Postmodern Philosophy
A course by Stephen R.C. Hicks, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy
Eight lectures. Key philosophers and philosophies since 1900 CE, with focus on the proponents and opponents of Postmodernism. Major thinkers covered:
Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Ayn Rand, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Derrick Bell, and Catharine MacKinnon.
For each, Professor Hicks establishes the philosopher’s intellectual context, presents his or her most influential arguments, and quotes directly from the philosopher’s important books or essays. Other significant thinkers, key ideas, and historical events from 1900 to the present included.
Lecture One: Uncertain Prospects. Bertrand Russell and John Dewey
Themes: Disquieting inheritance: Entropy, Marx, Darwin. A century of war? Skepticism about knowledge. Enlarge your mind? Experiment?
Titanic. Picasso. Lenin. Edison.
Texts: Russell: “The Value of Philosophy.” Dewey: The Impact of Darwin upon Philosophy.
Lecture Two: The Analysts of the Self. Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger
Themes: The new psychology. Pessimism. Instinct and aggression. Logic as limiting. Emotions as accessing. Nihilism?
World War I. Darwin. Spengler. Arendt.
Texts: Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents. Heidegger: “What Is Metaphysics?”
Lecture Three: Absurdity and Meaninglessness? Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
Themes: The death of God? The reality of war. Depression and the Depression. The pointlessness of existence? Existence precedes essence. The meaning of life?
Kierkegaard. Nietzsche. Heidegger.
Texts: Sartre: “Existentialism Is a Humanism.” Camus: “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
Lecture Four: What the Women Ethicists Are Up To. Ayn Rand and Philippa Foot
Themes: Naturalism. Bio-centrism. Value and virtue. Intrinsic/Objective/Subjective. Facts and Values. Ought from Is. Reason. Trolley Problems.
Aristotle. Russell, Carnap, Horkheimer, Medlin, Moody.
Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgely, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.
Texts: Rand: “The Objectivist Ethics.” Foot: Natural Goodness.
Lecture Five: On the Objectivity of Science. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn
Themes: Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability. Paradigms. Indoctrination. Progress? Truth?
Kant. Schlick. Ayer. Feyerabend.
Texts: Popper: Conjectures and Refutations. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lecture Six: Deconstruction and Power. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida
Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism.
Tocqueville. Marx. Nietzsche. Heidegger.
Texts: Foucault: History of Sexuality. Derrida: “Cogito and the History of Madness”.
Lecture Seven: Critical Feminist and Race Theory. Derrick Bell and Catharine MacKinnon
Themes: Feminism’s three waves. De Gouges, Wollstonecraft, de Beauvoir.
Critical Theory and Frankfurt School: Horkheimer and Adorno. Marcuse.
Anti-racism’s three waves. The Enlightenment, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Texts: MacKinnon: Only Words. Bell: “Racial Realism.”
Lecture Eight: Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern
Themes: Philosophy as three-way debates. Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Chart: Pre-modernism, Modernism, Post-modernism. What next?
About the Instructor
Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy and the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, Nietzsche and the Nazis, Entrepreneurial Living, Liberalism Pro and Con, and Eight Philosophies of Education. He has published in Business Ethics Quarterly, Review of Metaphysics, and The Wall Street Journal. His writings have been translated into twenty languages. He has been Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), Visiting Professor at the University of Kasimir the Great (Poland), Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College (Oxford University), and Visiting Professor at Jagiellonian University (Poland).
Trailer and enrollment options at the Peterson Academy site here.
Thank you for posting! Wish all the courses had this!