At the Explaining Postmodernism page, Chapter Two of my book is now available online. This chapter traces the decline of epistemology from Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” to the dominance of speculation and irrationalism in the nineteenth-century, setting the stage for the collapse of reason in the twentieth century, which is the subject of Chapter Three.
Here are the chapter’s sections and page numbers:
Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason
Enlightenment reason, liberalism, and science 23
The beginnings of the Counter-Enlightenment 24
Kant’s skeptical conclusion 28
Kant’s problematic from empiricism and rationalism 29
Kant’s essential argument 33
Identifying Kant’s key assumptions 36
Why Kant is the turning point 39
After Kant: reality or reason but not both 42
Metaphysical solutions to Kant: from Hegel to Nietzsche 44
Dialectic and saving religion 47
Hegel’s contribution to postmodernism 50
Epistemological solutions to Kant: irrationalism from
Kierkegaard to Nietzsche 51
Summary of irrationalist themes 57
[This excerpt is from Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004, 2011). The full book is available in hardcover or e-book at Amazon. See also the Explaining Postmodernism page. Related: Professor Hicks’s lectures on Philosophy of Education at YouTube via these playlists.]