You
Dr. Stephen RC Hicks is professor of philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois USA
Executive director of the Center for Ethics and entrepreneurship and senior scholar at the Atlas Society
He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Guelph in Canada
And his PhD in philosophy from Indiana University, Bloomington
USA he's published four books
Translated into 16 different languages
in
2004 and expanded in 2011. He published explaining post-modernism
skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault in
2010 he published Nietzsche and the Nazis in
1994 with the second edition in 1998. He published the art of reasoning readings for logical analysis
co-edited with david kelly
And he published what year was entrepreneurial living published 16
2016 in
2016 he published entrepreneurial living
co-edited with Jennifer Herold
He's also published in academic journals such as business ethics quarterly teaching philosophy and review of metaphysics as well as other
publications such as The Wall Street Journal Cato unbound and the Baltimore Sun in
2010 he won his University's excellence in Teaching Award
he has been visiting professor of business ethics at Georgetown University in Washington DC a
Visiting fellow at the social philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling, Green, Ohio
senior fellow at the Objectivist Center in New York and
Visiting professor at the University of Kashmir the great in Poland
Dr. Hicks work on post-modernism
explaining post-modernism
skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
That's the 2011 book and in particular has been quite controversial. So I thought we with that
Good. Thanks for having me you published explaining post-modernism in 2011 in the revised version
How has it been selling first of all, what sort of reaction are you garnery?
Yeah sales have been
Steady, which is gratifying for an academic book
And then in the last I would say three to four years sales have picked up again. Just because
Post-modernism has spilled out from being a primarily intellectual movement to a more broadly
Cultural movement as a result of that I'd say the reactions have been strongly polarized
Particularly among philosophers the reactions tend to be positive as we talk with
intellectuals outside of the area of philosophy the reactions start to become more mixed to outright hostile and then
Also interestingly among the broadly thinking public. There's been a lot of response to it
So, uh that's been been gratified again. Of course, the reactions are
Polarized because post-modernism is a very strong right vigorous movement. That makes some very
audacious in my view destructive claims and then as we're seeing when they spill out into the cultural arena
people realize the stakes are high and
We have the usual kinds of social media debates that we have a net. I'm going to do something terrible here
I'm going to start again. I'm sorry my my
My recorder my audio record, it wasn't functioning. Okay, so
Well that way I'll get the I'll get the intro right anyways with with
2016 so that'll be some small benefit to doing it. So
No problem, that's our warm-up so in
2016
There we go, entrepreneurial living with go edited with Jennifer Laurel
alright, so
We'll start that again
Steven Darcy Hicks is professor of philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois USA
Executive director the Center for Ethics and entrepreneurship and senior scholar at the Atlas Society
He received his bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Guelph in Canada
And his PhD in philosophy from Indiana University, Bloomington
USA he's published four books
translated into 16 different languages in
2004 and expanded in 2011. He published explaining post-modernism
Skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault in 2010
Nietzsche and the Nazis in
1994 with the second edition in 1998
He published the art of reasoning readings for logical analysis co-edited with david kelly and in
2016 entrepreneurial living co-edited with Jennifer Harrell
He's published in academic journals such as business ethics quarterly teaching philosophy and review of metaphysics as well as other
publications such as The Wall Street Journal Cato unbound and the Baltimore Sun in
2010
He won his University's excellence in Teaching Award
Dr. Hicks has been visiting professor of business ethics at Georgetown University in Washington DC a visiting fellow at the
social philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling, Green, Ohio
senior fellow at the Objectivist Center in New York and
visiting professor at the University of Casimir the great
Poland so welcome today and thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me back
Yeah
I thought we might start by talking about
Explaining post-modernism again your 2011 book skepticism and socialism from Rousseau difficoult
Because I know that it's been
Perhaps more controversial of late and it was when you originally published it
Absolutely, oh the sails and the academic and the public reaction
Right. Well sales have been strong. The book was originally in 2004 installed sold steadily for the first decade or so
Which is quite gratifying for for an academic book
and then starting about three years ago in part because
Post-modernism started to spill out of the strict in the academic intellectual world into the broader cultural world
Sales picked up again, and there's been of a two-front
Set of discussions one at the intellectual level and one of the more public thinking public level as well
Yet gratifyingly lots of translations. I think there will be three more translations added this year
Arabic Hebrew and Estonian are in the works, so
All together I'm pleased with that
The the reactions are quite polarized in part because reactions to post-modernism itself are polarized. It's a it's an extreme movement as
Good deep thinking should be even if I disagree fundamentally with post-modernism. It is a well articulated
negative outlook on most of life's philosophical questions and so we should expect that any movement that
pushes buttons
fundamentally like that should
Get some extreme reactions the same thing holds when for me when I push back
Against in my book some of these strong to my mind ultimately
Nihilistic claims that post-modernism ends up making I also get the the negative pushback the pushback
Kind of comes in two forms. I've found from the professional reviews
There have been H to my knowledge by professional philosophers in the philosophy journals
And they are generally strong to very strongly positive the normal scholarly quibbles arise
When I get pushback for our sorry reviews from academics outside of the philosophy they tend to be more
polarized so I'm strong in favor, but then particularly people in history in
sociology in in rhetoric studies and literature
Places where there are stronger contingents of postmodern thinkers, I tend to get strongly negative
Responses and those responses are also mirrored in the the general thinking public
When they respond and write back and write reviews maybe
To bring people up to date
For you to give us a brief overview of your view of post-modernism like a definition
It's one of those tricky. Yeah, terms like
Existentialism or phenomenology that are bandied about by people
educating people on a fairly regular basis, but
Right where where the definition itself is slippery and difficult to pin down
So right talk a little bit about how you view
post-modernism and also
What argument you made with regards to the history of its development, right?
Well, it makes sense that it's slippery in part because post-modernism
philosophically avoids
Categorizations avoids broad sweeping statements, although they do make some
So anytime you try to make a precise broad sweeping claim about what this?
post-modernism amounts to you will get pushback on that but there is a broadly unifying set of themes -
post-modernism if you start by breaking the term down its
Post-modernism. So first you have to say what is modernism such that post-modernism is reacting against it or saying that we need to go
beyond and
Modernism is used variously in different fields of modernism in art in literature. I'm using a philosophical and historical
understanding of post-modernism and that's how
It's mostly used now. That is to say we look at the modern world
So that essentially is the last four to five hundred years of history at least in the in the Western tradition
so what's going on in the world five hundred years ago is a
revolutionary transformation of Western society we have Columbus crossing the ocean and so we're entering into a new era of
Globalization the Renaissance is in full swing and its impact
Late 1400s early 1500s is now being felt all over
Europe
There is the Protestant Reformation and the Counter Reformation. So religious life in the West is being dramatically
transformed you see the beginnings of science with thinkers like
Copernicus and thus alias in anatomy and so scientific method is being developed and all of the things that we now recognize as the
Scientific disciplines are being founded. So that's the the modern world starting four or five hundred years ago
philosophically, we start looking at the analyses that are being offered by thinkers like
Francis Bacon
Rene Descartes and others and we see that they are putting
Fought on a different foundation from that that had gone on earlier
What happened with the modernists
maybe if we tried to sum it up is that
Seem to be this emerging consensus that the world was
rationally
Intelligible. Yes, and that human beings could
explore both physically and mentally and also come to predict and control the
transformations of the material world
I mean it seems to me that that's the fundamental element of let's say the scientific and therefore also the modernist
perspective but but also I think that what I went along with that was the idea that
Progress
genuine progress in knowledge was possible and along with that the benefits of progress both conceptually and
technologically and I mean it seems to me to be it seems to me to be fair to point out that that
movement for substantive fruit
I mean yes argue about the misery that the modernist movement caused along the way
Say with regards to the advancement of military technology and so forth
But it seems indisputable to me that the average human being is far better off now than he or she was
Well, certainly 200 years ago and absolutely 500 years ago, right?
