Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition)

Anyone looking for a solid introduction to postmodernist theory would be well-served to begin here. Oct 09, Roman Skaskiw rated it it was amazing. One of the most important books I've read. Its big idea is a comparison of the evolution of socialist thought to enlightenment thought. When enlightenment logic and reason was perceived as a threat religion, a series of "counter-enlightenment philosophers" waged a war on logic, reason and truth.

This tradition continued in the 20th century when the catastrophe of socialism became too great to ignore, the post-modernism picked up the counter-enlightenment tradition and waged a war on the very tools One of the most important books I've read. This tradition continued in the 20th century when the catastrophe of socialism became too great to ignore, the post-modernism picked up the counter-enlightenment tradition and waged a war on the very tools needed to perceive the catastrophe -- logic, reason, truth, language.

Jun 24, Jack Gardner rated it it was amazing Shelves: Explaining the Seemingly Inexplicable Greatly appreciate this very readable exposition, by a rational mind heroically treading where others become repulsed and confused. Makes understanding this opaque intellectual jungle enjoyable.

Informative - even essential - for understanding 20th century culture, its unraveling, and continuing influences.

Reviews the long history and identifies the leading characters in the development of this "philosophy. The expanded edition's essay on Explaining the Seemingly Inexplicable Greatly appreciate this very readable exposition, by a rational mind heroically treading where others become repulsed and confused. The expanded edition's essay on developments in art is alone worth the price. Oct 28, Heba rated it really liked it. Oct 16, Blair rated it liked it Shelves: Essentially, it is the denial that an objective reality exists.

For those who hold this view, words themselves are a meaningless game. I am not going to play. This book an account of how the systematic questioning of objective reality developed over the centuries, in the form of a guided tour of philosophers from Rousseau to Foucault. It seems that every explanation I read of the meaning of philosophers such as Kant and Hegel is like a Rorschach test — the authors see in it the genesis of their own philosophy. This book is different — the author sees what he does not want to see. I suspect the interpretation is just as subjective. However, the main merit is that we get a master class in the use of the false dichotomy from both the postmodernists and the author himself.

We get surprisingly little of that. I think our author is avoiding issues that are not compatible with his own belief system. He is clearly some kind of Objectivist. While almost every postmodern argument is based on a false dichotomy, the Objectivists employ the same tactic. For them, it seems to be enough to point out that Capitalism works and Socialism does not. We even get tables showing how many fewer cows there were in Russia after Communism! Socialism failed, therefore Capitalism should operate without interference. At one point we are actually told that we must choose between and egoism, both deeply flawed conceptions.

The Problem of Perception There are a number of statements in this book that are worth considering in more detail than the author chooses to. Let us start at the beginning with the problem of perception. If reason is presented with an internal sensory representation of reality, then it is not aware directly of reality; reality then becomes something to be inferred or hoped for beyond a veil of sense-perception.

But cave dwellers and certain academics are different than the rest of us — we have to work for a living. Our actions have consequences. If the mental models we use to interpret our senses are faulty, we correct them or we die. In other words, we all use scientific method, testing our hypotheses against reality, whether we know it or not. This argument does not address the real world; it merely sets up a false dichotomy between perfect comprehension of reality and knowing nothing at all.

However, it does raise the legitimate concern that we must be careful about what our senses tell us. When applied to human beings, such models posed an obvious threat to the human spirit. What place is there for free will and passion, spontaneity and creativity if the world is governed by mechanism and logic, causality and necessity? Unfortunately, this reductionist view of science is still widely believed. The irony is that it is postmodern ideology, with the claim that we are determined by social circumstances, that threatens the human spirit. Will not such rational individualism encourage cold-blooded, short-range, and grasping selfishness?

Will it not encourage individuals to reject long-standing traditions and to sever communal ties, thus creating a non-society of isolated, rootless and restless atoms? Traditionalists seem to forget that the ruling classes who actually made the decisions had plenty of cold and hot blooded selfishness.

Objectivists solve the problem by proclaiming the virtue of such selfishness. Those of us in the real world need to find the proper balance between the individual and community. If logic and mathematics are divorced from experiential reality, then the rules of logic and mathematics hardly say anything about that reality.

