Academia, The Counterculture Industry, and Their 'Great Pretenders' | DeepThink XI

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He's a real nowhere man Sitting in his nowhere land Making all his nowhere plans for nobody Doesn't have a point of view Knows not where he's going to Isn't he a bit like you and me?

 (The Beatles, 1965)

Introduction

It was once recognised in academia that, whoever the interlocutor and whatever the purpose, the ad hominem was the cheapest device at one's disposal. It was something that just wasn’t done or encouraged; students were told off if they were caught using it. Then emerged a revolutionary brand of metaphysics, postmodernism, which proliferated the idea that knowledge, reason, and morality are nothing more than structures downstream from Power, or socialised ‘lifeworlds’. Suddenly the game changed: the ad hominem evolved from being an epistemic vice to, in some cases, the entire basis on which educational and ethical decisions are made.