So this revolution in thought with the subsequent developments in science and technology
We certainly can judge philosophies by their fruits
And so we can then say yeah, absolutely
We're live longer. We're living healthier were living less pain-free life were able to enjoy a
More art more leisure and so forth
So all of the things that and again, this is a value judgment if you think those are all good things
Then we're doing a whole lot better as a result of of that philosophy. No the other side though
I want to emphasize here is that you emphasize the
That the world is rationally intelligible that along with modernism came the claim that it was rationally intelligible to each
Individual rather than bear being an elect number of people who have special cognitive insights into the mysteries of the universe
Or that there are certain authoritative
institutions that are controlled by elites and only they are the ones who have
cognitive and therefore social authority to make various pronouncements part and parcel of the rise of modernism is a broadly
Universalizing of that that each individual is born with the rational capacity and that with proper training education literacy
And so forth they can come to understand the world for themselves. They can be self responsible
They can take charge of their lives
And as a result of that we should have an extension of Rights that used to be
prerogatives only of the few an expansion of freedom
You can do whatever you want with your life broadly speaking
and so what we then see is that it's not only a religious elite or a political elite that is empowered but rather
Every human being and then we can see
systematically over the course of the next century it gets extended to
not only males who own property but to all males and then to women and then to people of other ethnicities and other races as
We push back against all of us. So we have this notion of
Universal rights and universal self responsibility Universal freedom that I think also is part and parcel of the modern movement
Well the thing about science that makes it so peculiar. I think is that science is actually a
Technology that enables people who are bright, but not that bright
Let's say to genuinely produce advances in College because of the method
Right meaning if you're if you're a careful scientist, look when we studied what predicted academic?
achievement for example both in graduate school and among faculty members
Creativity didn't even enter the equation that's interesting noted conscientiousness
But I think it's partly because with the scientific method
you can you can actually break down your knowledge seeking into a set of
implementable
technological steps and that enables it to be
Implemented on an incredibly broad scale and even if a lot of it is Error error ridden
which is obviously the case and and to a scandalous degree to some what lately it still means that as
Hundreds of thousands of us and increasingly now millions of us
Grind away slowly at this
careful technology of knowledge acquisition that
Overall, we do seem to be able to predict him to control the world better
then that started to become question, you know, one of the things that seem to characterize post-modernism one definition that I've read is
skepticism of
Meta-narratives, right? That's sorry. That's from Jean Francois leotard and
He is the one credited with labeling post-modernism philosophically, right?
So and defining it as a skepticism toward meta-narratives what that means
there's a couple of things built into that one is of course the skepticism and
Philosophy for the last century and a half or so has entered an increasingly
Skeptical mode so that pushes back against the very broad claims that the early modernists are
Making that the power of reason is great
It is highly competent and that essentially we can figure out all of the important truths of the world
We can come up with a big story that explains everything ultimately
not necessarily that any one individual will contain all of that knowledge in his or her mind, but certainly
Communally, there will have a huge amount of knowledge
we will slowly as you're putting it together piece together a
big pictures worried about the way the world works and then in principle
There's there's nothing about the universe that we can't figure out. They're just things that we haven't been able to figure out yet
So the skepticism that leotard and the others are talking about is a skepticism about that grand set of claims
Right a meta-narrative a narrative that encompasses everything
Instead we're left with smaller
narratives and then as the movement develops, we should be skeptical even about the truth status or the the
the knowledge status of those smaller narratives
so what becomes important in the postmodern tradition is a
Skepticism about our ability to know the world
And in milder form as much as the modern thinkers thought we could and in stronger postmodern form at all
That maybe there is no such thing as truth. No, such thing as knowledge instead
All we have is opinions and beliefs that are subjectively held but don't have any objective
Influence so sewer, for example
They seem to be convinced in some strange way of
something that
disturbed me
When I first really discovered dictionaries when I was a kid
You know
I'd look up a word in the dictionary
And of course, it would just refer to another word in the dictionary and that would refer to another word in the dictionary
and yes in some sense any definition outside of the dictionary and the French intellectuals that were so
Influential in the postmodern world seemed to think of meaning in exactly that way they exactly understand that
Linguistic meaning is necessarily embedded in a larger
Linguistic context so that each word is dependent on each phrase and each phrase is dependent on each sentence. And so there's a
contextual
dependency
absolutely on
Linguistic framing but they seem to me to and and this is one of the major problems I think of post-modernism in
university is that they seem to
deny, or ignore
The existence of any world whatsoever outside of linguistic construction
And that's that's something that strikes me as extraordinarily
curious that that like it's a real denial of nature in my estimation, but also something
tremendously dangerous because well, assuming that you think that physics and biology and chemistry
Actually have any sort of genuine reality. It denies the existence of a
substrate of existence that the
purely linguistic relates to I mean, I always think of words as being
They're not so much descriptions, they're tools that you use to like and that's a Vidkun Stinney anigh Diaz
That words are really tools that you use to
operate on the world width and the consequences of those operations are actually manifest in the world of
sensation and perception and emotion and motivation and embodiment rather than purely on a
linguistic level and so I also don't really understand how it could be that our
intellectuals could come to the conclusion that are and this seems like a primarily French idea that hmm our ideas are
primarily constructed
linguistically, I mean
How do I resist under those circumstances? Yeah, now that strong form of linguistic skepticism that you're
Articulating is most pronounced in Jacque Derrida, and he does bill himself as a post
structuralist and that's a linguistic version of
post-modernism
but the the challenge here is that
Our view is that consciousness
is a
Relational phenomenon it's responsive to an external world and that should be the fundamental
realist commitment that we make
The problem that the the post-structuralist are coming up with by the time we get to Dairy da I should say
the idea that there isn't any sort of ontological
substrate matching on to not all of the post modernists will buy into that as
Strongly as dairy Dodd does they will might say well there's something out there, but which is can't know
What the relationship is between our concepts and our words and an external reality?
So the point though, is that the words that we use are
abstractions and they do come along fairly far or high up in our cognitive development and
if you want to argue that
Consciousness is a response to reality or that consciousness is a relational phenomenon as I do to maintain that objective
relational commitment there or you then have to do is take up all of the
skeptical arguments that want to put consciousness out of relationship or to say that there's no way to bridge this gap between
the subject and the object
Once you start going down that road
If you want to say for example, that perception is fraught with
allusions or hallucinations or that we can't tell the difference between
a
vertical
Perception when our sensory organs are in contact with reality and a hallucination
well
Then you have a gap between our conscious apparatus and reality if you then want to go on and argue as empiricists do
that our
Concepts and the words that we assign to the concepts are based on
empirical
observations or perceptual observations, but you now believe that those perceptual observations are
Subjective and out of relation with objective reality. Then you're going to say these
abstract concepts and words are also out of relation with reality and then what gives them their meaning if you can't establish a connection between
the words and
reality
then you're into the dictionary you're saying well what gives the words their meaning is their sideways or network connections to other words and
Then a generation or two later you're into Derrida's University where he says
Where the language is all of reality?
