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This is the fourth and final part of my synopsis and discussion of Stephen R.C. Hicks's book, Explaining Postmodernism. The first three parts can be found here:This part looks at the final chapter of the book, Postmodern Strategy. The first five paragraphs are a brief recap to this point and you can skip ahead to the sub-heading if you've already read the previous parts.
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| Stephen Hicks (photo by Serche) |
But philosophical opposition to the enlightenment developed on two fronts, epistemologically and politically. The epistemological counter-Enlightenment is rooted in Kant and has evolved into various forms of unreason over the last two centuries. Politically, the counter-Enlightenment embraced collectivism against individualism, socialism over capitalism.
The political counter-Enlightenment split into left and right factions, the right embracing tribalism and nationalism, while the left clung to a universalist ideal.
After the failure of Marxism, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, leftists were in a quandary and so began a slow disintegration of socialist ideals. The end of poverty was being achieved by capitalism, so relativism became the new ideal. Not bringing the poor up but bringing the rich down became the mantra. Later wealth itself became the enemy. And leftist politics morphed into identity politics and radical environmentalism.
The previous three parts of my account of Hicks's book cover all this in a fair amount of detail. You may want to read them before continuing if you haven't already done so.
Postmodern Strategy
With the background set, Hicks is now ready to answer the question posed early in the book, "Why has a leading segment of the political Left adopted skeptical and relativist epistemological strategies?"
Language is the key, argues Hicks. "Moderns and postmoderns differ not only about content when arguing particular issues in philosophy, literature, and law; they also differ in the methods by which they employ language."
Modern realists use language as a tool of cognition and use the findings of cognition to serve as a guide to action. Postmodernist anti-realists are interested only in action. They disdain cognition completely.
Two key concepts emerge in postmodernism, unmasking and rhetoric.
Unmasking is not simply a way of understanding metaphor and nuance in language. For the postmodernist, it is more fundamental. It is not even the difference between subjective and objective beliefs. To acknowledge the subjective is to tacitly acknowledge the objective so postmodernism rejects them both. Ultimately there is nothing under the mask. Just language and more language, all of it sound and fury signifying nothing. A nihilist epistemology.
In common sense usage, rhetoric is the art of persuasion or argument - using reason to present facts and/or opinions to others. It is reality based.
But because the postmodernist rejects the cognitive component of language, "rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition." It has nothing to do with truth or falseness.
Discussing Richard Rorty, the most moderate of the four leading postmodernists, Hicks notes that he promotes language as a tool for resolving conflicts between groups. Rorty favors empathy, sensitivity and toleration.
For his more radical compatriots, however, "using language as a tool of conflict resolution is not on their horizon". For them, "language is primarily a weapon."
"The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, and the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language," Hicks avers.
The final move is to join this view of language as a weapon with Leftist politics. As discussed in Part 3, the utter failure of socialism "has been a disaster" for the Left. And even today, events like the shambles and oppression that socialism has created in Venezuela continue to run counter to the socialist dream. "The preponderance of logic and evidence has gone against socialism."
Now a modernist would heed the admonition that those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, acknowledge mistakes, and move on. Postmodernists, however, reject notions of truth and responsibility. In the words of Richard Rorty, quoted in the book, "I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t care much about our past sins."
Elaborating on this, Hicks brilliantly notes a strong parallel between religion and socialism as it relates to philosophy. Quoting Hicks:
But this strategy merely serves as a rationale for continuing to believe in socialism. To continue the fight against capitalism takes more than that.
Hicks continues with an intriguing discussion of the inherent contradictions of postmodernism, to whit: postmodernism adopts a subjectivist and relativist position on issues yet draws absolutist conclusions on that same issue. For example, the relativist position that "all cultures are equally deserving of respect" but the absolutist position that "Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad".
He also notes inherent contradictions between postmodern beliefs and reality. For example, "They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without."
This begs the question, notes Hicks, of which is primary - the relativism or the absolutism. There are three possibilities, he says - relativism is primary, absolutism is primary, or they simply don't care about the contradictions at all.
He rejects the first arguing that if relativism is primary, you would see right wing postmodernists, but all of them are of the left.
Relativism, he concludes, is a tool in the Leftist arsenal, a tool empowered by postmodernism. They aim to undermine reason by appealing to relativism. He compares it to religious fanatics defending Creationism.
"Postmodernists, wearing their multiculturalist garb and saying that all cultures are equal, are like those creationists who say that all they want is equal time for evolutionism and creationism," notes Hicks, "Creationists will sometimes argue that creationism and evolutionism are equally scientific, or equally religious, and that they should therefore be treated equally and given equal time. Do creationists really believe that? Is equal time all that they want? Of course not. Creationists are fundamentally opposed to evolution - they are convinced that it is wrong and evil, and if they were in power they would suppress it. However, as a short-term tactic, as long as they are on the losing side of the intellectual debate, they will push intellectual egalitarianism and argue that nobody really knows the absolute truth. The same strategy holds for the Machiavellian postmodernists - they say they want equal respect for all cultures, but what they really want in the long run is to suppress the liberal capitalist one."
This cultural relativism, Hicks continues, is evident in postmodernist attempts to discredit or marginalize the great books of Western civilization. "If you are a Left-wing graduate student or professor in literature or law and you are confronted with the Western legal or literary canon, you have two choices," he writes, "You can take on the opposing traditions, have your students read the great books and the great decisions, and argue with them in your classes. That is very hard work and also very risky - your students might come to agree with the wrong side. Or you can find a way to dismiss the whole tradition, so that you can teach only books that fit your politics."
The method for dismissing material you disapprove of is Jacques Derrida's notions of deconstruction, widely used in postmodernist discussions of art and literature. "Deconstruction allows you to dismiss whole literary and legal traditions as built upon sexist or racist or otherwise exploitative assumptions. It provides a justification for setting them aside."
As noted above, the question arises of which is dominant in postmodernism: relativism is primary, absolutism is primary, or they simply don't care about the contradictions at all. The primacy of relativism was dismissed because of the complete absence of right wing postmodernists. The discussion above considers relativism and deconstruction as weapons in a battle where leftist absolutism is primary.
But Hicks now considers the insidious idea that contradictions don't matter to the postmodernist. "Nihilism," he says, "is close to the surface in the postmodern intellectual movement in a historically unprecedented way."
The seventies, as noted earlier, saw the rise of violence as a means to an end in the leftist pantheon. "From the Reign of Terror to Lenin and Stalin, to Mao and Pol Pot, to the up-surge of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, the far Left has exhibited repeatedly a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends and exhibited extreme frustration and rage when it has failed."
From there it is a short step to nihilism. Nietzsche summed it up nicely. "When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, 'May the whole world perish!' This repulsive emotion is the pinnacle of envy, whose implication is 'If I cannot have something, no one can have anything, no one is to be anything!'"
This is Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment, which is "close to the English 'resentment,' but with a more curdled bitterness, more seething and poisoned and bottled up for a long time."
Hicks elaborates on this idea to conclude that postmodernists are consumed by self-loathing and their only out is hatred for the world. "Hate as a chronic condition leads to the urge to destroy," he says. Further he suggests that it is not just politics that has failed in the eyes of the postmodernists. Everything has. The world is meaningless, a big cipher. Nothing. They don't even value themselves.
The postmodernists find themselves "surrounded by an Enlightenment world that does not understand. The postmodernists find themselves confronting a world dominated by liberalism and capitalism, by science and technology, by people who still believe in reality, in reason, and in the greatness of human potential."
So the postmodernist sets out to destroy it the only way it knows how, with words. "The contemporary Enlightenment world prides itself on its commitment to equality and justice, its open-mindedness, its making opportunity available to all, and its achievements in science and technology. The Enlightenment world is proud, confident, and knows it is the wave of the future. This is unbearable to someone who is totally invested in an opposed and failed outlook. That pride is what such a person wants to destroy," writes Hicks.
"The best target to attack is the Enlightenment’s sense of its own moral worth. Attack it as sexist and racist, intolerantly dogmatic, and cruelly exploitative. Undermine its confidence in its reason, its science and technology. The words do not even have to be true or consistent to do the necessary damage."
The Enlightenment worldview remains dominant. But it was articulated and defended "only incompletely" says Hicks. What is needed is nothing short of a new renaissance of Enlightenment thought. A new commitment to realism, reason and individualism.
