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

by Stephen R.C. Hicks

Heidegger offered to his followers the following conclusions, all of which are accepted by the mainstream of postmodernism with slight modifications: 1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of reality; 2. Reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality; 3. Reason’s elements—words and concepts—are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked; 4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all; 5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason; 6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy—whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian—based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.