That's also where the postmodernists claim about. The primacy of power seemed to sneak in
It's like well if the words are only related to one another
They're verbal relationship
Well, they don't seem to have any motive force
And as soon as you enter a lens of linguistic consideration that has no motive force
then there's nothing to do and so
This seems to me to account for God being criticized very often for
Let's say conflating post-modernism and Marxism
But it seems to me that the Marxists or that the post modernists have had the default to what are essentially Marxist
preconceptions to add any motive to their thinking and
what they've done is to say that well words are related to one another and that's how they derive their fundamental meaning and they're not
really connected to the world in any real way
Except insofar as they privileged
One group or another or one point other in terms of power and status which exactly sort of go back to your dictionary
Analysis that the next step then would be to say if words are in these
Linguistic relationships to other words and we can find out what they are in dictionaries
Well who writes the dictionaries and then at that point or you're not asking an epistemological?
Question anymore. You are asking a social and psychological
Question. So who are the authors of the dictionary? What author?
authorizes rather than with the power to decide what words mean at that point we step directly out of
No kind of narrow epistemological
arguments into social and psychological
arguments about linguistic communities so
One another and there's this gap between the words and empirical reality which by the way I don't think anybody disputes
I mean, that's why we need five senses. That's why we need to communicate with each other
that's why we need the scientific method right is because it's difficult to establish a
useful one-to-one relationship between words and reality
But if words serve power then it seems to me that what the post modernists have done is
taken
biological
motivation let's call it the motivation for power at least and and sneaked it through the back door and and
reconnected the world linguistic
abstraction to the world of reality but
Saying well
look
the only connection is one of power and then they leave why it is that people want power like
the idea that people want power first of all, it's complicated idea because you have to define power and you have to define what and
those aren't trivial issues by any stretch of the imagination and
So you you you sleek it in the back door is sort of
Self-evident and then that seems to undermine the general post modernist claim
It's like if it's if the words are only embedded in a network of meaning that's related to other words then
It isn't a fair move on to logically or epistemologically to
Reinsert
power striving like a nietzsche and power striving or even in Adlerian power striving as the fundamental and
What you call it sort of sui generis
motivation that
Characterizes human beings so I also don't understand how they get away with that
Except that it seems to be like a mask for the continuation of a Marxist move on new guys
Well, I have no problem with seeing power as a positive
Coming back to just in a moment to all of the
Suspicions that you're announcing about inappropriate understandings of the relationship of power
I do think we should be able to say our cognitive capacities are a power that we have and
we they are a tool and the whole point of using that tool is to increase our power in the world to achieve our
goals
what the postmoderns are doing is
Undercutting the two things that make that understanding of power legitimate one is to say that when I am making a cognitive claim
I am
Successfully saying something about the world so that we can use the words knowledge and truth
so if I want to act on the basis of my beliefs
that those beliefs do map onto world as it really is but if you are skeptical about any sort of a knowledge claim
Or any sort of a truth claim then you're just going to say no. No
Your claims merely are subjective
Beliefs that are peculiar to you or peculiar to your group and they don't have any special cognitive status
Whatsoever. And in that case if you want to act on or use those beliefs to empower you well
Then you are in an out of reality
connection now
The other thing though is we want to say that power should be a tool that we use for good for advancing
genuine values in the world
But another part of the postmodern skepticism is to say that we cannot ground any values objectively
Instead values are merely subjective preferences either individually or group oriented
So in that case, if you have your value framework, then we're into the problem of relativism that I have my value framework
neither of us is able to adduce any facts that give an objective grounding to those values or to argue that those values should be
universally embraced
Then we're just left with you have a certain amount of power to advance your interest
I have a certain amount of power to advance my interests and
it's a naked power struggle in the suspicious way that you're worried about and that is
We come back to this issue of how Marxist or not the postmodern czar, but you're right that at least the great-grandfather
Move it was made by the Marxists in one generation and the Nietzschean
next generation to strip power down to that amoral
Ontological status that you are worried about but but what's the motivation for it? It's like if there isn't
Reality that's outside the linguistic and why is it?
Why is it that first of all what is well, I think there's two
Yeah, I think there are two kinds of motivations
One of the one of the things we know is that there are people who just like power they want to control other people
They have their agendas
No, we can talk about the sociological and the psychological foundation of that
But that is an ongoing fact about society
some people just want power and they will then rationalize their
Use of power over other people by a variety of means, okay
That's one that is an extra linguistic reality
Yes thing that's so surprising. It's like I'm not using that
Let me see the case. You think right if you think of the way some lawyers argue in a courtroom?
They will use all sorts of reach out or rhetorical power plays they will make fallacious
Arguments if they can get away with it
It will browbeat witnesses and make up facts and so forth now, they are not really skeptical
They believe that there's an external world and so forth
They just believe that life is a power struggle and any tactic is fair in order to achieve their ends. All right, so they're not
Postmodernist lawyers, they're just old-fashioned power seeking lawyers and so forth now that is one motivation
It comes up in religious circles
It comes up in political circles that comes up in the school yard
And so on but the other one in the one that I think that we are worried about though
Is that those who get to that view about the amoral ontological?
substrate
being power are those people who are smart and
Who do some thinking about philosophy thinking about politics and so forth and they argue themselves into that position?
because they find the
Power of those skeptical arguments to be convincing rationally to them
So even though the this is not a paradoxical formulation, even though they are rational
Individuals, they are following the logic of certain skeptical arguments to its conclusion and the legitimate conclusion of those arguments
Is that a moral power rules the universe? Okay. So so let's let's examine that for a moment
I mean, this is another thing that
strikes me as
Specious to say the least. I mean first of all, I'm very skeptical of people who try to
reduce all complex phenomena to a single explanatory mechanism
No, I mean if you look at because I do look at things biologically
It's obvious that human beings have a multitude of primordial
Motivational systems and that we share them and that we share them with animals. There's pain and there's fear and there's
incentive reward and there's rage and there's play and there's hunger and there's lust and
That's a handful that there's more than that and these are very and you know those
motivations get integrated across time into
Hyper motivations let's say that would be something akin to an integrated narrative one. That is
Manifested interpersonally, but also played out socially and higher-order values emerge from that. Um,
You take a claim like the post modernist make that well, first of all
they accept the idea that there's almost nothing but hierarchy and that people's fundamental motivations is to climb up the hierarchy even though they're very
My experience has been for example, whenever I talk about hierarchy the postmodernist types go after me
hammer and tongs
Because I'm making the claim that hierarchy is a natural
Phenomenon not necessarily a beneficial one, but an inevitable one in some sense with its pros and cons
but they accept that uncritically when they presume that power is the fundamental drive and then the other
Problem is and this is an even more serious one as far as I'm concerned
Is that the evidence that the most effective way for human beings to?
occupy
positions of authority, let's say and competence in
Human dominance hierarchies isn't through the naked expression of power
That's actually unbelievably unstable, you know even Fran's de Waal when he was studying chimpanzees
You know, the female chimpanzees are more empathetic than the male chimpanzees
But of all the chimpanzees, the alpha males are the most impacted. They're the ones that engage in the most
reciprocal
interactions with the members of the truth and
And there's evidence occurring from all sorts of areas including
developmental psychology the developmental psychology of Piaget for example that suggests that
like something like
cooperative game playing aim towards a particular
Important end is a much more stable means for establishing
Hierarchical relationships between people than power. It's like power
only rules in tyrannies and and I guess maybe that's part of the reason that the post modernists also insists that
The Western hierarch is fundamentally an oppressive patriarchy because that justifies their claim. That power is the primary
Motivator and mover of the world, but I just don't see how that's a tenable position
now
well, I think ontologically it's fair to say that most postmoderns buy into the notion that power is
Fundamentally, there's not anything that can be reduced to that
but that my reading of them is that that is not the entire philosophical story because power just is a
tool a means to an end and that still leaves open the question of
what ends - which one is going to use that power and here and I think the postmoderns are
Rightly diverse in their views. There is a strong streak of them
Then this is something that goes back to Marxism in general or broadly socialism in general. That will say
Yes, we all want
power but we recognize that power is
Unequally distributed in the world and that connects to your points about hierarchy
But what is your value?
reaction to that unequal distribution of power in the world
Now there are the Nietzschean who will react to say
well
the unequal distribution of power is fine and our sympathies are with those who have more power because we want them to
Advance the human species by some evolutionary mechanism, but that is a subjective value preference that they are adding to
Previous facts that power is fundamental that power is unequally distributed
now we're adding my sympathies are with those who have more power the
Socialist or more narrowly Marxist response to those to say power is fundamental power is unequally distributed
But our empathy is with those who are on the losing side of history
So to speak or a various source of social forces
And so what that then means for them is that they will accept that power is operating in an hierarchical
Context but that they want to use whatever power they have to
more
equally redistribute the power in a
In a
egalitarian fashion
The only needs to talk about it's going to be though that third component about what your value
Reaction is to what you take to be the metaphysical substrate
There's another form of real world smuggling that goes along with that which is both
ontological and ethical and the ontological
Smuggling would be while there are definitely power structures and that people compete for power
so that's claim number one, which seems to be extra linguistic and claim number two is that
the proper moral stance of a human being is
empathy so there's a claim that something like empathy exists and that he should be reserved for people who are on the
Lower end of the hierarchical distribution. That's right. Okay, and
Postmoderns like Foucault make that very clear
Richard Rorty
even more clearly
makes that claim
Jacques Derrida is a very interesting case because most of his work is
Not overtly social ethical or political but at various points particularly toward the end of his life
He says, you know, my my entire sympathies are with
the oppressed and he talks about
Reinvigorating a certain kind of or in the spirit of Marxism something or other
but from his perspective
He recognizes that he has no philosophical resort to justify
that value claim and he doesn't want to say that it's just a
personal subjective preference that he has so he does appeal to a kind of Conti and regulative idea or
What we're in more old-fashioned whether it's a kind of platonic form that that we need to appeal to if we're going to justify
in some way so it's kind of interesting that
Recognizing exactly the problem that you're pointing out. Where do we get that?
empathy claim from and justify that the postmoderns
Recognize the predicament and some of them are trying to point to extra linguistic sources for it
Well that opens that opens a big can of worms if your initial claim is that there's no such thing as an extra linguistic source
Exactly. Yes, because you let one extra linguistic source in especially something as complicated as the interplay between
Say power hierarchy and empathy. I mean, yes, those are major
motivational forces and then if you're willing to admit to the existence of those major
Motivational forces. Well, it's it's hard to exclude pain. It's hard to exclude anxiety
It's hard to exclude or something even more basic is hunger
It's hard to exclude
The proclivity for cooperation and play it's like all of biology. It seems to me sneaks back into
the postmodern project as soon as those initial
Well, absolutely, but that's what we're finding a lot of our debates are right now about psychology and biology
Is that certain number of psychologists and biologists are pushing back and saying oh there is a reality here or we're getting great
Resistance from the postmodern second and third generation to having to do so
Okay. So now you said the philosophers that have reviewed your book have been basically positive and so
Why are you receiving?
Positive feedback from what is it about philosophy and about philosophers or about your work?
Eliciting a positive response from them. Yeah
Well, my book is primarily an intellectual history to some extent I am
Polemical and pushing back against post-modernism. So people don't understand that. I'm taking a stance as well
But the primary purpose of the book is to do a solid intellectual history
where does this confusing sprawling but nonetheless very vigorous and powerful movement come from and
It doesn't come out of thin air, but rather there's a lot of deep thinking that's behind it
So what I'm doing is I'm tracing what I see as the important intellectual movements of the last two centuries
So I'm starting with Contin Rousseau. I'm talking about Hegel marx, nietzsche Heidegger and the others so
All of those figures are
difficult complex and important in their own right and there are scholarly debate about say how skeptical or not Conte is
whether there's an element of liberalism or not in each
Heidegger's connection to the Nazis and so forth
So there is a range of scholarly movement and most of these major
Intellectuals have two or three major schools of interpretation attached to them
But what and so the pushback that I am getting on
contour unmeet or Heidegger or whatever will be
From those who are in a different school of interpretation with respect to them, but typically among the Philosopher's it's a respectful
Engagement because they will recognize that there is a very good argument that can be made for interpreting. The Philosopher's the other way
and typically then what I'm doing is emphasizing the skeptical elements or they ultimately
Negative and nihilistic elements that get sifted out and woven together
Into ultimately the the postmodern framework and along the way the Philosopher's who want to argue
Well, you know this particular thinker is not that bad or you would not buy into the whole
Project. Those are the ones who will criticize me on various things, but I typically find though outside of philosophical circles
though is and that this is not a criticism of these individuals since we can't know ever thing is that they
Will know something about Nietzsche or Heidegger or or Conte, but they're not up on the scholarly literature
You know, they've read one book or one article about that person that was written from a certain perspective
So if I make the argument for the other perspective on that thinker it's new to them and it seems outrageous to them
And so they will react negatively to it. So something like that
So now you wrote this book back in 2004. So you were pretty early observer of
The
Vital importance. I suppose of the post modernist debate
I mean there it certainly be none rise in political correctness in the early 90s
and that's it disappear by the mid 90s, but
2004 is I would say five or six or maybe even eight years
previous to the to this new
burgeoning of
Political polarization and and the debate between the politically correct types. Let's say and those who take a more
biological perspective it's like what clued you into the fact that this was a
Issue of fundamental of potentially fundamental importance. Yeah
Well, yeah, thanks. I think if there's a testament to the power of
philosophy the power of ideas the power of logic that
when you identify
Abstract principles and their adoption and you have a good sense of logic you can make predictions
About how they're going to play out when they are applied in real life
This is one of my major career beliefs that philosophy is not
disembodied abstract head in the clouds, but no matter how abstract and
speculative various philosophical positions
Seem to be when they are believed and acted upon the they make a real-life difference
So in part, that's what I was doing
I actually wrote the first draft of the book 20 years ago this year in nineteen 9
I had a sabbatical and so I I had an outline of the book written in
1999 and then by the middle part of the year 2000 I had
Fully written the book but it didn't come out till 2004 because I had some challenges with getting getting it published
I think what has happened in the last 5 years or so is that we are now into second or third generation
Post-modernism depending on how you count things and what has happened is the the first generation of postmoderns were very successful
Inside academic circles at educating large numbers of students getting a significant number of them
through graduate school and then to themselves becoming
Professors and public intellectuals and things reached a critical mass. I would say starting six or seven years ago and
So then we start to notice it significantly starting to transform
The internal demand dynamics of the university but we also now have a critical mass of activists who are now
Graduated maybe they didn't graduate with PhDs
They got bachelor's degrees or master's degrees
But they've gone into activist organizations and they are trying to and successfully
shifting the terms of the debate
Outside of the academic world and so the broader public starts to notice things
and then
That's where we are right now with the culture war
manifesting itself on two major fronts the academic world and the broader cultural space
So what are your concerns about that like when you look out at the world?
