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  • Well, I’m speaking today with Dr. Stephen Hicks, who is a professor of philosophy in

  • the Department of Philosophy at Rockford University in Illinois. Professor Hicks has written a

  • bookhe’s written several booksbut he’s written one in particular that I wanted

  • to talk to him about today called Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from

  • Rousseau to Foucault, which was published a fair while ago now, in 2004, but I think

  • has become even more pertinent and relevant today.

  • I have talked a lot to my viewers about your book, and so let’s talk about Postmodernism

  • and its relationship with Neo-Marxism. So maybe you could tell the viewers here a little

  • more about yourself and how you got interested in this.

  • Well, I finished graduate school in philosophy in the early 90s, originally from Canada,

  • born in Toronto. At that point Pittsburgh and Indiana had the two strongest philosophy

  • of science and logic programs, and that’s what I was interested in at the time. And

  • so upon a professor’s recommendation, I ended up at Indiana, and it worked out very

  • nicely for me.

  • So most of my graduate work was actually in epistemology, philosophy of science, logic,

  • some cognitive science issues as well. So a lot of the epistemological and philosophical/linguistic

  • issues that come up in Postmodernismthe groundwork so to speak was laid for that.

  • When I finished grad school and started teaching full-time, came to Rockford University. I

  • was teaching in an honors program, and the way that program worked wasit was essentially

  • a Great Books programand so it was like getting a second education, wonderfully. But

  • the way it was done was that each course was taught by two professors to our honor students.

  • So the professors would be from different departments, so I was paired with literature

  • professors, history professors, and so on. And this was now the middle of the 90s.

  • I started to hear about thinkers I had not read. I’d kind-of heard about them, but

  • now I was reading them more closely and finding that in history and literature and sociology

  • and anthropology, names like Derrida and Foucault and the others, if not omnipresent, were huge

  • names. So I realized I had a gap in my education to fill. So I started reading deeply in them.

  • My education in some ways was broad in the history of philosophy but narrow at the graduate

  • school level and I had focused mostly on Anglo-American philosophy, so my understanding of the Continental

  • traditions was quite limited. But by the time I got to the end of the 90s, I realized there

  • was something significant going on coming out of Continental philosophy. And that’s

  • where the book [published 2004] came out of. When you say significant, what do you mean

  • by that? Do you mean intellectually? Do you mean socially? Politically? There’s lots

  • of different variants ofsignificant.”When you say significant, what do you mean by that?

  • Do you mean intellectually? Do you mean socially? Politically? There’s lots of different variants

  • ofsignificant.” At that point, “intellectually.” This

  • was still in the 1990s so postmodernism was not yet (outside of, say, art) a cultural

  • force, but it was strongly an intellectual force in that. At that point, young Ph.D.s

  • coming out of sociology, literary criticism, some sub-disciplines in the law (if youre

  • getting Ph.D. in the law), historiography and so on, and certainly in departments in

  • philosophy still dominated by Continental traditional philosophy: almost all of them

  • are primarily being schooled in what we now call postmodern thinkers, so the leading gurus

  • are people like Derrida, Lyotard, from whom we get the label post-modern condition, Foucault

  • and the others. So maybe you could walk us through what you

  • learned, because people are unfamiliar ... I mean, you were advanced in your education,

  • including in philosophy, and still recognized your ignorance, say, with regards to postmodern

  • thinking, so that’s obviously a condition that is shared by a large number of people.

  • Postmodernism is one of those words like Existentialism that covers an awful lot of territory, and

  • so maybe we could zero in on exactly what that means, and who these thinkers were: Derrida,

  • Foucault, and Lyotard, and what you learned about them.

  • Fair enough. Well, all of the thinkers you just namedthey think broadly, they think

  • strategically, and they do have a very strong historical perspective on their disciplines,

  • and at the same time they are trying to assess where they think we are culturally, politically,

  • sociallyand all of them are making a very dramatic claim: that to some extent or in

  • some way Modernism has either ended or it has reached its nadir, or all of thekind

  • of the pathologies and negative traits within the modern world are reaching a culmination

  • in their generation, and so it’s time for us to both recognize that Modernism has come

  • to an end, and that we need some sort of new intellectual framework, a post-modern-like

  • framework. And the Modernism that theyre criticizing,

  • how would you characterize that? That’s Enlightenment values? Scientific rationalism?

  • How would you characterize it, exactly? All of those would be elements of it. But

  • then of course there are some discipline-specific differences: so literature people and philosophy

  • people and historians will use Modernism slightly differently. But the idea at core is that

  • if you look at the pre-modern worldessentially the world of the Middle Ages, saythat that

  • was itself broken up by a series of revolutions: the Renaissance, Reformation, Counter Reformation,

  • early scientific revolutionsand all of this is going on in historically short chunks

  • of time: 1500s and 1600s.

  • And so if you look at both the intellectual world and the social world, comparing, say,

  • the 1400s with the 1700s, culturally and intellectually youre in a different universe at that point.

  • So the features then of the modern worldnow I’m going to use my philosophical labels

  • hereare that we are now naturalistic in our thinking. We are no longer primarily supernaturalistic

  • in our thinking. So we might still be open to the idea that there’s a God or some sort

  • of supernatural dimension, the way Deists are, but first and foremost were taking

  • the natural world as a more or less self-contained, self-governing world that operates according

  • to cause and effect, and were going to study it in its terms.

  • Were not seeing the natural world as derivative of a “higherworld or that everything

  • that happens in the natural world is part ofGod’s planwhere we read omens

  • and so forth into everything.

  • So metaphysically then there’s been a revolution: Were naturalistic.

  • Epistemologicallyin terms of knowledgethere also has been a revolution. How do we know

  • the important truths? How do we acquire the beliefs that were fundamentally going to

  • commit our lives to? Well, by the time we become Moderns we take experience seriously,

  • personal experience. We do that more rigorously and were developing scientific method (the

  • way of organizing the data), were taking logic and all the sophisticated tools of rationality

  • and developing those increasingly ...

  • And so our opposition then is: Either you know something because you can experience

  • it and verify it for yourself, or we've done the really hard work of scientific method

  • and as a result of what comes out of that, that’s what we can call knowledge or our

  • best approximation to that.

  • And that’s also revolutionary because the prior intellectual framework was much more

  • intellectually authoritarian in its framework. You would accept in the Catholic tradition

  • the authority of the Church. And who are you to question the authority of the Church? And

  • who are you to mouth empirical-rational arguments against the authority of the Church?

  • Or, you take the authority of Scripture, or you accept on faith that you've had a mystical

  • revelation of some sort.

  • So, in all of those cases you have non-rational epistemologies that are dominating intellectual

  • discourse. That is all by and large swept away in the modern world.

  • Okay, so prior to the emergence of the modern world, well say, people are dominated essentially

  • by their willingness to adhere to a shared tradition and that shared tradition is somewhat

  • tyrannically enforced. But there’s no real alternative in terms of epistemology [epistemology:

  • the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope: the investigation

  • of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion] let’s say. And then as the modern

  • world emerges, people discover the technologies of science and the value of rigorously applied

  • method and the comparison of shared experiences and that makes us technologically powerful

  • in a new way and philosophically different from what we were before. ]

  • Yes, the shared tradition phrase that you added there, that’s an important one. So

  • I’d say in the early modern world there’s not necessarily a skepticism about shared

  • traditionsso there would be an acceptance of shared traditionsbut the idea is that

  • you would not uncritically accept your tradition. You may accept your tradition, but only after

  • you've thought it through and made your own independent judgment.

  • Okay, okay, so youre elevated to the status of someone who’s capable of taking a stance

  • with regards to the tradition, and assessing its presuppositions and so forth.

  • Absolutely. So there’s an elevation of the individual

  • and the critical intellect along with the elaboration of the scientific method. Okay,

  • so then we might note, perhaps, that that’s a tremendously effective transformation, although

  • maybe it leads in a somewhat nihilistic direction metaphysicallywe can leave that to the

  • side. But it’s a very, very successful revolution, because by the time, at least the beginning

  • of the 20th century comes along, there’s this staggering (and of course before that,

  • the Industrial Revolution), there’s this staggering transformation of technology and

  • technological and conceptual power, and then a stunning increase in the standard of living.

  • And that starts at about 1890, to really move exponentially in the 1890s, or at least to

  • get to the really steep part of the exponential curve. Okay, so that seems to be going well.

  • So what is it that the postmodernists are objecting to precisely?

  • Just on those two issues: (1) the metaphysical naturalism, and then (2) the elevation of

  • kind of a critical empiricism and a belief that we can, through scienceeven not necessarily

  • a science, but social scientists and so onwe can come to understand powerful general principles

  • about humanity and social systems.

  • Those two revolutions both are then subjected to counter-attacks.

  • And again, what happens in this case is there is a revolution. Probably by the time we get

  • to 1800—the height of the Enlightenmentthere are the beginnings of more powerful skeptical

  • traditions that come to be developed, so thinkers are starting to say things like: Well, if

  • scientific method at root is based on the evidence of the senseswe observe the natural

  • world: that’s our first point of contactand then on the basis of that we form abstractions,

  • and then we put those abstractions into propositions, and then we take those propositions and put

  • them in networks that we call theories, and so onso we start to critically examine

  • each of the elements of scientific method, and over time, weaknesses in the existing

  • accounts of how all of thoserational operationswork come to be teased out, and philosophy

  • then starts to go down a more skeptical path.

  • So if, for example, you take perception as fundamentalit’s you know, the individual

  • subject’s first point of contact with the natural worldthen you have to immediately

  • deal with issues of perceptual illusions, or the possibility that people will have hallucinations,

  • or that the way you report your perceptual experience is at odds with how I report my

  • perceptual experience.

  • Tell me if I’ve got this right. So, with the dawning of theEmpirical Age,” let’s

  • say, there’s this idea that you can derive valid information from sense dataespecially

  • if you contrast that sense data rigorously with that of othersokay? So that’s sort

  • of the foundation for the scientific method in some sense.

  • But then—I think this is with Immanuel Kantthere’s an objection to that, which is that, Well,

  • you can’t make the presupposition that that sense data enters your cognitive apparatus,

  • your apparatus of understanding, without a priori structuring, and it seems to me that

  • that’s where the postmodernists really go after the modernists. It’s that, given that

  • you have to have a very complex perceptual structure (that modern people might say was

  • instantiated as a consequence of biological evolution), you can’t make the case that

  • what youre receiving from the external world is something likepure information”:

  • it’s always subjectto some very-difficult-to-delimit degreetointerpretation.”

  • And then you also have to take into account the fact of that a priori structure and what

  • it might mean for your concept ofobjective reality.” And that’s Kant, I think, if

  • I’ve got that right.

  • Right. Well, the postmodernists will use both of those strategies: (1) the anti-empiricist

  • strategy, and (2) the anti-rationalist strategy. And what’s important about Kant is that

  • Kant is integrating both of thoseantistrategies. So in the generations before Kant,

  • the skeptical arguments about perception which were directed against the empiriciststhe

  • empiricists want to say that everything is based on observational data, but then if you

  • don’t have good answers about hallucinations and relativity and illusions and so forth,

  • then it seems like your intellectual structure, whatever it seems to be, if it’s based on

  • probabilistic or possibly faulty perceptual datathen the whole thing is a tottering

  • mess. [Empiricism: the theory stating that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory

  • experience. Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools,

  • guide the scientific method.]

  • And by the time we get to Kant, the Empiricist tradition is largely unable to respond to

  • those kinds of objections. And so Kant is recognizing and saying: All right, weve

  • been trying now for a couple of centuries, we haven’t been able to do so successfullywere

  • not going to be able to do so.

  • Now, you also nicely emphasized that one of the other responses had been on the Rationalist

  • side, which is to say, “Well, no you don’t start with pure empirical datainstead we

  • do have perhaps some innate a priori structures built into the human mindhow they got there,

  • maybe theyre put there by God, maybe theyre put there naturalistically or whateverbut

  • what enables us to have legitimate knowledge is that our empirical data comes in and it

  • is filtered and structured by these pre-existing cognitive structures as well.”

  • Now the problem with that side of the lineand this is also well worked out by the time you

  • get to the Kantiansis to say: Well, if youre starting with in-built cognitive

  • structures, and everything that comes in, so to speak, goes through this structuring

  • machine and youre aware of the outputsbecause that’s what is presented to your mindwell

  • how do you know those in-built structures have anything to do with the way reality actually

  • is out there?

  • It seems like then what you are stuck with is the end result of a subjective processing,

  • and there is no way for you, so to speak, tojump outside of your headto compare

  • the end result with the way the world actually is, independently of how your mind has structured

  • the awareness.

  • So once again, youre stuck in a rather subjective place.

  • And again, the importance of Kant here is then he’s also looking at this more Rationalist

  • tradition and he’s saying, Well look, again weve been trying now for a couple of centuries

  • to work these things out from Descartes to Spinoza, Leibniz and the others, and Rationalism

  • also has reached a dead end, so were not going to be able to do so.

  • So Kant is, in effect, standing at the end of these two traditions and saying, “You

  • know, the skeptics have it right on both sides: both the Empiricist and the Rationalist traditions

  • fail. There is no way for us to objectively come to know an external reality. Were

  • stuck in some sort of deep subjectivism.”

  • Okay, so I don’t know now whether to talk a little bit about the American Pragmatic

  • approach to that, or whether to ... Maybe we should go ahead and continue our discussion

  • of the postmodernists, because theyre developing these claims.

  • Absolutely, and some of the postmodernists do describe themselves as Neo-Pragmatists,

  • like Richard Rorty for example. So yes, that’s exactly a direction that’s worth going.

  • Okay, okay. So my understanding of that, if I was going to defend the Modernist tradition,

  • let’s say, I would say that we have instantiated within us an a priori perceptual structure

  • that’s a consequence of millionsbillions of years for that matterof biological evolution,

  • and it has emerged in tandem with continual correction of its presuppositions by the selection

  • process. But it’s still subject to error because we have a very limited viewpoint as

  • specific individuals, and not only are we limited, but we can also make, you might say,

  • moral errors, and I’ll get back to that, that cloud our judgment.

  • And so, in an attempt toexpand our purviewand rectify those errors, we do two things:

  • (1) We test our hypothesis practically against the world, which is to say, we say, “Here’s

  • a theory of reality.” We act it out. If the theory of reality is sufficiently correct,

  • when we act it out, we get what we want, and then that’s sufficient proof for the validity

  • of the theory. It’s not absolute proof, but it’s sufficient proof. And then the

  • other thing we do (and I think this has been paid attention to much less except by thinkers

  • such as Piaget) is that: (2) We further constrain our presuppositions about reality with the

  • necessity of constructing theories that are also acceptable to the people around us.

  • So they have to be integrate-able within the currently existing social contract, and they

  • have to be functionally appropriate in the external world.

  • And that’s a nice set of constraints, and it seems to me that that, at least in some

  • part, goes a long ways to answering the objections to the limits of the scientific method that

  • have been discussed historically, and which you just summarized.

  • All right, I’m sympathetic to much of what you just went through. In fact a five-point

  • response to the kinds of arguments that have been laid out, where youre actually putting

  • me in the position then of defending the postmodern tradition about how it would undercut each

  • of those components.

  • So, if you take for example evolutionary epistemology [epistemology: investigation into the origin,

  • nature, methods and limits of human knowledge], and you gave a nice sketch of one standard

  • evolutionary epistemological frame in which you say: Maybe we have in-built a priori structures,

  • but we can rely upon them because here we are standing at the long end of hundreds of

  • thousands or millions of years of evolution, and they would not have survived or enabled

  • us to survive had they not served some sort of reliable cognitive role in accurately representing

  • the way the world works.

  • This is actually too early for the postmoderns, although the postmoderns will agree with this.

  • This is to say that all of that kind of begs the question in a very deep way against the

  • kind of skeptical objections that were raising. Because in order to make that paragraph-long

  • description of what evolutionary epistemology is, what I have to do is take for granted

  • basic assumptions, certain truths about the world: that, for example, there is an external

  • world; that we are biological creatures; that we have in-built structures; that those structures

  • are evolutionarily responsive and conditioned by changing forces; and so forth.

  • And if you take those assumptions to be true, then as a consequence or as a conclusion,

  • you can infer that therefore the intellectual products that come out of our cognitive processing

  • are reliable.

  • But where did you get those four premises from? How do you know that there is an external

  • world? How do you know that we are biological creatures? How do you know that evolution

  • is true, with all of the historical knowledge that’s necessary to reach the conclusion

  • that evolution is true? All of that presupposes that we have legitimate cognitive methods

  • to come to understand the world. But our having legitimate cognitive processes to understand

  • the worldthat’s exactly what we are arguing about in the first place, and you can’t

  • just assume that, for then the sake of coming up with some premises that are then in turn

  • going to validate those cognitive processes.

  • So something like that they will say is a big circle or a circular-reasoning problem

  • that evolutionary epistemology finds itself trapped in.

  • Now I think that there are some responses to that, and this is just the firstback

  • and forthon that particular debate. But that is the kind of response that would be

  • there.

  • The third and fourth response (if I’m keeping track accurately) is to say that we also have

  • constraints with respect to ourselves: that if we have a certain set of hypotheses or

  • a certain set of theories and were testing them out, we will accept those that give us

  • what we want,” what I want, so to speak.

  • And I’m also necessarily in a social situation so what I need to do is check my results against

  • the results of others: peer review, experiment replication and so forth.

  • [smiles] ... ability to live in the same household ...

  • [laughs] Yes, absolutely, right? More prosaically, “sharing our frameworks with others,”

  • right? And so on...

  • And so if, so to speakand this is the more Pragmatist orientationif we then say we

  • have a theory or a set of principles or guidelines or whatever, and they do enable me successfully

  • to navigate the world to get what I want, or they do enable me to navigate my social

  • world to get us what we wantthen theyre reliable, true, or some sort ofsuccess

  • label, epistemologically, that were going to give to them.

  • Okay, so let me ask you a question about that. This is a place where I got augured in very

  • badly with Sam Harris when we were discussing metaphysical presumptions. So you knowand

  • I’m confused about this I would say to some degree conceptually because I’m a scientist

  • and certainly operate most of the time under the presupposition of anindependent objective

  • world”—but then I also have some difficulty with the idea that it’s objective truth

  • within which all other truths arenested.” And that’s something that Sam and the people

  • that he represents in some sense are very dead set on insisting.

  • Now it seems to me though that the crux of the matter is something likethe method

  • of proof.” And this strikes me as very important because, “My theory is correct enough if,

  • when I implement it, I get what I wantis not the same as the claimMy theory

  • is true because it’s in accordance with some independently existing objective world.”

  • I mean, both of those things could exist at the same time, but I think the more appropriate

  • claim to make with regards to human knowledge is something like itsbiological functionality,”

  • which is that your knowledge is of sufficient accuracy (which is about the best you can

  • hope for because of your fundamental ignorance) if, when you implement it, it reliably produces

  • the results that are commensurate, say, with your continued existence.

  • Now it seems to me that that’s a reasonable claim from a Darwinian perspective [Charles

  • Darwin, 1809-1882] and it also seems to me that it’s very much in keeping with the

  • claims of the American Pragmatists. And I mean, it’s not like they were radical postmodernists

  • ...

  • Right...

  • ...because they weren’t. But they were trying to solve this problem to some degree of our

  • fundamental ignorance and our inability to be certain about the nature of the reality

  • that surrounds us.

  • Yes, okay. Let’s set aside Sam Harris’s version of this and focus on the Pragmatist

  • tradition here. So, no, youre absolutely right.

  • The Pragmatists, William James [1842-1910], John Dewey [1859-1952], and the others, late

  • 1800s, early 1900s; they are coming a century after the Kantian revolution [Immanuel Kant,

  • 1724-1804], after Hegelianism [G. W. F. Hegel, 1770-1831], and so forthand so they are

  • very much trying to solve this problem. One wayand this is kind of a very American

  • wayis like: Look, maybe the problem with philosophy is that we have been too intellectualizing

  • of cognition, that were not just disembodied brains or disembodied minds that are trying

  • to contemplate abstract truths in some other realm. Maybe what we need to do is understand

  • the mind and cognition as a naturalistic process and that the purpose of knowledge is not to

  • come up with these pure and beautiful Truths that are going to be kind of museum pieces

  • that we will admire, but rather the purpose of knowledge is functional. The purpose of

  • knowledge is to guide action. And so they will then hearken back to the earlier Baconian

  • tradition that knowledge is not an end in itself. As Bacon put it, Francis Bacon [1561-1626]:

  • Knowledge is power, and by its fruits, so to speak, is how you know its worth.

  • Right.

  • And so what we then should do is to see that the test of truth is not whether it meets

  • purely intellectual standards of logic and mathematics, but rather, when we put it into

  • practice, when we act upon it, we actually get good results, or we want the results we

  • want, or I get the results I want. And it can come in more individualistic form or more

  • socialized form.

  • Right, because then we can get on with things, too. Like, despite our ignorance, in some

  • sense.

  • So there are two things which are being packaged here, right? One is to say that knowledge

  • is functional. And that part I think is important and I think it’s a very nice correction

  • by the Pragmatists. It’s not original with them but they are reemphasizing it in the

  • 19th century. Knowledge needs to be put to the test and its ability to enable us to be

  • pragmatic in the real world, is its test.

  • [28:59] There’s a coda to that as well. And I think this is relevant to Thomas Kuhn’s

  • [1922-1996] discussion of scientific revolutions, because Kuhn is often read as positing a sequence

  • of, in some sense, discontinuous revolutions, and that the conceptual structure that characterized

  • oneepoch,” let’s saylike the Medieval epochwas so totally different in its presuppositions

  • from the conceptions that characterized the next epochthat you can't even mediate

  • between them in some sense.

  • Now the reason I’m bringing this up is because Kuhn is at least read as hypothesizing that

  • there’s not any necessaryprogresswhen you make leaps from one conceptual system

  • to another. But if you take this pragmatic approachthe one that we've been outliningit

  • seems to me that you can say, Well, it’s something like this: Your conceptions of the

  • world are more tool-like than objective-truth-like, and tools can have a greater or lesser range

  • of convenience. And so if you come up with a really good toolwhich would also be something

  • that would look objectively true, generally speakingthen that’s something that you

  • can use in almost every situation and it will never fail you. And I would think of something

  • like Newtonian physics in that regard, or even more particularly, quantum mechanics,

  • because it’s never failed us.

  • And so it seems to me the Pragmatic approach in some sense allows you to have your cake

  • and eat it too. You can posit a hierarchy of truths, moving towards absolute truth even,

  • but also retain your belief in your own ignorance and not have to beat the drum too hard about

  • theeternal accuracyof your objective presuppositions.

  • Okay. Again I’m sympathetic I think with about 80 percent of that. But let me put my

  • skeptical hat back on and say how the postmodernists or the critics of Pragmatismcritics really

  • of first-generation Pragmatismwill respond to that. So if we then say: All of these cognitive

  • results … I’m going to rephrase that.

  • Okay.

  • So if were going to assess all of our cognitive results or cognitive hypotheses in terms of

  • their workability, or theirgetting what I wantorwhat we want,” well then

  • the big question we have to turn to is to say, How do we judge whether something works?

  • Yes.

  • Or how do I say that, “It’s good because I get what I wantorWe get what we

  • want.” Well, what is a “want”? And where did thesewantscome from? And why should

  • we acceptwantsanddesiresandachieving certain goalsas our bottom

  • line, so to speak?

  • Right, okay. That’s right. So you can start to question the framework, the validity of

  • the framework within which youre constructing the answer.

  • That’s right. And at this point were reading epistemology [epistemology: the theory

  • of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope: the investigation

  • of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion] “neutrallyso to speak; and

  • moving into normative issues, then the whole status of normative goalsends and the means

  • that are going to enable us to reach those endscomes into play.

  • So if I want to say, “The most important thing is that I”—I’ll put it very baldly

  • here—“I get what I want,” right? And I’m going to assess intellectual structures

  • and beliefs and hypotheses in terms of, “Do they give me what I want?” Well, that sounds

  • already sounds like a fairly normatively subjectivistic standpoint. Like, why should you take your

  • wantsas having some sort of high status that everything has to be evaluated in terms

  • of?

  • Uh huh.

  • And then philosophically we say: Where dowantscome from? And of course there’s

  • a long anthropological and psychological set of literature here. What’s the source of

  • ourwants”? Are they based in biological drives? Are they instinctual? Are they acquired?

  • Are they intellectual? Do they have any relationship to our rational capacities? When I'm acting,

  • should I act on my desires and my wants, and so forth?

  • So there’s that whole tradition, and we have to have a sophisticated theory about

  • how all of that is going to work if were going to say well solve all of these cognitive

  • epistemological issues in terms ofwantsor the satisfaction ofdesiresor the

  • achievement of goalsthe way pragmatists want us to do.

  • And again, it’s fairly easy to imagine what the skeptical argument is likely going to

  • be. If it’s a matter of what I wantwell, isn’t science supposed to be about coming

  • up with general truths or maybe even universal truths?

  • Okay

  • And if it’s immediately going to devolve into whatever individuals want, well then

  • were going to go in fairly scattered directions.

  • Okay, so that also opens up a good point for a segue into the potential link between Neo-Marxism,

  • let’s say, and Postmodernism.

  • Sure.

  • Because maybe you could say: Once you've opened the door to an admission that you can criticize

  • the idea ofwantas a social construct, let’s saywhich is one of the things that

  • you intimated (not the only thing, obviously)—then you open the door to also making the claim

  • that that social construct that governs thewants,” that governs thetruth,”

  • can be governed bypower relationships,” something like that, and then byunfair

  • power relationships.”

  • Exactly.

  • So you can spin off down that aisle.

  • And that’s the other thing I really want to talk to you about, because on the one hand

  • the postmodernists are following this intellectual tradition of the critique of Western thinking,

  • which is exactly in some sense what philosophy should be doing. But in another way, they

  • seem simultaneously to be introducing, almost by sleight of hand, a kind of social critique

  • that has its origin more in political revolution and class-based theory, and they do that under

  • the guise of pure philosophy, in some sense, but with the intent and motivation of something

  • like justifying the social revolution, or continuing the Marxist analysis of power differential.

  • It can go both ways, yes. Right? It is possible to follow the road that weve just been

  • going down, to say, Well, you know, if it’s a matter aboutwhat works for you,’ then

  • that immediately starts to sound too relativistic and subjectivistic and we don’t have an

  • answer to all the weirdos who want to do strange thingsbecause that’s what they want to

  • doso we might introduce as a corrective a socializing of the process.

  • Right.

  • So we might then say, No, it’s not so much what you want as an individual, but rather

  • what we want, and we have to achieve some sort of a consensus here.

  • So that’s a slightly cartoon version, but the difference between William James, who

  • was more individualistic, and John Dewey in the next generation who collectivized things

  • a bit more. So then we have a corrective on all of the individual weirdoswho knows

  • what their desires and goals are going to be?

  • Right.

  • But anyway, of course we just confront the same problem there, as soon as we start doing

  • anthropology, because then if we say: Well, if we relativize it to the social group, when

  • we start looking at different social groups, obviously different social groups have dramatically

  • different wants and needs and desires, and theyve evolved very different traditions.

  • And if it’s a matter of sayingWhat’s true is what works for the group,” there

  • is then no über group or highest group of all groups that has status over all of the

  • others.

  • And if you doand this is the second point that you said exactly rightthen youre

  • saying, Well, no, no, this group’s norms and its goals are better than that group’s

  • goals or norms

  • Right.

  • and so then youre into what the critics are going to callimperialismof the

  • inappropriate form

  • Right, and so that leaves us with our current political situation in some sense, because

  • that idea has been taken tothat’s a logical conclusion, and that logical conclusion

  • has now been instantiated to a large degree as an intellectual and political activist

  • movement, I would say.

  • Right, sure, absolutely. So it can start as an intellectual movement and what were

  • trying to do is some hard-core epistemology [epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially

  • with regard to its methods, validity and scope: the investigation of what distinguishes justified

  • belief from opinion] and we go the Empiricists and the Rationalists and the Kantian revolution

  • and the Pragmatists, right? And now were in the second-generation Pragmatism where

  • we relativize into various cognitive groups and then were just stuck in a kind of group

  • relativism, and in the operational principles socially then is going to be that each group

  • so to speak should stick to itself and not think that it can impose its ideas and its

  • norms on any other group, right? All groups, so to speak, are equal.

  • Yeah, well, at least they have an equal claim to their formulation of the truth. The problem

  • with the postmodern conjunction with Neo-Marxism to me seems to be the acceptance of the idea

  • that there’s an intrinsic moral claim by thedispossessedto the obtaining of

  • status, and that actually constitutes a higher moral calling in and of itself! So theyre

  • swallowing a moral claim in making ituniversalin some sense at the same time they criticize

  • the idea of, say, “general narrativesoruniversal moral claims.”

  • Okay, now that’s also right. That’s the other way to say that. Rather than starting

  • with epistemology and getting to a kind of cultural relativism, you can start, of course,

  • committed to a certain normative [normative: implying, creating, or prescribing a norm

  • or standard] framework or a certain ideological framework (as Marxism is) where youre very

  • critical of one of those traditions, and then the cultural relativism can be a part of that,

  • that you use, to criticize the traditioninternallyso to speak. Now then were explicitly intonot

  • kind ofmeta-ethicsand asking where do we get our ethical principles off the groundbut

  • where do they come from in the first place, but kind of a robustnormativeethics

  • where people have commitments to fairly strong ethical principles and ethical ideals.

  • This is where the debate between, say, Nietzsche and Marx becomes relevant. This is a late

  • 19th century debate. So suppose we say, as both the Marxists do and the Nietzscheans

  • do, let’s say: There is noTruthin any objective sense. All we have is subjectivity

  • and relativity of various sorts, and we have different individuals and different groups,

  • and they are in antagonistic conflict relations with each other, and that means there’s

  • not really going to be any rational and civil resolution [40:04] of these discussions with

  • each other; instead, it all comes down to power.

  • Yeah, and that’s the strange sleight of hand claim there too, because why it has to

  • come down to power? Again that seems to introduce the idea ofnecessary need” ….

  • Okay, okay, yes, all right. That’s another thing. Let’s set that aside just for a moment.

  • Yep, okay.

  • So then we say: Okay, so we have power. And one thing that we can say is: While we don’t

  • think any one individual, or any one group, has a better objective claim to truth or better

  • ideals, it is nonetheless the case that some individuals and groups have more power than

  • others, and so then we have to make our allegiance clear in this unequal power struggle: Are

  • we on the side of those who have more power or are we on the side of those who have less

  • power?

  • And that’s where when we get then a Nietzschean and a Marxianfork in the road.” So the

  • Nietzscheans, following Nietzsche, will say: Look, it’s all about power. We can try on

  • some crude evolutionary thinking here: It’s only by the exercise of power by the stronger,

  • the fitter, the healthier, and so forth, who are willing to impose their power on the weaker

  • and use them for their own ends, that we as individuals and groups are going to make any

  • sort of progress toward the next best thing, whatever that is. So in the power struggle

  • there is no objective morality, no objective truth. We just throw our lot in with the stronger,

  • with the richer, with the more powerful, and say: Whatever it is that they do to advance

  • themselves, that’s the normative best that we can do. And of course there’s a long

  • kind of aristocratic tradition in normative thinking that one can draw on to support that.

  • And then the Marxists of course are just on the other side of that equation, where their

  • sympathies initially are going to be to say, in any power struggle: “Our a priori commitments

  • should always be to the weaker, to those on the losing end of history, those who suffer,”

  • and so forth, and it’s always the bad, rich and powerful people who are oppressing and

  • harming them. And so we throw our lot in with the weaker and were willing to use power,

  • whatever amount of power we have, on behalf of the weaker.

  • Right.

  • And then were just into what I think of as the major false alternative that really

  • has driven much of 20th century intellectual life: Are you a Nietzschean or are you a Marxist?

  • Right, right. Well okay. So now we can get to the crux of the matter here to some degree,

  • because to even engage in that argument means to accept the a priori position, which youve

  • made quite rationally compelling, let’s say, thatIt’s power. It’s power. Because

  • there’s no other way of differentiating between the claims of different groups, it’s

  • power that’s the determining issue.”

  • Yes.

