Several months ago, I debated Thaddeus Russell on
The Tom Woods Show. The proposition debated was "Postmodern philosophy is compatible with a politics of individual liberty." Thaddeus defended the proposition and I opposed it. Here, I want to flesh out some of the points I made in the debate, adding more context than I could marshal under the constraints of the format. For better or worse, this requires a somewhat deep dive into postmodern ideas.
Postmodernism, I argue, is incompatible with liberty, first because
it sees the individual as a mere product, as constructed by language, social factors, and so on. As such, postmodernism effectively
denies self-determination and individual agency. Second, the cultural obsession with social identity that is current today derives from the social constructivism of postmodern philosophy. Such social constructivism further denies individual agency.
The very concept of truth, meanwhile, is denied in favor of subjective belief. For reasons discussed below, the denial of the concept of truth is anathema to liberty.
Thaddeus Russell takes postmodernism's "anything goes" epistemological subjectivism, skepticism, and idealism for epistemic "humility." That is, because postmodernism eschews or denies "truth" and suggests that there are merely different "narratives" that pass for truth, it allows for people to escape from the truth claims that others, like the state, would impose on them. Its rejection of metanarratives is liberational and Russell takes this as an invocation of freedom.
Comment: Previously: