Stephen Hicks is a Canadian-American philosopher, considered part of the so-called intellectual dark web. Hicks and Jordan Peterson have overlapping anti-trans positions.
Background
Stephen Ronald Craig Hicks was born on August 19, 1960 in Toronto. Hicks attended University of Guelph, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2001 followed by a master’s degree. Hicks earned a doctorate from Indiana University in 1991.
Hicks began teaching at Rockford College in 1992. Hicks was a Fellow of The Heritage Foundation in 1996 and served as director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.
Hicks is known for the 2004 book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. It was influential among lay critics of postmodernism and progressivism. Hicks believes that Western society has experienced a failure of epistemology, which is basically a study of the way we know things.
Hicks’s thesis is that “the failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary.” In other words, Hicks believes that postmodernism is an intellectual reaction to the failure of communist, collectivist, and socialist political thought. Hicks believes those ideas failed when put into practice, and intellectuals needed a new form of political philosophy to explain those failures.
Anti-trans views
Critics of postmodernism sometimes see “gender ideology” as an aspect of postmodernist philosophy. As an example, the nonbinary gender identity emerged from deconstructionism, a school of thought which seeks to break down social constructs, many of which operate under what philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure calls binary opposition. As an example, the long-held idea of “opposite sexes” creates the category of “sex” as one of two mutually exclusive opposing terms: male or female. In this school of thought, binary opposition created a hierarchy where one of the two components is dominant.
Challenging binary oppositions is an important part of postmodernism, an intellectual movement that uses rhetorical, critical, and strategic means to destabilize concepts and beliefs that some people consider stable or even unchangeable. When academics say that race, sex, and other characteristics are socially constructed, they are challenging the deeply held beliefs of many people.
Critics of postmodernism and relativism also believe that these ideas will lead to loss of freedoms, the end of reason, and a number of other existential threats to society and humanity.
Academics are often concerned about freedom of speech in general and academic freedom in particular. Some believe these freedoms are threatened by postmodernism. They see things like expectations to use preferred names and pronouns as “compelled speech.”
Hicks gives an example:
Demanding that people call you by your preferred name is already a retreat from civility, and that should be a two-way street. You also have to respect the other person’s context and what kind of linguistic framework that they are operating within.
Lewis (2016) [transcript]
Hicks was an early adopter of YouTube and social media to present these ideas. Hicks has appeared with a number of anti-trans figures, including Jordan Peterson, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster of TRIGGERnometry, Michael Nayna, Glenn Beck, and Benjamin Boyce.
Media
Jordan Peterson Aug 18, 2017 Postmodernism: History and Diagnosis…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyzSrtr6oJE
Jordan Peterson May 27, 2019 Stephen Hicks: Postmodernism: Reprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwW9QV5Ulmw
TRIGGERnometry Dec 12, 2021 The Truth About the Nazis with Stephen Hicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAydErHRJ9w
Sovereign Nations Sep 3, 2021 Encroaching Darkness | Stephen Hicks, James Lindsay, & Michael O’Fallon | Changing Tides Ep. 6
Michael Nayna May 16, 2020 Stephen Hicks & Mike Nayna – PhDs and Passive-Aggression https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7iFIhUVHuw
Benjamin A. Boyce Dec 11, 2019 Postmodern Monsters | with Stephen Hicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEGMoQkgXf8
Mark Michael Lewis Dec 12, 2016 Ayn Rand Hero: Professor Stephen Hicks – Postmodernism and Making Work Beautiful Stephen Hicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTKE00OQTpE&t=1841s [transcript]
Glenn Beck Dec 17, 2018 Dr. Stephen Hicks | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 15 BlazeTV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fs0HFRwqrY
- https://possiblycorrect.com/show/open-college-with-dr-stephen-hicks/
Resources
Stephen Hicks (stephenhicks.org)
Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship (ethicsandentrepreneurship.org) [archive 2008-March 2020]
YouTube (youtube.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Twitter (twitter.com)