The digestion of these French ideas by the general public has been slow, to say the least, with liberals and conservatives alike in hysterics over the ‘wokist’ and ‘postmodernist scourge’ they beleive is to blame for everything rotten in society. — Joshs

Indeed. And all around us now people are trying to get nostalgia projects up and running as the antidote to some 'meaning crisis', and even the Thomists are having a small revival.

I have to admit I fall into the camp that tends to dismiss 1960s French philosophy as a postmodernist dead end. Not because I'm hysterical about it, but because I haven't been convinced of its intellectual worth. I say this as somebody who isn't afraid to engage deeply with obscure thinkers when necessary. So I would be genuinely interested to hear what it is you think made that time so creative, and I guess the second question is how you think about the balance "creativity" in philosophy against other desiderata such as having good arguments and evidence for your theories.

Excellent response, and I add my expression of interest, and hope @Joshs has time to respond about the creativity question. He knows that I value his take on these philosophers, despite my misgivings about many of them.

But with philosophy, you do, because most people aren't a good judge of your work: they simply don't know enough. And while in art, one person can achieve works on their own, in philosophy it can grow a lot more if more people work on it. It's usually what comes after one's work that's the real deal. — Skalidris

Interesting take here, I applaud your stance. Seems firm enough for me!

I always wondered about art in terms of judging, grading, valuing. "How can you tell me this is not a masterpiece?," and also I think of how art teachers can create a rubric of expectations, a standard, in order to give a grade but when you compared Picasso and philosophers alike, it reminded me of these thoughts I had before....time is relevant here but for what? "grasping" what you call, "the real deal,"?

Like it takes time to understand the "beauty" in art or "genius" in philosophies? This understanding comes to certain people at certain times though, I believe some would be able to spot a gem on sight, knowing that something is going to gain momentum or popularity, not yet but often too late.[too late for what? I dont know. I think timing is interesting]

Im interested in those/ the moment...its like when we say "she was ahead of her time," what if people have to say "he was way ahead of his time" because it is proof, in and of its self, making the statement, "she/he was so ahead," because of how slow people are going to be at understanding....as if he/she knew, no one was going to catch on right way or could....but that it would defy the doubts and resistance once put upon it. But I do still wonder, if when people discover people and their works, art or philosophy, [OR BOTH], "before their own time," if the gap is of any significance. Its like admitting how slow/fast it took to travel from then to now. What if we are stuck before our time? What if he was just ahead of YOUR TIME, every time?

Bravo! :strong: :eyes: :starstruck:

I have to admit I fall into the camp that tends to dismiss 1960s French philosophy as a postmodernist dead end. Not because I'm hysterical about it, but because I haven't been convinced of its intellectual worth. I say this as somebody who isn't afraid to engage deeply with obscure thinkers when necessary. So I would be genuinely interested to hear what it is you think made that time so creative, and I guess the second question is how you think about the balance "creativity" in philosophy against other desiderata such as having good arguments and evidence for your theories — FirecrystalScribe

I’m sure you would agree that in order to justify dismissing the intellectual worth a philosophy, you have to first demonstrate that you have read it effectively enough to be able to offer a detailed summary of it. I know firsthand how difficult this can be. As someone brought up in anglo-american culture, I had no exposure to continental writers up through my graduate school studies in psychology and treated them with enormous skepticism, believing that the only kind of ‘evidence worth its salt was that which scientific empiricism relied on. It was only later, on my own, that I introduced myself to contemporary Continental modes of thought through Heidegger’s Being and Time. It threw me for loop. I had never encountered a method thought so rigorous, dense and compressive in its unification of history and domains of culture. I went from Heidegger to Derrida, who it would have been impossible for me to understand without my prior background in Heidegger. In mastering Nietzsche and Husserl, I came to see how Heidegger, Derrida, Focault and Deleuze were all the heirs of Nietzsche and phenomenology ( as well as Marx and Freud). Most anglo-American philosophy only pays attention to Kant and, if one is lucky, Hegel, so they offer one no exposure to the influences or modes of thought I have mentioned.

When you say ‘evidence’ do you have in mind the match between theoretical prediction and observation? I assume that when you say you are not afraid to engage deeply with obscure thinkers, that this includes philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn. I tend to find that those who prefer Popperian falsification over Kuhnian paradigm shifts not only are not convinced of the intellectual worth of 1960’s French philosophy, but also reject those thinkers who follow in the wake of Kuhn, but are themselves still a fair distance away from the radicality of the French poststructuralist writers. Therefore, it is probably a waste of time to directly debate the merits of writers like Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida when we may need to focus on a preliminary debate concerning realism , the realism-antirealism binary , and positions put forth by anglo-american writers that critique both realism and anti-realism. In the U.S., that latter group includes new materialist philosophers like Joseph Rouse and Karen Barad, and phenomenological-influenced cognitive science writers like Evan Thompson (who does not consider himself to be a postmodernist).
So I need to know who are the paragons of contemporary philosophy for you, so I can fine-turn my response to what you are familiar with.

some complementary remarks from Alain Badiou (Adventures of French Philosophy) who more or less written, interviewed or debated with them all, a concise (inevitably biased and not without criticism, excludes the contribution of French feminist/women philosophers) overview of contemporary French philosophy chief concerns:

We may summarize the main points of the programme that inspired postwar French
philosophy as follows:
1. To have done with the separation of concept and existence—no longer to oppose the two; to demonstrate that the concept is a living thing, a creation, a process, an event, and, as such, not divorced from existence;
2. To inscribe philosophy within modernity, which also means taking it out of the academy and putting it into circulation in daily life. Sexual modernity, artistic modernity, social modernity: philosophy has to engage with all of this;
3.To abandon the opposition between philosophy of knowledge and philosophy of action, the Kantian division between theoretical and practical reason, and to demonstrate that knowledge itself, even scientific knowledge, is actually a practice;
4. To situate philosophy directly within the political arena, without making the detour via political philosophy; to invent what I would call the ‘philosophical militant’, to make philosophy into a militant practice in its presence, in its way of being: not simply a reflection upon politics, but a real political intervention;
5. To reprise the question of the subject, abandoning the reflexive model, and thus to engage with psychoanalysis—to rival and, if possible, to better it
6. To create a new style of philosophical exposition, and so to compete with literature; essentially, to reinvent in contemporary terms the 18th-century figure of the philosopher-writer.

Such is the French philosophical moment, its programme, its high ambition. To identify it further, its one essential desire—for every identity is the identity of a desire—was to turn philosophy into an active form of writing that would be the medium for the new subject. And by the same token, to banish the meditative or professorial image of the philosopher; to make the philosopher something other than a sage, and so other than a rival to the priest. Rather, the philosopher aspired to become a writer-combatant, an artist of the subject, a lover of invention, a philosophical militant—these are the names for the desire that runs through this period: the desire that philosophy should act in its own name. I am reminded of the phrase Malraux attributed to de Gaulle in Les chênes qu’on abat: ‘Greatness is a road toward something that one does not know’. Fundamentally, the French philosophical moment of the second half of the 20th century was proposing that philosophy should prefer that road to the goals it knew, that it should choose philosophical action or intervention over wisdom and meditation. It is as philosophy without wisdom that it is condemned today.

Wasn't Alain Badiou largely motivated by a strong critique of postmodernism and a concern about the rise of relativism and the disappearance of any commitment to truth? He was certainly critical of thinkers like Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, whose work he saw as contributing to a loss of faith in universality and radical politics. In other words, Badiou had his own philosophical vision to sell, which as at odds with the above thinkers. Should we trust his assessment?

