/lit/ - Literature

The majority of actually interesting philosophy has always been non-academic, "academic" philosophy is just one of those fields that exist to prevent putting to much downwards pressure on STEM wages.

Also your STEM research cannot make the world an "objectively better" place on its own, most of it will just be used to make fatter idiots live longer while consuming more degeneracy in more high tech electronic form... you need some form of cultural education to balance it to make people actually not just be idiots

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-the-mass-psychology-of-misery

>>8382436
They definitely fucked up by linking you continental philosophy. For some unfathomable reason people like to preach about how philosophy isn't irrelevant in the face of modern day science and then fail to acquaint themselves with the philosophy of physics. Read Maudlin, Albert, Shimony, Wallace (no relation), Lewis (also no relation), Bell, and McMullin if you want an actual discussion on ontological issues in contemporary physics.

Zizek is a retarded pastiche of jargon without the thought that sustained it. He's the fucking inside-out skin man of philosophy. Jesus Christ. Watching him talk about real, perennial philosophical issues, just as an excuse to show off how efficiently he can slather his naked Slovenian body with French jargon of stale 1960s/1970s vintage, is like watching Sophia get raped or something.

>In positing a thinking subject as distinct from the "mere" matter from which it arises, do we commit [look, I know this jargon from Badiou], or do we [look, I read the structuralists long enough to adopt their register]? Is it enough to [bet you didn't think I read Lacan too, did you?], or ought we to [get ready for sixteen paragraphs of me proving I get the orthodox interpretation of some essay by Derrida].

Wow, thanks for making my philosophically inclined brain get momentarily happy when it thought you were going to shine some light on dualism, and then rubbing your jargony dick all over it! Let me buy more of your fake books that no one gives a fuck about except untenured women in comp lit departments!

>>8382436
>Zizek

Literally a meme philosopher

>>8382436
>making the world an objectively better place
How?

>>8382436
>he doesn't get it

If someone who didn't know multiplication asked why they should take calculus seriously, what would you say?

The value of literature is not quantifiable. Fiction, philosophy, etc are means of exploring beyond the limits of your own thoughts to reach different understandings. This is not the kind of self-improvement you can put on a resume, nor will you even get college credit for it. In many ways education, both higher and lower, fails to properly impart this kind of understanding of literature. Instead, academia instills a bleak, utilitarian world view on students regarding their education. Knowledge is reduced to crude information and if it cannot be bent to a useful, materialistic purpose it is discarded.

So I cannot justify philosophy or literature to you on the grounds that you can exploit it for materialistic gain. Or rather, I could attempt to do so, but it wouldn't be the real value of literature, only a sham constructed to appease the shallow, grasping minds of the culturally destitute.

>>8383044
>Let me buy more of your fake books that no one gives a fuck about except untenured women in comp lit departments!
This is uncannily accurate. Though one of my professors who assigned Zizec actually was tenured, I'm pretty sure she was the only one who was.

>>8383021

>continental philosophy

What's the alternative? Is it not shit?

>>8383175
The alternative is British guys sitting around and agreeing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that a rock exists.

>>8383175
>>8383189
There's all the philosophy from before the split. Also Wittgenstein.

>>8383175
Most continental philosophy IS shit. Read the rest of the post faggot