I just listened to a presentation of the philosopher Stephen Hicks in which he explains the Postmodernist Left's psychology in Nietzschean terms. I find this presentation interesting enough that I would like to share it with you.
This is what Hicks says
Postmodernists have a sheer love for deconstruction and the use of crude and ad hominem argumentation. Examples are
- Stanley Fish calling all opponents of affirmative action bigots
- Andrea Dworkin calling all heterosexual males rapists
- Postmodernists revolt against the great historical figures like the great authors and thinkers of the past by dismissing them on grounds of racism or sexism or for putting too much emphasis on logic.
- Nietzsche had a psychological concept called ressentiment which is a more poisonous and bitter form of the english word resentment.
- Nietzsche is a hero for postmodernists due to his perspectivism, and aphoristic writing style instead of the logical or scientific styles.
- Stephen Hicks uses Nietzsche against the Postmodernists by looking at Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment and how it distinguishes slave and master morality.
- Master morality is morality of the vigorous, life-loving strong who love adventure and who have their own sense of purposefulness and assertiveness. Slave morality is morality of the weak, the humble - those who are passive and who cannot get what they want out of their lives. They are afraid of the strong and feel frustrated and envious. However, no one can live thinking that he or she is deeply hateful so they invent a rationalization in which they turn morality upside down. They convert being weak, humble, and powerless to virtues while equalizing those attributes of the strong to the evil.
- A smart weakling is never quite going to convince himself of this absurd rationalization. This will damage him. In addition, the strong will laugh at him, which will do damage to him even more. Eventually, the smart weakling feels such a combination of self-loathing and envy that he will feel the urge to lash out against his hated enemy. However, he cannot risk direct physical confrontation against the strong so he will use words.
- In our times, it's the capitalists that are the strong. Socialism has clearly failed. Socialists hate the fact of having chosen the losing side.
- If words are your weapons, and you want to destroy the achievements of Western civilization - especially of the Enlightenment - what will you do? You try to strike the opponent with ad hominems and not with logic, spread lies, and raise doubts among the minds of his fellow human beings about your enemies.
- Western tradition prides itself on its commitment to equality, justice, open-mindedness and making possibilities available to all. The West is confident.
- Postmodernists want to attack the West's confidence and launches attacks against the core values of the West, despite knowing that the accusations they are making are not true.
- The worst of the postmodernists are individuals with deep ressentiment. The combination with alienation, bitterness, envy and rage leads them to lash out against all aspects of culture that seems to them to be the opposite.
- This is called the nihilist explanation.