And by the same token, to banish the meditative or professorial image of the philosopher; to make the philosopher something other than a sage, and so other than a rival to the priest. Rather, the philosopher aspired to become a writer-combatant, an artist of the subject, a lover of invention, a philosophical militant—these are the names for the desire that runs through this period: the desire that philosophy should act in its own name

But all the best philosophers have "Saint" in front of their name. Verily, if one encounters a new name, looks them up, and they don't look like an archetypal sorcerer, I'd be skeptical indeed! :cool: :rofl:

And that's not just for the Christians, consider: Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus, Nagarjuna, Laotze, Shankara, Dogen, Proclus, Al Farabi, or even our old beloved Plato.

Yet behold! An epoch where even the philosophers are decadents. Even? Especially the philosophers! And now they've even made it to the Big Leagues—all the way to the Oval Office. I am not sure if being filtered through Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, and "Bronze Age Pervert," (complete with a return to radical asceticism in the form of fasting tax payer funds) jives with the original intent, but it certainly demonstrates the rollicking freedom of thought. :wink: (This, of course, ignores the philosophers who made themselves into accountants, but that's what people do with them—ignore).

When the Last Men become First, they can make themselves into Overmen—even colonize Mars if they want. The difficulty is that they fancy themselves Milton's Satan—or Macbeth, holding the dagger that killed God—and yet really they play Iago to themselves; yet it's not like the human race was ever more than the womb for AGI and Capital anyhow, the prime matter for the instantiation of Mammon, who's destined to birth Roko's Basilisk (i.e., ol' Jörmungandr, whose fiberoptic tail wraps tightly round the Earth underneath the waves even now). Volanturism clears away the old form and the ol' Demiurge—Yaldy-Baddy himself—shakes his mane, uncoils his tail, and does the rest. Dostoevsky was right about the Inverse Tower of Babel, bringing Heaven down to Earth, but missed that achieving this Brave New World would first require recreating God's punishment: linguistic atomization and separation.

Congratulations -- that may be the most dementedly entertaining post I've yet read on TPF! :party: Well, it's Saturday night and Dionysus rules . . .

The worst part is, it's all true... Modern man is an inverse Oedipus. He is born free, master of his own fate, and then tears out his own spiritual eyes, fating himself to wander the wilderness, unable to answer the Sphinx's queries. Jacob saw a ladder stretching down from heaven, angels ascending and descending, but modern man is more like Balaam, stuck on his path, hoping blindly in the better judgement of his ass to avert technopocopypse.

recreating God's punishment: linguistic atomization and separation — Count Timothy von Icarus

Modern man is an inverse Oedipus. He is born free, master of his own fate, and then tears out his own spiritual eyes, fating himself to wander the wilderness — Count Timothy von Icarus

modern man is more like Balaam, stuck on his path, hoping blindly in the better judgement of his ass to avert technopocopypse. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You sound like me. If I knew what I was talking about and read about it. Love it (and wish it wasn’t all true - although I have to look up some of the references.)

My only hope for “modern” man is knowing there are other people out there who get it. Cheers!

↪perhaps Wasn't Alain Badiou largely motivated by a strong critique of postmodernism and a concern about the rise of relativism and the disappearance of any commitment to truth? He was certainly critical of thinkers like Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, whose work he saw as contributing to a loss of faith in universality and radical politics. In other words, Badiou had his own philosophical vision to sell, which as at odds with the above thinkers. Should we trust his assessment? — Tom Storm

What you say about Badiou’s disagreements with French postmodernist philosophers is true. The shared features of their thinking he highlights here are cherry-picked to be consonant with those he endorses. I wouldn’t say , though, that these features are at odds with the postmodernists, just that they are broad enough to encompass a very wide range of contemporary thinkers.

The worst part is, it's all true... Modern man is an inverse Oedipus. He is born free, master of his own fate, and then tears out his own spiritual eyes, fating himself to wander the wilderness, unable to answer the Sphinx's queries. Jacob saw a ladder stretching down from heaven, angels ascending and descending, but modern man is more like Balaam, stuck on his path, hoping blindly in the better judgement of his ass to avert technopocopypse — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it is true of Modern man (and I include among this group Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug, despite their superficial aping of postmodern philosophical tropes), is it also true of Postmodern man?

Flint....Dibble?

Seems more like vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage to me.

