Stephen Hick's Interview

 On 12/19/21, Stephen Hicks was interviewed for an hour and ten minutes by podcasters Kevin and Truman on the podcast, Rousseau's Return: Here is what they wrote: "A while back Kevin and I of Engineering Politics had the honor of sitting down for a conversation with none other than Dr. Stephen Hicks. Dr. Hicks is a professor, thinker, author and scholar was a particular expertise in the field of Postmodernism . . . "

Here are my notes on that interview and then my responses:

Interviewers (Int): "A lot of Leftists ideas are derived from Marx and Rousseau."

Stephen Hicks (Steph): "Rousseau is more influential today than Karl Marx. Marxism won in Russia, but capitalism had a place in history in contrast to Marxism. Marxism seemed to favor some things in capitalism. its modernization, its industrialization and high technology. They wanted to see these developments and then swoop in and take over, introducing their dictatorship of the proletariat so history would be a legacy of further progress towards nirvana for the poor."

My response: what I take away from the discussion here is that Marx was in favor of science and reason whereas Rousseau disavowed them. The new socialists in rejecting science and reasons expose their postmodernist outlook.

Stph: "Jacques Rousseau was almost a century before Marx, publishing in the 1740s. He was anti-progress and anti-industrial, go back to nature kind of socialism, because as we modernize, we just get worse and worse. We need to go back to earlier times, when people lived in natural setting, tribal small communities that were pre-industrial.

Marx and Engels self-identify as scientific socialists that use empirical methods. As social scientists, they would devise general laws that made predictions and were testable.

Rousseau was anti-reason and anti-scientific epistemologically.  Science makes everything worse. Scientists were arrogant, flawed and biased in their structural study of nature. 

Now, obviously the Marxist version of socialism has been thoroughly discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 so educated, disenchanted socialists have now gone back to Rosseau for inspiration, as an alternative to Marx."

My response: the new Left are anti-realist and anti-progressive. They are neo-Rousseans.

Int: "Rosseau often romanticized, idealized and glorified the bucolic tribal life of the pre-historic noble savages. Putatively, they were innocent, pure and unspoiled and in touch with nature.

Steph: "Many find modern reality, capitalism and freedom as a source of growth and opportunity, while those afraid to be on their own are scared by these potentials to better themselves. The latter seek to go back to simpler times, tribal and immersed in nature, living in units of 100 to 150 people.

Some philosophers are sensible and detect trouble in our technocracy and want to go back to tribalism to avoid a collapse of our culture."

Int: "Are you familiar with The True Believer by Eric Hoffer?"

Stph: "I am not a scholar on Hoffer but I know who he is, brilliant and great writer."

Int: "Hoffer said. 'Freedom is the rule then equality is the cry of the masses. Where equality is the rule, freedom is the cry of the few.' People find freedom in servitude. They eschew what Hayek praise that freedom is our responsibility and risk. The masses want to feel directed and controlled."

My response: Freedom is the rule in America today, and the cry of the masses and their elite rulers and mind-controllers is for equality or equity, that is, tyranny and groupism. Once equity is the law of the land, the American Way of Life will have disappeared, and the few will cry out for freedom, but will be isolated, hunted down, arrested, jailed, even executed.

Stph: "What developmental psychology and developmental morality can teach us is that some loved freedom and some run from freedom. Why are some kids born followers, escapist and timid, and others are adventuresome?"

My response: No matter their natural bent, a milieu of upbringing that fosters in them confidence, reason, independence and a sense of adventure is one that will bring about a generation of strong youngsters.

Int: "There are no rites of passage today for youngster to pass over into adulthood. Children enjoy extended adolescence today--they do not grow up fast and take on adult responsibilities Without genuine rites of passages, now that racism is conquered, they invent pseudo-moral failings to attack, like anti-racism. Networks of higher education and social networks now raise children as adult children, and families do not push children into adulthood. Kids grow up in cities with no economic role to play in the family, so they do not mature and contribute."

My response: All these causes are legitimate.

Stph: "We are reconceptualizing what it means to be a child and an adult. We are rich so youngsters need not grow up quick. We have luxury, wealth, and leisure to extend childhood. Children today are too passive, too sheltered.

Children are not turned on to by free agency and working hard to become a success in this material civilization. Marx and Rousseau criticize this worldly affluence view. Rousseau famously announced that all are born free but everywhere people are in chains.

In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden story, God provided all that they needed. Once they fell from grace and were expelled, they become mortal, they had to work to make a living, the women knew the pain of childbirth. Work was a punishment and a burden."

My response: The Fall from grace was really the rise of the free individual, though mortal, suffering and required to work, he was alive to make something of himself.

Int: "What was Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution?"

Stph: "Rousseau was most influential in the 3rd phase of the Revolutionary Reign of Collectivist Terror. The leaders of this 3rd phases of the Revolution, Robespierre, Marat and Saint-Justice were deeply influenced by Rousseau. They were collectivists that dehumanized their enemies, so they could justify being cruel, ruthless, and homicidal. 

Part of the problem was that the French peasantry had ancient grudges against the elites for being oppressed, and really sought and go revenge."

My response: "Perhaps from Rousseau or from the French culture itself, the deep collectivism traditional to that society kept the ancien regime in office too long, and when it got overthrown, the revolution turned into savage, totalitarian butchery. Collectivism and fanaticism are both evil traits, and when a basically wicked people are a mass movement, no holds are barred and all moral restraints are removed, and great social evil can be born.

Notice, by contrast, the conservative American revolution run by aristocrats, far more individualistic and moderate, their revolution was much more restrained, It never got to that 2nd phase, or a 3rd phases where the Saint-Justs take over. Individualism and moderation are good traits, and that is the Anglo cultural trait.

Stph: "Leaders of the French Reign of Terror believed they could transform society, justified by  imposing a violent, bloodthirsty ideology. The relatively gentle American Revolution was Lockean and the French Revolution more Roussean. US a new country, and French had ancient rivalries and grievances to work out.

Attention: I did not include the final discussions about American universities, etc.