"Completing the articulation and defense of those premises," concludes Hicks, " is therefore essential to maintaining the forward progress of the Enlightenment vision and shielding it against postmodern strategies."
This is a masterful book, a sweeping history of philosophy of the last two centuries. It is clearly and passionately written. It should be must-reading for any libertarian, indeed must-reading for any moderate person whether conservative, liberal or moderate socialist who loves life, loves reason, loves and admires achievement, and values science and progress.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. One of the top ten books I've read in the last twenty years.
Previous posts on this topic
Book Review: Explaining Postmodernism Part 1 Book Review: Explaining Postmodernism Part 2 Book Review: Explaining Postmodernism Part 3
Language is the key, argues Hicks. "Moderns and postmoderns differ not only about content when arguing particular issues in philosophy, literature, and law; they also differ in the methods by which they employ language."
Modern realists use language as a tool of cognition and use the findings of cognition to serve as a guide to action. Postmodernist anti-realists are interested only in action. They disdain cognition completely.
Two key concepts emerge in postmodernism, unmasking and rhetoric.
Unmasking is not simply a way of understanding metaphor and nuance in language. For the postmodernist, it is more fundamental. It is not even the difference between subjective and objective beliefs. To acknowledge the subjective is to tacitly acknowledge the objective so postmodernism rejects them both. Ultimately there is nothing under the mask. Just language and more language, all of it sound and fury signifying nothing. A nihilist epistemology.
In common sense usage, rhetoric is the art of persuasion or argument - using reason to present facts and/or opinions to others. It is reality based.
But because the postmodernist rejects the cognitive component of language, "rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition." It has nothing to do with truth or falseness.
Discussing Richard Rorty, the most moderate of the four leading postmodernists, Hicks notes that he promotes language as a tool for resolving conflicts between groups. Rorty favors empathy, sensitivity and toleration.
For his more radical compatriots, however, "using language as a tool of conflict resolution is not on their horizon". For them, "language is primarily a weapon."
"The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, and the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language," Hicks avers.
The final move is to join this view of language as a weapon with Leftist politics. As discussed in Part 3, the utter failure of socialism "has been a disaster" for the Left. And even today, events like the shambles and oppression that socialism has created in Venezuela continue to run counter to the socialist dream. "The preponderance of logic and evidence has gone against socialism."
Now a modernist would heed the admonition that those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, acknowledge mistakes, and move on. Postmodernists, however, reject notions of truth and responsibility. In the words of Richard Rorty, quoted in the book, "I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t care much about our past sins."
Elaborating on this, Hicks brilliantly notes a strong parallel between religion and socialism as it relates to philosophy. Quoting Hicks:
- Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau)
- Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism).
- Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism).
- Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation).
- Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).
But this strategy merely serves as a rationale for continuing to believe in socialism. To continue the fight against capitalism takes more than that.
Hicks continues with an intriguing discussion of the inherent contradictions of postmodernism, to whit: postmodernism adopts a subjectivist and relativist position on issues yet draws absolutist conclusions on that same issue. For example, the relativist position that "all cultures are equally deserving of respect" but the absolutist position that "Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad".
He also notes inherent contradictions between postmodern beliefs and reality. For example, "They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without."
This begs the question, notes Hicks, of which is primary - the relativism or the absolutism. There are three possibilities, he says - relativism is primary, absolutism is primary, or they simply don't care about the contradictions at all.
He rejects the first arguing that if relativism is primary, you would see right wing postmodernists, but all of them are of the left.
Relativism, he concludes, is a tool in the Leftist arsenal, a tool empowered by postmodernism. They aim to undermine reason by appealing to relativism. He compares it to religious fanatics defending Creationism.
"Postmodernists, wearing their multiculturalist garb and saying that all cultures are equal, are like those creationists who say that all they want is equal time for evolutionism and creationism," notes Hicks, "Creationists will sometimes argue that creationism and evolutionism are equally scientific, or equally religious, and that they should therefore be treated equally and given equal time. Do creationists really believe that? Is equal time all that they want? Of course not. Creationists are fundamentally opposed to evolution - they are convinced that it is wrong and evil, and if they were in power they would suppress it. However, as a short-term tactic, as long as they are on the losing side of the intellectual debate, they will push intellectual egalitarianism and argue that nobody really knows the absolute truth. The same strategy holds for the Machiavellian postmodernists - they say they want equal respect for all cultures, but what they really want in the long run is to suppress the liberal capitalist one."
This cultural relativism, Hicks continues, is evident in postmodernist attempts to discredit or marginalize the great books of Western civilization. "If you are a Left-wing graduate student or professor in literature or law and you are confronted with the Western legal or literary canon, you have two choices," he writes, "You can take on the opposing traditions, have your students read the great books and the great decisions, and argue with them in your classes. That is very hard work and also very risky - your students might come to agree with the wrong side. Or you can find a way to dismiss the whole tradition, so that you can teach only books that fit your politics."
The method for dismissing material you disapprove of is Jacques Derrida's notions of deconstruction, widely used in postmodernist discussions of art and literature. "Deconstruction allows you to dismiss whole literary and legal traditions as built upon sexist or racist or otherwise exploitative assumptions. It provides a justification for setting them aside."
As noted above, the question arises of which is dominant in postmodernism: relativism is primary, absolutism is primary, or they simply don't care about the contradictions at all. The primacy of relativism was dismissed because of the complete absence of right wing postmodernists. The discussion above considers relativism and deconstruction as weapons in a battle where leftist absolutism is primary.
But Hicks now considers the insidious idea that contradictions don't matter to the postmodernist. "Nihilism," he says, "is close to the surface in the postmodern intellectual movement in a historically unprecedented way."
The seventies, as noted earlier, saw the rise of violence as a means to an end in the leftist pantheon. "From the Reign of Terror to Lenin and Stalin, to Mao and Pol Pot, to the up-surge of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, the far Left has exhibited repeatedly a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends and exhibited extreme frustration and rage when it has failed."
From there it is a short step to nihilism. Nietzsche summed it up nicely. "When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, 'May the whole world perish!' This repulsive emotion is the pinnacle of envy, whose implication is 'If I cannot have something, no one can have anything, no one is to be anything!'"
This is Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment, which is "close to the English 'resentment,' but with a more curdled bitterness, more seething and poisoned and bottled up for a long time."
Hicks elaborates on this idea to conclude that postmodernists are consumed by self-loathing and their only out is hatred for the world. "Hate as a chronic condition leads to the urge to destroy," he says. Further he suggests that it is not just politics that has failed in the eyes of the postmodernists. Everything has. The world is meaningless, a big cipher. Nothing. They don't even value themselves.
The postmodernists find themselves "surrounded by an Enlightenment world that does not understand. The postmodernists find themselves confronting a world dominated by liberalism and capitalism, by science and technology, by people who still believe in reality, in reason, and in the greatness of human potential."
So the postmodernist sets out to destroy it the only way it knows how, with words. "The contemporary Enlightenment world prides itself on its commitment to equality and justice, its open-mindedness, its making opportunity available to all, and its achievements in science and technology. The Enlightenment world is proud, confident, and knows it is the wave of the future. This is unbearable to someone who is totally invested in an opposed and failed outlook. That pride is what such a person wants to destroy," writes Hicks.
"The best target to attack is the Enlightenment’s sense of its own moral worth. Attack it as sexist and racist, intolerantly dogmatic, and cruelly exploitative. Undermine its confidence in its reason, its science and technology. The words do not even have to be true or consistent to do the necessary damage."
The Enlightenment worldview remains dominant. But it was articulated and defended "only incompletely" says Hicks. What is needed is nothing short of a new renaissance of Enlightenment thought. A new commitment to realism, reason and individualism.
"Completing the articulation and defense of those premises," concludes Hicks, " is therefore essential to maintaining the forward progress of the Enlightenment vision and shielding it against postmodern strategies."
This is a masterful book, a sweeping history of philosophy of the last two centuries. It is clearly and passionately written. It should be must-reading for any libertarian, indeed must-reading for any moderate person whether conservative, liberal or moderate socialist who loves life, loves reason, loves and admires achievement, and values science and progress.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. One of the top ten books I've read in the last twenty years.
Previous posts on this topic
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