Yes, but entertaining vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage. :smile:

(Not really, Count T!)

Yes really, apart from the "entertaining" part...at least as it strikes me, but clever yes...like a monkey. As Wittgenstein said " It's more important to be good than to be clever". Attention-seeking is not good philosophy in my world. I’m not going to play politics..this sort of moralizing 'holier than thou' diatribe turns my stomach.

Trying to explain why something is funny to one person but not to another is a notoriously hopeless task. If @Count Timothy von Icarus meant to amuse me, he succeeded. If he didn't . . . well, I still found it funny but that's just me.

If the biggest breakthroughs came from focusing on creativity rather than criticizing existing ideas, why is philosophy focused on the latter? — Skalidris

I'm just throwing this out there : maybe the lack of "creativity" is not just in Philosophy, but also in Physics, and in Politics. Are we seeing a general conservative turtle-shell retraction from taking risks. Instead of forging ahead into the unknown territory, we point fingers/guns at the opposition. Is this hyper-critical stand-off & stalemate how revolutions & civil wars begin? If so, maybe this is just the stagnant storm before the creative calm. :cool:

Dissection Over Discourse :
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16022/two-ways-to-philosophise/p1

Theoretical Physics Has Completely Stagnated Since the 1990s?

I have no criticism of anyone finding anything funny (barring cruelty or real misfortune). Perhaps the funniest thing is that the diatribe was meant to be taken seriously. The attention sought there seemed to me to be an attention acquiescing to purportedly profound wisdom, not merely an attention finding amusement in some clever name-dropping and recondite allusions. Whatever wisdom is, I don't think it consists in such attention-seeking.

If it is true of Modern man (and I include among this group Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug, despite their superficial aping of postmodern philosophical tropes), is it also true of Postmodern man?

I think post-modern man is a myth; a bit like sasquatch. It seems to me that all supposed "post-moderns" achieve is Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity." A phase transition, sure, but the same substance. The Reformation and Enlightenment shadow still colors everything. If the "Singularity" hits, I'm afraid we'll just have "gaseous modernity," a self-sustaining cycle of hot air made hideously prolific through the aid of LLMs.

John Deely wrote a whole history of philosophy focused on how Charles Sanders Peirce was the first post-modern thinker. Maybe it is even so, but if it is, he was at least a century and a half too early.

Seems more like vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage to me

Thanks, I seem to have hit my target!

I’m not going to play politics..this sort of moralizing 'holier than thou' diatribe turns my stomach.

Well now it cannot be moralizing and 'holier than thou' and vacuous, so now I'm questioning your original compliment.

Thanks, I seem to have hit my target! — Count Timothy von Icarus

That leaves me wondering what target you think you might have hit.

Well now it cannot be moralizing and 'holier than thou' and vacuous, so now I'm questioning your original compliment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure it can―it can be moralizing and holier and thou in terms of attitude, while being vacuous in terms of content.

And as to post-modernism―I think it is simply the idea that we should drop the myth that history is necessarily a story of continuous progress or that there is a real underlying telos at work in history.

If the biggest breakthroughs came from focusing on creativity rather than criticizing existing ideas, why is philosophy focused on the latter? — Skalidris

To the soft skinned, any new idea or thought is a critique of something old.

And then, we never start from an empty plate, we never clear our minds and be like a tabula rasa and then start create something new. We always create the new from the old. As Newton himself said "if I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

This is true in science, but it is also true in philosophy.

And as to post-modernism―I think it is simply the idea that we should drop the myth that history is necessarily a story of continuous progress or that there is a real underlying telos at work in history. — Janus

History already shows with many examples that there isn't continuous progress and that basically we can have such collapses that knowledge is forgotten. Yet as I said to @Skalidris above (on a comment he wrote pages earlier) that knowledge and new insights, be they scientific or philosophical, are created on the present knowledge.

