Episode 79

Postmodernism part 2

Published on: 15th January, 2024

We wrap up our discussion with Professor Hicks concerning his book. Truthfully, we could do about five more hours covering this plague upon Mankind. Alas, we will see if we can do that in the future. Happy New Year!

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

Episode 79 (53 minutes) was recorded at 2130 Central European Time, on December 7, 2023, with Ringr app. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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Transcript
Blair:

All right, ladies and gentlemen.

Blair:

All right, we have today a special guest.

Blair:

Professor Stephen Hicks has returned to do part two of our long standing discussion on

Blair:

his great book explaining postmodernism.

Blair:

Professor Hicks is a professor of philosophy

Blair:

at Rockford University and executive director of the center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship

Blair:

and the senior fellow at Atlas Society.

Blair:

Stephen, how are you?

Stephen:

Very well, thanks.

Stephen:

Yeah, we're closing on the end of a semester,

Stephen:

so busy time of year, but looking forward to holiday break also, I bet.

Blair:

Now, I want to jump right in, sort of continuing our discussion about your book.

Blair:

Postmodernists denounce reason and language, yet they need both of those to use them to

Blair:

articulate their ideas.

Blair:

So again, isn't that a contradiction?

Stephen:

Well, yes, it is a contradiction.

Stephen:

And then the postmoderns have various ways of

Stephen:

handling the contradiction.

Stephen:

One of them is simply to say that logic is a

Stephen:

tool.

Stephen:

It's a tool of language, or language is an

Stephen:

embodiment of a particular logic.

Stephen:

But what is the status of logic then?

Stephen:

They will fall back on a kind of subjectivist epistemology, saying, logic does not tell us

Stephen:

anything true about reality.

Stephen:

We don't know anything true about reality,

Stephen:

much less that reality is non contradictory.

Stephen:

So logic, language and all of that is just a

Stephen:

subjective tool that we have devised.

Stephen:

And if we want to avoid contradiction, we can.

Stephen:

But if we don't want to avoid contradiction, then who's to tell us that we are wrong?

Stephen:

Nobody can say anything like that.

Stephen:

So they will use an epistemological strategy

Stephen:

then just to dismiss contradiction.

Stephen:

Now, some of them also, though, will say, yes,

Stephen:

it is a contradiction.

Stephen:

Here I'm thinking of Jacques Derrida, and he

Stephen:

will say, well, look, we have to use language.

Stephen:

That's true.

Stephen:

We can't escape from language.

Stephen:

We are language users.

Stephen:

And the way language and logic have been developed in the western system has only

Stephen:

allowed us to use words and reason in a certain way.

Stephen:

So we are kind of stuck with that.

Stephen:

And rather than trying to step outside of that

Stephen:

framework to seek some alternative truth or better understanding of reality, all we can do

Stephen:

is work within it.

Stephen:

And we're trying to subvert that system.

Stephen:

So we will just use language to advance our ends.

Stephen:

And if we have to use contradictory strategies, then so be it, because we're not

Stephen:

left with anything else.

Stephen:

And then if you are a smart guy and you point

Stephen:

out that what I said three paragraphs ago contradicts what I'm saying in this paragraph,

Stephen:

well, I'll say, okay, well, good, you got me.

Stephen:

But who really cares?

Stephen:

And then just divert the conversation in some other direction.

Blair:

How nice.

Stephen:

Yeah.

Blair:

I stumbled across this word.

Blair:

And so if you could expand on this, you

Blair:

highlight the term resentment or resentment.

Blair:

Resentment.

Blair:

I've never heard that word and say it's also a strategy used by the postmodernists.

Stephen:

Well, yes and no. So the concept of raison tamal, it's a french word, but it's a

Stephen:

borrow word because it comes to fame in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th

Stephen:

century german philosopher.

Stephen:

And he used it because the kind of psychology,

Stephen:

the pathological psychology, he was trying to diagnose and analyze.

Stephen:

There wasn't a good word in German and the english resentment was close.

Stephen:

But the way that word Rey Santamon had developed in French was closer, with a little

Stephen:

more cynicism and so on.

Stephen:

So start from the concept of resentment.

Stephen:

One crude way of putting it then, is to say that there are people who are achievers in

Stephen:

their life, they have accomplished something, or they are confident in their abilities to

Stephen:

achieve their goals, and so they go on and just get on with life and enjoying life and

Stephen:

being proud of what they do accomplish and having a good sense of self esteem about their

Stephen:

ability to do so.

Stephen:

But we do know that there are lots of people

Stephen:

who don't feel up to the task.

Stephen:

And it's not that someone else is telling them

Stephen:

that they are not up to the task, it's that they, in their own self awareness, they feel

Stephen:

afraid of reality, they feel not competent in their abilities.

Stephen:

The kind of person who always says it's not worth trying, nothing is going to come from

Stephen:

it.

Stephen:

Why does reality, or why does this always

Stephen:

happen to me? So the person has a kind of self reputation of

Stephen:

being a loser, and that, of course, is humbling and in one's own self estimation.

Stephen:

But then, in the presence of someone who is not a loser, someone who's accomplished

Stephen:

something, the emotional reaction the loser type has is this resentment feeling, because

Stephen:

the person who has actually accomplished something stands as a kind of indictment of

Stephen:

the fact that they are a loser.

Stephen:

So I might tell myself, if I put myself in

Stephen:

this position, that life is unfair.

Stephen:

I never had a chance, and that's why I'm a

Stephen:

middle aged schmuck who's never accomplished anything, but it's not my fault.

Stephen:

And I'm telling myself this story now, I don't ever quite really believe it, but it is a

Stephen:

story I tell myself.

Stephen:

And then along comes someone, say, who

Stephen:

graduated from the same high school class, or who was in my peer group in some respect,

Stephen:

who's gone on to do something special and emotionally, my reaction will be to resent

Stephen:

that person.

Stephen:

I hate that guy, and I wish him damage and so

Stephen:

forth.

Stephen:

So all of the classic resentment feelings.

Stephen:

But what's going on there is that that person is showing that the story I tell about myself

Stephen:

isn't really true, that it is a rationalization, but I hate the person for

Stephen:

being a living example, that my rationalization doesn't actually work.

Stephen:

And so rather, though, than I taking responsibility for my own failings in life,

Stephen:

that's a very hard thing to do.

Stephen:

I outwardly project them onto the other

Stephen:

person, and I hate that person, and I want to damage that person.

Stephen:

I want that person to go away.

Stephen:

I want that person to be undermined so that I

Stephen:

can go on with my self rationalization for my loser status.

Stephen:

So what Nietzsche is doing is trying to diagnose what he calls the slave morality, in

Stephen:

contrast to what he calls the master morality.

Stephen:

And this is a bit reductionistic, but he

Stephen:

argues that human beings fall into two kind of life types, two psychological types, those who

Stephen:

feel they can master themselves, master reality, master their social circumstances,

Stephen:

and do something significant, and those who feel that they cannot do that, so they are

Stephen:

enslaved by their circumstances, enslaved by whatever, and they have effectively given up

Stephen:

and given up on life, given up on themselves.

Stephen:

So he uses the concept of reissanto mon, or

Stephen:

this really bitter, curdled resentment, as a deep condition to diagnose a certain type.

Stephen:

And with all of that, by way of background, it is one of the concepts that I deploy in the

Stephen:

latter part of the explaining postmodernism book, just because a century after Nietzsche,

Stephen:

in my estimation, many of the postmodern subgroups are motivated by a kind of

Stephen:

nietzschean, Rey Santa mon.

Blair:

Yeah, I understand that now.

Blair:

Thank you for that.

Blair:

Other writers claim that Marxism is laced with envy, so envy must be a subcategory or the

Blair:

same type of feeling.

Stephen:

Yes, resentment and envy are siblings, so to speak.

Stephen:

I think there is a difference between the two.

Stephen:

Even envy comes in a couple of varieties.

Stephen:

So there's a benign form of envy.

Stephen:

Someone has a very nice car, say, and I will

Stephen:

say, wow, I feel envious.

Stephen:

And what I mean is, I really like that car,

Stephen:

and I wish that I had one, and I'm a little bit sad that I don't have one, but I'm just a

Stephen:

little more redoubled in my efforts that someday I'm going to get a really nice car

Stephen:

like that.

Stephen:

The more bitter form of envy comes out in a

Stephen:

destructive form where someone, say, has a really nice car, and I don't really think that

Stephen:

I ever will have a nice car.

Stephen:

And I feel bad about that.

Stephen:

And it comes out in the form that I want to say, damage the other guy's car so I might

Stephen:

scratch it or intentionally ding it in some way as a way of saying f you to you having a

Stephen:

nice car, while I don't have a nice car.

Stephen:

And there's nothing valorizing about or decent

Stephen:

about envy in that particular form.

Stephen:

Resentment sometimes can have a justice

Stephen:

component to it.

Stephen:

So maybe I'm just making up an example on the

Stephen:

spot here, but maybe I'm up for promotion.

Stephen:

But I have some competition for this

Stephen:

promotion, and I kind of think that I deserve the promotion.

Stephen:

But I know that my competitor is perhaps not quite as deserving as I am of the promotion.

Stephen:

But nonetheless, say he gets the promotion.

Stephen:

And I'm upset about this fact that he now has

Stephen:

something that I wanted.

Stephen:

But in that case, there's a little bit of an

Stephen:

injustice because I think he was a little less indesering.

Stephen:

So sometimes resentment is meant for that particular kind of emotion as well.

Stephen:

So one has to be careful and start parsing out the subcategories.

Stephen:

But they definitely are in the same area.

Stephen:

And yes, to come back to your point about

Stephen:

Marxism, it is one of the interpretations of Marxism.

Stephen:

There's always a back and forth when we talk about philosophies, about whether kind of

Stephen:

psychology comes first and philosophy comes along and rationalizes the person's

Stephen:

psychological predispositions or their beliefs that they've acquired in a pre philosophical

Stephen:

way, or whether one first thinks about things and argues oneself into certain conclusions

Stephen:

and formulates a philosophy.

Stephen:

And then once you believe certain things, that

Stephen:

shapes your psychology in a certain direction.

Stephen:

And I think both routes are possible for us as

Stephen:

human beings.

Stephen:

First we can have an idea and be committed to

Stephen:

the idea.

Stephen:

And then rationalize a philosophy that

Stephen:

justifies that idea.

Stephen:

And then we can also come independently to

Stephen:

ideas and that can change our psychological outlook.

Stephen:

So in the case of Marxism, the question then would be, should we just take it straight as a

Stephen:

series of claims about the way the world works, and that those claims about the way the

Stephen:

world work lead to a certain psychology, including certain animosities and hatreds

Stephen:

toward people who have a lot of money? Or if Marxism really starts with some pre

Stephen:

philosophical resentment or envy or hatred for people who have life better than you do.

Stephen:

And what you're doing is trying to find a philosophy that just rationalizes that

Stephen:

animosity that you had in a pre philosophical mode.

Stephen:

And I think this is where one has to get to know any individual Marxist very well before

Stephen:

one knows for sure which came first.

Stephen:

But I think there are Marxists who fall into

Stephen:

both.

Blair:

I want to.

Blair:

I did want to talk about Hegel and what his

Blair:

contribution to postmodernism is, or was.

Blair:

But does he fit in that category?

Blair:

Does he have.

Stephen:

Yeah. So we're kind of backtracking our way through the german philosophical

Stephen:

pantheon, from Nietzsche in the late 18 hundreds to Marx in the middle 18 hundreds, to

Stephen:

Hegel in the early 18 hundreds.

Stephen:

Well, there's a lot of things one could say

Stephen:

about Hegel, but your question is more specifically about his contributions to

Stephen:

postmodernism.

Stephen:

So let me just start with one.

Stephen:

There are a number of things that are worth talking about here, depending on how much one

Stephen:

wants to say.

Stephen:

But there's a move that is made by Emmanuel

Stephen:

Kant.

Stephen:

We have to back up one generation earlier,

Stephen:

where Kant argues that modern philosophy had reached some dead ends, that it was committed

Stephen:

to reason, and that's what made it break with the earlier premodern philosophies that

Stephen:

emphasized revelation and mysticism and faith in authority.

Stephen:

The modern said individuals need to be rational and think for themselves.

Stephen:

But the moderns had divided into two major schools, those who were more empiricist, that

Stephen:

thought we should start with the senses and build our way up to more abstract, logical

Stephen:

formulations, more general principles, and the rationalists who thought that we should start

Stephen:

with some self evident, rational, logical principles and then apply them more

Stephen:

deductively.

Stephen:

And so there's a long story about modern

Stephen:

philosophy as it develops in the 16 hundreds on into the 17 hundreds.

Stephen:

And by the time we get to the end of the 18 hundreds, Kant, who's a genius, by the way, is

Stephen:

standing looking at what has occurred.

Stephen:

And he argues that both of those schools had

Stephen:

reached a skeptical dead ends.

Stephen:

The empiricist school and the rationalist

Stephen:

school had reached a dead end.

Stephen:

And so the project that had said, we can use

Stephen:

our reason to come up with objective, general truths about reality, and we can be very

Stephen:

optimistic epistemologically.

Stephen:

That has to be abandoned.

Stephen:

And so what Kant does on my reading is argue that we need to retreat to a kind of

Stephen:

subjectivism, that the subject has some inbuilt forms of sensibility and categories of

Stephen:

the understanding, as Kant calls them.

Stephen:

And what we do is we construct reality rather

Stephen:

than discover the nature of reality, that we create what he calls a phenomenal world and

Stephen:

then investigate it, rather than finding and investigating an independently existing

Stephen:

reality.

Stephen:

So there's a subjective term in kantian

Stephen:

philosophy, but what Kant argues, is that all of us subjects are the same, that we have the

Stephen:

same psychological apparatus, so to speak, or we have the same subconscious or preconscious

Stephen:

structuring forms.

Stephen:

And so we all then universally are in the same

Stephen:

subjective reality.

Stephen:

So there's a universal subjectivism.

Stephen:

Now, with all of that by way of background, one of the things that Hegel does is argue

Stephen:

that there's no way for Kant to know that all subjects have the same structuring subjective

Stephen:

faculties.

Stephen:

And Hegel then introduces a relativism, to say

Stephen:

that different subjects at different time periods will be structuring subjectively

Stephen:

reality differently.

Stephen:

So he's abandoning universalism for a kind of

Stephen:

relativism.

Stephen:

And so instead of saying that the whole world

Stephen:

is universally structured for all time, but that rather there are different epochs, that

Stephen:

human beings are part of the evolving or the evolution of the universe.

Stephen:

And as such, what's true in one generation is not necessarily going to be true in the next

Stephen:

generation.

Stephen:

And what's true in one culture, depending on

Stephen:

its stage of evolution, is not going to be true in a different culture, which might be at

Stephen:

a different evolutionary stage.

Stephen:

So Kant is abandoning objectivity for a kind

Stephen:

of subjectivity, but he's maintaining the hope of a universal set of beliefs.

Stephen:

Hegel is a relativizing, and then Marx adopts that relativizing and changes things in some

Stephen:

direction, in a slightly different direction.

Stephen:

And the story carries on until a century

Stephen:

later, we get to the postmoderns.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

What a great summation.

Blair:

Thank you, professor.

Blair:

Thank you.

Blair:

Let's jump to more present day, if I may.

Stephen:

Absolutely.

Blair:

Who was Herbert Marcusa, and what was his major thesis?

Blair:

I think it was called repressive tolerance.

Stephen:

Yes, that's probably the one that he's the most famous for.

Stephen:

Herbert Marcus, another german philosopher, the second third of the 20th century.

