{"id":41242,"date":"2025-03-17T17:15:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T00:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41242"},"modified":"2025-03-17T05:18:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T12:18:27","slug":"philosophy-is-not-my-forte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/philosophy-is-not-my-forte\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy is NOT my forte!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had two formal philosophy courses in my life.\u00a0 The first one, Critical and Creative Thinking, <\/em>focused on logic.\u00a0 The second, Introduction to Philosophy<\/em> was taught by a former Nazi soldier with a thick German accent that was difficult to understand. Based on these two courses, I failed to develop a love of philosophy.\u00a0 An inspectional reading of Stephen Hicks\u2019 Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault <\/em>also did not seem to spark a love for philosophy. I was not so excited that I was doing cartwheels, but I\u2019m also not sure that is as bad as going to the dentist or having to buy a new vehicle.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

While this book has not been in continuous print for the past three hundred years, it was first published twenty years ago and continues to be a book and topic that is relevant today.\u00a0 I listened to four different podcasts, three of which were produced in the past four years.\u00a0 I listened to various podcasts because this topic is a hard one for me to fully understand.<\/p>\n

In one of the podcasts the host, Jonas \u010ceika, critiques Hicks\u2019 book. \u010ceika states that Hicks \u201cmisrepresents most of Western philosophical history before them, its full of mis readings, technical problems, misrepresentations, misattributed quotes, intellectual confusion, historical caricatures, and straight up slander, once you take all those away, there is barely anything left, and the book lacks basic academic standards.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 A year ago Hicks recorded a podcast in which he responded to \u010ceika and another podcast\u2019s critiques.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 It was in this podcast that I came to understand Hicks better and where I want to focus the rest of this post.<\/p>\n

What is a Postmodernist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the topics Hicks discusses is the use of labels throughout his book. Hicks points out that when he uses the terms premodernism, modernism and postmodernism, he is referring to it at a \u201chigh level of abstraction and using it only on the points that I think all the major issues and all the major people\u201d who subscribe to that thought would use.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Throughout the book Hicks does point out where there might be a difference in beliefs amongst postmodern thinkers.\u00a0 The question Hicks raises is where one draws the line. Hicks asks the questions if there are between twenty or forty ideas that make up postmodern thought, does a person have to agree with a certain amount of them to be considered a postmodernist?\u00a0 Does believing fifteen out of twenty classify you as a postmodernist? If not a certain number, are there specific ideas that a person must believe and if they don\u2019t acknowledge those, they cannot be considered a postmodernist?\u00a0 These are good questions to ask; as we interact with friends, family, colleagues, we may find that they have a mix of modern and postmodern beliefs, how do we label them? I considered this while reading the book. I know a person who would agree on some aspects of postmodern thought, but at the same time this person is very scientifically minded, and I do not envision them giving up some of the modernistic thinking. What do I label this person?\u00a0 In his video, Hicks leaves it up to the individual to make that distinction.<\/p>\n

Individualism and Collectivism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patrick Deneen, throughout his book on liberal democracy points out that part of liberalism is giving up your individualist desires and focusing more on doing things for the betterment of society.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 In my mind I viewed this as a form of collectivism. Hicks sees liberalism as a result of modernistic thought and modernists as individualists, so I questioned what he meant by the terms individualism and collectivism.\u00a0 In his video he explains the difference between the two terms:<\/p>\n

Individual <\/strong>\u2013 There is a reality about the nature of a person, they have their own mind, their own body including biological sex, they are autonomous, self-responsible, and engage with others mutually.<\/p>\n

Postmodern Collectivism<\/strong> \u2013 There is no biological sex only social constructs.\u00a0 The social constructs that a person fits into identifies them more than the fact that we are an individual who happens to belong to a particular social construct(s). They reject the ideas of freedom and self-responsibility.\u00a0 Rather than mutual relationships we are divided into adversarial groups.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hicks\u2019 explanation in the video makes sense and I have seen people expressing the ideas found in collectivism.\u00a0 Yes, our identities are tied to various groups that we are part of, but who we are is an expression of each of those groups and their particular influence on us as an individual.\u00a0 Some have more influence on our lives than others and that can be situationally dependent.\u00a0 To illustrate this fact to my students, I have them identify who they are in relation to twelve different social identities, such as age, race, and religion.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 I then have them consider in a week what percentage of time they spend thinking about each of their identities. For most of the students their religious identity tops the chart and some like, first language or national identity seldom cross their minds.\u00a0 Send those students on a mission trip overseas and the results will be vastly different.<\/p>\n

Concluding Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

My brain is still trying to process everything that Hicks and others had to say.\u00a0 I may have to reach out to my friend, Shelley, and praise her for teaching philosophy at her local college. I do appreciate Hicks as explains postmodern philosophy in an understandable way; maybe someday, I will have both the mindset and intellectual capacity to understand it all.\u00a0 For now, I have a general idea of how to identify some key ideas and the history behind them. As leaders we need to be able to identify how others are thinking to effectively engage with them.\u00a0 While philosophy is not an easy topic, it is important to obtain some basics.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, (Reland Bay, QLD: Connon Court Publishing, 2019).<\/em><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jonas \u010ceika , A Critique of Stephen Hicks’ “Explaining Postmodernism”, Jonas \u010ceika CCK Philosophy, September 11, 2018. \u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EHtvTGaPzF4<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Stephen Hicks, \u201cTaking on my Critics: Defending Explaining Postmodernism Open College No. 40\u201d, CEE Video Channel, January 5, 2024, \u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1trnqmvBFWs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Hicks, \u201cTaking on my Critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Patrick, J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed<\/em>, (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2018).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Hicks, \u201cTaking on My Critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> This is an activity from Pamela A. Hays, Connecting Across Cultures: A Helper\u2019s Toolkit<\/em>, (Washington DC: Sage, 2013).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have had two formal philosophy courses in my life.\u00a0 The first one, Critical and Creative Thinking, focused on logic.\u00a0 The second, Introduction to Philosophy was taught by a former Nazi soldier with a thick German accent that was difficult to understand. Based on these two courses, I failed to develop a love of philosophy.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3437],"class_list":["post-41242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hicks-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41243,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41242\/revisions\/41243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}