History already shows with many examples that there isn't continuous progress and that basically we can have such collapses that knowledge is forgotten. Yet as I said to Skalidris above (on a comment he wrote pages earlier) that knowledge and new insights, be they scientific or philosophical, are created on the present knowledge. — ssu

I agree, we must always start from where we are. It seems to me that hankering for ancient, "lost" wisdom is a fool's errand, given that we may well be misunderstanding the contexts within which ancient literature found its meaning.

We have much greater knowledge today, and we might call that progress, but have we acquired the wisdom to deal with it? It seems not, and that failure cannot be rightly seen as progress in my view.

Yet behold! An epoch where even the philosophers are decadents. Even? Especially the philosophers! And now they've even made it to the Big Leagues—all the way to the Oval Office. I am not sure if being filtered through Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, and "Bronze Age Pervert," (complete with a return to radical asceticism in the form of fasting tax payer funds) jives with the original intent, but it certainly demonstrates the rollicking freedom of thought. :wink: (This, of course, ignores the philosophers who made themselves into accountants, but that's what people do with them—ignore).

When the Last Men become First, they can make themselves into Overmen—even colonize Mars if they want. The difficulty is that they fancy themselves Milton's Satan—or Macbeth, holding the dagger that killed God—and yet really they play Iago to themselves; yet it's not like the human race was ever more than the womb for AGI and Capital anyhow, the prime matter for the instantiation of Mammon, who's destined to birth Roko's Basilisk (i.e., ol' Jörmungandr, whose fiberoptic tail wraps tightly round the Earth underneath the waves even now). Volanturism clears away the old form and the ol' Demiurge—Yaldy-Baddy himself—shakes his mane, uncoils his tail, and does the rest. Dostoevsky was right about the Inverse Tower of Babel, bringing Heaven down to Earth, but missed that achieving this Brave New World would first require recreating God's punishment: linguistic atomization and separation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you might be right. Are we witnessing the end of one order and the beginning of another, or is it just the same preoccupations, endlessly repackaged and reinterpreted for our age? Hard to say whether it's a rupture or just another loop in the cycle.

I think post-modern man is a myth; a bit like sasquatch. It seems to me that all supposed "post-moderns" achieve is Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity." — Count Timothy von Icarus

What would a post-modern man consist of? I can't tell, is Bauman's liquid modernity a stage between the modern and the post or is it what we actually have, the 'post' in this view being an erroneous prefix?

I agree, we must always start from where we are. It seems to me that hankering for ancient, "lost" wisdom is a fool's errand, given that we may well be misunderstanding the contexts within which ancient literature found its meaning. — Janus

Well, I would be really happy if the book written by Zeno of Elea would be found and we could read thodr additional paradoxes that Zeno had found and in general something that the Eleatic School itself actually thought, because now we have only the writings of those who opposed the school. And naturally finding a part of the books from the Library of Alexandria that the Romans didn't burn would be fabulous. However it's unlikely that there would some totally unknown philosopher or mathematician who back then would have to the same conclusion if not have gone beyond Gödel's incompleteness theorem and would tell us something new that we are eager to hear. That is extremely unlikely.

Besides, we do know how that losing of knowledge happens in history.

Perfect example is how Antiquity turned into Middle Ages and what we call the "Dark Ages". Talk about a collapse in trade and in globalization. That's all it takes. Once North Africa couldn't feed Rome (as Vandals conquered it), then Rome's population started to shrink rapidly. Once that happened, then urban professionals like artists and engineers that relied for income from an advance economy simply didn't have any demand for their work. And then simply things like drawing, sculpture, engineering etc. simply regressed. When large administration became impossible, the logical solution was feodalism.

Earlier example is the Bronze Age Collapse. These historical developments and anything similar in the future can have a dramatic effect on our knowledge base. It might not be a societal collapse, but simply an economic collapse.

My favorite example of this is when an university professor, perhaps teaching the language that is spoken in country, has to have a second job as perhaps a taxi driver. This is reality in many Third World countries as universities simply cannot afford to pay a reasonable salary to their teachers. It's not reality yet in the Western World, but it surely can be. It sounds like a small difference, but in my view it's quite huge and tells a lot about the prosperity of the society itself.