You are obviously concerned enough about post modernist thinking to devote a
Substantial proportion of your academic career to it and then to put yourself on the line to some degree as well
What is it about the post modernist view that
Well, let's let's let's ask this question two ways
What do you think?
the advantages
if any are to the post modernist view or the inevitability of it and what you think the dangers and
Disadvantages are hmm
Well, that's to two big questions first. Why why I'm worried about it
And there's a question about what degree of worry right one should have
Interestingly and my home discipline of philosophy
Post-modernism is not that strong part of philosophy
flirted with and
Post-modernism for a while
I think philosophy did generate all of the arguments or we saw the major arguments that postmoderns use
the force if he does have built into its DNA, so to speak a very healthy respect for
argumentation and
A no liking for new argument
So what has happened mostly in the philosophy profession is a serious development and engagement with all of these negative
skeptical arguments and so on but then a
realization that a lot of them don't work in various ways and then people moving off in other directions or
once we start seeing the same arguments being
recycled and retreading a certain amount of boredom occurs with it because
smart active minded people live like new things and so someone comes along with a new
Positive argument or a new positive program and philosophers get excited about that
And so post-modernism is a little bit passe in those disciplines
But I am worried about it because philosophy
Demographically is a tiny proportion of the overall
Academy and the postmodern arguments have been picked up by the larger and more influential
academic disciplines such as
psychology, right
You know this one as well english literature to some extent in the law schools in the field of history sociology
is very polluted and then the the big rise of all of the
various special Studies programs
You know gender studies race studies ethnicity studies and so on you find a much higher percentage of post-modernism there now
I have not seen good
journalistic sociology about higher academic - whether it's 8 percent or 40 percent of people who are postmodern or
But there clearly is an uptick statistically significant increase in the number of people who are adopting
post-modern
Viewpoints and then educating the next generation of students. Yes. Why don't the activist types
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, that's right. So
There is that this is a non philosophical issue
this is a journalistic or a demographical issue about
measuring to what extent it's a rising movement how widespread it is and so on and my concern
professionally is with the arguments that generate post-modernism and refuting those now why this is important is
Well, you know, I'm a professor
So I'm always dealing with young people who are at the early stages of their their careers and in my view the most important thing
That we all need
As human beings were thoughtful people. We want to be passionately engaged with the world
we want our lives to be meaningful is we do need a philosophy of life that's going to success set us up for
The best chance of succeeding in our lives as possible. So in my view
Basically an optimist we do need as young people
With our whole lives ahead to have some sense that my life is going to be meaningful. It's going to be significant that there are
important values that I can strive for
The romantic in me wants to say my life can and should be this great adventure and
Having that fundamental commitment and helping students sort out
What are the genuine values that are worth pursuing in life that has to be?
instilled in young people
Otherwise, they will just drift through life and then they will get to their older years and realized that their life is frittered away
Yes, okay. So that's an interesting. No, that's very interesting
observation because you know
I've been trying to account at least in part for
well, let's say the
Surprising and surreal popularity of my public lectures
so absolutely yes about a hundred and fifty cities now to about
300,000 people and you know, I lay out a fairly straightforward case
I would say that's very much analogous to the case that you just described and that is that
Well, we looked for some
unassailable truth
and for me
There are two unassailable pessimistic truths and one. Is that a
Substantial proportion of life is going to be suffering because we're finite and even if things are going well for you
Now you're subject to illness mental and physical you're subject to the decimation of your dreams
You're going to lose the people that you love the world that you know is going to change in ways that you find
disconcerting and unfortunate and so sufferings built in and then if you don't want me
Interrupting at that point the the phrase unassailable truth and what we should be doing though in
education is
Saying that there are no
Unassailable truths that part of a good education is any previous generations truth should be assailed at least
intellectually by the students they should
challenge question and look at those truths what the best arguments can be amounted against them and then make their own judgments about
Whether they agree that this truth is in fact a truth or whether it needs to be rejected and and moved on
so the great danger I think of post-modernism though is its
skeptical stance toward the idea of there being truth at all and
then in its activist
manifestation when the professors are functioning as I just have my subjective preferences and I have power in the classroom and my
View as a professor of my practice rather as a professor is simply to indoctrinate students in my subjective preferences
in that case what you are doing is not only giving students a very
cynical
Negative ultimately as a negative empty view of the world
But you are not at all training them in the ability to think for themselves to compare competing viewpoints and make their own judgment
So that's the danger right? Well, I
Should I should reconsider my
Use of the word. I'm a saleable. I I'm thinking more
I was thinking more I supposed clinically in some sense unit
My experience has been that you don't have to scratch very deeply beneath the surface of people's lives right until you find
And I know yeah
They're dealing with and so I don't know. I know you're not saying this big from the students perspective
It can't be that Professor Peterson with all of his years of experience and wisdom has announced that this is a truth therefore
It's a truth. They have to go through the process that you went through. Hopefully you can accelerate that process
For them, but they have to go through that process. Yeah
well, I mean I do that in the lectures by telling stories to and and and illustrating the fact that you know, the
limitations that are placed on us that produce
Suffering and I invite people I would say to draw their own conclusions about how they regard
that reality in their own lives and
the second proposition let's say is that the suffering is often made worse by
Malevolence and that can be while this sort of
What would you say impersonal malevolence of nature or the more personal
malevolence of society or the individual and so we're faced with that set of problems that
that vulnerability that's characteristic of existence and then
that that vulnerability because it constitutes a real set of problems calls to us to generate solutions and
It's in that
Attempt to generate solutions that that adventure that you described earlier
seems to me to manifest itself and so it seems reasonable to me to
to suggest to young people that they do have a destiny that
gives their life
significant individual import and that is to take arms up against the
inequities of existence at
Whatever levels they counted to act forthrightly and courageously to minimize unnecessary
suffering and to constrain malevolence and that and that it's also it is also actually a vital importance that they do that because
their
their failure to do so is
more damaging than their than they think
They're not ilysm and cynicism that might entice them into
Nihilistic and destructive acts themselves
Actively is more destructive than they think and their capacity to do
positive things in the world on a large scale
individually and in their family and in their community is much larger than they think I it's very difficult for me to see
how
Young people cannot can be left
Uninformed of that as at least a potential reality
without falling down the rabbit hole of nihilism and cynicism and subjectivism and relativism that
Seems to me to the be at least one of the primary dangers of post-modernism. Yes
Yeah, I think undred percent on the latter part of what you were saying. I think on the should be an open question initially
Yes, there is suffering in the world. Yes. There is malevolence in the world
But we should also be open to the fact that there is pleasure. There is beauty there is romance
There is adventure
there is genuine love in the world and what proportions of
Benevolence versus malevolence
happiness versus suffering is
Possible and natural to human beings that should be part of the conversation early on
I think it's an appropriate initial start. Go ahead your tools. I'm sorry
That's a conversation about the potency of your tools
like you can you can admit that these fundamental limitations exist, but you don't have to draw the conclusion that they're
Constraining in any oh
Well, it's not just about the tools it's also about the nature of reality that we are confronting there are of course
People who are Pollyanna sthoo have this view that the world is on our side
There's a benevolent God or the forces of the universe are lined up
Such that I lead a charmed life and everything will go well for me. There are people at the other end of the spectrum
Who you know who argued the opposite the fates are against me. The gods hate me no matter what I do
The forces that govern the universe will just grind me down that's got nothing to do with my toolset
Initially, so to speak that's a metaphysical claim about the nature of the universe
now when we do turn to the toolset if
Whatever your position is along the spectrum of benevolence to malevolence
There is the question about how much power I have
To craft my own tools to to force myself into the kind of being that can take on life's challenges and here I think
Post-modernism is dangerous in two important respects in my view the the most important
development of education schooling parenting and so on is
giving students and young people the critical thinking the rational power to be able to
Understand the world to be able to conceptualize it to know how to do the experiments to analyze the results to sort out
good truth claims from bullshit and so on and so all of that cognitive development that can only come from a
commitment to the idea that the evidence matters
that doing the experiments matters that being
excruciatingly, ly honest with respect to the to the the power of the arguments for and against positions that one might want to argue or
Adopt, but that's absolutely important
the development of a student's rational logical critical capacity is fundamentally important and
Post-modernism is an assault on that and what that means is that in practice students
Do not develop that most important life skill and so put them out into the world
without the tools that they need and I think they are then more likely to feel disempowered there likely to feel
Overwhelmed and then we get the angry
despairing activist type of person that we see in larger numbers now the other
modernists are concerned ethically with the
Re-establishment of
genuine power at the bottom of the power hierarchies
Why do you think it's the case if it is the case and many commentators have made this case Jonathan Hyde among them
That the doctrines that the post modernists tend to be teaching young people
seem to be so
Absolutely
Infantilizing and
undermining rather than
strengthening and and and and
increasing resilience
Is it that they're not interested at the individual level? I mean because it seems so paradoxical that these things are happening simultaneously
Yeah, a couple things on that one is
That in addition to developing a person's rational capacity
We do need to develop their emotional capacity life is a capacity for a great adventure for great positivity
But as you emphasized there is also going to be a significant amount of pain and suffering
And so what we need to do is develop our emotional capacity for handling
All of that resilience is an important part of that
One unfortunate part of the postmodern package though is that they are focusing on a very narrow
range of emotions typically negative emotions and they don't see those emotions as having any connection to
rationality or any connection to a
response to an actual objective reality out there, so
The emotional life of human beings is both cramped and a mystery if you take the postmodern framework
Seriously, and so I think what happens then is when those postmodern ins become teachers or professors or in a position of authority
It's a large amount of
emotional
Communication that is going on, but it's going to be a negative
rage focused despair focus cynical jaded focused kind of
emotionalism and to the extent the students pick up on that they're going to be turned off or if they have some
Predisposition toward that they just get sucked into that emotional universe better speak to Jonathan Heights point that you're raising
yeah, let me just say one thing that is striking to me as I find it interesting among our public intellectuals that
three of the most prominent people on the public intellectual sphere
Are yours?
Jonathan hight and
Steven Pinker and all three of you are professionally
psychologists I
don't know think that that is accidental because
what all three of you are doing in different ways is
noticing that philosophy of course is a very abstract set of arguments and principles, but all of those do need to be operationalized in
actual living breathing human beings and when you see how they are actually
Operationalized in human beings a large part of what you're doing is psychology
so I think it's
Not accidental that
psychologists are of
significant importance in the public intellectual space right now
So to speak to Jonathan Heights point I think what he is
Pointing out is that we are now into a second and third generation of postmoderns and
there's a devolution in the
intellectual quality of
The movement and that makes sense because if you're first generation movement is quite skeptical and relativistic
But nonetheless very educated as Roorkee
Derrida Foucault leotard, especially in my view
were
but the end
Conclusion of their position is that we don't need to take
rationality logic the quest for objectivity to seriously
what will happen in the next generation then will be a
whole Jan duration of
people with PhDs who don't take logic rationality in the quest for objectivity very seriously and said,
They will be not developing those
Skillsets at a very high level so there will be a devolution. They will be more emphasizing emotionalism
There will be more emphasizing activism and then in the third generation
It will be a further devolution
so
I don't have a huge going
self defeating
Is it simple it is? Yeah, it is. I think it is self defeating
intellectually, and one of the things that people who are intellectuals who have been following the arguments for a while notice is this
Is just a recycling of arguments that I heard five years ago ten years ago 20 years ago
and so it becomes self-defeating in the sense that it fails to attract the ongoing interest of
The smart very active minded people. I think also that this is something built into human nature and this is my my great
optimism with young people when they come to university, however
Underprepared and damaged. They might be by their their primary and high school education
They are nonetheless particularly, I think in North America still
Optimistic gung-ho they believe that they can make something of their life. I said when they start going into classes
Where the professors in word and action and just in their physical bearing are commuting
communicating rather messages of defeatism and synthesis some
students who are
Psychologically healthy will just avoid those classes
They will go into fields that hold some promise of positivity for them
It will be the character entrepreneurial fields. I'm sorry they may avoid
University all together. Yeah, absolutely. Sure. Yeah. So what's the point of going to
wallowing
about what a victim you are or what a bad person you are because you have white skin or you're a male or whatever for
Four years now, I'm gonna quit University and get on with living
I do think there also will be corrective mechanisms in place
To some extent universities are driven by dollars and who is writing the fake checks
if it's a million dollar donors when some
terrible manifestation of political correctness happens at their institution
They won't write the million dollar check the next year that will get noticed and that will be communicated in various ways. So
The you know, the universities have their problems, but I am ultimately
Optimistic that they will be able to heal themselves there are market mechanisms in place to do
So to bracket time span, okay, that's interesting
It's interesting that I mean, I wavered between optimism and pessimism because I feel that
the
the
strata of
Postmodernists is relatively young and relatively entrenched and protected by tenure. And of course, I think tenure is a good idea
But that and that they're also unbelievably good at
fomenting activism
I mean, I think political surveys indicate that only about 4% of the general population who views that might be regarded as
radical
Marxist
Postmodern it's it's a tiny minority likes bigger than that in the universities, but they they swing up
They swing beyond their weight
They had absolutely they had past their weight and it's also I think because you know serious academics
This is my impression. Is that serious academics really ignored the
Second-rate
Postmodern disre or decades feeling that the arguments that they were making were
weak enough so that they didn't even require a
Strong rebuttal I mean even when Steven Pinker wrote his book come
the blank slate, you know, I read that book and I thought
That it was an interesting book, but I thought Jesus, dr. Pinker
No one's believed that people are blank slates for like 30 years. That's
It seems as a biological
Psychologist it just seemed to me to be observed that that case had to be even made
But yeah, it's obviously right about that and I was obviously very wrong about that
yeah predictions are
hard to make
And I think it goes back to we need better
Journalism about the demographics of higher education and what's going on there? So is it
4% Is it 12% Is it 25% Then this issue you're raising about punching above their weight
That does seem to be true
but how much above their weight are they punching is the major problem in the classrooms, or is that a matter of
You know as we know most academics don't like Mickey work
Yeah
But a significant number of the first-rate people Orrock doing their real academic work and they're trying to avoid committee work
but the second and third Raiders
They don't mind committee work and they see it as a vehicle to power within the university for them. Um
so if the postmoderns are
As we like to think 2nd or 3rd great
That's a little bit unfair not all of them are
But a higher percentage of them doing the important committee worked and they have a certain amount of power
They're an overlooked part of the university demographics from my perspective is student life
where
the residents
The people who look after the residents the hall all in the entertainment and deciding what student clubs are authorized or not
there's been a significant infiltration of
Postmodernism in that area that's not on the academic side or only in indirect. But if you look at
Orientation program and again, we need better journalism here
But you find a significant number of them are devoting the whole and Torrie orientation week
When the first-year students are coming in two
Lectures on privilege and oppression and whatever the buzzwords are that also is an important issue as well
Chronicle of Higher Education
excoriating
Faculty's event occasion for producing precisely the kinds of internal
University activists that are pushing exactly that kind of agenda, right? Yeah faculties of Education
I do some work in philosophy of education
They are all over the map but there has been a significant postmodern shift
As with post-modernism being the reigning philosophy of education
And then that of course that has impact not just in higher education because that's training the next generation of teachers
one of my
younger colleagues
a man named Andrew Colgan recent PhD from Western University of Western, Ontario
In his dissertation was documenting the the significant demographic
shift among the Ontario high school teachers toward
Basically buying into a postmodern framework and that's a going to be a very important generational shift for Ontario
so what makes you like you talked about market forces and the corrective ability and
and we spoke before we started this podcast about
About
optimistic and positive
Elements my movements. I mean so well, I've two questions for you at least before we conclude and one is
You you seem optimistic and positive and and so what do you see is the route out of this and and what?
What will replace it and like what's the time span?
hmm
Yes, well
I think one thing that we are noticing is an increasing number of first-rate people who are now engaging the debate within higher
education so you can mention someone like
Steven Pinker who's not just doing academic psychology now and said he's devoting resources to
Defending in a public intellectual sphere the Enlightenment project
Jonathan Haidt also excellent
Psychologist doing clinical work as well
But nonetheless is formative in creating that heterodox Academy bringing together
Academics from a wide variety of political spectrum
But the positions but nonetheless all agreeing that academic freedom free speech and so forth are important the work that you're doing
Stepping out onto the public space stage as well. So there is a major uptick in very good
academics
Taking post-modernism and its offshoots seriously and pushing back and I think that augers well
I think there also is a financial
Clout, I think young students when they come in they do
Take a post-modernism course
But they don't go back for more or they plug into the student grapevine and they learn which courses to avoid
and in many cases that postmodern
Activist type of professors they are really ghetto wised in marginal departments
They might be outsized in their voice
but they're not attracting a huge number of students and in my view the students that they are attracting are ones, who are
Already predisposed to that. They're not necessarily converting seems to be so least invasive way of dealing with
Post-modernism if it if it does have the negative
attributes that we've been discussing is actually something like a market solution which is to
Inform young people as to it's essentially and to help convince them that there are
viable
alternatives like viable philosophical alternatives viable political
Alternatives courses they could be taking that would enrich their lives instead of enhancing their sense of victimization
Exactly. That's right
the safest route rather than political intervention or or
some kind of attempt to
radically change the structure of the universities which seems to more dangerous than than usable and
I'm very gung-ho on the internet
The internet of course is just a tool can be used for good or ill and there's a lot of crap as we all know
On the internet, but it also is the case that young
open-minded hungry students
When they are at a U versity and they're not getting the education that they want. They now have access to all sorts of
Viewpoints and they're actively exploring them and I'm sure you get hundreds of contacts
I get lots of contacts from students from all over the world
Who?
Come to me through the internet, and I know that that's a worldwide phenomenon. I also do think
That there's lots of very interesting
entrepreneurial
experimentation going on in higher education
Some of it's driven by the cost demographics, you know people asking the reasonable question. Is it really worth a quarter million dollars?
To to get a good higher education at a traditional bricks-and-mortar
university or should I spend just a hundred thousand dollars and maybe get only a
75% quality education at an online
Institution or some other vehicle? So there's lots of experimentations that are going on there
and of course the technology is just getting better and better so
instead of
the only
Avenue being taking the universities on head-on from the inside that battle has to be fought and some of us are doing it but there
Will be a significant number of people who will just avoid the universities altogether and they'll be new
Institutions that are created and that will be a market solution. Mm-hmm. Do you know that seventy about
75% of the cumulative student debt in the United States is held by women. I
Did not know that
Supported number of those women are black so it that it's so perverse
Hmm. They're so perverse part of the
Explanation for that. It's not the total explanation is that
These
women were
Enticed or chose to enter disciplines where the probability of making enough money
over a reasonable span of your life
Especially given the high interest rates that are associated with student debt is extraordinarily low
No, that's another strange
Reaction as a perverse unintended consequence. Oh, I was not aware of that statistic. I was aware that
This matters with my experience about 60% of our university graduates are women
Compared to only about 40% male. So there's a demographic shift there. So
But I was not aware of the the racial component of that
Intended consequence
It's really what you know
Because there's poor women laboring under these debt loads that it looks like they're never going to be able to clear
Okay, so that's that's optimism. It's long term optimism, but it's also
That's good to hear can I ask you a little bit about what your private
What your life is been? Like? Let's say over the last couple of years as
you
use
Social media more and as your work has become
much more
Disseminated and discussed publicly. Yeah
Pluses and the minuses for you and what's changed for you? Yeah overall
plusses
A way the minuses definitely
Whether the mean- has been that it's cut a lot into my writing time in some ways. Majorly. I'm a
stereotypical nerd my
ideal day is to go to the library with my computer and read and write with a stack of books and
I
Envision my professors life as being dominated by that
But certainly for the last couple of years my my writing and thinking time has been has been lessened
the other major negative just has been they're
just the crap you have to put up with with people who are on various hobby horses who disagree with you, but who don't have
social skills or the
to know how to have a fruitful discussion so
They send to you ad hominem emails and just resort to insults because you you disagree with them
so there's been a certain steady stream of that but part of my learning curve has driven just to be able to
ignore that or filter that out and focus on the the
The positive responses and and the critical responses that are raising good questions. I
Did want to mention if I can plug I have an open college podcast series and I've got two
Podcasts in the work where I'm taking up the the serious and in some cases good criticisms that have been raised of my work
So I'm I'm working on on those as well
That's just part of the ongoing
Fun scholarly back-and-forth that that should be going on and
while I am down on
Post-modernism I should say that I do think
It's an important part of any person's
education to at least for some time consider the most skeptical and
Nihilistic arguments that are out there that post-modernism should have a seat at the table in any person's education
And so it really should be a three or four-way
Debate that's going on there and and students need to process those arguments for themselves
the
Other pluses are that I do enjoy
travel so in addition to my normal academic
conferencing and academic lectures
I've been giving some public intellectual lectures and interacting with the general public more thinking public and that's been a lot of fun
It's actually been very encouraging to realize
How many smart?
Knowledgeable people there are out there in the world living full lives
doing very interesting things, but they also have an interest in intellectual matters and you can have a very fond this conversation with them about
Nietzsche or Marx or
the current state of higher education, so I found that
The the the tourism part that comes with the travel and just interacting with people that I never would have interacted to be very pleasurable
the other big plus has been since I am a
professor I just love young students in their first second year of university when they realize
How big the intellectual world is and how exciting it can be that when they come alive intellectually
And then having a lot more students from around the world who will email me or Facebook me?
with very interesting questions or
They have their own podcast and when I can I'll have a you know, 45 or 50 minute conversation with them on their podcast
so if
Interacting with a lot more students from other parts of the world than than I otherwise would have so yeah
We'll roll the pluses have been great
The thing is about the public exposure and the social media exposure that it's so interesting. Is that come?
The people who come to listen to you only come because they want to listen to you hmm
it's really part of it's a real pure form of the university because there's no compulsion as there is with say
Mandatory classes and grades and so on in universities is that that's right there
Is this tremendous public hunger for philosophical discourse?
That's really been completely in some sense undiscovered up until now and it's it's not an asset
That's right. And that's why I think optimistically
I am or ultimately I am optimistic because I think it is built into
Human nature to to want to be vigorous to engage with the world
and since we're such a smart species to engage with the world intellectually, so young people in their teens when they are becoming
More fully aware of themselves as independent of their parents and that their whole life is ahead and they're preparing for life
they do have this hunger and
It's beautiful to see it activated
Yeah, obviously
all the controversy that surrounded your work hasn't
Soured you in the least on the intellectual enterprise. It sounds like quite the contrary. What are you working on now?
Next five years. That's a
Missions what I've carved out in my schedule starting the end of this academic year
mid May a
Significant amount more of writing time and so I'm I'm making progress and I'm optimistic that by the end of this calendar year
I'll be almost on this next book. What I'm doing is
Focusing on the positive the post-modernism book is negative the Nietzsche and the Nazis book is negative going into some dark philosophical and political
territory
but the to put it positively what are the
positive philosophical issues and positions that need to be developed to
reinvigorate the Enlightenment to correct its deficiencies to make people realize
that the postmodern arguments are
powerful, but they're powerfully based on some
often easy philosophical issues or mistakes to make
Very subtle. So my value added is as a philosopher
The way I'm going to impart package
This is to say that we do have huge debates along any number of dimensions about politics and so on
but in fact, most of our debates about politics are not at all about politics, they are about underlying
Philosophical issues. So for example, we're having debates right now about the proper political
status of say transgender
Individuals, but we're spending very little time actually talking about the politics of it instead. We are having arguments about human nature and
to what extent things are fixed
Causally into a extent things are a matter of human volition
what things are subjective what things are objective and so on and so
Really we are having
philosophical
Arguments hopefully philosophical arguments. It should be informed by biology
but even that is itself a philosophical debate because some people want to say we should approach this as a
Scientific method type of question look at the facts look at the experiments and others have a more free-floating
Ideological commitment that is to say they're operating on a different
epistemology so really what we're doing is we're having a debate about
Epistemology and human nature not really debates about politics so that the politics is just a manifestation of that
so
then my
Hopeful professional value added is to bring clarity and some fresh perspectives on on
On those philosophical debates, one of the things that has plagued lost. Sorry. I'll just say one more thing
It has played philosophy as a whole number
false alternatives that have been entrenched in the discipline for
generations and in many cases
If you can notice
- apparently opposed arguments but realize they have a shared premise and in often cases that shared premise is
implicit then
Asking what the alternatives to that implicit premise would be once you make it explicit can be very illuminating
So I'm working that territory a lot. Hmm. Well, it's interesting. You know that maybe one of the consequences is that
out of them
Let's call it
rather murky darkness of moral relativism and
Post-modernism and the claim that power is the fundamental motivation of human beings. I mean, these are very
pessimistic
philosophical statements
taken almost - almost
Dudes think - they're logical extreme. Hmm. Maybe what will happen is that out of that will come something like a
philosophy, that's
genuinely optimistic without being naive
Exactly. That's nicely put I'm
reminded of a line from the Roman
poet Horace who was reflecting on some of the skeptical and nihilistic trends of his time where they were
Denying the natural world denying and so forth
then a lion is
Though you drive nature out with a pitchfork
Ever she will return right? So the optimistic return is is what we're working on now
Right well and there does seem to be I would say a tremendous hunger for that, you know
one of the things why and I'm sure you see this in your teaching is that
It it's amazing
you know, I I usually begin my lectures on a
fairly pessimistic note, you know detailing out the problems of human nature and
society and to some degree the natural world trying to make a vicious case for the for the
in some sense the atrocity of life and
It means that there's nothing hidden in some sense when the argument begins and then I
Try to make a case that despite that you know
We have within us the capacity to transcend that and then that capacity to transcend that
the atrocity of life is actually more powerful and
Then you can derive an optimism out of the pessimism out of the pessimism. That's even more
Optimistic because of the depth of the pessimism, you know, I can you could tell students
Look you guys you've got real problems to deal with it's no wonder that you're suffering from the existential
Dilemmas that you're suffering from they're real. Hmm, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a
Set of viable solutions and maybe a very large set of viable solutions that can be
that you can learn and that you can practice and that you can engage in that make a
genuine difference to your life and a genuine difference to the life of the people around you and that this is even more real than
the reality of the relativism in them
and the nihilism and and the pessimism and
I've been aligning that especially with the idea of responsibility. You know that
it's possible to find the sustaining meaning in your life through the adoption of a
substantive
responsibility as you can manage and it's really quite remarkable how
Ready people are for that idea
Reduces the audience's to silence to speak of that
Yeah, well, that's all of that touching on the profound themes that human beings do need to engage with
My approach is typically a different particularly with my my first-year students. Where am I?
Reading of them is a lot of them are coming into
University feeling somewhat constrained sometimes they're in
University because they have to be in university or they have the sense that their lives are largely
predetermined or that things have been mapped out either by their parents or expectation of certain social horses or whatever and
Getting them to see that the world is a lot more open
To them. There are a lot more possibilities than that. They have more power to shape their own
destinies than they otherwise might have been taught so
higher education has transformative in the sense of of liberating them from constraints that they
Felt themselves to be put in
And I found that that has been
Useful in tapping into the hunger that we are both talking about because that can be suppressed
but once they get a taste of it that in fact
they are free agents that the world is a lot more open-ended than other people might have been telling them they they
They start to drink it up. Well, that was very exciting University for me
You know
I came from a small town and went to increasingly large universities and every time I made a transition
Vince that the world was opening up to me continue to increase
In a part, that's what
Makes post-modernism unsettling because it really is a cramped intellectual vision
But it also tends to put people into smaller and smaller
Categories or you're only a member of this group and you're an exemple are of it
and your identity has been shaped by forces beyond your control and
You can't engage with other cultures and other individuals except on the basis of hostility
Which just means people retrench so it's a very closing in kind of intellectual movement
so there the the optimism and the the romance and the adventure in the sense that
You can in fact take charge of your own life and make yourself and the world a better place
That's the point that we need to emphasize. But of course, it can't be a naive one
So we do need better intellectual tools for that. Well, I do think students to
always love teaching undergraduates is because even those who are
Who have that?
brittle and
Thin-skinned
cynicism sort of the prematurely
hmm
intellectually hopeless
however II thought this
dynamism of youth that
wants exactly
That call to adventure
Exists and that they will respond
with
Unbelievable enthusiasm, I agree entirely. That's right. Yeah - any message that puts
That idea across in a believable manner and that takes them seriously
The other thing that struck me - that it's really saddening
you know, I've talked to hundreds of people after my lectures now and
It's it's almost inconceivable
The degree to which people are
starving for encouragement
How little they get and how little it takes to make a massive difference in their life just to say, you know
You are a sovereign individual of
Divine value that you're the cornerstone of the community and and and that's the fundamental
presupposition of our society that happens to be true and that you
Can put your life together with truth and courage and things will work out better and even more importantly than that
Whether it works out or not, even more importantly than that
That is the adventure and destiny of your life and it actually matters and people are sewing
Dyeing they're dying for that idea
Yep, that's beautifully put so thanks for saying that
Well, look, I'd like to know when you put up those podcasts that
respond to the criticisms of your book
So if you would be kind enough to let me know that I'll be happy to do so
I would I would love to publicize them. It might be an opportunity again for us to have another conversation
Because I'm very interested in the criticisms, you know, because I relied on your book a fair bit in my discussion of post-modernism
It's not an area of expertise of mine
You know, I was one of those academics who tended to ignore it not entirely but while I was pursuing my own studies
but your book was extremely useful and
You know, it's not
Necessarily the case that because I'm not as philosophically versed as I might be that I can
Evaluate all the criticisms and so I would definitely like to know more about that and to know more about you respond
So, please do let me know. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me again. I always find that
extremely illuminating
Right, I appreciate the invitation and spending time with you as well. It's good fun
Great-grand important. Oh, good luck. Good luck with your ambitions and I wish you
even more success in the public domain because I think that what you're doing is extremely helpful and
Well, thank you. Yeah, you too. Yeah
The regard is mutual. Absolutely. All right. Well, hopefully we'll have a chance to meet at some point in the
not-too-distant future
Perfect
Very good to see you. You too
Bye for now. Bye bye