The implication is that logical or mathematical proofs cut no ice in adjudicating competing claims of fact. Analytic propositions are entirely devoid of factual content. And it is for this reason that no experience can confute them. Offering logical proofs about real matters of fact is thus pointless. Logic and mathematics on their own deal with abstractions.

It may be a mystery why these abstractions are such powerful tools to help us understand physical reality. Science is the connection between logic and physical evidence. It is correct that there are no proofs in science, but there are degrees of confidence. The author fails to address these arguments. While the conclusion that science cannot produce meaning is yet another false dichotomy, so is the implication that if the conclusion is false, the entire argument has no merit.

The Direction of Emergence I found this statement interesting: The individual is merely along for the ride. For example, a perfect knowledge of the cells we are made of would not give us much insight into human beings. Here it is turned around to suggest that the individual emerges from the collective. I suppose there is some truth to that. Cells must function in a way that keeps the human alive.

But really a false dichotomy is being set up between the individual and the collective, and we are supposed to choose the individual. I think this is a bit simplistic, but then, Objectivists are obsessed with socialism. I suggest both the traditional and modern left are filling a void left by the absence of religion. Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.

Again, left and right are becoming more alike. Hypocrisy is not a Bug. It is an Essential Feature. On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad. Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next. Words are not about truth or reality or even anything cognitive.

They serve as a rhetorical weapon. This is the strategy: Undermine its confidence in its reason, its science and technology. The words do not even have to be true or consistent to do the necessary damage. Then fill the void with the correct Left political principles. From Marx, we feel a deep sense of alienation, victimization, and rage. From Nietzsche, we discover a deep need for power. From Freud, we uncover the urgings of dark and aggressive sexuality. Rage, power, guilt, lust, and dread constitute the center of the postmodern emotional universe.

Apparently philosophers such as Kant and Hegel originally attacked reason in defence of their religious faith. On this basis their successors have constructed a new pseudo-religion that would horrify them. I suppose this book performs a useful purpose by giving us a tour through the evolution of the philosophy that questions the value of reason.

If only I could trust it. For example, Karl Popper was a strong defender of scientific method, but gets labelled as a postmodernist because he acknowledged that evidence was theory-laden. That means scientists need to be wary of confirmation bias. It seems if you are not completely with us, you are against us. After all, confirmation bias is not a problem for believers in Objectivism. I want to know what we can do to resist postmodern thinking.

How should we teach our children to inoculate them against it?

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How can we undermine the faith of its believers? How can we challenge postmodern ideas from entering public life using language that ordinary people can understand?

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This requires a combination of philosophy and psychology. The contribution of this book is only of modest value. Jun 20, Nate Weger rated it really liked it. Although Stephen is not shy letting the reader know what he thinks of postmodernism from his 'rational' philosophical perspective I think that he is even handed in articulating at least where it comes from and its basic t Resentful Cain and Righteous Abel Review of Explaining postmodernism: Although Stephen is not shy letting the reader know what he thinks of postmodernism from his 'rational' philosophical perspective I think that he is even handed in articulating at least where it comes from and its basic tenants.

The book is technical but comprehensible by anyone that has heard about postmodernism and wants to know more about it knowing on the outset that the author doesn't support it. If you are a Western, non-marginalized product of the enlightenment you will probably agree with him. If not then you will probably write a review saying something like 'no that is not what Derrida and Foucault meant' but then you would have to use reason to prove your point which will be difficult and they will then instead resort to colorful language to express your resentment and ad hominom points.

Having said that, I was particularly interested in Stephen Hicks analyses of postmodernism's roots in Kant, Hegel and even Kierkegaard. The reformation created this idea that man doesn't need an intermediary pope, priest, etc.. Through both revelation and reason the Bible could be understood and applied by anyone who took the time to apply themselves - that every person can have an individual relationship with God.

This simple idea arguably gave birth to the enlightenment and as Hicks points out many of the 'enlightened' minds in the height of the enlightenment were card carrying Christians Newton, Liebnez or at the very least deists Bacon. As most people know, exposing everything to the light of reason brought many advances scientifically which positively affected the common man but this also had its own negative side affects, as well. Nietzsche points this out. He realized that since Darwin used enlightens reason to give an alternate understanding of how we all came about besides being created that this essentially 'killed God' and even though he was by no means a fan of religion, he recognized that this was not a good thing for humanity.

The child that was birthed by the Reformation grew up and killed its Father in the Enlightenment. The problem was that a big black abyss of darkness filled where the Father used to be. This was called Nihilism and everyone who is 'reasonable' has to deal with it and what everyone since then has been trying desperately to neutralize. The reality is that it caused an existential crisis in the child because of the paradox that if your father never existed how can you exist? It is the nuclear waste that is a direct result of reason.

I understood this before I read this book but what I didn't know, and that Hick's points out, is that many of the philosophers of the enlightenment still had deep religious convictions and faith of the Christian kind and they all realized the threat reason posed on their faith but more importantly they became aware of this abyss called nihilism. This can be summed up on the Dostoevsky quote Hick's mentions "Even if I find out Christ is not real I would still believe in Him" The alternative at least for Dostoevsky was too dire and stressful.

It became obvious that ones reason when pitted against ones beliefs caused anxiety. Kierargaard realized this and pointed it out. Hence, he became known as the first existential philosopher in that he reformulated Christian faith as an answer to the existential paradox reason created. In their attempts to subvert reasons strangle hold on reality, the philosophers of old used their reasoning power to try and fight reason back and give a little room for faith or non-reason again seems very ironic. So, weirdly, according to Hicks, postmodernism's long lost cousin, in a way, is Christian doctrine.

Hick's even goes as far to connect the two in the present day using the example of creationists wanting to 'irrationally' set up their theory as truth and silence all others not sure if this is totally fair with postmodern ideology of not listening to any rational argument against it since reason itself is the source of the problem.

Another historical observation that he makes that I found very interesting was when he juxtaposed the two paths enlightenments reason took and the two very different outcomes it produced in Britain first and later America and France. The question that while they were cut from the same cloth of the Enlightenment, as it were, why did they have such different outcomes? The bloody French revolution and the relatively bloodless British and American revolutions. He traces this back to the two philosophers Voltaire and Locke and how really reason itself took two paths.

Almost like the child that was birthed as reason mentioned above was actually a set of twins and like all Biblical stories of twins - one is bad. Locke embraced the reason of the enlightenment but did not throw out the 'reasonable' Christian ideals from the reformation the good twin that didn't kill the Father. He did make a point out of using reason to chop off the dead wood that the reformation started chopping, though, hence 'separation of church and state'.

He did this not as a matter of hating religion and religious thought, though, as it is used most frequently today. He did it rather as a reasonable conclusion that true belief has to be belief that has the liberty to not believe. Just like how Luther made the individual responsible for his own relationship with Christ he is a 'personal' saviour , Locke went a step further and made the citizen responsible for their own liberty irrespective of religious affiliation. He did, however, go through great pains to show everyone that he really did believe that Christianity was a reasonable guide for the individual and key to a just, civilized society.

Maybe he wrote them to sell his brand of enlightenment rational to the Puritans and Quakers or maybe he actually believed it - only God knows. So, what did Locke keep that Voltaire threw out? Reasonable Irrationality I would call it. Others call it religion. Still others would say that there are some laws that are deeper than reason and that were set up as the very foundation upon which reason rests. These truths must be the foundations of any religion for that religion to have any validity. These truths are the 'light' and only where they are absent is the 'darkness'.

The best example of this is the infamous line in the Declaration of Independence copied almost verbatim from Locke by Jefferson. The original unedited Jefferson version goes: The idea that all are 'created' equal does not drop out with reason. If there is one thing that is certain, it is that people are not born equal. Some have higher and lower intelligence. Some are born with diseases. Obviously, we are not equal. This was and is an irrational statement. Yet, all human rights pivot on this fulcrum. Where you do not have it you have atrocities and inequalities way worse than where you do have it.

Where it is the foundation of the laws of a land you have liberty, freedom and unrivalled success. It is important to note that at the time it was implemented it was an experiment. No civilization had ever tried this before. But, if it didn't come from reason where did it come from?

Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen R.C. Hicks

Sounds a lot like Romans 14 , possibly? Or as Tolstoy put it in War and Peace: For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. This combination of reason and reasonable irrationality unleashed an incredible amount of good and human advancement. It gave room for the ideas of universities and hospitals to flourish and almost all of them were religious reasonably irrational institutions to start with.

Like Hick's points out, the average life of every person at least in the countries that adopted Locke's brand of reason has become unthinkably better. What used to take a whole legion of slaves to keep a house warm and well supplied is available to pretty much everyone in the Western world not using slave labor of course. There are exceptions, but the mass majority have more food, faster and more comfortable transportation even if you are just using the bus , fresh water, heat or AC that only kings and nobles could have had less than years ago and most times even better.

Refrigeration alone completely transformed food for society. Now you can eat meat and fruit all year long. Can you imagine years ago telling someone this? They would think you were nuts or a magician. That alone should make you happy whatever situation you find yourself in. Go to your local McDonalds and have a Big Mac - just because you can. Well, like Hicks suggests, this is what Voltaire advocated for and led to the bloody French Revolution and Marxism led to communism socialism based on the state and national socialism socialism based on race.

Both of these nihilistic philosophies tried to eradicate any reasonable irrationality and both brought unprecedented suffering and spilled blood like never before in the history of the world. So much so, that it was ironically irrational. When Nietzsche said "God is Dead" what he really said was: And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There will always be lots of blood. The question is just whose blood.

It is true that God's blood was spilt by humanity but way before Neistche wrote this. Was it not of the same motivation, though? That eternal blood that was spilt was enough for all humanity and when embraced by the Lockean's was enough to pay the price. Juxtapose that with the 's of millions of gallons of blood that were spilt under nihilistic regimes and anyone with a shred of 'reasonableness' has to admit that reason alone - Simply - Doesn't - Work.

The sacrifice just was not enough to pay the price of paradise. You need to choose which twin to follow and in that regard Hicks speaks well when he states postmodernism is nihilistic. Postmodernism is the reincarnation of the resentful twin-brother. Resentful because God didn't die forever. He survived in liberty and freedom of choice belief and the world is a better place because of it. He wants to poison everyone, to make them turn on their liberty and accuse it for any problem that has ever happened to them rather than their own responsibility.

He is only a skeptic, though, with no real answers. He is the Grand Inquisitor saying that the weight of liberty is too heavy for the average person to bear. He is irrational like his brother but not reasonable. He is Cain and his sacrifice was not worthy and we are watching with our very own eyes as he tries to kill Abel.

The good news is that there is a wave of new philosophers that have room for reasonable irrationality of faith claims again and you see it in folks such as William Lane Craig , Alvin Plantiga and Ravi Zacharias. The unfortunate thing is that their contempories, the so called 'New Atheists' sound a lot like the postmodernists. I am filled with hope with folks like Jordan Peterson , though.

Liberal folks who recognize the beauty and value in the traditional beliefs and work to synthesize them into arguments palatable to the hopefully post-post-modern mind. Dec 02, Mark Alexis rated it it was amazing. Reading Stephen Hicks' Explaining Postmodernism left me wondering whether some people haven't become too smart for their own good, yet also reminded me of the adage that a smart person is not the same as a wise person.

In this book, Mr.



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Hicks traces postmodernism back to its intellectual roots. For those unfamiliar with the subject, postmodernism is the twentieth-century philosophical movement, still dominant and pervasive in academia today and with tentacles reaching deeply into our wider soci Reading Stephen Hicks' Explaining Postmodernism left me wondering whether some people haven't become too smart for their own good, yet also reminded me of the adage that a smart person is not the same as a wise person.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, postmodernism is the twentieth-century philosophical movement, still dominant and pervasive in academia today and with tentacles reaching deeply into our wider societies, that contends that man is unable to make objective notions about truth, reason and human nature, and that any such claims must be the product of his socio-economic, historical, cultural, gender and ethnic circumstances. The foundation of this school of thought, Hicks argues, was laid two hundred years ago by Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason was an effort to protect his Christian faith from attack by early Enlightenment philosophy.

In an exquisite historical and intellectual overview of German philosophy, Hicks follows the bloodline from Kant to Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and ultimately to Martin Heidegger, who was in turn a key influence on the twentieth-century postmodernists. The author proceeds to do the same with socialism, which started with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a contemporary of Kant, and worked its way through the ages in the writings of Hegel, Herder, Marx, Fichte, Spengler and Junger, all of whom provided fertilizer for the writings of Heidegger.

In case you were wondering why this list includes "Men of the Right", that's because Hicks identifies the collectivist Left and Right, correctly in my opinion, as merely two sides of the same coin. The difference is that national socialism was left entirely discredited in , while its equally ugly twin brother wasn't until at least , when the Soviets crushed any illusion about their true intentions one might still have had at that point in time. It would seem paradoxical for postmodernism to marry socialism: After all, the former denies any claim to impartial knowledge or absolute truth, so one would expect its adherents to be found all over the political spectrum.

Nevertheless, the two strains ultimately came together in the twentieth century, when all the great postmodernist thinkers, Derrida and Foucault included, were hardcore socialists at the same time. Hicks argues that the crisis of socialism lay at the root of this phenomenon. While Marx had argued that the rise of capitalism would inevitably lead to an ever greater schism between the rich and poor in society, in reality the opposite was true and the middle classes were prospering.

In fact, by the mid-twentieth century the middle classes were living lives of which the kings and emperors of yesteryear could only have dreamed. At the same time, it became patently obvious to any impartial observer that life behind the Iron Curtain was an absolute nightmare. The house of cards came thundering down when the Soviets invaded Hungary in '56 to crush the popular uprising against the socialist rulers in that country. Socialism had always been the product of reason and logic, starting from the idea that the Marxist revolution would inevitably follow in every capitalist society and ending with the illusion that smart technocrats could engineer their nations into workers' paradises.

When all that got shattered, postmodernism proved the refuge for the disillusioned socialists. The author is an Objectivist gasp! These detractors ought to be ignored, because Hicks explains it all very well and correctly identifies it to be a phenomenon of the Left. This observation is by no means revolutionary if you'll pardon the expression. Nevertheless, the book is not without its flaws. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Hicks has little use for religion. He starts from the premise that the early Enlightenment thinkers, with their emphasis on reason and logic and rejection of religious superstition, had it right, and provided the foundations of our modern democracy and ordered liberty.

Hicks shows to have a blind spot here. Because Christianity is not on his radar, he never ponders the question whether it serves a function in a modern democratic, capitalist and free society, let alone whether the latter can even survive without the moral foundation provided by the former. Thinkers such as Tocqueville, a keen student of democracy, argued it couldn't.

Given that the Enlightenment grew more radical and anti-religious with every new generation of thinkers, it's fair to ask whether it, and the modern societies it spawned in the West, weren't top-heavy from the beginning. No, I don't necessarily have the answer to that. Secondly, the roots of postmodernism can arguably be traced back to the first days of the Enlightenment, not just to the later "counter-Enlightenment philosophy" of Kant.

Thomas Hobbes, who is not even mentioned in the book until footnote 67, contended that, since human life in the beginning was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", man started forming societies governed by the rule of law out of sheer self-interest. It happened in reaction to his fear of violent death. In other words, to Hobbes the social contract was conventional, not natural.

This marks the first departure from the natural law doctrines found in classical philosophy and Christianity. But the greatness of an outstanding book like Explaining Postmodernism lies in its invitation for us to conduct a civil and rational argument about what postmodernism is and where it originated, devoid of the ad hominems , reductio ad Hitlerum , cries of "racism" and other base cannon fodder employed to win 'debates' in our postmodern world these days.

Stephen Hicks has done us a great service here. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in the topic. Aug 30, Ryan Murdock rated it it was amazing. An essential book for understanding the extreme polarization we're currently seeing in the West, with its quagmire of political correctness, bitter identity politics, censorship and de-platforming of speakers at universities, and the incredibly persistent zombie of a failed socialism that just won't die.

Hicks offers convincing arguments for how we got to this point, and where the split occurred in both the philosophical literature and politics. Unfortunately, he stops short of offering solutions An essential book for understanding the extreme polarization we're currently seeing in the West, with its quagmire of political correctness, bitter identity politics, censorship and de-platforming of speakers at universities, and the incredibly persistent zombie of a failed socialism that just won't die. Unfortunately, he stops short of offering solutions. This book is awesome. It explains what Postmodernism is from a philosophic perspective and why there is so much intolerance among third wave feminists and those trends invaded by postmodernism.

I believe in feminism and gay marriage. But those causes have to get rid of postmodernism which is basically frustrated socialists who have seen socialism and communism fall once and again. Jun 08, Rodrigo rated it it was amazing. Books by Stephen R. Trivia About Explaining Postmo No trivia or quizzes yet.

Quotes from Explaining Postmo Consider the following pairs of claims. On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is. Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others. Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. How, though, can socialists claim that reason is relative and at the same time aver an absolute belief in socialist politics? Are they not here caught in a contradiction that even they cannot dismiss? Hicks finds plausible two explanations of the contradiction.

On one account, "absolutist politics are primary, while the relativism is a rhetorical strategy that is used to advance that politics"; on the other, "both the relativism and the absolutism coexist in postmodernism, but the contradictions between them simply do not matter psychologically to those who hold them" p. Hicks rejects the view that relativism is primary and the politics secondary. If it were true, "then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that is simply not happening" p.

Hicks devotes considerable attention to the intellectual origins of the contemporary trends he finds so deplorable. He draws attention to the malign influence of Rousseau, whom he terms a proponent of the Counter-Enlightenment that opposed untrammeled reason, individualism, and capitalism. He did not celebrate civilization, but deplored its onset.

Culture does generate much learning, luxury, and sophistication—but learning, luxury, and sophistication all cause moral degradation" p. The unfortunate rise of reason drove humans from their simple, primitive life. Reason, once awakened, cannot be expunged; and, we cannot, Rousseau held, return from civilization to primitivism. But society must be tightly controlled. Hicks rightly calls attention to the influence of Rousseau on the Jacobins during the French Revolution, with all of its appalling destruction and massacres.

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But his discussion contains one minor slip, though I perhaps read him unfairly. The king was executed some ten months before the queen, not in the same act. The main source of intellectual corruption, in his view, lies in the skepticism and subjectivism of Immanuel Kant. I have to confess that he has not persuaded me, and here is where I fear for the worst. Perhaps as a result, Hicks never cites Ominous Parallels , though he lists it in his bibliography [p.

But this is by the way. I did not hear the end of it for years afterwards; an ex cathedra dismissal of my objections from a writer for whom the letter to the editor is an art form remains vivid in my mind. The vital core of his interpretation is that Kant denied that we know reality. Is reason capable of knowing reality—or is it not?. Kant is crystal clear about his answer.

Reality—real, noumenal reality—is forever closed off to reason, and reason is limited to awareness and understanding of its own subjective products" p. He rightly says that Kant denies that human beings grasp the noumenal world. It does not follow from this, though, that Kant denies that reason is capable of knowing reality, unless "reality" is equated with the "noumenal world. Concerning the noumenal almost nothing can be said: But the view needs much more defense than Hicks gives it.

On one point, Hicks seems to me not only disputable but altogether mistaken. Quite the contrary, Kant denies reason access to the noumenal self: One might counter my main objection in this way. Despite what Kant may "really" have meant, his successors among the German Idealists took him as just the sort of subjectivist that Hicks portrays and, accordingly, followed him in succumbing to skepticism. But this defense also fails. As Hicks himself rightly notes, Hegel "was dissatisfied with the principled separation of subject and object.

He offers no evidence that these neo-Kantian followers took the position he attributes to them. Putting this aside, in order to show that Kant lies at the source of modern skepticism about reason, he would need to establish a line of continuity between these "closest followers" and modern developments. His endeavor to do so rests on the very non-standard view, offered without support, that structuralism and phenomenology are varieties of neo-Kantianism.

He displays an extreme hostility to religion, and this often biases his historical claims. Thus, he portrays the Middle Ages as dominated by Augustinian "mysticism" and faith. He acknowledges that in "the later medieval era," matters changed somewhat. What is one to make of Anselm on this view? For that matter, did not Augustine himself argue to the same conclusion? Hicks operates with a simpleminded dichotomy between faith and reason that does not do justice to medieval thought.

He condemns Kierke-gaard for his "panegyric to Abraham, a hero of the Hebrew Scriptures who in defiance of all reason and morality was willing to turn off his mind and kill his son Isaac. Because God ordered him to. How could that be—would a good God make such a demand of a man?



That makes God incomprehensibly cruel. Does he even question? He shuts down his mind and obeys" p. Kant held that Abraham should have realized that since God is good, no instructions to kill his innocent son could have come from God.