Perfect example is how Antiquity turned into Middle Ages and what we call the "Dark Ages". Talk about a collapse in trade and in globalization. That's all it takes. Once North Africa couldn't feed Rome (as Vandals conquered it), then Rome's population started to shrink rapidly. Once that happened, then professionals and artists that relied for income from an advance economy simply didn't have any demand for their work. And then simply things like drawing, sculpture, engineering etc. simply regressed. — ssu

I'm not convinced that the visual arts, at least, regressed in the so-called Dark Ages. Anyhgow thanks for the historical insight―I wasn't aware of the African connection with the fall of Rome.

My favorite example of this is when an university professor, perhaps teaching the language that is spoken in country, has to have a second job as perhaps a taxi driver. This is reality in many Third World countries as universities simply cannot afford to pay a reasonable salary to their teachers. It's not reality yet in the Western World, but it surely can be. — ssu

Thanks again, I wasn't aware of the kind of situation university professors can find themselves facing in the Third World. I agree with you that such a situation could be coming in the West. I'm not economist, but I think that any apparent general increase of prosperity in the West over the last twenty years or perhaps longer is largely "smoke and mirrors".

I'm not convinced that the visual arts, at least, regressed in the so-called Dark Ages. — Janus

Well, there was a time called the Renaissance, so at least people back then did think that art had fallen back in the Middle Ages. Only in the 19th Century we started to feel romanticized by the Middle Ages.

Art from Antiquity:


Art from the Middle Ages:


Renaissance art:


Why they call it "Renaissance" should be obvious to everybody. Of course now as we have modern art and cameras, even AI making pictures, hence difference isn't so evident. But back then before cameras, it was evident that some abilities had been lost. Above all, it should be noticed just how limited it was to few cities where the "Renaissance" happened. Just to show how Medieval the artists in the periphery were, here's a Finnish Church painting from the 16th Century made by a local Finnish artist.

This picture is from a Finnish Church painted in the start of the 16th Century:


This is from Italy at the same time period (actually, from ten years earlier), also a Church decoration:


Today we rarely understand the huge difference in the ability to paint as you can go to any country today and you will find artists that can paint photorealistic paintings. Take classes in your local art school, and many could be "masters" earlier... at least in the periphery. But back then, it really was only a few like Leonardo da Vinci and not many else.

I'm not economist, but I think that any apparent general increase of prosperity in the West over the last twenty years or perhaps longer is largely "smoke and mirrors". — Janus

We should stop gazing at our own navel and notice what huge transformation has happened in the World. Absolute poverty has decreased dramatically around the World. China is far more prosperous than it was fifty years ago as are many countries all over the World. The growth simply hasn't been so fast in the West as it has been in other places. Above all, one should note that we suffer more of the problem of income distribution where the rich have come far richer while the middle class and the poor haven't seen such increases in prosperity as the rich. Yet in absolute terms, absolute poverty has diminished even in the West.

The abilities, or skills in the creative arts ebbed and flowed with the prosperity and decline of societies. There hasn’t been a progression in high art particularly, just an expansion into the depiction and expression of subjects and ideas that weren’t previously represented, for whatever reason, in the medium. Culminating in the radicalism of modern art and now in the post modern era, High art has died. Ravaged and crucified by the modern and post modernists. Leaving the ground open for new artistic expression, an explosion of every conceivable kind of art unhindered by previous constraints. The creative arts are struggling a bit, primarily because they require more skilled craftsmen. Many crafts, including my own, are dying. Or their remnants remain in settings where there is sufficient patronage to make a living. Although, the creative content will be preserved and reproduced using advanced technology. Highly skilled robots, will take over, as there will still be the demand for the product.

Why they call it "Renaissance" should be obvious to everybody. — ssu

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance are categories encompassing many forms of art, including literature, poetry, architecture and music. Given the fact that Gothic architecture and polyphonic music were both born in the high Middle Ages, it is difficult to justify the claim that art as a whole ‘had fallen back’ during that period.