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I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. They're mostly just awful prose writers (and ev

I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. They're mostly just awful prose writers (and even worse, French). Glibly casting off an entire intellectual tradition as a case of the emperor having no clothes is, to me, a really tragic dismissal of an electrifying body of ideas. For anyone who's been put off by the language of continental philosophy, I'd recommend Peter Barry's book called Beginning Theory. It's written in very clear English and gives concrete examples of the terms you usually just hear bandied about (deconstruction, semiotics, whatever).

pdonis 5y ago
> I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. I've yet to see a claim made by a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. The awful prose just makes it worse.
wahern 5y ago
It's difficult to dispute a philosophic framework on its own terms. It's not that difficult to be self-consistent. But when you dig into these philosophies I always find myself asking, "So what?". Compare Jean Baudrillard's Simulcra to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. IMO, they both identify the same basic phenomenon--that the reality we inhabit is socially constructed, including much or all of what we consider our physical reality, if only because it's difficult if not impossible (except through contrivances like math) to disentangle socially imbued meaning from even the most mundane of objects and events. But Baudrillard builds an exaggerated philosophical framework with little if any additional descriptive power. Similarly, Baudrillard's philosophy is often used, including my himself, in an excessively prescriptivist manner, unrestrained by any admission of incompleteness. (Continental philosophers have always loved indulging in supposedly universal philosophies that can be used to explain and dictate everything.) By contrast Anderson's Imagine Communities concept is principally descriptive, emphasizing as it does the emergence and importance of nationalism in particular. That makes it, among other things, more easily analyzed, critiqued, and even falsified. Extrapolating the framework into a more universal philosophy is something you would have to do entirely on your own, and at your own peril. Importantly that makes it much more difficult to weaponize Anderson's concepts, directly or indirectly, in political and cultural rhetoric. Yet, at the end of the day, you can ride Anderson's concept anywhere you might Baudrillard--in the abstract it doesn't limit you; in fact, arguably it can take you more places by being less categorical. There's a hilarious chapter, "Foreword to Newt Gringrich's Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, By Betsy DeVos" in the book Moving Forward: Real Introductions to Totally Made-up Books. I feel like the author tore the entire story straight from my head; thus, unsurprisingly, I find it hilarious. But in any event it IMO perfectly encapsulates not only the shortcomings in post-structuralism and related philosophies, but the dangers. FWIW, I don't think all non-analytical philosophies are problematic. I far prefer Camus' writings over Satre's precisely because Camus evinces a laudable restraint. He doesn't emphasize implications; at most he hints at that them. Whether that's because he was just a good storyteller (letting the reader fill in the gaps), or because he was conscious of the inherent incompleteness of his perspectives and was capable of admitting to himself uncertainty, I don't know, but it makes for a far more mature and, ultimately, truthful examination of the human condition.
btilly 5y ago
Glibly casting off an entire intellectual tradition as a case of the emperor having no clothes is, to me, a really tragic dismissal of an electrifying body of ideas. Where do you get the impression that I'm merely being glib? I'm not being put off by the language. I can make my way through that (though I do a lot better in English translations than the original French). But whenever I make the effort, I find that "there is no there there". And I have the effort on a number of occasions because someone I respected swore that a particular work was particularly important. But the more I did, the more I found myself agreeing with Paul Graham in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. And I've found the hard way that whenever there is a topic of interest that both philosophy and science touch on, I always prefer to read what science has to say about it. My reasoning is different than his. Whenever we think of something, our odds of being on the right path are low. We need feedback to steer by. And "applicability" makes feedback much clearer than any other standard that I can think of.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I followed the Paul Graham link. It is true that "philosophy" refers to a bunch of apparently-unrelated disciplines. What they share doesn't have a name that I know of; it is that they all depend on how to think, in broad terms (perceive, remember, how to reason etc.). Paul Graham certainly knows how to think. But I think he doesn't give enough credit for that to his philosophy training.
yesenadam 5y ago
> I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. Did you read e.g. Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures, aka Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science?! Set out to show how numerous key intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly, Sokal and Bricmont intentionally provide considerably lengthy extracts in order to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context. Such extracts pull from such works as those of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard, who—in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and of citations received—were some of the leading academics of continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, and/or the social sciences at the time of publication. The book provides a chapter to each of the above-mentioned authors, "the tip of the iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts." For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us;" and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics. Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument and is "not just false: it is gibberish." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

pdonis 5y ago

> I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. I've yet to see a claim made by a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. The awful prose just makes it worse.

wahern 5y ago

It's difficult to dispute a philosophic framework on its own terms. It's not that difficult to be self-consistent. But when you dig into these philosophies I always find myself asking, "So what?". Compare Jean Baudrillard's Simulcra to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. IMO, they both identify the same basic phenomenon--that the reality we inhabit is socially constructed, including much or all of what we consider our physical reality, if only because it's difficult if not impossible (except through contrivances like math) to disentangle socially imbued meaning from even the most mundane of objects and events. But Baudrillard builds an exaggerated philosophical framework with little if any additional descriptive power. Similarly, Baudrillard's philosophy is often used, including my himself, in an excessively prescriptivist manner, unrestrained by any admission of incompleteness. (Continental philosophers have always loved indulging in supposedly universal philosophies that can be used to explain and dictate everything.) By contrast Anderson's Imagine Communities concept is principally descriptive, emphasizing as it does the emergence and importance of nationalism in particular. That makes it, among other things, more easily analyzed, critiqued, and even falsified. Extrapolating the framework into a more universal philosophy is something you would have to do entirely on your own, and at your own peril. Importantly that makes it much more difficult to weaponize Anderson's concepts, directly or indirectly, in political and cultural rhetoric. Yet, at the end of the day, you can ride Anderson's concept anywhere you might Baudrillard--in the abstract it doesn't limit you; in fact, arguably it can take you more places by being less categorical. There's a hilarious chapter, "Foreword to Newt Gringrich's Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, By Betsy DeVos" in the book Moving Forward: Real Introductions to Totally Made-up Books. I feel like the author tore the entire story straight from my head; thus, unsurprisingly, I find it hilarious. But in any event it IMO perfectly encapsulates not only the shortcomings in post-structuralism and related philosophies, but the dangers. FWIW, I don't think all non-analytical philosophies are problematic. I far prefer Camus' writings over Satre's precisely because Camus evinces a laudable restraint. He doesn't emphasize implications; at most he hints at that them. Whether that's because he was just a good storyteller (letting the reader fill in the gaps), or because he was conscious of the inherent incompleteness of his perspectives and was capable of admitting to himself uncertainty, I don't know, but it makes for a far more mature and, ultimately, truthful examination of the human condition.

btilly 5y ago

Glibly casting off an entire intellectual tradition as a case of the emperor having no clothes is, to me, a really tragic dismissal of an electrifying body of ideas. Where do you get the impression that I'm merely being glib? I'm not being put off by the language. I can make my way through that (though I do a lot better in English translations than the original French). But whenever I make the effort, I find that "there is no there there". And I have the effort on a number of occasions because someone I respected swore that a particular work was particularly important. But the more I did, the more I found myself agreeing with Paul Graham in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. And I've found the hard way that whenever there is a topic of interest that both philosophy and science touch on, I always prefer to read what science has to say about it. My reasoning is different than his. Whenever we think of something, our odds of being on the right path are low. We need feedback to steer by. And "applicability" makes feedback much clearer than any other standard that I can think of.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I followed the Paul Graham link. It is true that "philosophy" refers to a bunch of apparently-unrelated disciplines. What they share doesn't have a name that I know of; it is that they all depend on how to think, in broad terms (perceive, remember, how to reason etc.). Paul Graham certainly knows how to think. But I think he doesn't give enough credit for that to his philosophy training.

yesenadam 5y ago

> I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. Did you read e.g. Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures, aka Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science?! Set out to show how numerous key intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly, Sokal and Bricmont intentionally provide considerably lengthy extracts in order to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context. Such extracts pull from such works as those of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard, who—in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and of citations received—were some of the leading academics of continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, and/or the social sciences at the time of publication. The book provides a chapter to each of the above-mentioned authors, "the tip of the iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts." For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us;" and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics. Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument and is "not just false: it is gibberish." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense