Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault

By Stephen R.C. Hicks

Book Overview

Tracing postmodernism from its roots in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant to their development in thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty, philosopher Stephen Hicks provides a provocative account of why postmodernism has been the most vigorous intellectual movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Why do skeptical and relativistic arguments have such power in the contemporary intellectual world? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why has a significant portion of the political Left--the same Left that traditionally promoted reason, science, equality for all, and optimism--now switched to themes of anti-reason, anti-science, double standards, and cynicism? Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592476422
• ISBN13: 9781592476428
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Scholargy Publishing
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

This is how philosophy should be written!

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

This book should be in every student's backpack.

This book should be in every student's backpack. In the post-modern intellectual battleground in which each student find himself submerged - and sometimes drowning - this book offers essential intellectual self-defence for every student who still cares to think. No matter if you already know every answer to all the sundry irrationalities you face every day - herewith is a comprehensive summary of your intellectual enemy that...

A badly needed expos?

This is an enthusiastic endorsement of Stephen R. C. Hicks? Explaining Postmodernism. It is some great but very scary read. Professor Hicks has written a sweeping yet very readable explanation of why contemporary intellectuals embrace postmodernism. This is the position widely championed in academic circles?from philosophy, literature, law and the social sciences?that holds that there is no truth, no reality, no clear meaning,...

Essential reading

When speaking with a colleague about this book, he was surprised to find out that Postmodernism has such a storied history including the likes of Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell. And many readers also will be surprised to see the intellectual pedigree that Postmodernism boasts. Of course, Dr. Hicks isn't arguing that Kant or Russell were Postmodernists--but what he does in this quick and highly readable book is to show...