even mean by this, or that there is no relation between knowledge and power? In what way is there 'no relation,' as you've made a very counter-intuitive statement by saying such.
Laughing so much at Hick's chart on defining pre-modernism vs modernism. Do you even scholasticism
what about the chart on how "reason" lead to human happiness :D
I see where Jordan Peterson gets his sweeping generalisations of philosophy and sociology from now
bygon432 I still have a soft spot for Peterson's theories of myths. I want to rescue my father from the underworld.
+diiasze Yes. Apparently the pursuit of happiness is over, and anyone who says they're unhappy is just deluded.
@@ohmandamp All the more power to you. I didn't say anything about his knowledge of psychology
Also, Rick Roderick saying "That is a straw-person argument!" in his thick southern accent is endearing as hell.
This is true of essentially every sentence he uttered. ❤️
the woke left wants to erase the word "man"!! /j
mood
"Complete guide for Horse business success"
my sides
I bet that book is 10 times better than Hicks's.
yeah...that term will be going into the rotation.
If by horse he means heroin I'm on board. If by horse business he means the sale of horse steaks I'm even more on board.
What puzzles me most is that it has a second edition...
me, a very good Marxist: boy I sure do love those aristocrats! Stratified class society, that's what I'm all about!
Robert Carmody same buddy
I assumed he was referring to vanguardism here, not that it means what he thinks it means
Micah Ingle but even if he were, his timeline would still be entirely ahistorical as to when vanguardism rose to prominence, even if we ignore the clear misunderstanding of what it is.
@Clownin' Around Paul Cockshott? W. Paul Cockshott? The man who wrote Towards A New Socialism? Well, I'm glad we are speaking the same language, comrade.
Sounds like resentment
well, that’s exactly what a postmodernist would say
Is what Stephen Hicks would say (without any supporting evidence)
Gregizzle it is its own supporting evidence
@@Thefarbetween ?
durnsidh ` yes?
Ah, tribalism.
Watching a southerner defend Derrida against liberals isn’t what I thought I’d be doing today, yet here I am
Val Kilmer fan 53
A southern American?
LX Junius yeah
ogogo ogpgpg yeah
LMFAO
Postmodernists: question who controls knowledge and where it comes from
Hick:so you're saying reason and logic are wrong?¿?¿?¿?¿?
Notice how this trend shows in many other fields of sociological thinking that are questioned by people like Hicks and Peterson. The same gross misinterpretation happens with Feminism, Id Pol, etc.
bless this post
I thought all Hicks meant was that the empirical science and/or historical record was not on the socialists (or feminists) side, so they started to question science all together? Like the crisis theologians faced under the enlightenment. If reason, empirical evidence etc. isnt really working out that well with your inner convictions & intuitions about the world around you and how things ought to be, question the entire concept of reason itself? Seems pretty plausible to me, people all over the political spectrum think like this, post hoc rationalizing their intuitions.
Jack Offson Yeah I mean thats just autistically detached speculative postulation, projection, and revisionism that really
demonstrates his biases and ignorance.
Jack Offson The only people who disgrace and throw out reason are Pragmatists, and that’s where Jordan Peterson gets his notion of truth from. Not sure about Hicks, but generally speaking, only
pragmatist leaning anti-theory feminist types actually discredit reason as an idea, which can be seen with their offering of “alternative epistemologies” which are often literally based on feeling and *le feminine intuition*. What does this have to do with the absolutely
genius work of many postmodern philosophers? Absolutely fucking nothing? Probably.
It's a tough choice, but I have to say if I had to pick my favorite book on philosophy, it would definitely be Complete Guide for Horse Business Success.
That and Marx's Explaining Christianity. These two books have shaped my life. My understanding of Goodism is based on these two iconic treatises.
This video is a public service. Thank you for this.
*Edit:* Fair warning, there is a copypasta bot Hicks fan named Joaquim G in this thread. When asked for arguments against this video, he started repeatedly copy-pasting an unrelated paragraph from a book predating this video. Enjoy his descent into insanity below.
Sub Roy Shut up, and get back to suffering, Søren! 😡
Nikola Demitri I never stopped.
What is astonishing to me is, how misunderstood Kierkegaard still is. I see him as the first post-modernist and when I look what Adorno (I am allergic to him and his ignorance - and don't get me started on his music, yikes! Brrrr...) or Jung (oh how he loved the past and sex/death.. A poet of the 21 century said: "Death sells sex and sex sells, period.") said/wrote about him shows it - they have no clue. Secondary literature is also quiet clueless about him, which is understandable when one only resides in one's mind/rationality and never feels or dances ("living is the rarest thing").
Kiekegaard and Nietzsche are so important as a contrast for all of academia and intellectuals in these absurd nihilistic times - especially because kiekegaard saw it coming that a thinker like Nietzsche will emerge. It's a kind of either/or with those two (not like in the masterful meaningless first book by Kierkegaard - oh how it hurt so good - not in a sexual way though)... Kinda - systemizing those two is not really possible, which is a biiig problem for modernists from the get go..
@@nikolademitri731 ahahahaha, good one.. Good luck with your pride.
@@subroy7123 aww, Ad Hominems are funny...
If someone is willing, I respond to Ad Hominems.
Thank you for doing this.
Peter Coffin you watch duck philosophy? Nice
@@HistoryOfSocialism that auto correct
LOOK AT ALL THAT FRAMEWORK!!!
Peter Coffin The Doctor of Postmodernism, himself! 👋🏼
arent you the guy who faked having a girlfriend
"Don't you want to be a follower of my ethical theory Goodism? Are you really going to chose Badism instead?" made me literally lol.
When Mises Institute says your work is sloppy.
LUL Thinking the same.
is the Mises Institute known for being particularly sloppy?
@@sofia.eris.bauhaus Mises is mainly a platform for Austrian economics, which believes it is impossible to use math for economic modeling, rejects all of Keynes, wants abolition of the federal reserve and return to the gold standard, and claims completely unregulated laissez-faire capitalism is the ideal economic system. Pretty much every other school of economics thinks they're bonkers because they ignore most of economics after the 19th century.
> which believes it is impossible to use math for economic modeling
that seems to be a misrepresentation of the calculation problem, which is about the inability of a single organisation to plan an entire economy, not about the complete inability to make predictive models of economic phenimena. but perhaps i'm mistaken.
personally i'm somewhat sympathetic towards austrian economics. it seems to be a much more coherent picture of economics than what, say, marxists tend to say (perhaps that's too low of a bar.. _shrug_ ). but i should probably look into a bit more mainstream econ courses to get a better big picture..
anyway, i guess my initial question stands.
Not even close.
Oh, so that's why I see random "$ceptic" TH-camrs saying that "Kant was the founder of Post-modernism". It's even more stupid than I thought.
A lot of them (including Hicks, I assume, as he is a Randian objectivist) build on Ayn Rand's reading of Kant, which is kind of notorious among readers of Kant for how bad it was.
There's a blog post by a guy who did his doctoral dissertation on Kant on (some of) the ways in which Ayn Rand misrepresents Kant: maverickphilosopher.blogspot.com/2004/06/rands-misunderstanding-of-kant.html
But it is true. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_realism_(philosophy)
Monoid Maybe I'm misunderstanding? What is true? The wiki article you linked doesn't even mention Kant.
@@ОлегОленев-я3о Of course not. You have to read the books by these people, to understand their arguments about kant
Monoid Hmmm that seems awfully convenient for you.
34:33. There's something amazing about a man with a thick southern accent defending Derrida and saying "straw-person argument" instead of "strawman argument."
I can't believe I just watched an entire hour long critique of a book that I haven't read
That's how engaging this channel is to me
You are engaged by some pretty simple things bro. I would hate to see you around a rubics cube. good lord.
Unsure what you're getting at. Are you implying that the content of this channel is too simple for you? I have had very little exposure to philosophy so I find all of it quite fascinating . I don't know any other channel that covers similar topics in a more advanced way, but I would greatly appreciate it if you shared any.
@@salrigatonio2940 You sound sad.
@@mihajlostasuk5801 Listen to Stephen Hicks podcast and specifically his reponse to this video.
th-cam.com/video/-kA8zi10cjo/w-d-xo.html
@@salrigatonio2940 Rubik's cubes, the pinnacle of complexity.
I'm firmly convinced that no Objectivist anywhere has actually read Kant or any of the other philosophers that they rail against.
@Drinker_Of_Milk I think he was referring to followers of Ayn Rand's (subjective lol) philosphy Objectivism
Correct. I was referring to Objectivism, the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand.
lol.... no, it was because I used to be an Objectivist, and I remember the visceral hatred for Kant (and Hegel and Plato and many others) but also the simultaneous fact that no one was encouraged to actually go out and read Kant. Everyone just consumed him through "interpreters" like Rand, Piekoff, Binswanger and the rest of the constellation of "philosophers".
Piekoff has a new work that deals with the "integration, misintegration and disintegration of concepts". It's utter, essentialist nonsense.
Who reads any of this shit anyways philosophy is for people who have nothing better to do.
I read this entire book a couple of years ago when I was really into JBP. I don't have any background in philosophy, and although some things seemed off, I couldn't quite place my finger on it. Thank you for taking the time to carefully show those of us not trained in this discipline how deep the problem runs. I hope your video gets many more views and great channel overall
May I ask what drew you to Peterson
Thousands of people unfortunately we're drawn to him in the last years. There could be many reasons but he was promoted by many interests, it wasn't random that he appeared in live television here and there.
This hatred and misrepresentation of Immanuel Kant is something expected of a Randian. Kant is usually a chief antagonist to them. You should see Ruka's Randian Rap on the history of philosophy. It's absolutely hilarious.
Individualism vs collectivism without any elaboration. This is something one would expect of a Randian.
Even though Randians could just say "give rich people whatever they want and let poor people starve" that won't fill a book that they need to sell to become rich. Just imagine if they became poor and had to follow their own ideological logic!
@American Fuel TV no, elaboration as in, "exactly what they mean by collectivism"
@American Fuel TV
Hicks is a Randian. That is why. This sort of dichotomising that he does (individualism v collectivism, etc) is normal among Randians. So is the hatred of Immanuel Kant, etc.
@American Fuel TV
I also get the feeling you haven't read much Post-modern literature or watched the video. _Post-modernist_ seems to mean the same thing as _dishonest person_ in your mind. I also noticed no references for what you said. What am I going off of to know whether or not I should believe you?
American Fuel TV.... You seem to be one of the complying recipients of Hicks/Peterson randian banal version of philosophy for inane conservatives.
Stephen "Questioning My Own Preconceptions (AKA Philosophy in general) Is Anti-Reason" Hicks.
Logic and reason are not all-powerful. ANY logic requires axioms that cannot prove themselves, and pointing this out does not invalidate logical reasoning as a real and powerful tool to model reality. Trying to use logic to challenge it's own foundations *is* a non-sensical endeavour.
Post-modernists look at a system like mathematics, find out that if you try to divide by zero you get an undefinable answer, and then conclude that mathematics as a whole must just be useless, and anything else would substitute it just as well as a tool for numerical reasoning.
Post-modernists think they've outsmarted (or out-reasoned) reason, when really what they've done is misunderstood it, asked a bunch of nonsensical, quite literally unreasonable questions and then said "Ahah!" when reason spits out a nonsensical answer.
It's like asking the universe "why gravity, though?" Nobody fucking knows why. Science doesn't even attempt to explain *why.* But we've gotten pretty fucking good at explaining *how* and it turns out that systems in our universe happen to line up with a certain thing we've named logic.
So yes. It is anti-reason to ask certain questions. And if you tried being reasonable, you'd see it's obvious that there are infinitely many such questions and even if you could answer all of them, you would learn absolutely nothing of value.
«ANY logic requires axioms that cannot prove themselves»
Great video. One criticism however: Kant's use of the word 'critique' (Kritik in German) has nothing to do with the contemporary meaning of the word. In his context, it means something like 'investigation' or 'analysis'. Kant goes back to the Greek origin of the word, the verb κρίνω, which means 'to distinguish'. So Kant does not criticize pure reason, he wants to investigate it and describe how it functions.
That's what a critique is?
I can't speak for what Kant did but κρίνω means to judge, to critisise and to explain. Διαείδω means to distinguish. Διακρίνω is a derivative of κρίνω and it means to distinguish but that's modern greek.
in English criticise can just mean complaining, critique always means a full analysis
Exactly. Woops! There goes the academic infallibility of the very young men here
@@mikuhatsunegoshujin Yes. And its why modern video game journalists suck
Having read a lot of Ayn Rand's nonfiction when I was young, all of Hicks and Peterson's nonsense starts with her. She was writing all this nonsense about Kant, Hegel, Hume and postmodernism before Hicks was.
Peterson is a follower of Kant and Heideggar.
Quad9363 but but doesn’t that mean he’s a postmodernist and doesn’t believe in objective rational science truth ? )-:
"Ayn Rand's non fiction"
Peterson is mainly a follower of Nietzsche
@@Onlyhas99 yes, the Christian apologist traditionalist is mainly a follower of Nietzsche /s
Learning about postmodernism through detailed critiques of shitty 'explanations' of it are probably the best examples of postmodernism right now. Great stuff 💖
what do you mean?
@@YM-cw8so
he means that
when you listen to someone explain how someone else’s explanation of something was wrong,
they have to teach you the subject
in order to explain how the other person was wrong.
And therefore you get a great dose of content
But when the detailed critique of shitty 'explanations' is itself a shitty explanation, then you're back in the Tower of Babel.
11.13
When you asked how insignificant religion is for bacon, locke, and descartes, I laughed loud. Religion indeed plays such a central role in their philosophies that it is almost impossible to tearing their philosophies from their religious grounds without changing their essence.
Great video
Enlightenment Philosophy yeah I mean I guess they just heard that Locke’s first treatise was about refuting theological paternalism and then just didn’t bother to read the second treatise.
Do you think? It seems to me that Bacon for example believed that we should leave to faith what is faith's, if you read his essay on the advancement of learning. That seems to me to be separating the two domains out, in a similar way to how Pascal suggested that certain revelations were of the heart and others the head.
This is of course good evidence against the "conflict thesis" that certain new atheist types might contend (i.e. the idea that enlightenment philosophy and science have to be in conflict). However, I also think it's possible to look at them as simply being different domains of activity. Of course, I could be wrong.
I think you make a point, and it doesn't just apply to Bacon, Locke, and Descartes but to the Enlightenment, and The Western tradition in general - which pomo is still part of. For example - why was the idea of univeralism so important to Enlightenment thinkers? and where did the idea come from? Pomo still thinks it's doing a univeral deconstruction of Western Reason - so despite Pomo - The Univeral is as valid today as in the past.
I disagree. They doffed their caps to religion - as everyone had to back then - but the subject of their writing was not religion. The fact that religion isn't essential to them is why we still read them today.
This book may also be the source of many a young right-winger lumping together "postmodernism", "Marxism", and "identity politics" when they have nothing (necessarily) to do with each other.
Hicks opposes all of them and believes they must all be part of the same "irrationalist" project.
The point isn't that postmodernism in its entirety is in alignment with marxism in its entirety. The point is there is a new group of people who take elements of each. So for instance, you have the notion that civilization essentially boils down to power struggles, which is a marxist idea, but instead of simply class you have identity groups, and you use postmodern reasoning and rhetoric to tear down anybody who gets in your way. Peterson is not saying young pseudo revolutionaries on campuses are faithfully representing postmodernism and marxism all at once.
Jeremy yeah - I once read a Shuja Haider article arguing (persuasively) that JP mixed up some of the initial disagreements among 60s radicals for these differing strains. And while I liked the piece, I also wound up thinking: who cares? The ultimate endpoint is more important, and the actual focus of the backlash.
I’ll check out this video though
I think it's just an example of that conflation rather than the origin. Hicks' attacks on "postmodernism" are mostly recycled accusations that have been disingenuously employed for decades. The political right has always had a good reason to present all critics of the existing order from any angle as a single, undifferentiated ideological mass.
Jeremy
That's a misunderstanding of Marxism then. Marxism concerns class struggle as the motor of history. Not "power".
Fopenplop in my experience, people outside of their preferred ideological group are always boiled down into a coherent unified enemy, while people in their broad ideological are recognized as having meaningful differences.
The right does it, but they don’t solely do it.
I am in genuine shock as I, too, got recommend this book as I study philosophy. It confused me quite a bit to "find out" Kant was ACTUALLY an anti-reason guy. I continued, still, trusting Hicks's academic status. Just now I decided to actually look up who he really is and what people criticize about his work and... I'm pretty shook by the fact I blindly trusted this book's validity. Thank you so much for making this video, I'm so glad to have realized my gut wasn't making it up the whole time.
Vídeo of full of shit, made by pseudo post modernist militant who got brutalized by the light of truth.
This is just another example of what post modernism is, and how it's creation of current identity politics is a result of what this pseudo philosophical fad:
Postmodernism, Identity Politics, and Other Political Influences
in Political Psychology
Peter Suedfeld
"In the last couple of decades, humanists and to some extent social scien- tists have experienced increasing pressure from colleagues who, under the label of postmodernism, have rejected the possibility that objective truths can be discovered, or even that such truths exist, in the domains of these disci- plines. Instead, they argue that all truth is “construction,” a function of his- torical, cultural, and geographical context interacting with demographic categories such as sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. One hallmark of this view is the use of derogatory quotation marks around the word “truth” wherever it appears.
Each of these demographic groups supposedly has different “truths,” and should insist that only their own members can understand (and, a fortiori, teach or write about) any aspect of the group (“particularism”). Regressing to earlier racist and sexist assumptions, they argue that members of differ- ent groups have mutually incompatible ways of learning, thinking, and behavior. Therefore, they need special and often separate courses, read- ings, professors, students, advisors, dormitories, campus centers, et cetera, whose primary task is to advance their group’s recognition and agenda through political as well as intellectual means (“identity politics”). Identity politics is an offshoot of postmodernism in its denial of universal, objective truths (and of the position that Wnding such truths is the goal of scholar- ship), but many researchers have accepted the implications of constructiv- ism without knowingly subscribing to it as a general philosophy of science.
Paradoxically, practitioners of postmodernism and identity politics criti- cize the adherents of traditional scientiWc objectivity for not having lived up to their ideals, and simultaneously argue that objectivity is inherently impossible to attain and, anyway, morally wrong. They have suggested that the primary purpose of research and teaching should be to reshape society for the beneWt of particular groups (Gross & Levitt, 1994; Searle, 1993- 1994), and that research that might hamper such social change should (a) not be conducted, (b) if conducted, not be published, and (c) in any case, certainly not taught.1
Have you seen Hicks' response to this critique? th-cam.com/video/-kA8zi10cjo/w-d-xo.html
Hicks clearly has his own definition of reason; but so do nearly all philosophers:- including Kant, the pomos, and Jonas.
Hicks does not believe subjectivism is rational. I'm with Hicks. Can any of Hicks critics defend their faith in subjectivism? Perhaps, but they're not doing it here.
A devastating critique. And Jordan Peterson admires this book, eh? Those Peterson fan boys making him wealthy should definitely watch this.
I'd give him money for his fight against bill c-16 and for his psychology lectures. But yes, his lack of understanding of post-modernism is obvious and painful.
Terriccota Pie You’d give him money for a fake fight against a straw man piece of legislation?
No, but for a fight against an actual legislation that's not a straw man. Don't do the same thing Hicks does when he misrepresents others for his political gain.
Terriccota Pie I’m not. But that’s what Peterson did when he claimed C-16 would land him in jail or force him to use someone’s preferred pronouns.
The bill leaves persecution of those that chose not to use one's preferred pronoun, that's not a straw-man.
To add to the "Hicks on feminism" part around the 4-minute mark, the key author of postmodern feminism, Judith Butler, is one of the most effective critics of Identity Politics such as radical feminism. Postmodern feminism argues that a political movement based on a contingent category, here women, will inevitably fail to represent all people constituting that category as it is too fragmented. (And that an efficient emancipatory political movement ought to be able to answer for marginal voices that its' categories fail to include.) Hell, even the idea that "all pornography functions as sexual violence" is impossible for a postmodernist feminist to state, as pornography is too fragmented an object to speak of in such generalising terms. (The genere of lesbian pornography made by and for lesbian women seems difficult to see as fundamentally misogynistic.)
I should probably also add that Irigaray is also a feminist author who is if not purely within the field of radical feminism at least incredibly epistomologically similar to authors like MacKinnon. For Irigaray women constitute a category, a gender that while it is contingent has a very unitary nature. (A single historical cause, the gradual eradication of female subjecthood through patriarchal rule enforcing a phalogocentric language, amongst other things.) She also has a relatively essentialist/biologist view on what causes femaleness -> womanhood; at least one of her lectures written down in Sexes and Geneaologies says it's chromosomes. So while she is an important author to postmodernists like Butler, who refer to Irigarays work relatively frequently in Gender Trouble, I'd argue she doesn't fall within the frame of postmodern feminists. Like, at all.
This was a very useful and informative comment for me. I'm not as conversant with contemporary "continental" thought as I'd like to be, so please correct me if I'm mischaracterizing anyone here, but my understanding is that Irigaray is a Lacanian; and my understanding of Lacan is that he was a fundamentally *modernist* thinker whose conception of gender shared more in common with an essentialist like Freud than (say) Butler. Would you agree with that characterization?
Maybe I've mistaken something but Judith Butler is very much an idpol idol. Radical feminists can be bad in their own way but they don't really recognise "woman" as an identity but more of a social reality.
Well, in the conclusion to Gender Trouble she states the following:
"The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken." (p. 142)
"I have tried. to suggest that the identity categories often presumed to be foundational to feminist politics, that is, deemed necessary in order to mobilize feminism as an identity politics, simultaneously work to limit and constrain in advance the very cultural possibilities that feminIsm is supposed to open up." (p. 147)
I think that what she means is: For an identity politics to function, it must define and internally legitimize the identities of the subjects that it supposes it represents. If someone says "I am a woman, and I have these problems that are caused by the world due to me being a woman." an idpol feminism would have to judge whether she truly is a woman, and act from that. From this idea of who truly constitutes a woman, a set of political goals are synthesised that will, undoubtedly, fail to take into consideration the needs of those women that fail to conform to womanhood:
"The feminist "we" is always and only a phantasmatic construction, one that has its purposes, but which denies the internal complexity and indeterminacy of the term and constitutes itself only through the exclusion of some part of the constituency that it simultaneously seeks to represent." (p. 142.)
PDF of the conclusions: theory.theasintheas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/paradoy-to-politics_butler-judith-gender-trouble-feminism-and-the-subversion-of-identity-1990-2.pdf
It is true that radical feminists see womanhood as a social reality, and in many cases will deny for example transwomen representation despite the fact we "identify as" women, but that's not really the thing that an identity politics cares about. An identity politics argues that representatives from a group of an identity (a group that can be described as something) should be the foundational source of the politics governing that group. Radical feminists argue that women are an oppressed group, and that a politics taking their experience of misogynistic oppression as a starting point is what effectively counteracts said oppression. This is all well and dandy, but if we look closer we'll see that the politics proposed by many radical feminists actually fails to take into account forms of oppression that we might actually want a feminist politics to be able to make visible and counter act; the woman represented by radfem generally is conceived of as white the specific problems women of colour suffer that white women (and men of colour) don't, and many a radfem has explicitly attempted to exclude transwomen from political functions such as rape shelters, as we are deemed not to be women in the image of the woman championed by radical feminism. This is how radfem functions as an identity politics, in that it identifies a category that it champions, a process of identification that reinforces the boundaries of that category in a way that excludes.
I'm gonna completely disagree that it's "utter hogwash" either of these authors produce. Butler, at least from what I've read of her (Gender Trouble and the first half chapter of Bodies That Matter) provides an excellent epistemological foundation for just about any researcher who wants to examine gender as a cultural product. Irigaray I would argue is an excellent essayist; her text When Our Lips Speak Together must hands down be the best essay regarding intimacy and sexuality that I've ever read. The way she captures the aesthetics of intimacy in text is just stunning, which not only functions as a call for a movement into a post-patriarchal eroticism but also managed to give an idea of what that actually is and feels. Thus I have a really difficult time seeing either author as examples of nonsense.
@@WeatheredPeach There's a good joke I often heard that most people only read the first 30 pages of Gender Trouble and base their feminist politics around that and fail to realize that Butler argues against the essentialist categories that are often spun off those first 30 pages.
Unfortunately the well has been so poisoned online concerning Butler that it's difficult to critique or discuss Butler's work at all because you just get people saying "this is bad, she is bad" without any real reasons, just feelings about her writing style.
Oh my god, this book has a 4.1 on goodreads, has *no one* even read it?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>goodreads
@@Hi_5uuu huh?
@@yesway Goodreads is not always reliable. It's not a peer-reviewed journal. No editorial involvement. No gatekeeping on what is good take or a bad take. Also, most serious learners of philosophy won't read or even know Hick's book anyway. The only reason that it's got these many good reviews is because Jordan Peterson had recommended it to his fans...
This is such an underrated channel. 👌🏾
Ehh its pretty overrated if you ask me.
if you don't mind me asking, why do you think it is overrated? (and what philosophy channels are actually underrated and/or better then?)
This video is good. I say that adhering to strict Goodism. No word yet from Badism, but who cares what they think..
A general rule of thumb for modern discourse I've noticed: The more loudly a person or group espouses "facts and logic" the less they embody them.
Hey, don't you knock my "Complete Guide for Horse Business Success", I put a lot of thought and research into that.
Thank you good sir for writing this book! It helped me turn my passion for horses into a successful business. Its proven techniques helped me maximize profits and minimize headaches, and the practical guide showed me how to create a viable business plan, identify marketing opportunities, and efficiently maintain my facilities.
PS: Thanks for the savvy tips on reducing veterinary and feed costs, and how to make my operation self-sufficient and keep it financially sustainable. DS.
The dishonesty that Hicks has displayed here makes me angry. Thanks for this video.
You get angry over a book. Lol seek help bro.
@@bodbn Angry isn't that extreme of an emotion...
@@bodbn
Well, books can make people angry.
The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, anything by Deepak Chopra... can stir some people really bad.
The Communist Manifesto, anything by Feynman, Mein Kampf... they sure stir people up.
By the way, all those examples have had real world impact.
Dismissing books. Seek help bro.
@@frechjo the irony is that it was a video about a book that made this dude angry.
@@bodbn
Oh well, I've seen your comments against "sjws", feminism, "postmodern marxists", and the like.
Is it making you uncomfortable that your school of thought is being exposed and ridiculed?
No need to take it out on someone else.
I was wondering why this “critique” of Post-Modernism sounded so broadly misinformed and then you mentioned Ayn Rand so of course it all makes sense now.
Objectivism: philosophy's answer to Jehovah's Witnesses.
So funny bro. Have you solved the is-ought gap or the problem of induction?
6:30 In all fairness Todd May does look like a straight version of Michel Foucault
Funny thing is that I can't find any info on what his sexual orientation is... Though it is likely that I have just missed something.
@@durnsidh6483 but foucault def looks gayer
First rate work. Congratulations. "Goodism" is an illuminating and hilarious example. It seems that Hicks is engaging in the construction of a meta-strawman, just to knock it down.
Now we need someone to debate peterson about the dabate goodism vs badism. That would be hillarous.
The difference in the like/dislike ratio between this video and *"Jordan Peterson doesn't understand postmodernism"* is quite amusing, considering the material is so similar. I guess a bunch of disaffected young males with messy rooms just don't like *FACTS* and *LOGIC.*
Actually a lot of them are cleaning up their personal lives and getting wealthier. Meanwhile woke media is dying, woke university applications are going down steadily, Trump will likely be re-elected, and conservatives are starting to have a lot more kids, leftists a lot less.
Good times.
@@mothsforeyes The people who care about the planet are doing something themselves, not whining or virtue signaling to others.
@@sirellyn4391
Nice comeback, Priscilla.
I'm sure those individuals will do great things, especially in the face of the your hard-earned "winning" streak with their greatest hits such as: Austrian economics, deregulation, austerity, privatisation, anti-intellectualism, science-denialism, concentration camps, fundamentalist evangelism and our personal favourite the unprecedented expansion of the military industrial complex.
Not a suicide cult at all.
The average joe just needs to take shorter showers and recycle more. That'll fix it right up!
@@mothsforeyes
Name the "wins" for PM ?
Nothing ?
Oh.....
@@Ixiah27 ... what?
Thank you for introducing me to Rick Roderick. I can’t stop watching his lectures now.
Same here. As is always the case with thinkers I love, I disagree with him on numerous topics, but God damn, do I like listening to him.
I bet he loves trans people as much as Peterson does.
@@mauricioquintero2420 People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully...
I remember months ago when I left a comment congratulating you on 1k subs. Good job.
I've checked many of your claims and, unfortunately, you are correct. Thank you for your critique.
Wonderful attention to detail here. Thank you for your intellectual contribution, TH-cam needs more of this.
The way Peterson practically spits through his teeth in disdain when mentioning postmodernism makes me laugh, imagine having so much anger for something you don't understand.
A Lewis attempts to defend post modernism are pathetic.
So ?
If PM never existed, what would be lost ?
Question everything, but not the results you get by following PM.
@@Fidelio116 You are pathetic for wanting something to hate and blame and being frustrated that you do not comprehend post-modern scholars so you have to find something else to hate.
Joe S. Pathetic people use post modernism to hate society in general. Post modernism is an expression of frustration with life itself. And hence, it blamed reality in itself as the culprit of all ills of the world. Post modernists are not scholars but militant frauds. :)
indirect existence all these people did was complain about how evil and deluded everyone but themselves is.
Before I discovered philosophy, I was deeply in love with these pseudo-philosophical public intellectuals. Thank you for this critique. His mistreatment or “pre-modern” thought is unfortunate.
- a Thomist
Vídeo of full of shit, made by pseudo post modernist militant who got brutalized by the light of truth.
This is just another example of what post modernism is, and how it's creation of current identity politics is a result of what this pseudo philosophical fad:
Postmodernism, Identity Politics, and Other Political Influences
in Political Psychology
Peter Suedfeld
"In the last couple of decades, humanists and to some extent social scien- tists have experienced increasing pressure from colleagues who, under the label of postmodernism, have rejected the possibility that objective truths can be discovered, or even that such truths exist, in the domains of these disci- plines. Instead, they argue that all truth is “construction,” a function of his- torical, cultural, and geographical context interacting with demographic categories such as sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. One hallmark of this view is the use of derogatory quotation marks around the word “truth” wherever it appears.
Each of these demographic groups supposedly has different “truths,” and should insist that only their own members can understand (and, a fortiori, teach or write about) any aspect of the group (“particularism”). Regressing to earlier racist and sexist assumptions, they argue that members of differ- ent groups have mutually incompatible ways of learning, thinking, and behavior. Therefore, they need special and often separate courses, read- ings, professors, students, advisors, dormitories, campus centers, et cetera, whose primary task is to advance their group’s recognition and agenda through political as well as intellectual means (“identity politics”). Identity politics is an offshoot of postmodernism in its denial of universal, objective truths (and of the position that Wnding such truths is the goal of scholar- ship), but many researchers have accepted the implications of constructiv- ism without knowingly subscribing to it as a general philosophy of science.
Paradoxically, practitioners of postmodernism and identity politics criti- cize the adherents of traditional scientiWc objectivity for not having lived up to their ideals, and simultaneously argue that objectivity is inherently impossible to attain and, anyway, morally wrong. They have suggested that the primary purpose of research and teaching should be to reshape society for the beneWt of particular groups (Gross & Levitt, 1994; Searle, 1993- 1994), and that research that might hamper such social change should (a) not be conducted, (b) if conducted, not be published, and (c) in any case, certainly not taught.1
@@Fidelio116 Everything about the experience of reading this is just subtly off, like music that is occasionally off key.
L everything about post modernist cheerleaders is laughable. And their despair is sweet.
@@Fidelio116 Not sure what that had to do with my observation, but ok.
Please start a podcast with a postmodernist!
I've been really ill this last week and haven't had the strength to do much so thanks for filling an hour of my time with quality content
Though it is a very laughable book coming from an amateur, what's more saddening to me as a philosophy student is that many analytic philosophers share Hick's sentiment (even though certainly not his arguments) against so-called postmodernism and Continental philosophy in general. As a student of both traditions (I read Quine, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Putnam, Sellars, Brandom, as well as Nietzsche, Gadamer, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt) I find it very frustrating. It's frustrating not only because I think more conversation between the two would lead to more interesting philosophy, it's also because it is very discouraging when the professor you look up to dismiss the works of continental philosophers based on his own ignorance. The need to reassuring oneself that anything outside of one's knowledge is not worth knowing seems to be a rather universal need shared even by professional philosophers.
"The need to reassure oneself that anything outside of one's knowledge is not worth knowing"
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I think it to some extent explains certain movements and trends in online communities and their impact on our political landscape.
The internet is big. Really fucking big. There are communities of experts and the heavily invested on almost anything on here. Historically we've been able to segregate ourselves off into smaller groups where your worldview makes sense (you wouldn't see many scientists mingling with philosophers, or conties with analytics as random examples), but online every worldview is thrown in with every other worldview, and seeing how limited your worldview is outside of your own little bubble/life experiences is crushing. You're constantly forced to face the limitations of yours and anyone else's worldview, with constant critiques and examples of things that don't fit your framework. Against that you only really have two choices: double down on what you have, rejecting entirely anything that's different, or be thrown into that infinite void where you realise you didn't truly know anything at all.
I think this explains why you have so many people online who either retreat to a sub-community that re-establishes their niches bubble (a subreddit for example, or a corner of TH-cam), or spend their time sifting through endless reams of memes and meaningless content because what else do you do when you don't really know anything and don't even know what to value anymore?
I think one of the big ironies of anti-SJW types and IDW types is that the effects they have identified (loss of belief in meaning and structures in the youth, more radical politics, fading belief in our existing canon and hierarchies) aren't caused by people trying to destroy our civilisations but by the technologies those civilisations produced.
Now I'm not an expert on anything, not am I trying to claim to be, but from my time online the last couple years this really feels like a major cause and consequence that isn't discussed all that much. Any critiques welcomed.
exactly as you do in this comment section reassure yourselves.
Liquidus118 I think you describe quite well the existential void people would be thrown into when they encounter a completely different worldview, but I don't really think it is something new or specific to the internet era. For example, Hegel was infamously Eurocentric, and whenever he mentioned philosophical and religious tradtions outside of Europe, he was dismissive, either due to his superficial understanding of those traditions or because they don't fit into his pre-formed narrative of progress. Then we have analytic and continental philosophers dismissing each other from 1950s onward based on superficial understanding of each other. In the 90s we have an even worse crossfire between science department and humanities department, or the so-called "science wars", which is where all the scientistic trashing of "postmodernism" originally came from. Interdisciplinary warfare exists because both sides are trying to take over the role of a cultural leader. That's why this kind of thing is specifically prominent between scientists and philosophers, and between analytic and continental philosophers. It is not possible for them to just mind their only business like everyone else as they are fighting for an exclusive cultural leadership. It's perhaps also why many of them seem to have the need to say something about the other camp even when they know very little about it. They think if they do not say something beyond their limited expertise, their cultural leadership would be taken over. As you can notice the pop stars on both sides have a tendency to comment on everything outside their academic expertise in public. The whole thing ends up more like a messy political wrestling than a respectable academic debate.
BTW, for anyone interested in an analytical diagnosis of the "science wars", I recommend the book "The Social Construction of What?" by Ian Hacking. Hacking is a prominent philosopher of science with analytical background but is also very sympathetic to the continental tradition. He is also one of the few analytic philosophers who take Foucault very seriously and is positively influenced by him.
CHS; how funny, a student calls the university professor twice his age an amateur. The thing is you took upon yourself a task that overwhelmed you, you can read all the philosophers and still be dumb and on top of things become arrogant which you proved in your comment.
There is no way my guy took "Critique of Pure Reason" literally and said Kant is anti reason therefore "counter-Enlightenment" 😭
We are all grateful that you read it so that we didn't have to
Edit : Cringing more with every second
You’re right, Hicks didn’t do that.
Kant's statement in the Critique of Pure Reason: "I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith"
Definitely not Enlightenment
> criticises post modernists for being hating things like truth and reason
> writes book full of factually inaccurate information
Please choose one Stephen
Don't forget that this is the book Peterson recommends everybody to read.
Don't forget none of the mistakes refutes Hick's thesis.
"I believe in logic, my opponents don't, I believe in reason, my opponents don't, I'm rational, my opponents aren't..." sounds like Stefan Molyneux lol
Sounds like a good way to be
@@fuckamericanidiot Sounds like an arrogant, egomaniac way to be.
I feel like there's a good video in there somewhere about how altirghters and such's sledgehammer of "i am reason" is actually a logical endpoint of the liberal technocratic fantasy about the end of history and a postpolitical era where all remaining rational disputes are about efficiency, all other disputes being inherently irrational.
A truly admirable use of the internet. God bless.
52 minutes! Let me just recline my chair
Great takedown. Although I appreciate the 'social importance' of these videos in rectifying misconceptions of postmodernism, I preferred it when you focused more on using philosophical concepts to approach contemporary phenomena (e.g. hauntology and 80s nostalgia, hegelian recognition and incels etc) instead of debunking obvious hacks like Harris, Peterson and Hicks. At the start of the video, you mentioned how you were growing tired of the need to defend postmodernism. If you continue to make videos that apply postmodern theory, then your work will serve as 'living proof' of postmodernism's usefulness for social analysis. Attack is the best defence.
Having said this, if you were to continue this 'review series' another good target would be Stephen Pinker. His latest book Enlightenment now was beyond embarrassing. Would be good to see you critique (neo)liberal caricatures of postmodernism as well as those of the alt-right.
Anonymous The Alt Right?
Someone needs to make a meme with Jordan Peterson's head on Cathy Newman's body doing a Channel 4 interview with Jacques Derrida's head on Jordan Peterson's body.
JP/CN: "So... what you're saying is... that the core of your philosophy is you don't believe in competence, right?"
JD/JP: "What? I've never said anything close to that."
JP/CN: "Sure you have. But don't you think that contradicts your position, if I've understood you correctly, that all interpretations are totally arbitrary and equally good?"
JD/JP: "I don't think that at all. You're arguing against some fictitious boogeyman of your own invention. It's almost as if you haven't carefully (let alone charitably) read anything I've actually written..."
The part where Hicks claims that Kant ''blamed mankind for having chosen to use reason when our instincts could have served us perfectly well'' made my brain convulse. My first thought was the section of The World as Will and Representation where Schopenhauer criticises the categorical imperative for lacking sentiment, heart, and discounting affections, emotions, and subjective passions.
Hicks is really not very good at this, is he?
Seems to me Schopenhauer is likely saying morals are affective, emotional, and subjectively passionate. Which is, most likely, why we have morals, and ethics. Look at mass media: how it inculcates morals. Does media inculcate morals by presenting dispassionate, rational arguments?, or does it try to inflame and stir the emotions, tell us parables to trick us into taking a particular moral stance, bully us into conformity by telling us to obey the new moral standards: that women can have penises, that "we are burning the planet", ...
🤣This is the most absurd accusation against Kant I can ever hear. The whole point of Kant's critique was to ground reason (while he did set limitation).
I can’t tell you how excited I am to watch this
I went to art school. ART SCHOOL! And even I had to provide more solid reference than this book bothers to!
Yeah. I'm a Nietzschean philosopher, and even I'm offended on behalf of Kant. It never ceases to amaze me how people are able to write so much before they learn to read.
Bieng more of a Socratic, I feel the need to question evrything.
However, I also have a moral obligation to defend even my enemies
From my bieng misrepresented unchallenged
What's you're view of SklavenMoraal?
@didrik mortensen
Lacking, just like his understanding of both Marxism and Post-Modernism
You're a hobby philosopher.
@@paddleed6176 everyone who doesn't agree with all of my very specific opinions is a poseur
okay but to be fair, todd may looks almost exactly like foucault, so i can see how someone would confuse the two
I still really appreciate this video, because it takes a trash book and through critique turns it into something for explaining philosophy. A lot of people learn better if they are presented with a false claim at first and then are told the actual account of the presented case.
It is not a trash book. It's a poisoned dagger aimed at the heart of Western subjectivist philosophy - which is nearly everything in Western philosophy for the past 200 years.
Why can't these pathetic pomos actually criticize Hicks' main arguments?
I want to read your defense of subjectivism.
@@mark4asp His arguments don't hold up because they're based in falsities, there's no other criticisms necessary.
People who support him just don't understand anything, as you're demonstrating here.
There is no "defence of subjectivism" -the common version of subjectivism is that only our own conscious experience, whatever that actually is, unquestionably exists. This doesn't need to be defended, since the only way to attack it is to provide something other than conscious experience that 100% demonstrably exists. No one has managed that.
So unless you're denying subjective experience, what are you even asking for?
@@pietzsche His arguments are NOT based on falsities. There may be some exaggerations from him, but his arguments stand, or fall, on their own terms. You don't seem to be able to meet the intellectual demands of debating him on his ideas - which may explain why you think you can dismiss him like that; with a casual "he's telling untruths". JP is not telling lies, and his whole argument is worth hearing. Any untruths he says are peripheral to his case.
@@mark4asp Who are you referring to with "his arguments"? Hicks' I actually have debated, it's under one of these videos. His arguments are extremely idiosyncratic, so much so that all terms are completely redefined, and they remain absolutely unconvincing to me, but I accept he believes them. JP is just a bullshitter who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Disclaimer:
Please disregard my other reply to your post (above). Because JP was in the video talking about SH, I though it was about JP! [my fault]
The meat:
The topic is more complex than you make out. During The Enlightenment Western philosophy took an empiricist turn. Hicks favours this approach too; as I do. We don't think The Enlightenment is over (in the sense that key themes are still up for debate). It was, of course, abruptly ended and, Kant, as it's last great philosopher, is rarely critiqued for his writings going against the spirit of the Enlightenment. For such a "based" guy (Kant knew loads about science, and taught many science classes to his students):- he messed things up by leading philosophy away from what really mattered - away from reality. I'm not dissing all of Kant's work, just the writings adored by philosophers. Since pomo ended in the last 1970s, the spirit of Kant made a comeback with writers such as John Rawls, and all the other ethics-mongers. FFS, with New Atheism, they even tried to make atheism an ethical stance ("look how unethical all those religions are - come join us - free yourself from bad ethics!"). So a critique of Kant is important; we're not just raking over the bones of a philosopher from 220 years ago! Hicks' attack on subjectivism is aimed at modern philosophy - not Kant's reputation. You try to shore up modern philosophy by dismissing the attack on subjectivism out of hand, with the joke remark that subjectivism is a thing philosophy deal with a long ago and put in its place. We (me and Hicks) don't think so: subjectivism is alive and well today. It dominates all leftism, and much else too. It is the Zeitgeist of our age.
Since the Enlightenment ended, modern philosophers have often pretended they are grounded in empirical facts by labelling themselves are materialist, positivist, or even, phenomenological. But there is ONLY one way we ever developed of taking facts seriously: empiricism. Or, to be precise scientific empiricism. Modern philosophy of science makes things worse - instead of seeing itself as the ONLY worthwhile epistemic discourse it seems to accept its relegated status as just a discipline of philosophy. Kant paved the way for this with his ridiculous 'anti-system' system building. Just as Natural Law, of scholastics, fed off Aristotle to turn the spirit of his work inside out, (partly be declaring Greek philosophy over, so 'closed down') so too, modern philosophy turns Kant inside out by telling us the Enlightenment is done and closed.
When Hicks talks about subjectivism, he's referring to more than just all philosophy post-Enlightenment, which also includes most of Kant. Hicks is referring to today's society, and nearly all social discourse. The dispute over subjectivism affects us all; and we cannot trust philosophy to resolve it. It must be resolved practically; in reality, not merely in theory.
Honestly, you should probably post this in Text form and tweet a link to it at Jordan Peterson.
Excellent Video
i'm a postmodernist and i do want to bring forth monsters, but that is for purely personal reasons.
Would you be able to explain postmodernism, as I find it quite difficult to find one definition of it?
No
coming back around to this video to say that Stephen Hicks is now teaching postmodern philosophy in Jordan Peterson's new online university. lol
🤣Talk about the blind leading the blind.
I've been waiting for this! It is embarrassing how much press this guy has got simply because of all the confusion surrounding POMO thought thanks to JP and the crew. In the most recent interview by Sam Harris with Jonathan Haidt, Jonathan says this throwaway line like "I don't understand post-modernism" and Sam Harris just chuckles along and says "you're not alone". Oh the intellectual rigor. It's not like understanding everything under the header of POMO is necessary to get enough of a general outline to appreciate what is being offered, or to understand that it is really hard to make clean connections between POMO and marxism or activism.
Eh, the misunderstanding and bizarre fear mongering around POMO has been around a bit longer than Peterson has been. Right wing types have been trying to smuggle the "cultural Bolsheviks" (read: Jews!) conspiracy theory back into modern discourse under the guise of postmodern neo-marxists since at least 2010.
Yeah, it is crazy how many regular folks hold something close to a cultural theory of degeneracy, although they wouldn't call it that, and it's really ramped up since 2010ish.
It's scary honestly.
Yeah postmodernism criticism goes way back - for instance, Noam Chomsky discussed it in pretty similar terms.
@@joeberg3317 Oh for sure, there are legitimate critiques of Postmodernism. I don't care for Chomsky's, I don't think he has taken the time to actually understand what they are trying to say. Jameson on the other hand, in his book Postmodernism, I think gives a thorough retort to postmodernism.
Kant as a COUNTER ENLIGHTENMENT philosopher?!
Three words.
WAS IST AUFKLÄRUNG?
It's the thing that all German boys go through when they turn 15 and have attentive parents
Hicks' argument was based on gross misunderstandings of the philosophies he was trying to refute. It follows that his central argument was invalid, it had no foundation.
AUFKLÄRUNG IST DAS VERMÖGEN, SEINDN EIGENEN VERSTANDES OHNE LEITUNG EINES ANDEREN ZU NUTZEN.
"I have decided to limit reason in order to make room for faith." Kant's belief in the Enlightenment was superficial and could not survive his basic philosophy
@@isidorregenfu9632 You're trapped inside the phenomenal world.
Wtf so I started binge watching your videos 3 hours ago and fell half asleep while still listening to the arguments. In this haze I experienced some of the strangest dreams I've ever had. Woke up indignant to this video due to how horrifying Hicks' Kant interpretation is. This was the most fun I've had on TH-cam for a long while. You're a true intellectual. Keep it up 🙂
There's nothing "horrifying" in Hick's interpretation of Kant. It's a perfectly legitimate interpretation. It is, in fact, also my interpretation of Kant's greatest weakness. There are, of course, lots of things in Kant I like, but also some I hate.
@@mark4asp Are you out of your mind? In what way is it legitimate? When did kant ever venerate our instincts about reason, in the the groundworks, kant says nature had put reason in charge of our instincts, venerating this and venerating our reason. Anything else about kant's metaphysics makes him sound like a sophist, but their might be some room for possible interpretation of what he meant by "what we could know".
@@twannnchwan3449 "Are you out of your mind?"
@@mark4asp He asked- in what way is it legitimate?
@@mark4asp Have you actually _read_ Hicks' book or bothered to watch this video to the end? You said that Hicks' interpretation of Kant was "perfectly legitimate" and then also said that your interpretation. When asked about a specific element of Hicks' misrepresentation of Kant, which you have willingly embraced as your own as well, you then say that you never argued the position. You've just given yourself away as an ignoramus on this topic in the most egregious possible way.
Tfw when you read so much Ayn Rand that you start thinking KANT is counter-Enlightenment.
Hicks says that Kant was the "first step" to what later became postmodernism
Eduardo Biesczad as someone who believes in dialectics, that is of course a sense in which that’s true. But it’s true of every major western philosopher in that all subsequent western philosophies are antitheses and syntheses of what came before. But beyond that very vague almost trivial sense in which it’s of course true, I fail to see how his work can at all be read as affirming the ideas that would later become postmodernism. Obviously postmodernism is a response to modernism so any modern or enlightenment philosopher has an impact on it, but mostly as a thing to argue against or deviate from.
Speak to an Objectevist...
You'll find them to be the most preumpteos and arbitrary people around.
Ironic.
Their also very intellectually snobbish and cultish.
@@eduardobiesczad4924 And that's exact
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 I have no idea how an objectivist could come close to the presumptuousness, arbitrariness, cult like behavior, and intellectual snobbery of an intersectionalist.
BOTH BALD MEN!! BALD GUY THEORY DETECTED
It almost as though Hicks started with a conclusion mashed the pieces until it fit his narrative and then J.P. recommended the book knowing his followers wouldn’t read it or fact check if they did.🤔
31:15 Also Wittgensteinian fideism.
That's always fun to mention because people (Partially wrongly) attribute Wittgenstein as being a logical positivist and a "destroyer of metaphysics"
Yet Wittgensteinian fideism literally talks about how faith isn't rational at its basis and doesn't need empirical grounding because usually these faith based claims (such as God or even that the world exists) effect the empirical data in such a way that simply observing the empirical data wouldn't say anything about the faith claim.
Wittgenstein clearly developed a form of solipsism in his major work and later he developed a fairly sceptical philosophy of semantics. Russel and others completely misunderstood him.
@@MrDzoni955 good thing I'm not taking Russell's view then. And good thing I'm referring to his later philosophy, specifically the beetle in the box part. And to say he "clearly" argued for solipsism (even in TLP) is debatable
Yes, Russell saw him exactly as a logical positivist and a "destroyer of metaphysics" which frustrated Wittgenstein.
I think Tractatus is completely solipsistic. It argues that the world consists of facts as of semantical structures with truth values and that we can only understand that which we can put into those semantics. And his point is that there are things in the word beyond our approach and we should never talk about them because we can't think about them. You can clearly talk only about things you can think about because the language is the border of the mind. And he ditched this view later in Investigations.
Outstanding.
I’d seen a few other critiques of Hicks and this is a great addition to them. Very systematic. A fascinating thing is despite the way you rightly point out how Hicks would condemn Peterson the more I hear Peterson the more it seems this is his only source for his bizarre understanding of Postmodernism. But then since, I think, he shares some political beliefs with Hicks perhaps that shouldn’t surprise.
Almost like conflating POMO with feminism and anti-colonialism is part of an ideological project protecting a narrow, white, male centric understanding of what's real
Blockbird I think it is exactly that. And there are a lot of narrow, white, males who lap it up uncritically.
There is an overlap between feminism and POMO tho. Not from the postmodern side but from the feminist side that adopts POMO arguments (just like some creationists do)
Onlyhas99 There is subsection of feminism that uses Postmodernism however the vast majority of feminists (liberal and radical feminists) don’t. What is being done is the attempt to put all feminism under one blanket and present it as postmodern. For example, of how Hicks classified radical feminists as postmodern in the first few pages of his book.
rugbyguy59
From what I have read, most of nowadays "radical feminism" is more or less based on POMO thought. Judith Butler was heavily influenced by Foucault and the practice of "self-identification" is based on the notion that there is no objective basis for gender or race etc. and that are solely constructed by discourse.
Little fun fact: I don't know if this actually translates into english well but "critique of pure reason" is in its original german title "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" something like a pun, as it could also be read as "pure reasons' critique (of something)".
so, the usual "postmodernism is everything lefty/bad"
Communism is murder.
more like postmodernism is nothing.
@@vajoynus cry
@@vajoynus Is that the best memetic phrase you have?
Here are some good ones to use as templates:
Labour is theft
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Taxation is theft
Abortion is murder
Capitalism is freedom
Venezuela
"communism is murder" just doesn't compare.
@@onehallyu4312, you can't stand a month in socialism.
29 minutes in: "This brings me to my first major point." 😂 Never change 👍🏾
Tfw a book is so full of bullshit you need half an hour's worth of contextualization before you can get to your analysis.
I knew at once that Hicks was a sloppy scholar and shallow thinker when I heard him describe Hegel as a pantheist.(?!) Great video by the way, I love listening to people who know what they are talking about. Such a nice change.
Sloppy: post modernists. 😊
Teaching works beside the canon? MADNESS!!! MADNESS!! I TELL YOU
Thanks for doing this, I'm a great fan of Peterson the psychologist, but get regularly frustrated with Peterson the philosopher. This is the most in-depth, well reasoned response to one of his larger missteps that I've come across.
Reading Hicks is one of Peterson's "larger missteps"?
As a psychologist, I'd say he is no psychologist
@@Me_ThatsWho Dude, read a single one of his papers on psychometrics. Man was near the top of that field in his prime.
@@Enragedguy24 academic psychologist- okay
I was so happy when I saw the Roderick clips, such an excellent teacher. Also, an impressive and encompassing video my friend.
Wait, I SHOULDN'T bring forth monsters? DAMN! Igor, stop the experiment!
I'm not academically trained in philosophy, and I wanted to read this book to understand postmodernism - away from Jordan Peterson's assailing critique of it. Thank you for the informative review. Consider me informed.
Literally every weird bugbear that Stephen Hicks has, particularly with respect to Kant and religion in philosophy, can be explained as him parroting Ayn Rand in the most doctrinaire fashion possible. I swear, for all that Randroids talk a big game about individualism, they really have a woeful dearth of independent opinions.
Thank you so much for this video. I read this book on a whim because I was taking an introductory humanities class, and I initially thought it was meant to be an unbiased explanation. As I read, I became increasingly frustrated with the author and the conclusions he was reaching. As soon as I was done, I looked for a solid critique of this book, and this video certainly gets the job done.
Hicks' book is a criticism of nearly all Western philosophy post-Rousseau. Not detailed, but honing in on his criticism of Western subjectivism. By implication, it's also a denouncement of much scholarship going on the the Academy today. So the hate of Hicks has to be seen in that light: intellectual rentiers defending their turf.
@@mark4aspyeah, the issue is, the self-professed post modernists Ive encountered seem to hold views that basically dispense with the foundations of my civilization. It just seems like trash philosophy.....chaos.
@@doubtshadow1 That sounds like Hicks!
I think Hicks is worth reading, but not as an introduction to pomo, since he's biased against it; as I am. I think a better introduction would be selected readings of
(1) Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, some of Lacan's feminist critics, Baudrillard, ...
(2) Of course, than means you also need an introduction to the thinkers who inspired them, and which they rebelled against: the French Humanist Marxists & Existentialism, French Post-Kantians, the Annales School, Structuralism, Semiology, Post-Structuralism, Freud, Nietzsche, Hegel.
(3) Thirdly, you need to read the critics of pomo.
I don't think secondary sources are a good introduction. Your professors should've given you such a list of primary readings: the bare bones of pomo. Do not blame Hicks - blame your professors and lecturers.
@@doubtshadow1 I studied philosophy part-time. Back then, I met many people with philosophy degrees; but not one called themselves a "postmodernist"; yet decades ago many told me that we now lived in Postmodernity, or a "postmodern society". Like those telling us now: "we live in a post-truth society". None of them seem capable of debating that claim. None of them will. There's definitely a lot of people lying to us today; they live in an anti-truth society. Why? Isaiah Berlin wrote a book called "The Crooked Timber of Humanity". That's a good description of people. There are too many psychopaths and anti-social people about. Some hide themselves well. Some of them will bend reality to tell any lie which advances them. It's always been that way. It always will be like that. Does the existence of a minority of psychopaths force the rest of us to be so? Not one bit.
I'm personally still an Enlightenment skeptic. One does NOT have to believe in "grand narratives" to hold to Enlightenment values; one need not even be a modernist. Enlightenment skepticism forces one to adopt some ethics. The ethics of the "golden rule" - treat others as you would want to be treated by them. It favours cosmopolitanism over localism and identity. It's epistemology is empirical. It's ferociously critical of lies. Why am I NOT a socialist, conservative, green or liberal? Well I am socially 'liberal' but I cannot abide politicians who promote lies; that includes way too many: socialists, a conservatives, greens and liberals.
It sounds like the trouble with reading Hicks, is that Hicks doesn't read.
It seems his biggest meta-misunderstanding is the belief that all philosophers from a similar time period or even the same school had the same ideas.
I don't understand how anyone can think for a second, for example, that Marxists all agree with each other. Have they met Marxists?
Psshh. Your blowing the cover. We don't want any people thinking Marxist can rational/reasonable people
I agree with the comment below. Thank you for taking time out of your life to provide what is often missing from TH-cam: scholarship. Your content is excellent.
Also “explaining postmodernism” implies a book you pick up for an accessible intro. But that isn’t Hicks’ intent. He’s attacking it, which should dictate a different title. In other words, he is trying to trick the general consumer into buying it so he can poison the well
And the entire book cover with all the names on the front imply that this is something that could have been used as a textbook. However, as Cuck Philosophy points out, using this as a textbook would easily get you a failing grade
so what,you want less sales from your own book?,that seems to be a stupid idea
holy shit i love Rick Roderick
Being a subscriber to goodism, I very much appreciate the breakdown you provide. As others have said, it is a public service.
"So he realized that we need to decide which has priority [reason or religion] - Kant firmly choose religion." For that sentence, my dear friend, you've earned a year in a re-education camp.
I really appreciate long, in depth content. Thank you for taking all this time, for the content and the documentation!
Peterson just interviewed Hicks again, and Hicks said that he was about to do some podcasts to answer some criticisms. I have previously emailed both Peterson and Hicks this video, but Hicks said that he wouldn’t watch it as friends had called it a hit piece and hack work.
I think that some of the confusion is simply that they are talking mainly about the activist disciplines which aren’t necessarily “post modernism”, but we know their typical argumentation, and I don’t think the Marxist label is incorrect.
Well, if Hicks and Peterson can't debate/respond to thoughtful criticism because their friends dismissed it as "piece and hack work", this is utterly disappointing and also revealing about what is important to them (keep criticism to their ideas away from their fan base). A pity