The Kindle version of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault is now available.
The book had a gratifying two hardcover printings and eight softcover printings from 2004-2009, and I am finalizing an expanded edition to be published in hardcover in the spring of 2011.
Here’s the book description:
“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 century. 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.”
Links to the six scholarly reviews of the book are listed toward the bottom of my site’s Explaining Postmodernism page, and the thirty-one all-over-the-map Amazon reviews can be found here.