Stephen:

And he represents kind of a marriage of two trends.

Stephen:

One is a fairly strong left wing political trend.

Stephen:

He was a marxist philosopher and kind of enamored of Marxism in his youth and on into

Stephen:

his twenty s and did serious academic work in the marxist tradition.

Stephen:

And if one drills down he's part of the 20th century type of Marxism that says Marx didn't

Stephen:

get everything exactly right, so there have to be some modifications.

Stephen:

And so he ends up being some sort of neo, neo Marxist of the 20th century.

Stephen:

At the same time, I'm mentioning the name Heidegger, because Marcusa is working with

Stephen:

Martin Heidegger, who is another very important german philosopher of the early 20th

Stephen:

century.

Stephen:

And Heidegger's philosophical approach is not

Stephen:

marxist ontologically or epistemologically.

Stephen:

We'll talk about the politics in a few

Stephen:

minutes.

Stephen:

And so Marcusa, as a graduate student, is also

Stephen:

working heideggerian, what we call phenomenology, which is a school of german

Stephen:

philosophy in the early part of the 20th century, where one is not assuming that in

Stephen:

one's philosophy, what one is doing is trying objectively or scientifically to analyze the

Stephen:

world as it is.

Stephen:

But rather, one is assuming that one is a part

Stephen:

of the world and that one can't go into one's description of the world by assuming a strong

Stephen:

distinction between subjects and objects and so forth.

Stephen:

But rather, one is rather trying just to describe the flow of experience without making

Stephen:

assumptions about distinctions between subjective and objective, factual and

Stephen:

imaginary, and so on.

Stephen:

And there's a lot of technical developments

Stephen:

that are going on there.

Stephen:

So what Marcusa is doing in his phd work is

Stephen:

trying to do heideggerian phenomenology, but at the same time, integrate some.

Stephen:

Then, in terms of deep philosophy, a quasimarxist, quasi heideggerian.

Stephen:

Now, where this comes to become more important is that we have to integrate the politics as

Stephen:

well.

Stephen:

And here, a striking fact is that Heidegger

Stephen:

was a Nazi that is a follower of national socialist philosophy and a card carrying

Stephen:

member of the nazi party and kind of a gung ho advocate of that approach to politics.

Stephen:

So what we have then, in the case of Marcus, whom your question is about, or who your

Stephen:

question is about, is that someone who is working with a card carrying Nazi, at the same

Stephen:

time, is quite strongly attracted to Marxism.

Stephen:

And so what we find in Heidegger also is a way

Stephen:

trying to integrate some elements of what we would think of as national socialism and some

Stephen:

elements of Marxism.

Stephen:

And then the slide is to say that one way of

Stephen:

trying to do this is to stop talking about the world workers as a unified class and to start

Stephen:

focusing on ethnic groups in the way fascists and national socialists will.

Stephen:

So what they will argue is that Marx said, when we do our politics, we need to divide

Stephen:

groups into oppressor and oppressed and see them as in conflict with each other.

Stephen:

But the oppressors are the rich, property owning class, and the oppressed are the poorer

Stephen:

working class.

Stephen:

And so it's an economic oppressor, oppressed

Stephen:

relationship.

Stephen:

What we find in National Socialist philosophy

Stephen:

is that there also are oppressors and oppressed, but it's not economic classes that

Stephen:

matter so much as ethnic and racial classes that matter.

Stephen:

So you'll find the Nazis talking about the Aryans versus the Jews.

Stephen:

And, of course, they will also mention the Germans versus the English and various other

Stephen:

ethnic and racial groupings and so on.

Stephen:

So what, Marcus?

Stephen:

And now we start talking about the Frankfurt school and other related thinkers, like Max

Stephen:

Horkheimer and Theodore Ordorno, who also were very strongly attracted to Marxism but also

Stephen:

trying to work.

Stephen:

Marxism is they will then take the same

Stephen:

oppressor oppressed relationship and the same anti capitalism and the same anti

Stephen:

Enlightenment philosophies.

Stephen:

But say, sometimes it's a matter of economic

Stephen:

clash, sometimes it's a matter of religious clash, sometimes it's a matter of racial

Stephen:

class, sometimes it's a matter of gender class, sometimes it's a matter of ethnic

Stephen:

clash.

Stephen:

And what we need to do is have a

Stephen:

multidimensional, oppressor oppressed relationship.

Stephen:

And out of this then comes what we call Frankfurt school theorizing, which takes some

Stephen:

of Marxism.

Stephen:

We haven't talked about Freud, but some of

Stephen:

Freudianism, some of Heidegger, some of Nietzsche, and puts it all together in a

Stephen:

package in the middle part of the 20th century or so.

Stephen:

So where all of this then comes is to fruition, is in the 1960s.

Stephen:

And this is when Herbert Marcus becomes a big deal, primarily in America.

Stephen:

Interestingly, all of these Frankfurt school thinkers, they are german thinkers.

Stephen:

And with the rise of Nazism, when things got bad in Germany and central Europe, some of

Stephen:

them are also jewish.

Stephen:

They decide, of course, that they're going to

Stephen:

get out of Germany.

Stephen:

And even though they are marxist sympathizers,

Stephen:

they don't go to the Soviet Union.

Stephen:

Most of them come to America.

Stephen:

And so they get kind of nice university positions at american university.