  • But that’s something that I really have a problem with. And I think it’s of crucial

  • importance. Because first of all I think there’s a big difference between power and authority

  • and competence. Those are all not the same thing, because you might be willing to cede

  • greater status to me in some domains if there are things I can do, that you value, that

  • you can’t do. And that’s not power exactly. Power seems to be more that I’m willing

  • to use force to impose my interpretation of the world to get my wants fulfilled on you,

  • and it seems to me that where the Marxists make a huge mistakenot that the Nietzscheans

  • aren’t making mistakes as wellbut where the Marxists make a huge mistake is that they

  • fail to properly differentiate between hierarchies of interpretation that are predicated on tyrannical

  • power, and hierarchies of interpretation that are predicated on authority, competence, and

  • mutual consent.

  • The other issue that they fail to contend withand I believe this is a form of willful

  • blindnessis that it isn’t obviously the case thatevery society is set up equally

  • to only fulfil the desires of the people who are, in principle, situated at the pinnacles

  • of the hierarchies.” I actually don’t think that that’s fundamentally characteristic

  • of the Western tradition, because it has a very strong emphasisweirdly enough, and

  • this is how I think itextractsitself out of the conundrum which accepting a socialized

  • version of truth presents to you: The West does two things: (1) It says, We have a social

  • contract that constrains our views of the world and our actions in it, but (2) that

  • contract is also simultaneously subordinate to the idea of the sovereignty of each individual.

  • And so the social contract then is bound to serve the needs of each individualnot any

  • privileged set of individuals, although sometimes it works out that wayand I don’t believe

  • that the postmodernists have contended with that properly, with their criticism oflogocentrism

  • for example, which was something that characterized Derrida.

  • Cause I think that that … ‘cause I … It doesn’t … it never has seemed to

  • me that what you had with Stalinist Russia and the Marxist view of the world, and what

  • you had on the side of the West, was merely a matter of a difference of opinion between

  • two equally valid socialized modes of interpreting the world, you know? There’s something wrong

  • aboutThere’s something more to the view of the West than what’s embodied in

  • the conflict between, say, capitalism and socialism. Because it could have just been

  • a matter of argumentation and opinion, but I think that that’s faulty.

  • I thought this way in part because of Piaget [Jean Piaget, 1896-1980], you know, because

  • Piaget was interested in what the intrinsic constraints were on a social contract, and

  • he saidand he was trying to address this issue of the insufficiency of want as a tool

  • to justify your claims to truth. That’s when he introduced the idea of the equilibrated

  • state. So, if youre sophisticated, you have to put forward your want and then meet

  • it in a way that will meet it today, and tomorrow, and next month, and next year, and in a decadeso

  • you have to iterate yourself across time, and you have to take all of the iterations

  • of yourself across time with some degree of seriousness, and then you also have to do

  • the same thing as you extend yourself out into the social community. So it has to be

  • what’s good for me nowand repetitively into the future in a manner that’s simultaneously

  • good for you now and simultaneously into the future.

  • Uh huh.

  • And that starts to becomeand he thought about that asthe playable game,” something

  • like that. Thevoluntarily playable game.” And there’s something deep about that, because

  • it includes the idea of iteration, you know, iterated interpretations into the equation,

  • which strikes me as of crucial importance.

  • Okay, yes, right? Again, I count about six very interesting sub-topics built into that,

  • and the latter part is a very nice statement I think of a kind of Enlightenment humanism

  • where were going to take power seriously, but were going to constrain power in a

  • way that respects the individual and simultaneously enables individuals to form mutually beneficial

  • social networks across time, and so on.

  • And I’m very sympathetic to that overall construction. And that comes out of then the

  • first part which is a taxonomy [taxonomy: the science or technique of classification]

  • youre offering about the nature of powerand that taxonomy does differ significantly from

  • both the Marxist and the Nietzschean ones.

  • Now what I’d say is that I think it’s better to take power more neutrally so there’s

  • a continuity with what the physicists do. And my understanding there is that power is

  • just the ability to get work done.

  • Uh hmm.

  • So you can put that in tool and functionality language: Power is what gets you from A to

  • B.

  • Right, right. Which is also … I love that description, because it fits very nicely in

  • with the narrative conceptualization of being, because narratives seem to be descriptions

  • of something likeHow to get from point A to point B.”

  • Right. But it also doesn’t say anything about B and the status of B: How we choose

  • where we should be going, what our ends are, or what our goals areso in that sense power

  • is normatively neutralit’s a means to an end, and that means when we try to evaluate

  • the uses of power, were going to be evaluating power in terms of the ends toward which it

  • is put, if I can end with that preposition there.

  • So nowThen we say: Okay, well, power comes in all kinds of forms. I’m quite happy

  • to say that there’s intellectual power: that’s the ability to use our minds to address

  • and solve certain problems. There’s muscular power: the ability to move physical objects.

  • There’s social power: people respect you and are willing to spend time with you and

  • divert resources to you voluntarily, and so forth. There’s military power; political

  • powerand so we can have a whole set of subspecies of power. And what they all have

  • then in common is in each of those domains there are goals, and having the power enables

  • you to achieve your goals in those domains.

  • Right, and we shouldn’t fall prey to the illusion that there’s necessarily anylike,

  • what would you call it—“unifying matrixthat makes all those different forms of power

  • importantly similar except for the terminology, you know? I meanand this is another thing

  • that bothers me about both the Nietzschean and the Marxist view, is that there’s this

  • proclivity to collapse these multiple modes of power into power itself, and that’s not

  • reasonable because it’s reasonable to note that many of the forms of power that you just

  • described contend against one another, rather than mutually fortify one another. It’s

  • like the balance of power in a polity like the American polity.

  • Yes, I think that’s a deep point that youre making, and I think that both the Marxists

  • and the Nietzscheans do end up collapsing power into a unitary type, and that’s a

  • mistake. But it’s a mistake only if you deny, as both the Marxists and the Nietzscheans

  • do, that there is a deep individuality about the world. So if you think, by contrast, about

  • the kind of individual human-rights-respecting Enlightenment vision that youre articulating,

  • and that I agree with as well: normatively that wants to devolve social power to the

  • individual, and leave individuals with a great deal of self-responsibility and control over

  • their own domain so to speak. And the idea then is that if were going to form social

  • relationships, or any sort of social interaction, it has to be mutually respecting: that I have

  • to respect your control over your domain and you respect my control over my domain, but

  • we agree to share domains, so to speak, voluntarily to a certain point.

  • It also meansand this is a place where I think the postmodernists are really open

  • to, you might say, conceptual assaultis that you know, in order to have that freedom

  • devolve upon the individual in that manner, it also means that the individual has to take

  • responsibility

  • Right.

  • for acting as a locus of power in the world, actual responsibility, and cannot conceive

  • of themselves or act in a manner that only makes them an avatar of a social movement.

  • And I think that part of the perfervid anti-individualism of the radical Left is precisely predicated

  • on that refusal to take responsibility, and I think that’s also reflected in the fact

  • that, by temperament, theyre low intrait conscientiousness,” so it’s deep, it’s

  • not merely an opinion; it’s an expression of something that’s even deeper than opinion.

  • Okay, yes, that phraselocus of responsibility,” “locus of power,” “locus of control”—youre

  • right that the far Left in Marxist and Neo-Marxist form does deny that, but you also find that

  • in the far Right

  • Yes, you find that among ideologues in general.

  • Right. So this is a bit of cartoon intellectual history, but then if you try to trace it to

  • the Marxists on the Left and the Nietzscheans on the Right, both of them do deny that individuals

  • are loci of responsibility. Both of them in their views of human nature have strongly

  • deterministic views. What we can anindividual,” according to both of them, is just a “vehicle

  • through whichoutside forces are flowing,” so to speak. [Determinism: the doctrine that

  • all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will.

  • Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that human beings have no free will

  • and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.]

  • Right. Well, you can also see that in some sense as a perverse consequence of the scientific

  • revolution

  • Yes.

  • because you still see this among modern scientists: It’s like, “Okay, what are

  • the causal forces that regulate human behavior? Okay, there’s two primary sources: Nature/biology

  • and culture.”

  • So it’s the crudeNature vs. Nurturedebate being played out through them, yes.

  • Right! And so in my opinionand I’ve derived this conclusion from studying mythology, mostlythere’s

  • a missing third element there which is whatever it is that constitutes the active force of

  • individual consciousness. And we don’t have a good conceptual schema for that.

  • Right, self-responsibility and being an independent initiator of power instead of merely a responder

  • to other power forces, or a vehicle through which those other power forces operate.

  • Right.

  • So yes, the individualism that is built into Enlightenment humanismyou start to see

  • it developing in Renaissance humanismis to take seriously the notion that individuals

  • have some significant measure of control over their thoughts, over their actions, to shape

  • their own character

  • Right!

  • to shape their own destinies, and that that is fundamental to one’s moral dignity

  • as a human being. And so that view of human nature is built into the ethics fundamentally,

  • and then all of social relationships have to be respectful of that individuality, and

  • then, consequently, when we start to turn to political theory and we talk about very

  • heavy-duty uses of power, such as the police and the militarywe want to have serious

  • constraints on government power to make sure that we are respecting individual sovereignty.

  • Okay. And here’s something perverse, too, that emerges as a consequence of something

  • you pointed out earlier in the conversation, you know. You mentioned that when Modernism

  • emerged out of Medievalism, that two things happened. One was the elaboration of the conceptual

  • frames that enabled us to deal with the external world. But the other was the elevation of

  • the individual to the status of valid critic, predicated on the idea that there was something

  • actually valid about individual experience as such.

  • Now the problem there, as far as I can telland maybe this is part of the reason were in

  • this conundrumis that the elaboration of the objective scientific viewpoint left us

  • with the idea that it was eithernatureornurturethat was the source of human

  • motive power.

  • But the missing element there is: Well, if that’s the case, then why grant to the individual

  • to begin with the role of independent social critic?

  • Exactly.

  • Like, on what grounds do youIt’s like a residual belief in something like the autonomy

  • of the soul, which you can’t just sneak in and not justify, without problems! Like

  • the ones that we have now!

  • Yes. Now that’s well put. And I think it’s fair to say that we still are in the infancy

  • of the psychological sciencesyou can speak to this better than I canbut as someone

  • in philosophy, I think were still at the beginnings. And we are still in the grip of

  • early and crude versions of scientific understandings of how cause and effect operates. So what

  • we are starting with is very mechanical understandings, and we can understand how people then are

  • pushed around by biological forces. We can understand to some extent how theyre pushed

  • around by external physical and mechanical forces. But we do not yet have a sophisticated

  • enough understanding of the human brain, the human mind, human psychology, to understand

  • how a volitional consciousness can be a causal force, a causal power in the world.

  • Right. That’s perfectly well put. So, I do a detailed analysis that some of the people

  • who watch me are familiar with, of this moviePinocchio,” and Pinocchio has got a very

  • classical mythological structure, and it basically introduces three elements of being: so there’s

  • (1) the element of being that’s associated with Geppetto; and also (2) the evil tyrannical

  • forces that are kind of patriarchal in nature, and that’s sort of theconceptualization

  • of society”—a benevolent element and a malevolent element, say. And then there’s

  • (3) the introduction of this other causal factor and it’s personified in the form

  • of the Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy is a manifestation of Mother Nature, and she animates Pinocchio.

  • So Geppetto creates him, and then sets up a wish for his independence, and then Nature

  • appears in the guise of the Blue Fairy and grants that wish. So you haveculture

  • andnatureconspiring to produce a puppet that could in fact disentangle itself from

  • its strings. But the movie insistsand it does this on profound mythological groundsthat

  • the puppet itself has a causal role to play in its ownwhat would you call itin

  • its own capacity to transcend the deterministic chains, the deterministic processes which

  • have given rise to it, that also enslave it.

  • Um hmm.

  • You know in all of our profound narratives, I would sayand this is part of the way

  • that they differ from the scientific accountthere’s always that third element. There’s always

  • the autonomous individual who is, in some sense, you know, lifting himself up by his

  • own bootstraps.

  • Yes

  • And I don’t think it’s a problem that science is unable to account for, but it’s

  • a very big problem when scientists who are unable to account for that deny that it exists,

  • because they can’t explain it. That becomes extraordinarily dangerous.

  • Right. Yes. Once you stop looking, you stop trying, right? Then youre left with an

  • impoverished account. So in a way, there’s a kind of hubris built into the skepticism

  • that says, “I know that this is a problem that we just can’t solve, so I’m not going

  • to try anymore.”

  • Yeah, well there’s a performative contradiction as well, which is much worth pointing outbecause

  • on the one hand, the scientist might well claim, “As far as I’m concerned, from

  • an epistemological perspective, the only two causal forces arenatureandculture.’

  • But then I’ll go about my actions in the normative world, as an existential being,

  • acting in the world, and I will swallow whole-heartedly the proposition thateach individual is

  • responsible for his own actions’—because that’s how I constantly interact with everyone

  • in the world. And I get very irritated if they violate that principle.”

  • Yes, right. So how you live with your skepticism or your relativism in a way that doesn’t

  • ensnarl you in tensions and contradictionsthat’s a hard project itself.

  • Well, it does seem to me, I think it’s reasonable to point out that it’s not possible to find

  • a person who acts as if he or anyone else isbiologically or culturally determined.”

  • We just don’t behave that way in the real world. We act as if were responsible for

  • our own actions, and the consequences of those actions.

  • Right. So then we have a tension between what ourintellectual theoriesare telling

  • us, and what our kind ofempirical datais telling uswe don’t have a way to put

  • those two together, and then what you as an individual do in response to that tension

  • between theory and practicethat’s a whole other can of things to explore.

  • Right.

  • But to back up to our discussion about powerIt’s interesting that the way our discussion,

  • up to that point, then integrates three things: (1) We started talking about truth, and then

  • (2) we started talking about goals and normative ends and ideals, and then (3) we talk about

  • power.

  • So there weve got already the big three: Truth, Ideals, and Power.

  • Our discussion about Truth took us into epistemological issues in philosophy; our discussion about

  • Ideals takes us into ethics and meta-ethics issues and also into philosophy; and our discussion

  • of Power takes us into issues about human nature, all of which traditionally comprise

  • a branch of philosophy and its sub-disciplines.

  • So we already have to have a theory of epistemology [epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially

  • with regard to its methods, validity and scope: the investigation of what distinguishes justified

  • belief from opinion]; a theory of human nature; a theory of ethicsand we can sometimes

  • try to integrate thoseand postmodernism is going to be an integration of certain views

  • that develop in philosophical traditions in all three of those areas.

  • So maybe one way to put it is this: If you contrast it to kind of a—again, taking the

  • Enlightenment as our touchstone—I think were both fans of the Enlightenmentwe

  • say: All right, were fine with power. Knowledge is power, and we want to empower the individual.

  • We want to eliminate slavery and empower people. We want to eliminate old-fashioned sexism

  • and empower women. So power is

  • Yes, we actually want to remove arbitrary and unnecessary impediments to the expression

  • of proper power.

  • That’s right. So there are illegitimate uses of power that are stopping and disempowering

  • people. So it’s the double-edged sword. And as long as power is properly directed

  • or properly located, then we are confident that, by and large, people individually and

  • socially will use their power to put together useful lives, build successful economies and

  • societies, and so forth.

  • So it’s actually a very optimistic overall assessment about power. But power is then

  • structured as a means to an end: we want to empower people cognitivelyteach them how

  • to read, teach them how to think, so that they themselves can understand the truth and

  • discover new truths. Sopower leads to truth.”

  • But we also then want people to be free to act on the basis of their power, because then

  • we think that if people are respected as individual agents, theyre going to be happier and

  • so they will achieve good goals, and they will mutually work out together fair agreements

  • and deals— a kind ofjustice,” right? Society will get better and better, and so

  • forth.

  • So power is in the service of just social relations, and power is in the service of

  • truth.

  • Yes, so now that’s a greatjustification,” say, for the Enlightenment viewpoint, and

  • it seems—I don’t want to stop you from pursuing thatbut it also seems to me that,

  • to the degree that that’s true (a valid description of the Enlightenment aims), and

  • to the degree that that has actually manifested itself in reality in the current state of

  • human affairs, that it’s perhaps unwise of us to allow our Marxist or our Nietzschean

  • presuppositions to take too careless a swing at that foundation, given that it’s actually

  • Absolutely right, and that’s why the Enlightenment

  • articulationPower is good if it’s in the service of truth”— orPower is

  • good if it’s in the service of justice”—then were fine. And were optimistic enough

  • about human beings, cognitively and morally, that we think thatempoweringthem

  • giving them lots of freedomsis going to increase the net stock of truth, and it’s

  • going to increase the net stock of justice. So that entireEnlightenment package

  • is precisely what the Counter-Enlightenment attacks. It attacked very fundamentally so

  • that by the time we get two to three generations laterto the generations of Marx and Nietzsche

  • it has been hollowed out. So on the epistemological side we don’t

  • believe that there is such a thing astruthanymore. So it’s not the case thatpower

  • is in the search oftruth,” because we don’t believe that human beings are capable

  • of getting to any sort of objective truth anymore. So were just left withpower.”

  • And also on the normative side, we don’t believe injusticeanymore. We don’t

  • believe that any sort of normative principles or ethical ideals can be objectively grounded.

  • And so then, once again, maybe were left with subjective desires and so forth, but

  • were just left again withpower.”

  • So power in the service of Truth; power in the service of Justice: that goes away. All

  • that we are left with is Power.

  • Okay, so then we could mount a psycho-analytic critique of that set of objections. Because

  • I could say, Okay, here’s some reasons. Let’s assume youre doing something simple

  • and easy instead of complicated and difficult with your objections. And so here’s the

  • simple and easy explanation:

  • You want to dispense with the idea ofjusticeandtruthbecause that lightens your

  • existential load because now there’s nothing difficult and noble that you have to strive

  • for, and you want to reduce everything topowerbecause that justifies your use

  • of power in your pursuit of those immediate goals that you no longer even have to justify

  • because you don’t have to make reference to any higher standards of, say, “justice

  • ortruth.” And so I would say: That’s a deep, impulsive and resentful nihilism that’s

  • manifesting itself as a glorious intellectual critique. [Nihilism: a viewpoint that traditional

  • values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.]

  • Now, I understand as well that there is the history of genuine intellectual critique that

  • youve been laying out, which is not trivialbut those things have to be differentiated,

  • you know. It’s certainly not reasonable either for those who claim thatall there

  • is is power,” that theyre not themselves motivated equally by that power.

  • Sure. So in one way, all right, what you can always say, in effect, is that philosophy

  • is autobiographical. In many cases philosophers will put their pronouncements in third-person

  • form, or in generalized form, but if you always put it down to third-person formulations,

  • it can be profoundly self-revelatory.

  • So if you say, for example, “Human beings are scum”—there you have some sort of

  • a pessimistic assessment of the human condition. Well, built into that then is the idea that

  • I, if I “first-personalize it,” that “I am scum.” What youre really doing is

  • a first-person confession. And it’s always then an illegitimate move to exempt yourself

  • from the general principle.

  • Right.

  • Or: “Everything just ispower relationsandpeople imposing their agendas on other

  • people.” Then what youre saying is: “Well, my fundamental commitment is power, and I

  • just want to impose my agenda on other people.”

  • So I do think youre rightthat it can go both ways: It can of course be that you

  • have people who, for whatever reason, have a predisposition to nihilistic, amoral power

  • seeking, and when they become adults andintellectual,” they latch onto theories that indulge them,

  • that enable them to rationalize their predispositions.

  • And so in many cases, yes, a lot of Postmodernism, in some of its manifestations, is disingenuous

  • in that form. People don’t necessarily buy into the postmodern philosophical framework,

  • but rather, in kind of pragmatic form, Postmodernism as a set oftoolsis useful for them

  • to advance their own personal and social agendas, whatever those happen to be.

  • Okay. So let’s switch a little bit. Let’s switch over into that a little bit. I’ve

  • found our discussion extremely useful on the philosophical end, but now I would like to

  • make it a bit more personal, if you don’t mind.

  • Youre written this book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to

  • Foucault. And it’s a fairlypunchy,” let’s say, critique of Postmodernism and

  • its alliance with Neo-Marxism. And youve done a careful job of laying out the historical

  • development of both of those movements and their alliance.

  • (1) What was your motivation for doing that; and what have you experienced as a consequence

  • (1) of writing the book, and (2) as a consequence of being a professor who’s in the midst

  • of an academic society that’s basically running on postmodern principles?

  • [laughs] Yes, that’s a good trio of questions there. Well, my motivations for writing the

  • book were: One, as an intellectual exercise: here was a movement that was complex, many

  • philosophical and cultural strands coming together, and I enjoy intellectual history

  • very muchso it was a pleasure for me to read back into the histories and to tease

  • out all of the lines of developments, and how things were packaged and repackagedso

  • that the postmodern synthesis (as it came together in the second third of the 20th century)

  • came into being. As a purely intellectual historical enterprise, I found that fulfilling.

  • Partly also this was the 1990s, late 1990s, it’s end of the Cold War. One of the things

  • I had donenot professionally, but just out of personal interestwas read a lot

  • of political philosophy, read a lot about the Cold War and the intellectual developmentsand

  • call it political developmentsthat had gone on there. So I had a very good, I’d

  • say, amateur working knowledge, before I started researching the book, about the history of

  • Marxism and the history of Cold War geo-politics.

  • And sort of one of the big questions on everyone’s mind of course in the late 1990s with the

  • fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War is: What’s going to happen next?

  • So what’s the new geo-political alignment going to be?

  • Then from my academic position, the big question inside the intellectual word is: Since far-left

  • politics had been so prominent and that for generations, intellectuals inside the academic

  • world had largely given the benefit of the doubt to far-leftist experimentseven going

  • out of their way to be fellow travelers, and so forththat by the time you get to the

  • end of the Cold War, basically everybody, except for a few true believers, is rethinking.

  • So what does this mean fornot necessarily left politics more broadly, but certainly

  • for far-left politics? And so even the far-leftists of the leftists are recognizing that theyre

  • going to have to come up with some sort of a new strategy in order to remain intellectually

  • respectable, and some sort of a new strategy in order to become culturally and politically

  • feasible.

  • So I did have a kind of a cultural/political interest in what the thinking was on the far

  • left about what theyre going to do now that the Soviet Union has collapsed and the

  • whole world is shifting more toward a market liberalism or to some sort ofthird way

  • centrism.

  • Yeah, and now that all the corpses have floated up on the beach, so to speak

  • Right. Yes! So you have a huge then amount of empirical data that you have to confront

  • andNow, I think this is going to be part of the postmodern package, but there’s a

  • lot of denial of the relevance of empiricism; there’s a lot of denial of the relevance

  • of logic and social-scientific statistical methods of aggregating that data and reaching

  • normative conclusions on the basis of that. So we can understand the temptation on the

  • part of a lot of people to find psychological devices that will enable them to deny the

  • Gulag and the various other horrible things. By the time the 90s …

  • Right. When the facts, as even you [of the left] would have construed them, are stacking

  • up viciously in contradiction to your theory, it’s time to mount an all-out assault on

  • what constitutes a “fact.”

  • Okay, that’s one strategy, and that’s again one of the sub-strategies I think that

  • postmoderns will use. So, if you then have philosophers and social scientists, and people

  • who are up to speed in their epistemology, who are telling you, Well, you know, there

  • are just different narratives that are out there, and there are no such things as objective

  • facts, and logic does not necessarily point us in one direction: there arepoly-logics

  • ormultiple frameworks”—then if you have oneframeworkthat says, “No.

  • There are objective facts and the logic is all going against your version of political

  • idealism,” then it’s going to be very tempting for you to say, “Well, I can just

  • dismiss that as just one narrative way of constructing the historical facts: I can come

  • up with a different narrative that softens or denies altogether …”

  • And certainly some of the bad-faith postmodernists do go down that road very much.

  • So in part that was my motivation for writing the book.

  • And in part I did feel that I was in a good position intellectually to do so because my

  • Ph.D. work had been in logic, philosophy of science and epistemology, so I was up to speed

  • on the entire history of epistemology from the modern world on through the way things

  • were in the 80s and the early 1990s. So I was reading the same people that Rorty had.

  • I have to say I learned an enormous amount from reading Richard Rorty. He’s first rate,

  • even though I end up disagreeing fundamentally with him about everythingFoucault’s

  • Ph.D. also was in philosophy; he also had a Ph.D. in psychology. Derridaanother philosophy

  • Ph.D. Lyotardanother philosophy Ph.D. So, not necessarily putting myself on the same

  • stature intellectually, but all of us, so to speak, are first-rate educated in epistemology.

  • So I know where theyre coming from and where all of that is going.

  • At the same time, my undergraduate and master’s degree at Guelph (just down the road from

  • you) in history of philosophyso I had a long-standing passion for how arguments and

  • movements develop over time, so I thought I was in a good position to see how postmodernism

  • had evolved out of various other earlier movements that had developed over timeand I am enough

  • of a political animal to be interested in political philosophy. And I believe that abstract

  • philosophical theory, when it gets put into practice, makes life-and-death practical differences

  • So the stakes are high. So I was motivated then to put it all together: How does the

  • history and the philosophy and the politics all come together in Postmodernism? So I wrote

  • the book.

  • Now, yes. How it has affected me personally in academic life. Well, let me see. In one

  • way I think I was fortunate that I had tenure by the time the book was published, and my

  • university is by and large a tolerant place. We have some issues here, but by and large

  • my colleagues are reasonable, decent people, and at least I was able to get tenure on the

  • strength of my teaching abilities and my publication. And so it wasn’t that I was going to lose

  • my job over this.

  • But of course there is blowback. I did have difficulty getting the book published in the

  • first place. Actually I finished writing the book by the year 2000. I had taken a sabbatical

  • from 1999-2000 and wrote the book then, but I was not able to get the book published until

  • 2004, and the reason for that was a number ofdesk rejections”—you know, the editor

  • just sends a form letter back. I got a few of those. But, more seriously, what happened

  • three times, possibly four times, I don’t remember exactly now, was it would get past

  • the editor at the press, and then it would be sent out to two or three reviewersand

  • in each case what happened was I would get split and polarized-split reviews. One would

  • come back and say, “This is a really good book; he’s done his homework, it’s a good

  • argument, it’s a fresh argument … I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but this

  • really ought to be out there as a book”; and then the other review on the other side

  • would be equally savaging: “This is a terrible book; he doesn’t know his history of philosophy,

  • he’s butchered this that and the other thing, and I strongly recommend that you don’t

  • publish this book.” And then almost always in that situation, the editor just says, “No.”

  • So it wasn’t until late 2003, early 2004, that Scholargy Publishing, which was then

  • a small press working out of Arizona, took the book on, and I’m happy to say that after

  • it was published, it’s been in print consistently since then.

  • Yes, that’s remarkable. That’s remarkable.

  • Yes, so I’m very happy about that

  • For any book, let alone an academic book.

  • Yes, and then multiple translations, and those continue, so I’m happy about that.

  • Now I’d say the scholarly responses have been from moderate liberals: so kind of traditional

  • don’t necessarily want to use the wordtraditional,” but from rational, naturalistic,

  • liberal thinkers, conservatives and libertarians: the reviews have all been strong, and strongly

  • positive.

  • But I have not received any formal reviews from any of the postmodern or far-left journals,

  • so I’m not sure what that means, but there is, at least at some level, an unwillingness

  • to engage ...

  • Well, it might be a sign of respect.

  • Well there is one sign of respect that comes out, and that is that every… I’d say once

  • a year or soprobably a dozen times since the book has been published, I’ve been asked

  • by the editor of a postmodern or close fellow-traveler, critical-theory-type of journal, to be a second

  • reviewer on one of their articles. So I’m “in their Rolodex,” so to speakto use

  • the old-fashioned labelwhen they are actually looking for someone who is likely to give

  • an objective but critical perspective on some article that’s been submitted to the journalonce

  • in a while my name floats up and theyll send it out to me, so I’ll just do the standard

  • thing of reading it and giving my professional opinion of it.

  • So I think they are aware of me, but there hasn’t really been any direct intellectual

  • engagement, which is kind of sad.

  • Right. Yes. So now when you set yourself up to write the book, were you thinking of writing

  • a critique of postmodernism, or were you thinking of conducting an exploration of postmodernism?

  • Well, right now I’m working on the critique. The first book ends—I don’t want to say

  • abruptlybut it does end with the door open to saying: How then do we respond to this

  • dead end of Counter-Enlightenment thought in postmodernism? So were at a point culturally

  • where the meaning of postmodernism has now infected the academy and you see problems

  • there, but it’s also left the academy, and so thoughtful people outside the academy are

  • seeing the results. And so the big question is: What do we do next?

  • So I am actively working on the sequel to Explaining Postmodernism now. And I did go

  • back and forth in the writing of it. My first purpose was to write a straight diagnosis

  • and intellectual history of postmodernism, and that’s where I ended up leaving it,

  • because in one sense this was a bit artificial, but I really like 200-page books. It’s long

  • enough for you to get into a subject deeply enough and to make a good, pointed, integrated

  • argument and then stop.

  • And so I realized if I wrote the sequel then, it would be a 400-page book, and I thought

  • it was more important to get this self-contained intellectual history of postmodernism out

  • there. So I brought things to I think a logical conclusion where I ended the book, and now

  • I’m working on the next.

  • What’s the next one called?

  • The working titleit changes every few months or sosometimes I think about, The

  • Fate of the Enlightenment or something to do with Neo-Enlightenment orit won’t

  • be thisbut Post-Postmodernism or After Postmodernismsomething like that.

  • Okay. Weve been struggling with terminology as well with the people I’m been talking

  • with about such things.

  • It’s a very hard thing to do, because as weve seen philosophically, Postmodernism

  • is multi-dimensional: it’s a metaphysical critique, it’s a normative critique, it’s

  • a political critique, it’s an epistemological set of views. And so the alternative then

  • also has to be integrated philosophically. There has to be an entire philosophical packageso

  • what label is going to capture all of that and at the same time make a connection to

  • postmodernismand also, I’m basically an optimistic positive guy, so I want something

  • that has a positive

  • Yes, illuminates the pathway forward.

  • Yes, that’s right, yes. Making the world a better place

  • Right. Exactly, exactly. So look—I think an hour-and-a-half interview is approximately

  • the equivalent of a 200-page book.

  • So were done.

  • Why don’t we end with that, and what I would like to propose is that we have another discussion

  • in a couple of months about what youre thinking about with regards to what youre

  • writing now.

  • So, like, weve covered the intellectual territory; weve covered the historical

  • territory; and done a reasonably good job I think of bothjustifyingpostmodernism

  • in this discussion, and also pointing out its pitfalls and dangers.

  • Sure, yes.

  • We haven’t outlined much for an alternative vision except making tangential reference

  • to the potency of individual capacity, but that would seem to be reasonable grounds for

  • the next discussion. So

  • What else would be worth, next time we chat, talking about are the current culture war

  • issues. You know, one of the things I’m very interested in is younger people in particular

  • who are in the front lines in universities, so to speak, and theyre surrounded and

  • bewildered and angry, and in some cases, intimidated by all of thismicro-aggressionsand

  • so forth, and in some cases the indoctrination theyre getting

  • But I’m actually kind of glad that we didn’t talk about the more political end of it today,

  • because it enabled us to have a conversation that was almost entirely philosophical in

  • nature, and I really think that’s the right level of analysis, because the battle that’s

  • occurring in our culture is actually occurring at a philosophical level. I mean, there’s

  • other levels as well, but that’s even more important than the political level as far

  • as I’m concerned.

  • Well said. I agree one-hundred percent. Nicely put.

  • All right. Well, it was a pleasure speaking with youit was very much worthwhile.

  • For me too, thanks much.

  • You have a remarkable capacity for tracking the content of conversations and keeping them

  • on point, so that’s quite amazing to see, because we did branch out in a lot of different

  • directions, more or less simultaneously, and it was quite helpful in keeping the conversation

  • on track that you could so rapidly organize theYou know, it was almost like you were

  • putting a paragraph structure in the conversation as it occurred, so that was something that

  • was really interesting to see.

  • So, anyways, it was a pleasure meeting you, and thanks very much for talking with me.

  • I’ll obviously put a link … I’ve been recommending your book like

  • My pleasure. Much respect for the work youre doing. Thanks for having me on your show,

  • and will be happy to talk again.

  • Great. Good. Well set that up.

  • All right. Thanks Jordan. Bye.

  • See you. Yep. Bye bye.

Well, I’m speaking today with Dr. Stephen Hicks, who is a professor of philosophy in

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後現代主義:歷史與診斷....。 (Postmodernism: History and Diagnosis....)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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