I "keep coming back" to challenge, as I've said, Derrida's apologists & expositors. His "texts" seem to me no less facetiously incoherent now than they've ever seemed each time I've bothered with them over the last forty years. The fad peaked and then fades leaving knee-jerk relativisms and pop-nihiIism in its wake – reactionary damage done (e.g. "post-truth"), IMO. But hey, if "différance" yanks your crank, man, then go on with your bad self. :victory: :smirk:

I guess I just don't feel challenged because it seems to me to be a matter of preference, but then when I say so it seems like you don't acknowledge it's a matter of preference. It seems you still want to say that your preference is right.

I "keep coming back" to challenge, as I've said, Derrida's apologists & expositors. — 180 Proof

So far, though, your challenge seems to consist in accusations that you have not yet substantiated. I'm not saying you can't make a great case but that you haven't yet. So far your critique is all too familiar. The thread would only benefit if you expand your comments, go into more detail.

Not at all. I just don't understand your "preference" re: Derrida. That's not my "preference" versus yours, only intellectual honesty on my part.

So far, though, your challenge seems to consist in accusations that you have not yet substantiated. — igjugarjuk

Applying a paraphrase of Hitchen's Razor: what can be expressed without substantiated clarity can also be dismissed without substantiated clarity. And yet, I'm sure my dismissals of Derrida-ism are far clearer than anything Derrida "defers".

this thread:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705495
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/706931

other threads:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/510980
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/570551

Sorry if those posts are not "substantiated" enough for you, igjugarjuk; just dismiss them (or defer their contents) as you see fit. :ok:

NB: If you haven't noticed, I've a very low and cranky tolerance for academic or political sophistry (aka "bullshit" ~ H. Frankfurt).

Not at all. I just don't understand your "preference" re: Derrida. That's not my "preference" versus yours, only intellectual honesty on my part. :,point: — 180 Proof

Ahhh -- ok. That's fair. Plus, it keeps things interesting when we find places to dispute rather than simply dismiss.

I appreciate your taking the time to provide the links. It seems we both agree that 'the modern' is already self-critical. I go on from this idea to include Derrida in the same old tradition. He doesn't even necessarily deserve an especially prominent place. Perhaps his early work is pepper to the later Wittgenstein's salt.

As for the intolerance of bullshit, that's the rule that binds all of us as we play at being philosophers. I expect that most of us would understand ourselves to be virtuously cranky in the same way. It's just not always easy to decide whether something is bullshit.

:cool:

Sokal and Bricmont are heroes in my book. They fought the right fight, and even made it fun. What's not to love?

When and where academia becomes an inbred clique of self-serving poseurs, it is right to ridicule them. It's the Voltairian thing to do. The same kind of prank could have been played on the analytic philosophy clique when they were still dominant in anglo-saxon academia.

When and where academia becomes an inbred clique of self-serving poseurs, it is right to ridicule them. — Olivier5

Agreed. And I love Voltaire. But there's always the danger of deceiving ourselves with a little cartoon gang of bad guys. Tucker Carlson probably gives his loyal viewers that they are the shrewd, rational minority on this great stage of fools, and this anti-academic anti-fancy-talk vibe fits right in. Sokal's target was specifically political, aimed at feckless progressives rather than old-fashioned science-denying creationists. I grant that academia is so liberal that it's hard to take the reactionary threat seriously, and one feels that progressive sentimentality is the real threat, but that's ironically an ivory tower illusion itself.

philosophical approaches that disparage traditional, conventional ways of seeing things. — Clarky

Ah but that's what a biblethumper would say about Darwin or Hume. (I'm not accusing you of that, let me be clear, but riffing on your phrase.) The issue is what one takes for tradition. Many opponents of (their idea of ) deconstruction ( not all !) are likely gobbling up Jordan Peterson's strange brew -- hho is or was likely convincing lots of white boys with no interest in science that they were the knights of rationality against the black tide of a progressive hoard that could no longer tell pussy from asshole.

@180 Proof

I guess what I really see in Derrida -- my interest in him -- is what I often see in philosophers. There's a unique perspective there that I don't see anyone else really doing or trying to do within philosophy.

The broadening of philosophical activity is a natural goal and interest of mine, given that I'm not within the institutions of academia but this stuff still floats about my head, and Derrida's project naturally lends itself to broadening the notion of philosophy.

And I see it as a continuation of -- in line with -- the philosophical project. If Derrida is no skeptic -- and at this point in the thread it seems we're pretty much in agreement on that, minus Jackson due to Hume -- then his is a response to the problem of skepticism, ye olde classic question that marks the traditional history of the modern era of philosophy.

OK -- so are you contesting that Hume basically did it first, more or less?

OK -- so are you contesting that Hume basically did it first, more or less? — Moliere

I don't know first, but certainly Hume was radical.

I just mean before Derrida.

But then it would seem that Hume wouldn't undermine Derrida, but get along with him?

That's why I asked, because I'm not sure if your reading of Hume is in some sense undermining Derrida, or if it's just that Derrida is not original due to Hume.

But then it would seem that Hume wouldn't undermine Derrida, but get along with him? — Moliere

Not sure. Hume did not reduce philosophy to text. But, there may be similarities.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/570551 — 180 Proof

I believe I answered this charge here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/707330

Derrida's goal/s with "deconstruction" is one thing, the implications and applicability of what he proposes are quite another thing; and it's the self-refuting nature of the latter – in effect, reducing 'all' truth-making discourses to 'nothing but' tendentious rhetoric – which many critics like me take issue with. A semiotic sleight-of-mind perfomative contradiction confidence trick "that opens up space for"...???

Derrida might be a latter-day paleo-Kantian after all, proposing an analogous (semiotic) ruse "to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith"; unlike Kant, however, he fails to cogently make the internal critique – fails to make the argument from within argument-making itself – in order to establish a compelling case for 'logocentricity as more bug than feature' of Western philosophy in particular (that's 'symptomatic' of discursive reasoning in general).

(Actually, Derrida reminds me more of the itinerant sophist Gorgias than the philosophy professor Kant.)

I feel you're making assertions I cannot evaluate, because I'm only responding to some of the takes on Derrida that I feel confident enough to refute. How do you feel about 180 Proof's statement @Joshs ?

Check out the link on Gorgias, that might help you grok my take on Derrida et al.

I mean, I read the Gorgias some time ago, tho re-reading and re-re-reading isn't bad. I feel like your take on Derrida is unfair, so far, though. But it's only a feeling, and as I've said before I'm in the halfway house. I'm going to wait to see what @Joshs has to say because I feel they're in a better position than I to respond -- but we'll see. As always, I hope to bring some amount of agreement between participants in a thread.

The article I linked is not to Plato's dialogue but to a broad summary of what intellectual history records about sophists including Gorgias. The reference to Derrida therein is what I want to call to your attention to in the context of my own commentary.

OK, fair. I just glanced over it, and started to wonder. I'll give it a look. My bad.

↪Moliere Derrida's goal/s with "deconstruction" is one thing, the implications and applicability of what he proposes are quite another thing; and it's the self-refuting nature of the latter – in effect, reducing 'all' truth-making discourses to 'nothing but' tendentious rhetoric – which many critics like me take issue with. A semiotic sleight-of-mind perfomative contradiction confidence trick "that opens up space for"...??? — 180 Proof

The term ‘self-refuting’ tips me off to the root of the issue here, which is less about Derrida in particular than about every one of the numerous philosophical discourses thar have appeared over the past 100 year which take their leave from Nietzsche’s
critique of truth.

I suspect most philosophical discourses in the last twenty-four centuries since Pyrrho of Elis refute themselves either partially or, in the case of sophists, completely.

I feel the same way. I've tried reading Derrida and find his writing philosophically more or less impenetrable; i.e. it doesn't really seem to say anything of philosophical note and even the truisms in it are buried in thickets so dense that seem likely to lead nowhere, that the effort to cut pathways of understanding through them seems pointless.

And I say this as someone who finds value in Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Henry and even Zizek. I think reading Derrida can be enjoyed if it is read as a species of arcane literature. where it is his imaginative gymnastics that are being admired, but I don't take it seriously as philosophy.

It's just not always easy to decide whether something is bullshit. — igjugarjuk

You first have to be able to decide what you think it means before deciding whether you think it is bullshit.

I think reading Derrida can be enjoyed if it is read as a species of arcane literature. where it is his imaginative gymnastics that are being admired, but I don't take it seriously as philosophy. — Janus

Just be careful not to universalize your sentiments. It’s fine that FOR YOU he is only enjoyable as arcane literature, and YOU can’t take him seriously as philosophy, but there are many scholars inside and outside of philosophy who consider his work to be a prime example of substantive and serious philosophy. I am one of them.

Right, I don't deny that others find him philosophically interesting, and perhaps if I put the requisite effort in I might discover more there than I thought. It just doesn't seem likely to me at this stage, but I do allow for a change of attitude.

↪Joshs Right, I don't deny that others find him philosophically interesting, and perhaps if I put the requisite effort in I might discover more there than I thought. It just doesn't seem likely to me at this stage, but I do allow for a change of attitude — Janus

I’m reading his biography right now, and I’m starting to think that his extremely neurotic and depressive personality entered into his writing in the form of endless asides, apologies, digressions and ass coverings , and this is a large part of what makes it so tortuous to read him. Compare his style to early Heidegger, who on the one hand shares many ideas with Derrida and is difficult for many to read, but so much more straightforwardly methodical and systematic in Being and Time than anything that Derrida has ever written.

I’m reading his biography right now, and I’m starting to think that his extremely neurotic and depressive personality entered into his writing in the form of endless asides, apologies, digressions and ass coverings , and this is a large part of what makes it so tortuous to read him. — Joshs

The first few books by Derrida were interesting and original. After that he just published stuff that seemed Scholastic and writing for the sake of writing.