/lit/ - Literature

you can't go wrong with raymond geuss

Howard Zinn.

Don't read Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. Neither of them are historians, yet they write about history and such. Personally, I prefer Cornel West.

Richard Tarnas

Poptellectuals?

Try Badiou, Zizek, Parenti, etc.

Those guys served me well in my younger days.

If want to get real try reading some Habermas, guy changed my life.

There's currently no one in the world more eloquent and intelligent. Christopher Hitchens.

>i listen to Noam Chomsky to have a better informed opinion on things

good christ, I'm moving to Greenland. 10/10

>>1686468
hes awfully eloquent, but intelligent? even he admits hes be wrong about numerous things

>>1686490
Please explain yourself.

lovelovelove chomsky, he was to give a presentation at my school but the linguistics department got screwed over. sooo pissed, my one chance to see this mans great mind and hear him speak and i cant... people like this dont happen often and are rare these days :c

>>1686508
he presented at my school TODAY

unfortunately the tickets were all sold out by the time I checked

Why on earth would you listen to this man

>>1686497

his stance on waterboarding

got waterboarded, realised it was torture, changed his stance on it

>>1686490

Are you fucking retarded?

>>1686530

no, are you going to elaborate?

>>1686528
I'm aware. You did say "numerous"; may I ask what else? I hardly think the stance on waterboarding is an intellectual blemish on the grand scale and wealth of things he's commented on. It seems like you're cherry-picking, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt. Anything else?

>>1686536

Er... how about the first Gulf War? He was one of its most vocal critics at the time and he has now decided that not only was that war justified, but an additional (and disastrous) invasion was also justified.

He's also completely abandoned whatever socialist principles he once had and he's embraced the most poisonous and vicious strand of imperialism/neoconservatism.

He has traded in his former comrades of the left, like the admirable Chomsky, for his new filthy allies -- Rumseld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton et al.

I'm not sure one needs to 'cherry pick' when the guy has betrayed everythin he once stood for. All that he has been consistent on is his opposition to religion and, let's be honest, the 'Noo Atheists' are an impoverished bunch with little that is new, and even less that is interesting, about them.

>>1686536

Hes definitely not a socialist any more.

and I think making presumptuous arguments for a method of torture is a pretty huge intellectual blemish actually.

I'm not saying hes not smart, and I like the man personally, but the most intelligent? Not by a long shot.

Chomsky is really the gold standard of public intellectuals. He has a good few years ahead of him, but not many. When he passes, we may say of him as Hamlet said of his father, " 'A was a man. Take him for all in all. / I shall not look upon his like again."

therealnews.com is an excellent source for investigative journalism, as is democracynow.org

In terms of public figures who comment of politics, Thom Hartmann, who does AM talk radio, is excellent. And actually, in terms of public visibility to the liberties he took, Keith Olbermann gave opinions that would have been unthinkable for any other major on-air personality.

Hope that helps.

Zizek
Lakoff
Stiglitz
Finkelstein
Dawkins (lol)

can't think of many more off the top of my head, theres a lot of smart old men out there though

>>1686134
>Don't read Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. Neither of them are historians, yet they write about history and such. Personally, I prefer Cornel West.

That's a pretty unfortunate lineup, there.

>>1686549
I think that's overstating it. A bit gung ho on the "war-on-terra" but not as bad as all that.

I think.

Johan Galtung

>>1686105
>>Chomsky
>>semantic analysis

Think what you will of Hitchens' stance on various issues, everyone could learn something from that guy. Everyone, without exception. Worth reading no matter what the prevailing political winds. And for the record admitting you were wrong is a sing of intelligence, not stupidity or flakiness.

But you know what? I'm a guy who reads John McPhee and is stimulated more by that than anyone else listed in this thread.

>>1686653

'Admitting you're wrong' is certainly a sign of intelligence in some instances; completely abandoning your former principles is a sign of a total lack of integrity. Lest we forget, of course, this is also a man who sold out his good friend Sydney Blumenthal, so it's not as though we should be surprised by his moral bankruptcy.

>>1686508
Question: anything.
Answer: "Its all our fault because we're lazy."

That's a chomsky q&a.

>>1686708

You're just too dumb to understand anything he says.

>>1686708
I have to agree there. From what I've seen him say, he isn't really saying anything new or interesting about politics. Really anyone can do what he does, which is cherrypick the bad parts of US foreign policy an present them in a way which gives the impression that EVERYTHING AMERICA DOES IS EVIL OMG OMG!!!1

Slavoj Zizek

I warn you though, you will not achieve any sort of coherent worldview from listening to him. He has an extremely disorienting style also.

The thing with Chomsky is this:
>he speaks the truth
>but he jumps to wrong conclusions and proposes wrong solutions

also feel free to swap 'wrong' with unrealistic/dumb/naive/evil

I get a kick out of all the people in this thread slagging on Chomsky without ever actually trying to refute any of his ideas or offer any counter-arguments. Maybe it's just me but if you're going to slag on one of the premiere living intellectuals of the English-speaking world perhaps you should attack the substance of the Q&As (>>1686708) or cherry-pick some of your own examples to back up what you're saying(>>1686729). It's not hard to offer an uninformed opinion but it's hard to participate in the discussion at a meaningful level and that seems to be the difficulty most people have with the guy - he actually knows what he's talking about, has a staff that does research, cites sources for most everything he writes and has rarely if ever been caught in an academic slip-up. So the only recourse for people who don't want to jump through those hoops is to sidechannel him and blow his shit off with "stop liking what I don't like!"

But possibly you are all butthurt po-mo fanboys who are offended when he brushes off your beloved po-mo-po-co unintelligible philosophies for newspaper articles, think tank studies, un reports, lefty investigative journalists, and other things that demonstrably exist in the real world?

>>1687153
Indeed, indeed.

>>1686460
>Badiou
>Poptellectuals
it is not that i am a great fan of this guy, but i'd not call him "pop" intellectual, his writings are not very accessible for an outsider, you know