Pseuds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvwhEIhv3N0

>>9243233
>Lacan
yes
>Zizek
yes
>Deleuze
no
>Derrida
a bit
>Foucault
a bit

>>9243233
>Lacan
no
>Derrida
no
>Foucault
yes

>>9243236
oh an analytic dork ranting about euro pomos, so enlightening

You just described all of philosophy. None of them know anything about science so all they can do is bullshit about abstract scenarios.

>>9243341
It's useful advice for the proclivity to pontificate among the French philosophers. I don't doubt he had the conversations he says he had with those guys. Why are you so assblasted by the truth?

>>9243233
Once you understand that the french dont really care about the fate of the world and are more comfortable bitching in a coffee shop than actually trying to fix anything your relationship with their philosophy will be more fruitful.

>>9243341
Don't kill the messenger.

>>9243375
That's a pretty dumb thing to write down, not to mention believing it's true.

>>9243251
Wrong

>>9243341
He is not attacking Foucalt.
>"Foucault was often lumped with Derrida,” Searle says in a 2000 interview with Reason magazine.
>"That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether.”

>>9243406

I was just thinking about it all again. I may be wrong regarding Foucault. I never heard anyone telling me clearly how original and interesting he was, and I didn't find it in his own essays either.

regarding Lacan: i've been interest in him few years ago because i suffer from severe anxiety (ocd) and i used to read extensively about psychoanalysi, psychiatry and the like. the way he describes our psyche is pretty relevant, i felt like he nailed the neuroses scenario.

BUT, yeas the obscure language is off putting, iirc Foucault once said he intentionally made his writing in the way we know cause that was the fashionable praxis of the time to fit in as an intellectual.

>Foucault
No, why don't you read him sometime?

>>9243590

>reading philosophy

Unless you want a phd in that shit just podcast/youtube lecture it

>>9243616
This post needs to be a banner for /lit/.

>>9243233
who would have guessed it, op? No one can agree on whether the philosophers you've listed are worth reading or not! I guess you'll just have to read them for yourself and find out! Isn't it exciting! A READING ADVENTURE AWAITS.

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Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy

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>>9243808

Lacan
>obscurantist pseud
Zizek
>obscurantist coke addict
Deleuze
>important thinker
Derrida
>obscurantist pseud
Foucault
>important thinker

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>>9243810

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>>9243816

>>9243811
>zizek
>obscurantist

He appears in the mainstream media and most of his books of are meant for the mainstream audience. He has to be clear by necessity or he wouldn't have an audience to begin with.

He does get obscurantist in his more academic stuff though

You fucks just need to calm down. All of these philosophers are valuable in their own ways. The minute you attempt to quantify philosophical 'value' to a theorist is the moment you depart from a legitimate study of philosophy. Yes, there is room to prefer some works over others, but entire philosophies? Give me a break.

>>9243233
>Is Lacan a worthless fraud who just uses deliberately over-complicated language to hide an incoherent and meaningless argument?

Well he's French so that goes without saying.

>>9243233
>please tell me what to believe

>>9243808
what a stupid thing to say

>>9243808
>>9243810
>>9243816
I gotta say, these pictures totally encapsulate his thought.

>>9243403
I stole it from a frenchman

Lacan >obscurantist pseud, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Zizek>astute at times, but too enamoured of hokum

Deluxe>magnum opus is basically Negative Dialectics with different source materials, has some good insights couched in reams of nonsense

Derrida>more important than all the above but goddamned obscurantist at times

Foucault>Consummate intellectual

>>9244767
>too enamoured of hokum
lol what a way to say it

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Consider the difference between Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol. All of these guys are painting something in reality, and producing completely different results. They could all paint a lifelike picture of your aunt Gladys if they wanted to. But they don't. Who's right? The classical painter, the impressionist, the cubist? They all are. And, in a sense, they also help you to understand the history of this thing called painting.

I wonder if it isn't perhaps the same phenomenon with theory. You have a lot of different ways of looking at whatever it is that we are calling reality this afternoon. Because we are all entitled to make claims about reality, change our minds, and so on, we aren't - fortunately - straitjacketed in to any one mode of perception. Rather, you have a lot of options, possibly even to the degree of a tyranny of choice. If you read these guys, any of these guys, you are going to be persuaded by their arguments. That's part of the magic, it just happens like that. For better or for worse.

Of course, there are well-meaning students who occasionally feel tempted to storm the Bastille armed with a few good quotes from any of these guys. It doesn't mean that the philosophers they read from are wrong. It means that they are theorizing about concepts that we have to admit we don't fully understand, but which are nevertheless often all-too-easily applied for revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary purposes. With mixed results.

Anons are keen sometimes to get their metaphysical ducks lined up neatly in a row so that they don't have to think. It's understandable; that's certainly why I started reading this. I wanted The Answers. It would be nice to achieve Total Enlightenment as quickly as possible so that we can get back to watching the hockey game or whatever the fuck. Nothing prevents us from getting cozy with one guy and dismissing the rest. And you can score all kinds of cultural capital by having a postmodern Theory of Everything, which alll of the big guys have; a totalizing theory is basically the calling card of a Big Deal philosopher. It's deep and expansive and apparently airtight. Until some other genius comes along and finds some new part that isn't sufficiently explained by the forerunners.

I'm saying this because if I were an academic, and I'm not, that's how I would be looking at it: essentially, the history of subjectivity from Plato to NATO. It's a story that hasn't ended yet, with a rather large ensemble of characters.

So my own answer, FWIW, would be, no, of course they aren't frauds. They're writers making their contributions to the study of mind, just as people have been doing in every discipline since the beginning of things. And they're all worth reading.

The Truth just isn't a thing that can be forced to appear on command. This isn't obscurantist posturing, it's just a form of understanding the human condition. Lacan knew this better than most.

(cont'd)

>>9243371
you are the one overreacting about this boy, all i did was state an opinion in a shitty one-liner. i don't like french pomos either. you analytic fanboys are always such sensitive spazmoids

>>9243233
does anyone else feel that chomsky is a retard at anything science?

Lacans insights into the nature of desire and subjectivity are astoundingly insightful that anyone who claims to have a casual interest in literature should become familiar with.

His ideas once you actually get past his particular terminology and expression style are so straightforward and innately apparent they may as well be Kantian deductions while elucidating on issues that writers (and we as humans in general) have grappled with for millenia. Including but not limited to the question of finding ones authentic self, fulfilling ones true desires, the astounding frustration of mutual understanding between men and women and finally the problem of comprehending to reality itself as individuals imbedded in a world of culture and language.

I really can't recommend him enough and would suggest anyone who is so wantonly dismissive to at least look into his account of these massive questions which are really just the beginning of his work.

>>9243233
Foucault and Deleuze aren't that much of obscurantists though

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>>9244917
One thing we have known, since Nietzsche, is that we are free - almost unbearably free - to conceive of reality however we like. And we are (well, some of us more than others) getting more free by the hour.

What do we do with all of this freedom? Who the fuck knows? Regardless of what happens with science, we are still as humans going to be free to think society, imagine society, in an almost infinite number of different ways. One thing we don't believe in, and which is perhaps a legacy of poststructuralism, is limiting the freedom of others to make choices (or even unconsciously limiting ourselves). We believe in freedom, intellectual freedom, which can at times seem to exceed all boundaries, including those of social common sense, even sanity.

The point is that what is called obscurantism is simply high-powered instrumental language. Sure, any of these guys could have been smacked upside the head and been told, 'Bro, you're overthinking this one. Life's not that complicated.' And, in a sense, they would have been right. We just would have been the poorer for it later on, we would have lacked a concept that is basically free and open to anyone to use, for whatever reason or purpose they might see fit.

But it's kind of a good thing they carried on. Even as they seem to get more and more hung up on what sometimes seems perfectly obvious, or totally ephemeral. This is all part of the process of coming off the old gold standard of God, of discovering relativity (and, I would say, mimetics). And the enormous possibilities and potentiality of human thought: expressed, I would say, increasingly through the phenomenon of capitalism, but I am not a Marxist, and that's another story.

Anyways, you sexy motherfuckers, I don't mean to give the impression that I think hysterical pomo relativism is by any means wonderful for its unreadability. Or for the gigantic clusterfuck theory has reaped in the form of SJW-itis. This all sucks, precisely because in the desire for authenticity and self-expression a number of other equally important virtues, like charity, tolerance, patience and so on, have gone missing. Even asking another person to listen can be construed as sovereignty, can be seen as asking too much. It's a trigger-happy universe out there, and too much of this freedom has a way of turning nice people into cunts.

>or worse, bores

So for me at least, I think the idea is less to get hung up The Truth and to pay more attention to those scenarios, contexts or circumstances in which you might be fortunate enough to learn something new or have a chance to change your mind. I'm as guilty as anyone else in that regard, in *failing to listen.* Which, in an age of total relativity, is arguably even more important than the talking and the writing.

Interestingly, that's what analysis is all about. Not being the Sphinx. Because people already may have one of those inside them.

>>9243236
Back in the day I used to agree with Searle. But nowadays I've seen how much of a jerk the fucking guy is and I don't trust him when he quotes/paraphrases Bourdieu. The guy is fucking scum. Most famous American philosophers from the Analytic tradition are scum.

>>9244917
>>9245001
Good post

>>9243233
>Even Chomsky has called him a 'posturing and self-conscious charlatan'.

Chomsky is an idiot. He said he liked Lacan 'pre-cult' i.e when he was a shitty neo-Freudian, which says more about Noam.

What kind of complicated language does Lacan use? He even formalised his work into very basic algebra

>>9243233
>Lacan
A bit
>Zizek
The biggest hack of them all
>Deleuze
No
>Derrida
a bit
>Foucault
No

>>9245005
Elaborate. What scummy stuff did Searle do?

>>9245005
>Most famous American philosophers from the Analytic tradition are scum.
Is Quine also scum?

>>9244321

Thank God you showed up, anon. None serious philosopher diminishes entirelly other's Works. It's unpractical and childish.

>>9245001

Veeeery Nice. Absolutely correct, anon!

>>9243233
the real question is: are you as autistic as chomsky?