Stephen:

And so their stars rise largely in America.

Stephen:

And what's happening in America, this is now,

Stephen:

after the war, is that the old left is sort of dying out.

Stephen:

And there's the new left, and it is the Frankfurt school and Herbert Marcus who become

Stephen:

some of the shining intellectual stars for the new left.

Stephen:

Now, the concept then, all of this is by way of background, of getting to repressive

Stephen:

tolerance, which you had put in your question.

Stephen:

And the idea of repressive tolerance is the

Stephen:

claim that what we have in liberal, capitalist America and much of Western Europe is a

Stephen:

society that pretends to be liberal and tolerant.

Stephen:

Right? We say that people have free speech, that

Stephen:

people can publish whatever they want, that we're going to have art of these arguments

Stephen:

about all sorts of stuff.

Stephen:

And so it sounds very liberal, it sounds very

Stephen:

tolerant and so on.

Stephen:

But what we need to do is apply a kind of

Stephen:

marxist analysis to see that that really is just a surface or a cover analysis of the way

Stephen:

society is, that really we live in a capitalist society, and so it has to be

Stephen:

oppressive.

Stephen:

But what the capitalists have done is become

Stephen:

very clever at hiding their oppression, hiding the way they really are, intolerant, at the

Stephen:

same time being very good at this rhetoric of liberal tolerance and so forth.

Stephen:

So they will allow dissenting voices to speak and allow some of them to get published at the

Stephen:

same time, knowing that if they get too uppity or they get too much power or too much

Stephen:

influence, they can find various sneaky ways to just cut them down to size and continue to

Stephen:

control society.

Stephen:

So they want to argue that what we liberals

Stephen:

think of free speech and academic freedom and freedom of the press and freedom of the

Stephen:

religion is that that really is just a fake cover story for an oppression that is largely

Stephen:

hidden, but that the critical theorists, the Frankfurt school trained, the neomarxist

Stephen:

trained theorists, are the ones who are able to see beneath the surface, to see the real

Stephen:

oppression that's really going on there.

Stephen:

The argument then is that this is then Herbert

Stephen:

Marcus's famous formulation, where he wants to then say, look, the liberal capitalists aren't

Stephen:

really tolerant.

Stephen:

They're only pretending to be tolerant.

Stephen:

So there's no reason why we should be tolerant.

Stephen:

In turn, we should, to the extent that we have power as professors or whatever cultural

Stephen:

institutions we control, that we should just play the same game.

Stephen:

And so, of course, we will be tolerant and promoting of viewpoints that we think advance

Stephen:

our agenda.

Stephen:

And when we have the power to do so, we will

Stephen:

be intolerant to voices that are coming from the capitalist side of the equation.

Stephen:

So that is then going to be a liberating intolerance.

Stephen:

And you might then say, well, that's just a double standard.

Stephen:

And we will say, well, double standards depend on believing that we should have these

Stephen:

universal standards.

Stephen:

But we learned from Hegel a long time ago that

Stephen:

there are no universal standards, just what works.

Stephen:

And what's true is, depending on what class membership one has and what stage in the

Stephen:

historical evolution of society one is.

Stephen:

So we're not at all bothered by double

Stephen:

standards.

Blair:

Man. Wow. I think postmodernism, certainly from the left, is the root of what

Blair:

we see today, is they smear everyone who doesn't agree with them as fascists or Nazis.

Blair:

That's a systematic campaign to me, to shut down debate.

Blair:

Is that what you see?

Stephen:

Well, yes and no. Certainly to shut down debate.

Stephen:

Part of the postmodern package now is the idea that debate is pointless.

Stephen:

So if you think about the ethos of debate, the idea then is you're going to have two sides

Stephen:

that will give them equal time, and we will structure things so that everybody gets a

Stephen:

chance to speak.

Stephen:

And the idea is that we're taking a

Stephen:

controversial topic and we're supposed to be open minded about it and listen to both sides

Stephen:

and be willing to change our own minds and to have our positions subjected to debate and so

Stephen:

forth, with the idea being that the better arguments will and should prevail over time,

Stephen:

and we'll get to the truth or we'll get closer to the truth.

Stephen:

But by the time we get to postmodernism, we don't believe in truth anymore as a goal.

Stephen:

We think everything just is power and achieve social power for our subjective value

Stephen:

framework.

Stephen:

We also don't believe in reason in that old

Stephen:

fashioned sense.

Stephen:

We don't believe in evidence and logic, and we

Stephen:

don't believe that people presented with evidence and logic are going to change their

Stephen:

mind.

Stephen:

We think that is an outmoded epistemology.

Stephen:

And so the entire ethos of what we are trying to do, it's just a power struggle, means that

Stephen:

the debate structure is just completely outmoded.

Stephen:

And so we don't debate.

Stephen:

Instead, when we use language, we are using

Stephen:

language rhetorically as a power tool to try to influence people, to put them on the

Stephen:

defensive in some cases, and less sure of their values, less sure of their beliefs, and

Stephen:

to advance our own values and our own beliefs in a social context.

Stephen:

And in that context, instead of seeing language as a tool of cognition that we will

Stephen:

use, and that we will, in a social context, use formal structures like debates, instead,

Stephen:

we have to see language as a different kind of tool.

Stephen:

It's a weapon.

Stephen:

It's in an adversarial context, and you use

Stephen:

language as a weapon.

Stephen:

And that means that using insults when they

Stephen:

work, using ad hominem arguments and other things that we used to call logical fallacies,

Stephen:

if those work, go ahead and do so.

Stephen:

Name calling, like calling someone a fascist,

Stephen:

is very effective because it puts people on the defensive.

Stephen:

Nobody wants to be called in a fascist and immediately means the person is trying to find

Stephen:

five reasons why they're not a fascist and they're groping for that, and while they're

Stephen:

groping and so on, you can go on to make other points and so forth.

Stephen:

So name calling is then just a useful rhetorical weapon, and you just use it

Stephen:

explicitly.

Stephen:

And if you think the idea here is, oh, well,

Stephen:

we need to have clear and precise definitions of the words that we are using.

Stephen:

If that's your modus operandi psychologically, then from their perspective, you're just one

Stephen:

of these old fashioned, rational, liberal individualists who doesn't get it.

Stephen:

And so we're just going to be rhetorically able to out weaponize you.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

So I'm out of touch then.

Stephen:

You're a modernist, and they are postmodernist.

Blair:

Yes. All right, professor, again, thank you for these wonderful, wonderful summaries.

Blair:

What I want to do, and you obviously devoted some of your book to this current topic, which

Blair:

seems to be all the rage now, free speech and or censorship.

Blair:

Who's censoring who? What's going on?

Blair:

For me, thinking and the freedom to think are corollaries.

Blair:

And so shouldn't criticism be part of speech and essential to discover truth?

Blair:

But I guess, as you just said, truth doesn't matter.

Stephen:

Yes. So if we focus on the concept of free speech, then I think you're right from

Stephen:

our perspective, and I think I would agree with you on this one.

Stephen:

We have an understanding of human psychology, so humans have the capacity for rational

Stephen:

thought.

Stephen:

But that is a volitional capacity, and it's

Stephen:

fundamental to our identity as human beings that we exercise this rational capacity to

Stephen:

learn about the world, to form our characters, to form our beliefs, and then to act in the

Stephen:

world.

Stephen:

But since it's a volitional capacity, it

Stephen:

becomes a very deep responsibility for each of us as individuals to choose to think and to

Stephen:

think consistently throughout our lives.

Stephen:

Then, when we are in a social context, because

Stephen:

many of the things we do in lives, we pursue our values in a social context with family

Stephen:

members, with friends, going to school, doing our business organizations.

Stephen:

And so there's a lot of kind of shared discovery, a lot of discussion, a lot of

Stephen:

conversation that goes on there.

Stephen:

And so for those social relations to work,

Stephen:

well, one of the preconditions then, is that it's going to be a lot of discussion and

Stephen:

sometimes a lot of debate.

Stephen:

We work out what we are going to do socially,

Stephen:

but that each of the participants in the family, in the friendship, in the business, in

Stephen:

the classroom, and so on, still needs to be a free agent to do his or her own thinking.

Stephen:

So part of the social ethos is to encourage that freedom of speech in that social context.

Stephen:

So if I say, am the father of children and I'm preparing them for adult life, then part of

Stephen:

what I want to do is encourage my children to think for themselves and to speak their minds

Stephen:

and not just take me, as always, to lay down the law, authority, dad, and whatever I say,

Stephen:

is the absolute truth.

Stephen:

And so some challenging and criticism when

Stephen:

appropriate.

Stephen:

And the same thing if I am a teacher

Stephen:

establishing the rules for the class, that each of my students needs to learn more

Stephen:

sophisticatedly how to think for himself, how to think for herself.

Stephen:

And so my responsibility is to establish that as a social condition in the classroom, and

Stephen:

then more broadly, in a political context.

Stephen:

If we're going to have some sort of liberal

Stephen:

democratic republic, we want our citizens to be thinking about all kinds of political

Stephen:

issues and having discussions and debates.

Stephen:

And so my job as a politician is to establish

Stephen:

those free speech conditions.

Stephen:

And then things become more particularized in

Stephen:

specialist institutions like universities, where we want professors to be researchers, in

Stephen:

part, to be discovering new knowledge, and to be taking up all of the controversial issues

Stephen:

and having arguments and debates amongst themselves and so forth.

Stephen:

And so free speech in an academic context becomes important.

Stephen:

And then we set up special protections like academic freedoms and giving people tenure and

Stephen:

so forth.

Stephen:

So all of that is free speech.

Stephen:

Working it out in the liberal, individualist, pro reason, philosophical framework.

Blair:

All right, Steven, is that correct?

Stephen:

You're still here.

Blair:

All right, well, I mean, do you think it's still recording?

Blair:

I think that's the key question.

Blair:

I hope so.

Martin:

You say you are offline, and something happened on your side.

Martin:

So that's why.

Martin:

What are the last question are we on?

Martin:

Who are they? The movement on free speech, or have you

Martin:

covered that?

Blair:

We're just starting the free speech on campus?

Martin:

I was thinking of taking an example of what's happened now in Middle east and Israel

Martin:

and the terror sympathizers and supporters.

Martin:

It's pretty.

Stephen:

So let me just say a couple more sentences, though.

Stephen:

Everything that I said about free speech.

