/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2615999]

>wonder what is this fuss around Zizek all about
>download "The desert of the real"
>read 10 pages
>my countenance
so, what was the reason anyone takes him seriously again?

[Anonymous No.2616004]

What exactly is the problem you have with him?

[Filosofer scientist No.2616007]

He's an intellectual pretender.

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed

[Anonymous No.2616012]

Hahaha, I've had to read Zizek for one of my lit classes as of late. My facial expression was pretty much the same.

[Anonymous No.2616022]

>>2616004
the problem is that I recognise all the words but somehow they fail to come together and make a coherent text. Is he making some sort of statement? Asking a question? I don't know.

[Anonymous No.2616028]

>>2616022
ah, so maybe you should wait until you're older.

you should start with something a bit more appropriate. have you read the wikipedia on Freud yet?

[Anonymous No.2616035]

>>2616007

>As for the harder task of reclaiming humanities and social studies departments for genuine scholars, Sokal and Bricmont have joined Gross and Levitt in giving a friendly and sympathetic lead from the world of science. We must hope that it will be followed.

Dawkins clearly has a very large stake in this, being at the lead of the scientific demagogues making far more money being entertainers than scientists. This article should be taken with that in mind, and with a grain of salt.

>>2616022

So you didn't understand it. Why is this a cause for questioning of legitimacy? Would you have the same response if you picked up a scholarly text on quantum theory and didn't understand it?

[Anonymous No.2616038]

I've been reading him. So far I've read Did Someone say Totalitarianism, which was pretty good. It was about the misuse of the term Totalitarian by both the right and the left and trying to figure what exactly went wrong during the Stalin era. I'm reading For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. The second edition has a 150 page intro, which really shouldn't be read until after, as it doesn't make much sense until then. A lot of good comparisons between Hegel, Lacan, Marx and Baidou.

There are tons of great lectures on youtube, check them out.

[Anonymous No.2616043]

>>2616028
>resorts to ad hominems
>implies his own intellectual superiority
>totally isn't madhurt or buttanguished

[Anonymous No.2616049]

>>2616043

You shouldn't confuse plain old insults for argumentum ad hominem.

[Anonymous No.2616050]

>>2616035
>Would you have the same response if you picked up a scholarly text on quantum theory and didn't understand it?
there is a pretty clear difference between a complicated text with a message and an obscurantist rambling

[Anonymous No.2616052]

>>2616049
people who confuse insults for ad hominem are usually high school kids who think they're smart because they read a wikipedia list of logical fallacies

[Anonymous No.2616053]

>>2616050
why are you so sure you could tell the difference?

[Anonymous No.2616054]

>>2616052
or 4channers who keep reading the word on the site.

[Anonymous No.2616055]

>>2616050

Is there? What are the respective characteristics of each, besides the difficulty of understanding?

Please don't resort to muddy statements like "it's obvious", or "I can just tell".

[Anonymous No.2616059]

>>2616054
so highschoolers who misunderstood the term. not much of a difference.

[Anonymous No.2616083]

>>2616007
Zizek is pretty easy on the jargon, at least in the books of his that I've read. Desert of the real may be worse, I don't know. You have to know some philosophy vocab, but its nothing like the quotations from Deleuze and Guattari.

In fact, if I have any beef with Zizek is that he makes lot's of interesting small points while seeming to have no over-arching thesis about anything except that capitalism is bad.

[Anonymous No.2616108]

>>2616007

>He's an intellectual pretender
>cites Dawkins

Hilarious

[Anonymous No.2616118]

>>2616007
>In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a 'rape manual') Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a 'sexed equation'. Why? Because 'it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us'

[Anonymous No.2616124]

>>2616108
Dawkins has the courage to put forth a cogent argument, free of esoterica and hermeticism. Zizek is just another asshole who pontificates about psychology and capitalism - nothing he says has to be right, just so long as it sound interesting when it comes out of his mouth.

[Anonymous No.2616140]

>>2616118
I can't stop laughing

[Anonymous No.2616143]

>>2616118

Genuinely don't know whether to laugh or rage.

[Anonymous No.2616146]

>>2616124
Dawkins argues against a five-year-old's definition of God, and calls it a delusion. Then he sits smug and pats himself on the back.

Zizek at least recognizes the phenomena of god/gods and explores their implications on our world, being funny, ridiculous, and creative.

Zizek is far more interesting. but people who have no background in philosophy or literature find him incomprehensible. whereas Dawkins makes arguments against shit most wouldn't even give a fuck about. he's almost akin to political pundits who argue pointless shit no one in academia would give a moments time to.

[Anonymous No.2616147]

>>2616118

>one ridiculous statement
>indict entire school of thought

And this is my problem with the article. It takes a handful of legitimate cases of obscurantism, and uses them to argue for the eradication of entire movement(s) in academia. And to replace them with what? Oh, scientifically minded ones! What a surprise. It's almost as if the author has something to gain from the humanities becoming more scientifically minded.

[Anonymous No.2616149]

>>2616140
>look up the quote on some random blog
>read these fucking comments

http://www.philosophicalmisadventures.com/?p=11

[Anonymous No.2616153]

>>2616147

This. I agree 100%. The article suffers from some of the problems it derides.

[Anonymous No.2616154]

>>2616149

"She may be on to something.

Please check out these references which in one way or another deal with the topic of Conscious Light or the formula: C=E=MC2 C being consciousness.

Or put in another way the relationship between consciousness and the body (whatever it is altogether), and how right left-brained patriarchal western man has always been at war with the body or the feminine Pleasure Dome principle–the culture of the senses and everything that springs from the left side of the body and its right-brained equivalent psyche which by its very nature enters into free psychic participation in the World Process–the patterns that connect.
The Latin word for left is sinister—the prejudice runs hell deep.
In and of itself, untempered by Wisdom (especially the Wisdom of the Heart),the patriarchal mind always cuts things up."


Wow.... Just fucking....wow

[Anonymous No.2616156]

>>2616146
When Dawkins is talking about biology, he's actually pretty good. Otherwise, I agree he's wasting his and everyone else's time.

[Anonymous No.2616161]

>>2616156
he's hardly wasting his time, he's making good money

[Anonymous No.2616164]

>>2616146
Dawkins argues against a five year old's conception of god because, once you strip away all the obfuscation and cognitive dissonance people build up to accommodate the discrepancy between biblical values and western, secular values, that's all that's left. Just bleating into the darkness about LOL TOO SOPHISTICATED FOR YOU is as vapid as arguments get. Either demonstrate the sophistication yourself, or fuck off.

[Anonymous No.2616174]

>>2616164

It clearly IS too sophisticated for you.

[Anonymous No.2616182]

>>2616174
Fascinating.

[Anonymous No.2616184]

>>2616164
a god is a type of artwork that is working. when art is working it is opening up a world, i.e. shine its light. they make intelligible for a culture what matters, making intelligible their world and who the people are.

two types of artwork: reconfigurers adn articulators.

e.g. jesus: reconfigurer: opened up the world of christianity to many of the jews and gentiles. john/augustine/etc: articulators: made sense of what jesus said.

e.g. reconfigurer: marlyn monroe: goddess of femininity for the 50s. showed people what it means to be a sexy woman etc.

for more on this: see later Heidegger, for instance "The Origin of the Work of Art."

[Anonymous No.2616190]

>>2616164

>admitting you're a plebeian

You've taken the first step.

[Anonymous No.2616208]

>>2616184
So a "god" is anybody who elucidates? How is that anything other than a worthless, upper class white person's semantic game?

[Anonymous No.2616219]

>>2616184
But no actual Christian or religious person would ever use that definition of God.

I like Dreyfus too, but I think post-modern polytheism does a disservice to what its trying to save.

[Anonymous No.2616220]

>>2616208
no, i said "opens up a world," faggot.

lol wut? poor blacks can participate too. not asians though, they've never had an understanding of Being.

[Anonymous No.2616221]

>>2616208
>bringing class into this
Woah woah buddy

[Anonymous No.2616229]

>>2616219
what is opening up the space beyond either/or nihilism/monotheism doing a disservice to?

[Anonymous No.2616256]

>>2616220
Yeah, you said a poetic phrase, I said a less poetic word.

>>2616229
Definition of words - obfuscation is only "open-minded" to those who have no mind to begin with. Someone earlier in this thread brought up the complexities of quantum theory to defend Zizek, but the difference is that bad philosophers are happy to bandy around lots of words whose meanings they insist are malleable to the point of opacity, whereas math is notoriously precise in its definitions.

[Anonymous No.2616257]

I'd say that Jizzwreck's prominence is comparable to the esteem which Mike Tyson had.
Following the era of heavyweight titans in the 70's the talent level took a dive off a cliff.
Along came Kid Dynamite knocking out every bum Don King could find.
Of course Buster Douglas comes along and exposes Tyson but even now people still laughably rank Iron Mike among the all time greats.
That is Slaver Jizzwreck but in polemicist form.

[Anonymous No.2616278]

>>2616229
You are beyond nihilism, but after that do you need the language of "gods"? Opening up to different practices and responding to the world's many shining lights is all well and good, but do we grant the label of the supernatural when we see beyond that distinction (natural vs supernatural)?

To put it another way, are you really worshiping anything when you do this? You subscribe to an existential philosophy, and therefore the tenets of any particular faith do not fit your beliefs about the world (I'm speaking ontically here). Buddhism contains a very different idea of the soul and interpretation of the world than Christianity. Now according to Heidegger both are pulling from an understanding of being more primordial and immediate, but that says nothing of their ontic truth.

God is a meaningful concept only when it is something truly real and personal. A true experience of something other. An interaction that, through faith you choose not to see as your own delusion but as real.

You say it's a "five year old's definition" of God, but only those like little children enter the kingdom of heaven.

[Anonymous No.2616283]

>>2616278

>Pontificating.

[Filosofer scientist No.2616290]

>>2616022
>the problem is that I recognise all the words but somehow they fail to come together and make a coherent text. Is he making some sort of statement? Asking a question? I don't know.

Yes, that is a known fenomenon to linguistics. Chomsky did the same with his famous example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It's called semantic-selection (s-selection). Some words require that the other words they are used with are of a specific type, otherwise the result will be nonsensical altho grammatical.

[Filosofer scientist No.2616297]

>>2616035
>So you didn't understand it. Why is this a cause for questioning of legitimacy? Would you have the same response if you picked up a scholarly text on quantum theory and didn't understand it?

One can get people to explain QM to me and i understand it fine. No one has ever been able to explain what people that write like the people Dawkins quotes do. They don't seem to mean anything. They fail the test and this makes me very suspicious.

The same point was made by Chomsky who also hates the intellectual imposters, typically french 'intellectuals'.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

[Filosofer scientist No.2616302]

>>2616143
>Genuinely don't know whether to laugh or rage.

First laugh becus some people take it seriously.
Then rage becus u realize that people take it seriously, and get funding for it. Money that cud and shud have been used on something more... meaningful.

[Anonymous No.2616305]

>>2616283
I am but whatever, it's internet. Worst thing that happens is that I look like a moron.

Honestly I'm hoping he challenges my understanding of Heidegger, I have a feeling I made something wrong moves in separating "ontic" doctrines of different religions from their understanding of being.

Can you even be conventionally religious while accepting a modern/post-modern philosophy like Heidegger's? Maybe that's his problem.

[Filosofer scientist No.2616306]

>>2616147
Such examples of language are rather common in the works of the persons mentioned. The authors of the book that Dawkins reviews also notes this. They just chose to deal only with the passages involving terms from their fields of study (fysics and math).

[Anonymous No.2616310]

>>2616305

Probably not. Which is where cognitive dissonance creates obfuscation.

[Anonymous No.2616311]

>>2616306
So you think "fysics" works better than "fizics" or "fizicks"? You're not reforming that usage of "y"?

[Anonymous No.2616312]

>>2616278
faith like little children.... but "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

[Anonymous No.2616314]

I think Zizek is a pretty cool dude, but I can't take psychoanalysis seriously, and Lacan is just the jokeist of them all.

[Anonymous No.2616318]

>>2616312
Who are you going to believe, Jesus or Paul?

[Anonymous No.2616319]

>God is a meaningful concept only when it is something truly real and personal.
mmm, that's based on nothing.

>are you really worshiping anything when you do this?
the divinities in heidegger takes care of this. they can be worshiped, but more so, we mortals give thanks to the divinities when having a feast with close friends, letting things thing, etc.

[Filosofer scientist No.2616320]

>>2616154
I swear that i cudn't make up such stupid shit. I must be too honest.

[Anonymous No.2616321]

>>2616318
lol u can't pick and choose from the new testament. isn't it all the 'word of god'?

[Filosofer scientist No.2616332]

>>2616311
>So you think "fysics" works better than "fizics" or "fizicks"? You're not reforming that usage of "y"?

Not in the minimalist project. I'm basically just picking among the variety of spellings for the same word and choosing the one i like the best.

[Anonymous No.2616333]

>>2616319
>it's something!
>it's nothing!
You're gonna need to expand on that. Maybe I do too, but you first because I'm confused.

Why bother thanking something? I understand letting things thing and all that, but when religion stops dealing with full on /x/ stuff I stop seeing the point.

[Filosofer scientist No.2616340]

>>2616332
Except for substituting PH with F, i suppose. I probably shud not include that in the proposal. I do it for my own benefit as of know. One stroke instead of two on the keyboard, and there can be no doubt about the sound as F only has one value i.e. /f/.

[Anonymous No.2616351]

>>2616333
religion is primarily about binding oneself with others.

spirituality i think has to do with dealing with one's finite existence, and even if you fear death, during moments of joy you can be thankful that you are alive. this thankfulness isn't directed at anything at all, unless you have some sort of symbolic representation/idol/godbeing, but that isn't a requirement. just thankfulness because engage in thankfulness is what we do as mortals.

[Anonymous No.2616355]

I never read into Zizek and didn't understand the fuzz until I saw a couple of vid with him and Assange. He is a great political activist-philosopher. He does obviously have a deep understanding of societal functioning. He is genuine and he has a heart. He fights against corruption, oppression and such. I don't think I would want him for president or prime minister, not even maybe have him draw the exact structure of government system. But I love having him fighting on the political arena. Zizek is a hero.

[Anonymous No.2616363]

>>2615999
So because of all the nonsense this thread has produced, I decided to read the first 10 pages of The Desert of the Real. What's so hard about it OP? Once again I say: It's nothing like the jargon forests of Guattari. Zizek is pretty clear.

[Anonymous No.2616374]

>2012
>not realizing Islam is the light