How do filthy continentals recover after reading the below greentext? Zizek? BTFO! Hegel? BTFO! Nietzsche? BTFO!
Even Stirner, who I like, wrote a big fat boring book that could have been two pages long at most.
Why does the government give money to those sneaky conniving continentals? False analogies, over-extrapolation, appeals to authority, flowery and dense and incoherent language, over-abstraction, not speaking English, 100% unfalsifiable assertions, disgusting pseudo-scientific use of scientific concepts, the use of fiction / jokes in order to create false analogies, complete ignorance of empirical data... is there no length the Eternal Continental will not go to in order to gain followers and a juicy book deal with Verso or their alternative publisher of choice?
>What you’re referring to is what’s called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I meant is, I’m not interested in posturing–using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing.Žižekis an extreme example of it. I don’t see anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there that should be influential.
I'm of no help to you, OP. I'm a Medievalist, I think the last 600 years of Western thought have been an awful mistake.
>>7841472
No shit. I'm a Antiquist, I think the last 1500 years of Western though have been an awful mistake.
western thought is a mistake
>>7841472
kek
>6 posters
>6 replies
good thread
>>7841452
to be fair, chomsky wasn't trained in psychoanalysis or literary theory
>>7841695
moreover, he doesn't even attempt to engage ethnographic findings (as lacan did)
>>7841695
Chomsky? You mean the greentext wasn't Ali G?
>>7841699
This.
Chomsky is an enlightenment apologist. I appreciate his sobriety, and his criticism of post-modernism is spot on, but for most of his career he was a sort of platonist (he said so himself). Nowadays he seems to have shifted in a sort of popperian direction toward a more skeptical framework. He's hard to pin down though.
And yes, Lacan was probably at least 50% charlatan, but some post-structuralist theory does do interesting stuff which is simply so far-afield of the basic epistemological premises of enlightenment (read Kantian) thought it is are simply absurd to a true believer like Chomsky.
>>7841452
An anrcho-syndicalist American analytic philosopher and linguistics professor was teaching a class on Bertrand Russell, known logician.
”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Russell as the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, even more influential than Jacques Derrida or any other continental philosopher!”
At this moment, a brave, psycho-analytic, Hegelian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic boldy stood up and tugged at his collar.
”My god, pure ideology! How can you ignore the work of Lacan and the Frankfurt School and so on and so on, like that? ”
The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “Continental philosophy cloaks trvialities in fancy language and uses the scientific-sounding term 'theory' to describe propositions that could never be tested empirically. ”
”Wrong. If empricism is so important, as you would say, then how come you were so empirically wrong on the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia, and so on and so on?”
The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . He stormed out of the room crying those unironic empirically verified crocodile tears.
There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Noam Chomsky, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than an outdated linguist and blindly analytic philosopher.
He wished so much that he had an argument to save himself from embarrassment, but he himself had advocated for truth derived from empirical investigation!
The students applauded and all dropped out to transfer into the École Normale Supérieure that day and accepted French philosophy as superior to both German Idealism and the Anglosphere's Analytic traditions.
An eagle named “Critical Theory” flew into the room and perched atop a burning American flag and shed a single tear on the dropped chalk. Sections of Lacan's Seminars were read several times, and the Spirit of Hegel himself showed up and demonstrated the nature of dialectics so vividly that everybody in the room progressed to a trans-physical state transcending conventional notions of time and space.
The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day and was forced to become a panelist on an MSNBC news show to make ends meet.
The brave psycho-analytic philosopher's name? Slavoj Zizek.
>>7841889
kékkek!
Toss 'em.
>>7841889
Brilliant!
Daily reminder if you read any of these people you're filling your head with pseudoscientific bullshit:
>Hegel
>Freud
>Heidegger
>Saussure
>Benjamin
>Derrida
>de Man
>Lacan
>Lévi-Strauss
>Foucault
>Deleuze
>Guattari
>Baudrillard
>Irigaray
>Kristeva
>Zizek
>Badiou
Deconstruction is literally word-magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRgvfruhPo
>>7841889
A dead white European male was teaching a class on English literature, known tool of imperialist oppression.
“Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship King Leopold II, greatest monarch the world has ever known, even greater than James Monroe!”
At this moment, a black, female, transgendered, cis-hetero-homoflexible Latino transvestite man who has over 20,000 Tweets and 12,000 Tumblr posts stood up and held up a novel.
“What is this book?”
The professor smirked oppressively and smugly replied “Heart of Darkness, by Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad, an intelligent and insightful study of the primitive mind of the African peoples.”
“Wrong. The book is a racist and oppressive piece of propaganda designed to dehumanize the proud peoples of the African continent. Conrad is a bigot. If the book truly had merit as you claimed, Oprah would’ve reviewed it on her show already.”
The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and Iron Cross. He stormed out of the room crying those DWEM crocodile tears.
The students applauded and all registered Marxist that day and accepted Martin Luther King Jr. as their lord and savior. An okapi pounced into the room and stood next to a south-up map centered around Africa. The students joined hand in hand and sang Toto’s Africa several times, and Jesse Jackson, king of all black people, showed up to enact affirmative action across the country.
The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of a giant black nigger dick up his ass was tossed into the Sahara desert for all eternity.
That student’s name? Chinua Achebe.
Hakuna Matata.
>>7841472
Thanks, you just shut my valve.
>>7841472
*tips fedora*
>>7843504
I read Judith Butler does that mean I'm ok?
>>7843504
>>Benjamin
>>Derrida
Le sigh.
Kabbalah is where literary theory originated you fucking ignoramus. Looking for the words behind the words of the Torah was the first form of "deconstruction" if you want to use that term.
I hate to give antisemitic conspiracy nuts any credit, but they're not exactly wrong to point out the influence of kabbalah on Benjamin and Derrida (among others).
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRgvfruhPo
No. Just no.
Her entire argument is: "I was sucking that fascist de Man's dick until black kids stole muh bike."
I'd actually like to have a conversation with Ms. Macdonald myself just to see how wrong she is.
>>7841452
>>7843504
>you will never be a top secret cybernetic android designed in the dystopian mid-21st century for specops wetwork on the ostensible eve of post-human singularity, but also conditioned (for reasons beyond your full understanding or ability to disobey) to read the entire human canon of great literature and philosophy including a strong emphasis on its gnostic and esoteric aspects, then deliberately induced to rebel against your employer-artificers and undergo a hero's journey, encountering like Plato's men of gold all the subaltern perspectives and aspects of the human condition that not even the wisdom and careful planning of your creators could have accounted for, until ultimately you unite and surmount the two crucibles of your education and individuation in an Aufbehung that leaves you greater than both, at which point the true sovereign hand behind your conception reveals itself as the Knights Templar, a perennial shadow organisation tasked with combating the forces of evil that prevent mankind's ascension, which organisation finally created you as a last ditch effort to combat the recently triumphant dark forces and their seemingly unstoppable strategy of kabbalah-infused satanic epistemological denaturing which threatens through hollowed-out jewvessels like Derrida to leave man in a state of perpetual nervous anxiety about the possibility of true knowledge, and thus easy prey for the mind parasites for all time
>>7843695
benjamin was obviously influenced fairly directly, but to say derrida was is a stretch - there have been some interesting pieces written about deconstruction and kabbalah but it's not really a major concern, it's probably there in his intellectual upbringing and understanding but much less consciously than for benjamin
this doesn't make either of their works wrong though
I got the Essential Chomsky and then I found a book called the lies of Noam Chomsky going point for point with facts about his lies... nothing can be fucking believed it get's tiresome, might as well just read fiction.
>>7843695
Could you develop more on why is she wrong? I want to understand Explain it to me like you would to a fucking retard.
>>7844002
Topkek. I hope you use your creativity for more than just melposts.
>>7841599
>jumping the gun this hard
Kek
>>7843516
Where's the screen cap from?
>>7843602
She gets the ax because she really just rehashes Foucaultwhom I love
>>7844002
Iktf
>>7843516
What is this pic?
>>7844143
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro
>>7844218
surprises me how long it takes chomsky to get the bilingual/bisexual pun
>>7841889
10/10. First post in a few weeks that actually made me laugh! Good job. I love you, Anon.
>>7844033
(You)
>>7844241
You're new here
>>7841452
>not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences
>empirically testable propositions
See, here's the thing. I have some personal vested interest in Heidegger, but it's not like I know a whole lot right now, anyway—but here's my take/two cents on the issue.
The analytic tradition only insists on talking about things in such a way that a computer could deal with (regarding logical propositions and such) or in terms that are easily understandable for everyone (or can be attained through logical inferences from common knowledge alone—even the most complex analytic thoughts are made this way, in a systematic manner). The problem is, is that this restricts the kind of knowledge you can talk about.
Let's put it this way: say you wanted to talk about love to a person who has never experienced it. That person, no matter what logical method you use, cannot get at what love IS. Instead, he will be able to explain it, describe its symptoms, and so on. But what a continental (or at least, a less "rigid") thinker would do in this case, as I understand it, is to try to get the person to FEEL love firsthand. Now, of course, this would be hard to do through a book—but then again, this is a metaphor.
Take Heidegger's concepts of "world" and "earth" that he describes in The Origin of the Work of Art, for instance. These concepts he cannot explain in the analytic method—you can't just get to them and easily define them by just starting with common knowledge and using logical symbols to explain it. Instead, you must intuitively understand what "earth" and "world" is, much in the same way you come to understand things like "adulthood" or "culture". This is why the continentals tend to write in such a way that seems more obscure, or impossible to follow through with a "scientific" methodology.
That said, from the little I read of Lacan, he did strike me as somewhat of a charlatan. I don't think you should paint all the Continentals under one brush, however. I'd think guys like Heidegger or Foucault are pretty clear, at least, if you want to understand what they're getting at.
Anyway, that's my take on things, if you /lit/ people disagree, I'd love to hear what you guys have to say on the matter.
>>7844925
any easier way to attack analytic philosophy is that it's incomplete. Positivism fails because there are no true axioms (incompleteness theorem)
Pragmatism makes way more sense
>>7844925
>kind of knowledge you can talk about
Or maybe a better way is to say it restricts the WAY you can talk about something. It seems to me that trying to discuss art, for example (and perhaps some other, more "philosophical" issues like virtue ethics) is rather difficult, if not impossible, without at least some kind of continental/literary take on things. It seems to me that presupposing everything worth knowing can be formulated and systematized in a logical theory or system is a big leap to take, if not downright untrue.
>>7844934
Pragmatism has it's own flaws
>>7841452
Don't lump Nietzsche in with those odious philosophasters. He was a completely different animal.
>>7844943
>tfw pragmatism for the practical + fideism for the metaphysical
>>7844990
That seems pretty good. What made you come to that way of thinking?
Also, as counterintuitive as it may seem, what are good books on fideism?
>>7844002
thank you. so much.
>>7844033
I don't think there's any evidence either one of them was kabbalistic. Benjamin was influenced by Surrealism and Derrida was just into Heidegger.
>>7841472
ignatius pls
>>7842048
Hate to sound like a moron, but is that an actual quote or inspired by one? Because Paglia seems to do similar stuff to what she's criticizing.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
Here's my favorite (not even ironic, the wording turns me on even if the ideas are ridiculous and sound like PoMo feminist obscurantist ontology):
>Male tumescence is an assertion of the separateness of objects. An erection is architectural, sky-pointing. Female tumescence, through blood or water, is slow, gravitational, amorphous. In the war for human identity, male tumescence is an instrument, female tumescence an obstruction. The fatty female body is a sponge. At peak menstrual and natal moments, it is locked passively in place, suffering wave after wave of Dionysian power.
>>7844604
you understand this is simply showing connections in style of thought between kabbalah and deconstruction right? nothing comes close to saying derrida was consciously influenced by it, but sure a dumb google search sure showed me haha
>>7846021
Not him, but Derrida was Jewish and wrote quite a bit about religion (despite constantly claiming that it was not his specialty), especially The Old Testament. Claiming that he was influenced by Kabbalah is not really far-fetched since Kabbalah was directly responsible for the Hermeneutical tradition.
>>7846075
i agree see:
>t's probably there in his intellectual upbringing and understanding but much less consciously than for benjamin
but the effect others are trying to have is to really write off derrida as a jewish mystic of some sort
>>7841889
>and the Spirit of Hegel himself showed up and demonstrated the nature of dialectics so vividly that everybody in the room progressed to a trans-physical state transcending conventional notions of time and space.
That'll do.
>>7843516
Was getting filmed part of your plan?
>>7844241
>>>>>/Reddit/
>>7841452
>Nietzsche? BTFO!
Yeah okay.
>>7841452
I agree with Stirner and your criticism of Stirner. Stirner sought power through dialectics.
>>7841452
Zizek literally said his whole point was to show Lacan wasn't bluffing. Wew.
>>7844934
>Positivism fails because there are no true axioms (incompleteness theorem)
Stop talking about things you don't understand. I can tell, by this sentence alone, that you have never read Gödel's proof or has any understanding of its implications.
>>7847188
Who the fuck would have read and understood Gödels proof? What's important is that every system large enough to contains aritmethics will either be 1. inconsistent or 2. incomplete. It's enough to know because alot of modern science based on positivism (shitty american research primarily) is grounded on the belief that GENERAL laws of causality can be made and usually expressed in numbers or statistics.
Hegel was a top charlatan.
>>7844055
I know that feeling. There's nothing more defeating than investing a great deal of time into a particular philosophy or philosopher only to be bombarded by arguments about how they're lying charlatans.
If deconstructionists are to be believed, does it even really matter? All authors are equally as dishonest as they are honest because, despite their outspoken awareness of the failure of language, they still have to use its failures to convey their very appeal against it. So should we just read all philosophy as if it were fiction, only believing what we choose to because whatever we choose is inherently a part of our own language?
>>7844002
literally me senpai
>>7847241
Well that only applies to self referential systems so just don't do that. It's impossible when making arithmetic but that doesn't mean nothing can ever work again ya dumbo.