Stephen:

So if you were to go through and make a

Stephen:

checklist of all of the points that we are individuals, that we have the capacity for

Stephen:

reason, that reason is volitional, that we're setting up these voluntary social networks,

Stephen:

schools and businesses and families, in which discussion and debate has to happen.

Stephen:

All of those points would be challenged and rejected by the postmoderns.

Stephen:

They don't believe we're individuals, that we are rational, that we are volitionally self

Stephen:

responsible, that we're trying to set up win win social institutions of various sorts

Stephen:

within which free speech is a core cherished value.

Stephen:

And since they reject all of those elements, they end up rejecting free speech as a value,

Stephen:

consistently.

Stephen:

And so they will push for speech codes when

Stephen:

they can get away with it.

Stephen:

If they are the ones who have power, they will

Stephen:

push for double standards in the application of speech.

Stephen:

Who gets to say what? If it's the favored group, yes.

Stephen:

If it's the disfavored group, then no. They will enact kind of rhetorical sleight of

Stephen:

hands.

Stephen:

They will enact explicit censorships.

Stephen:

They will deplatform.

Stephen:

They will cancel.

Stephen:

They will use all of the forceful, violent, rhetorical and physical methods at their

Stephen:

disposal to achieve their end because they reject the liberal, individualist,

Stephen:

rationalist, freedom oriented philosophy all the way down and all the way.

Blair:

Great. Now, Martin, I guess you can repeat this just in case I want to ask him.

Blair:

The postmodernists are trying to make us believe that speech and action are no

Blair:

different.

Blair:

That's a dangerous road to go down, I think.

Stephen:

Yes, in free speech philosophy and free speech jurisprudence have long standing

Stephen:

discussions about the distinction between speech and act.

Stephen:

And it's a fascinating set of issues, partly because philosophically we want to say that we

Stephen:

are not sort of dualistic creatures, that speech exists entirely in its own realm, and

Stephen:

action is in this completely disconnected other realm.

Stephen:

The whole point of speech is to work out our beliefs and then to use our beliefs to guide

Stephen:

our actions.

Stephen:

And we want all of these things to be

Stephen:

integrated.

Stephen:

So I want to observe the world, to think about

Stephen:

it sometimes to talk about it, and then to act on the basis of that, and then evaluate the

Stephen:

results of my action for further thinking.

Stephen:

And so it's this ongoing, continuous, and

Stephen:

hopefully integrated process.

Stephen:

But in liberal philosophy, and I'm using this

Stephen:

in the classically liberal sense, and then liberal jurisprudence, there is a distinction

Stephen:

between speech and act that is fundamental and cherished.

Stephen:

And the idea is tied into the fact that we are volitional creatures.

Stephen:

So I can say some words to you, I can use speech, and that is actually a form of action.

Stephen:

My vocal cords are acting, my mouth is acting, and it acts upon you.

Stephen:

Sound waves travel and impinge upon your ear, supposing this is oral communication.

Stephen:

So my speech has become a kind of action.

Stephen:

But you are then able to hear what I am saying

Stephen:

and decide volitionally, are you going to pay attention to me?

Stephen:

Are you going to agree with me? Are you going to disagree with me?

Stephen:

And how you are going to react? So you still are a volitional agent in control

Stephen:

of your response to my speech.

Stephen:

And that is different from if I say, take a

Stephen:

stick and hit you with the stick, so I might say, I don't like you, Blair.

Stephen:

That's blur.

Stephen:

And so I'm expressing in speech something

Stephen:

negative toward you.

Stephen:

On the other hand, if I take a stick and hit

Stephen:

you with the stick.

Stephen:

To express my dislike of you.

Stephen:

Your reaction to being hit by the stick is in large part not under your volitional control.

Stephen:

It will damage your skin, it will bruise you, it might break your bone.

Stephen:

And so I am not treating you as a rational volitional agent.

Stephen:

I'm treating you, in that case, just as a physical thing and trying to coerce you

Stephen:

physically.

Stephen:

So in liberal jurisprudence, the distinction

Stephen:

between speech and act is very important.

Stephen:

So I can say, I will give me $10, and I will

Stephen:

give you this thing in return, and you can say yes or no, or I can say, give me $10, or I

Stephen:

will hit you with this stick.

Stephen:

In both cases, I'm making you a deal, so to

Stephen:

speak.

Stephen:

But the deal is fundamentally different,

Stephen:

because in one case it's speech, in the other it's act.

Stephen:

But there are then transition cases, and there are cases where it's not clear that the speech

Stephen:

is only speech and not act.

Stephen:

So if, for example, I don't know, I want to

Stephen:

hire an assassin, and so I call up the assassin, and I say, I'll give you a certain

Stephen:

amount of money if you go and kill this person.

Stephen:

And the assassin says, okay, and goes off and kills the person, and I send the person the

Stephen:

money, can I say in my defense, well, I didn't actually kill the person.

Stephen:

This other guy killed the person.

Stephen:

All I did was some speech.

Stephen:

And consistently, liberal jurisprudence has said, no, you are part of the causal chain,

Stephen:

and so you can go to prison or be executed in some cases for murder.

Stephen:

In that case, it's not just speech because of the nature of that particular circumstance.

Stephen:

So one needs to be very careful in how one formulates the distinction between speech and

Stephen:

act.

Stephen:

Another important example would be, suppose I

Stephen:

have a trained attack dog.

Stephen:

It's really a powerful attack dog, and you are

Stephen:

walking by, and I take the leash off of my dog, and I say, attack to my dog, and my dog

Stephen:

attacks you and does some physical damage.

Stephen:

In that context, I cannot say, well, I only

Stephen:

just said a word, attack.

Stephen:

I didn't actually attack you.

Stephen:

It was the dog who attacked you.

Stephen:

In that case, you are part of the causal chain

Stephen:

controlling the dog, and the dog did physical damage.

Stephen:

And so liberal jurisprudence will say that that speech act is continuous causally and

Stephen:

hold you responsible for it.

Stephen:

What has happened, though, is that there are

Stephen:

some people, there's an interesting debate then, philosophically and jurisprudentially,

Stephen:

about all kinds of new cases that come up.

Stephen:

And I think this is one of the beauties of the

Stephen:

common law tradition, where we are always having test cases about where exactly the line

Stephen:

between speech and act is going to be drawn.

Stephen:

But what has happened then is between those

Stephen:

who are unsympathetic to liberalism is that they want to have a much more expansive

Stephen:

understanding of the kinds of speeches that will count as actions.

Stephen:

And so this gets us into the whole speech or hate speech debate, as one example.

Stephen:

They will want to, for example, argue that speech is not individual to individual, that

Stephen:

speech is going to be group to group.

Stephen:

And so if you say something about a group in

Stephen:

general, that counts as inappropriate speech, it doesn't have to be targeted toward any

Stephen:

particular individual.

Stephen:

So the standard liberal individualism is one

Stephen:

avenue by which it becomes attacked.

Stephen:

Or they will make the argument that certain

Stephen:

emotions are not subject to our individual emotional control.

Stephen:

So emotions are in a different category.

Stephen:

So certain kinds of speech, if it is too

Stephen:

emotional, evokes responses in people that they cannot control and cannot be held

Stephen:

responsible for.

Stephen:

So just saying sticks and stones will break my

Stephen:

bones, et cetera, et cetera.

Stephen:

We can't say that anymore because certain

Stephen:

words are like sticks and stones.

Stephen:

They evoke emotional reactions beyond the

Stephen:

person's capacity.

Stephen:

And so that's another avenue of incursion into

Stephen:

the traditional liberal speech act distinction.

Stephen:

So there are lots of philosophical and psychological routes through which the speech

Stephen:

act distinction is under attack.

Stephen:

And of course, in many cases, it's under

Stephen:

attack by those who have a political agenda or an ideological agenda for their favored

Stephen:

groups.

Stephen:

Then we can get on to the usual suspects, if

Stephen:

you want.

Blair:

Actually, something has come up in my personal life, and I need to.

Blair:

Can we do one more question? And then I do have to end this.

Stephen:

Okay, we're coming close to time anyway.

Blair:

Yes, true.

Blair:

You mentioned Miss Rand and her ideas.

Blair:

So what can those of us interested in defending liberalism and individualism and

Blair:

free speech do to help turn the tide against the growing censorship?

Blair:

And that'll take another half hour to answer.

Blair:

But.

Stephen:

My short answer to that would be to say, yeah, Rand is absolutely important to the

Stephen:

ongoing battle.

Stephen:

So one thing I would say, though, is that Rand

Stephen:

was a generation ago.

Stephen:

So rather than resting on Rand's laurels and

Stephen:

expecting her to do all of the work, we each need to add and update things and so on.

Stephen:

There's also a huge cultural division of labor, and one philosopher and one novelist is

Stephen:

only doing it.

Stephen:

We need millions and millions of people who

Stephen:

are articulate, thoughtful, passionate, each working in their own lives, in their own areas

Stephen:

of influence to keep a healthy, liberal, individualist, free culture going.

Stephen:

So what I would just say is, don't feel that you have to do anything more than you want to,

Stephen:

but just in your own life, right? Work on your own life and enjoy your life and

Stephen:

look after your own interests, for sure.

Stephen:

And in one sense, just being a good example of

Stephen:

what it's like to be a rational, decent, passionate, life loving human being is already

Stephen:

going to be influential on all sorts of people in your social circle.

Stephen:

But also, if you have a voice, if you are a business owner or have family or you organize

Stephen:

some events or whatever, then just in your area, be a voice of reason, be a voice of

Stephen:

civility, and you will have more impact than you think.

Blair:

All right.

Martin:

We do that in our own little way here with the podcast, of course.

Martin:

Stephen, where could the listeners find you in the cyberspace?

Stephen:

A couple of places.

Stephen:

I've been doing a lot of video work recently,

Stephen:

podcasts and audiobooks and video production.

Stephen:

So say Cee video channel, we have the center

Stephen:

for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, but at YouTube, we have.

Stephen:

What's the Cee video channel? You'll find a lot of my stuff there, or my

Stephen:

personal website, stevenhicks.org.

Stephen:

You'll find a lot of posts and links to my

Stephen:

publications there as well.

Blair:

Very good, then.

Blair:

Well, again, once again, Stephen, thanks for

Blair:

manning the Foxhole with us.

Stephen:

All right, appreciate it.

Stephen:

Yeah, good.

Stephen:

Strong questions.

Stephen:

Thanks, guys.

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About the Podcast

The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
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About your hosts

Blair Schofield

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I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

Profile picture for Martin Lindeskog
Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: Pluck the Day. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum