Was Derrida a charlatan?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- Derrida is one of the most misunderstood and controversial contemporary philosophers. He has been accused of being an enemy of Western Civilization and Truth. Some have even called him a charlatan. Peter Salmon, the author of "An Event Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida" speaks about Derrida's childhood in Algeria and its impact on his philosophy as well as why Derrida is so hated by the conservatives, right-wingers, and academic celebrities like Jordan Peterson.
00:00 Intro
01:17 How did Derrida become Famous?
05:59 How did Derrida's childhood experience and Jewish legacy in Algeria influence his future life as a philosopher?
10:25 Derrida was a "child in the margins of Europe."
13:01 Did Derrida join the French Communist Party?
14:02 What is deconstruction?
18:50 What are "Specters of Marx" and "Hauntology"?
24:00 What is the role of 'ghosts' in Derrida's thinking?
25:50 Why are conservatives afraid of Derrida and French Theory?
29:43 Was Derrida anti-truth?
31:50 Derrida, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Identity
35:41 Derrida's writing was a performance of his philosophy
40:06 What do Jordan Peterson & Helen Pluckrose get wrong about Derrida?
48:40 Was Derrida a relativist?
49:40 Paul De Man's pro-Nazi propaganda and Derrida
54:11 How is Derrida relevant today?
If Derrida was a charlatan, then half the famous philosophers in history were charlatans because, with all due respect, he does little more than push the thoughts of several figures further. Now, this fact does not diminish Derrida's achievement, for pushing the thoughts of these giants further is no light accomplishment. Moreover, some of the biggest names in analytic philosophy, including Austin, Quine, and Davidson are closer to Derrida than many historians of thought imagine. That is, Austin's performatives and the Quine/Davidson notion of interpretation are strikingly consistent with several themes in Derrida's thought.
Well, I would say the exclusion of falsification in the testing of theory, amounts to a methodological fault.
If by famous philosophers you mean postmodernism and related french thinkers of the late XX Century we must agree Derrida was the Ultimate king among a plurality of charlatans.
Derrida certainly would not have liked Quine's naturalized epistemology.
I"m Pretty sure Austin and speciallly Quine wouldn't have agreed with such a diré and deconstructive comparison with Derrida.
On the other hand equating a Fair share of (speciallly but not exclusively posmos) philosophers with charlatans Is not exactly Big news. If anything, Derrida was remarlable as an unbeatable charlatan among the Best ones.
@@khanthor7974 Here here he he he
I am a visual artist and found Derrida's book The Truth in Painting an EXHILARATING experience to read! Mischaracterizations of his work abound but when you actually READ him you realize how absurd most of them are.
Share your work!
Derrida's anti-structuralism sounds a lot like it echos or mirrors Hegel's central principle in the Preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit that you cannot replace the position or locus of the subject with a logical proposition. Here "God" in the "structure of religion" or "Truth" in the "structure of philosophy" can be used in such a way. In that sense, Derrida's move against structuralism could be seen as "Hegelian".
He wrote a book about Hegel.
Isn't there the part in the preface where Hegel speaks about "god" as just an empty sound (a word) as well? Derrida was massively influenced by Hegel in any case.
If you've read the other essays in the same volume (writing and difference), you'll remember that several of them are basically critiques of various thinkers' (Levinas, Bataille, Foucault, Heidegger, etc.) attempts to break out or deconstruct Hegel's dialectics. Among his generation of intellectuals, he's one of the more careful readers of Hegel
Derrida once said that Paul DeMann was the only thinker who actually taught him anything. DeMann's critique of Of Grammatology focussing on Rousseau is truly a tour de force.
He was a Nazi Collaborator during WWII. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Man
Good point. I think so much of what is going on now is a feeling of losing power and not able to adequately explain it. Is it possible that Nietzsche unknowingly opened something he shouldn't have opened when he wrote The Antichrist (1888). This is a quote from his 1888 book:
2.
What is good?-Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?-The feeling that power increases-that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?-Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak-Christianity....
In this regard, the only psychologist that Nietzsche felt he had anything to learn from was Dostoevsky. Even after I read this book, I understood Nietzsche never meant for others to take his work ‘literally’. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, So Nietzsche indeed achieved a certain prestigious accomplishment at a young age.
But as I reviewed his work it dawned on me that Nietzsche was giving his critique of modern perceptions of language, even if he did not agree with them. Philology is the study of language preserved in written sources; classical philology is thus concerned with understanding any texts from the classical period written in the classical languages of Latin and Greek. So there may be hope yet. I was reading of Twilight of the Idols on Thursday, January 19th, 2023. And as I read through I got a strange deja vu of that scene of Galactus from Fantastic Four #262 back around 1984. Back then, it blew my mind when each alien race saw Galactus as a reflection of their own alien race. I am not sure if Nietzsche's work was an inspiration. But if it was intended, I understood it now around 40 years later at the age of 53.
@@dalelerette206 Jesus christ gimme that weed man... Galactus (was it a battle ship or what?!) and Nietzsche! Well, Mr. Nietzsche just collapsed under the colossal weight of his thinking; he should have learned to fly, smoke some pot, relax, chill and pick up ladies he fancied. A pure fella who fell short in the only realm of power a man really cares about and needs in his guts to become full and accomoplished: a true romance. But no, this dude just wrote delirious rants about power and morals and could not get laid barring prostitutes. A bleak horizon of a true philosopher.
@@jackquinnes It is interesting that I heard Nietzsche was trying to inoculate himself from syphilis by having sex with prostitutes. More likely, Nietzsche suffered from migraine without aura which started in his childhood. In the second half of his life he suffered from a psychiatric illness with depression. During his last years, a progressive cognitive decline evolved and ended in a profound dementia with stroke. He died from pneumonia in 1900.
It seems odd that so many find this man a source of strength, even thought he went through so much suffering. In some ways Nietzsche was Christ-like in his suffering. But his writings clearly seem to indicate an increasing degree of insanity. I suppose Nietzsche chose a noble path like Socrates, saying, "I drank what????". Sorry for the dark humor. That came from Val Kilmer's "Top Secret".
If anything good can come from this we may rediscover how we are re-energized by our virtues. I remember seeing Tim Robbins in Cadillac Man with Robin Williams around May, 1990. Then I saw Tim Robbins later that same year in Jacob's Ladder around November, 1990. Based on those two first appearances I knew Tim was an exceptional actor. But it was several years later in 1996 that I saw Tim Robbins with Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption -- which blew my mind just how good Tim Robbins' acting was. Maybe we just have to look harder.
Even Peterson, who (as a practicing clinical psychologist) is confronted with insanity on a regular basis, was taken aback. Some people relish the opportunity for violence. They think "bloody conflict" will be fun. The people who are clapping at rebellion are most certainly not aware of how destructive the malevolent nature of rebellion really is. God have mercy on us. Pray for the true peace in Christ that surpasses all understanding.
@@jackquinnes can't help the feeling that there's sth to what you write. On the heels of this assertion: What is it that we need this power for that we are obviously so sadly lmissing ? There is no solidarity in a society which knows only competition instead of cooperation and solidarity is regarded suspiciously as communist trait because the individual is singularized (is that even a word ? Well it ought to be !) by all the pressures the capitalist state puts on it. The historical swindle of the phoney adaptation of the word 'communist' in naming the states of the former Eastern block has blinded the world for its meaning : communal, for the people by the people. This is not to say i want to deny difficulties in organizing a society after principles so inspired. Nevertheless the demonization of the concept that has taken place in western 'culture' rests on misinformation, bad, very bad education and an undeniable interest that this status puo never stop. What grotespue forms this alienation and self-alienation can produce we can watch in the Us, Dis-united States just now. Veritable mass psychosis rages over the disenfranchised .. "disenfranchised" and they flock to those who propagate just what they're ailing from.
Great content: I'm studying theology and am fascinated by questions of identity, margins and marginalization. This interview is wind beneath my wings.
I am glad people find these interviews useful.
@@mentalitydesignvideo I don't think one studies philosophy or theology as a medium of exchange for a meal. Unless maybe one is Esau, in which case the price is one bowl of stew.
@@mentalitydesignvideo I beg to differ. As a Christian there's absolutely no subject that is more important than identity. Who are we in Christ? How does the word (logos) shape our identity?
@@mentalitydesignvideo I think you may be conflating the political with the theological (as well as the ontic and the ontological) and creating a distracting straw man argument. I'm NOT interested in how the world defines identity as gender, nationality, class, or political affiliation.
Christ said, "I and the Father are one." This is a radical statement about identity. As a theologian and a follower of Christ, I have questions. I don't read Derrida (a Marxist and an atheist - but i repeat myself)in order to find answers; I read him to find good questions. Hermeneutics is an interesting stance from which to think and to ask these questions. From time to time, Derrida evokes and inspires. As far as I'm concerned, ideology has nothing to do with this process.
Anyway, I wish you all the best. God bless you Viktor.
@@mentalitydesignvideo but it's not a tautology for followers of Christ, Viktor. Christ also prayed that we would be one in him as he is one in the Father. If I'm not mistaken, this involves theosis. So this is not a matter of tautology...
For the first 3 sec I thought that is Derrida on the screen lmaoo.
🤣🤣🤣
He didnt die at the end of Drive.
I´m a big fan of Derrida. Can I re-upload your interviews on Derrida on my channel? This interview was great. I personally like Derrida and Peterson.
Thanks for your comment. Sure thing. Feel free to use the video on your channel.
Thanks for posting this very interesting discussion. I’d never before seriously considered the relatively narrow temporal, social and political context (France from 1930 to 1960) which produced so many of the influential French intellectuals of the mid-to-late-20th century. In your account of Derrida’s early life in which “identity” had such a serious and often negative impact on him and in France, Vichy France, the French colonies, and of course in the direct confrontation with fascists and Nazis, it’s little wonder perhaps that Derrida and other philosophers like him would attempt to deconstruct the concept entirely, beginning with the original unified Cartesian “I” which of course grew to become the Enlightenment Kantian “transcendental unity of apperception”.
Frightened by the trouble this unified subject becomes when in the hands of race ideologues like the Nazis the answer though is not to deny its existence … the answer is to resist those who would create radical hierarchies of identities and encourage engaging society in “culture wars” in order to camouflage better their programs of economic oppression.
I think the insight is profound and important that so much of this postmodern identity focused philosophy came from thinkers in France who had direct and recent experience of the vicious use of social, religious, gender, racial, ethic, sexual orientation, etc. identity by the Nazis, fascists, and their own Vichy government. The effect the this had on these men (and a few women) as they considered their recent experience and the events in the French colonies as the French empire disintegrated must have made “identity” and “culture” seem for the moment far more important than material considerations and economics since, especially for the Nazis, they didn’t matter since stealing the wealth of cultural and racial “inferiors” was one of the main goals.
Thanks a lot for your comment.
Although I have an appreciation for philosophers categorized as post-modern. I have a similar aggravation as Peterson, Lindsay, Pluckrose, but I dislike their specific criticisms as completely inadequate.
One of the issues is that I found in academia is that 2nd and 3rd rate postmodernists general use the theory to dismiss whole philosophies and disciplines without bothering to understand them. I personally encountered this in regards to my interests in psychology. And in its place they have in fact offered the most mediocre identity based theories.
Peterson was on the right track but was so ignorant of the material he failed to critique it well. Foucault’s real response to psychologies was to proclaim them as one among many techniques of the self, and I thought that is a very good way to look at it. But Foucault himself would be very critical of identity politics theory and was when he was alive, and used basic Freudianism to critique it. He once said to gay men that they were conditioning each other’s sense of self, a much more precise and concise critique than Peterson ever gave in regards to identity groups.
Pluckrose is right in how postmodernism usurped Marxist thinking and that cultural Marxism is a right wing myth. But I think she incorrectly believes that identity politics is primarily generated from postmodernism. Of course there are people like Judith Butler Pomo but really I found most transgender people for example actually reject Butler and want a born this way idea, as does much of LGBT.
Identity politics In my opinion is neither postmodern or Marxist. It is born out of the same circumstances that gave rise to nationalism in the past and present. It is a simple way of creating in-groups that help people feel they have some sense of agency and protection.
It is remarkable to see how the fall of communism immediately produced ethno nationalism which we see in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, today. But it also happens in western countries as the social democratic or liberal state falls apart. Identity politics is a direct response to the demolition of grand political theory by uncontrollable capitalist forces.
But one of the first people to really put their finger on this problem Ironically was Derrida, in Spectre of Marx.
The irony about the taboo of Marx is that Marx provides very obvious simple analysis of basic problems. It has just become very taboo to mention them which makes our contemporary capitalism a sacred system that can’t be criticized.
Thank you very much for your comment. Postmodernism needs to be rigorously critiqued, but as you have also pointed out, my only concern is that the vocal critics are those who have actually not even tried to engage with these ideas. Their statements are way too broad and often erroneous, but they have a platform of their own audience to whom they have to cater. I have another interview with Vivek Chibber on my channel who vehemently critiques postcolonialism and identity politics. He has recently written a book called The Class Matrix which is a critique of cultural theory and identity politics. These are the sorts of critique I appreciate.
Very interesting comment. Many points I can to some extend agree or half-agree with. I think at the end you go a little too far. The USSR had nationalism emerge in the 20's already and responded with Stalinism. It was never a stable system that could work, not at that size. Chrustchow tried to destalinize but realized the entire thing would fall apart in the process and when Gorbatschow finally did it for real it all did fall apart. I think this is very apparent when you look at Lenin's USSR and the NEP (essentially a plan to bring capitalism to the USSR) and which direction it took under Stalin. Stalin resorted to a pragmatist case by case approach. There was no more grand vision, just band aid upon band-aid (most of which were absolutely brutally repressive ofc).
In a way this is also whats worrying about this prevalent actionist sentiment with no solid theory behind it. The world never fell apart from too much theory (not to my knowledge). I agree on what you say about Marx. People speak too much about him but read him too little. The discrepancy is crazy. Everyone has an opinion on Marx but no-one has read him - and if anything people read a silly pamphlet aimed at the working class 170 years ago, distinctly the text that has the least to do with the present day and is best approached as a historical document.
The worrying part is that right wing thinkers are slowly picking up and learning from Marx. People like Armin Mohler for instance.
its a terrible idea to politicize ideas and philosophies
I appreciate this comment. I always thought the French thinkers brought important and overlooked insights into our present age. But, it’s the cult of second-hand followers that piggy-backed off them, turning certain subtle ideas into dogmas and authoritarian creeds that have spawned the backlash. They lack Derrida’s charm, wit, and humor and resemble more of Nietzsche, making his philosophy one of the hammer - Destructionism.
Congratulations. Thank you for sharing. 👏
Derrida is not a charlatan. The west fears threats against its own sense of superiority, which is dispersed through culture, economy, and politics. Derrida theorized that meaning and signifieds are forever moving back, slipping away from human grasp. This synopsis threatens centuries of Western philosophy, hence the vitriol against him and his writings.
Also, his writing must be read like how one reads Proust, Joyce, and Nietzsche. The misty quality of his writing is part fiction, part poetry, and part philosophy. To entirely focus on linear logic in philosophy is wrong, and is one of the implications of Derrida's whole work. Marx's poetics comes from the leaden texture of the German language and the political climate of Europe at the time. Derrida's poetics comes from regret and mourning, the failure of futures and dreams to materialize in real life.
Also, I don't consider Peterson a philosopher. He is an agitator. Nietzsce would consider him a bad reader.
You do not understod Derrida
"Leaden texture of the German language"? Amazing cultural bigotry.
@@selwynr German has a very weighty "feel" to it. Even its poetry, which is much softer and flowing, still retains that characteristic. It is the opposite of my lingua franca- an Asian language, mixed with Castilian Spanish, that has a sharp and often staccato rhythm.
Derrida is a bad philosopher because he’s got no politics. He’s apolitical. Our world of immense power disparities cannot afford “philosophers” whose only goal is to analyze (“deconstruct” is a just a fancy word for analyze which imbues far more action and moral import with the practice than in fact it has in reality).
After Marx in a world that exists with capitalism, fascism, failed socialist states turned totalitarian; we can no longer accept any philosopher who feels the task of thought is to destroy the thinking subject and analyze all structures of power while those very structures further entrench themselves and subjugate.
This rush to deconstruct “the west” and “all totalizing narratives” and “the unified subject” has only served to aid the neoliberal commodification and subjugation of peoples and cultures while postmodern influenced philosophers have gazed idly at their own navels.
A contemporary universalizing philosophy of metaphysics, morality and politics that has grown from the enlightenment is the only route forward to resist and combat the growing destruction wrought by neoliberalist capitalism as it spreads around the world and brings about climate disaster and reinforces social racial and cultural injustice in order to serve the desires of the oligarchies that are its masters.
I believe students pretend to understand his obscure anti-philosophy.
*Describes himself Derida's ideas the exact same as the people who criticize him
"They misunderstand Derida, surely they haven't read him"
What
17:28 “The analysis of ideology must then direct its attention to the points at which names which prima facie signify positive descriptive features already function as 'rigid designators'.”
Sublime Object of Ideology p121
Okay i have only seen anti Derrida clips, wanted to form my own opinion. so this is highly interesting, ill definitely give the book a try. Derrida will be to hard for me , although i will try .,
Thanks a lot
Thanks for your interest in the interview. The book is a very good intro to him. And Peter does talk about why/how Derrida is usually misinterpreted and vilified.
If you wanna try to understand derrida try the john ceka RUclips channel
"If someone doesn't embrace Derrida's philosophy, he must not have read it." "How can we take seriously the thoughts of someone without a PhD?" It's the same contemptuous posture you see in interviews with Derrida himself. That said, the background information was interesting in this conversation and helps explain the dangers of putting too much stock in worldly/political identities.
Thanks for your comment Rachel, but Peter Salmon has a bachelor degree only. There have been a lot of academically vetted critiques of Derrida's work, written by experts, but the most vociferous and shallow ones, have come from the likes of JP or like-minded politicians who have never even bothered to read him. If JP actually reads Derrida, he will find a lot of helpful stuff, like Derrida's hospitality theory, for his own rules of life books.
@@mentalitydesignvideo Noone has subjected him to reading Derrida or Foucault. He just talks about them without having read the most basic of their writings. In fact, he doesn't even want to try to understand them because he knows his audience and he gives them what they want to hear. Simple.
@@mentalitydesignvideo Let's just agree to disagree. I am not into cult worship like JP fans are. There are videos on RUclips with detailed analyses of how JP misinterpreted them which obviously shows he has not even read them. And for those who actually read, here is a book about his many mistakes written by four academics who actually study and teach philosophy www.booktopia.com.au/myth-and-mayhem-ben-burgis/ebook/9781789045543.html
@@mentalitydesignvideo Don't judge a book by its cover. I am not a fan of Zizek either and that's the only part of the book that I skipped.
@@LitArtCulture The whole “he’s a Charlatan” attitude followed Derrida around for pretty much the whole of his career, especially in the anglophone world. It really doesn’t start with Jordan Peterson. His most heated, testy dispute was with John Searle, dating from the late 1970s. Searle claims Foucault told him Derrida’s writing style was a kind of “terrorist obscuritanism”; writing that’s super gnomic on purpose, so that if you disagree with him, he can just say that you’re too stupid to understand him.
I’m old enough to have read Derrida since the mid-1980s. I went from being a big fan to thinking maybe Searle et al were right that he was a “smoke-and-mirrors” charlatan; and now I’ve swung back to being a qualified fan of some of his works. I think his earliest works are terribly written, and while he never achieved a crystal-clear prose style, he did improve a lot over time. What has changed is, in the 1980s, Derrida seemed to be the most important French thinker of his generation. in 2023 he seems like one among many, and probably less important than, say, Deleuze.
I like that line - the intellectual filament
Yes, he was.
very nuanced observation
@@chalabot969 You can always tell the ones who are color-blind.
I appreciate your guest's incites on Derrida but he clearly hasn't studied CRT or if he has, he is lying about what it is truly about. I assume ignorance not malice in this instance.
The vast majority of CRTs biggest supporters and opponents have one thing in common, they haven’t actually studied CRT. CRT Founders admit Neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci is one of its main influencers. Other key influencers are neoMarxists like bell hooks and Angela Davis. CRT co-founders Delgado and Stefancic, specifically cite Foucault and Derrida as core influences on CRT as well.
CRT has repackaged Marx’s antisemitism (read his essay "Zur Judenfrage" aka "On the Jewish Question"). He equated Jews with capitalism and he wanted “emancipation of society from Judaism [meaning capitalism]”. CRT now says whites = capitalist but they don’t always specify if Jews are white. Most CRT scholars at the very least consider Jews white-adjacent if not outright white. A CRT-inspired children's book like "Not My Idea" is being taught in countless classrooms across the country. The book portrays capitalists as white devils.
Herbert Marcuse, famed critical theorist, "father of the New Left", who was put on a pedestal as one of the 3 Ma’s (Marx, Mao, Marcuse), wrote in Counterrevolution and Revolt (1970):
"Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the [Gramsci-inspired] long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working in them, but not simply by 'boring from within," rather by "doing the job,” ... The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counter institutions.”
CRT has been largely successful in attempting the Long March in American institutions thus far.
From the book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction", written by two of the co-founders of CRT: "Consider how in many disciplines scholars, teachers, and courses profess, almost incidentally, to embrace critical race theory. Consider as well how many influential commentators, journalists, and books, such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, develop critical themes while hardly mentioning their origins in critical thought. Might critical race theory one day diffuse into the atmosphere, like air, so that we are hardly aware of it anymore?" They are open about the long march taking place through CRT.
CRT doesn't have a monopoly on the history of racism. The evils of racism should be taught but there is no need to teach neoMarxism along side of it. Conservatives who ignore or downplay racism should be harshly criticized. That doesn’t mean CRT should be amplified to replace conservative ignorance.
And yet I can study Foucualt and Derrida et al. and avoid the dogma of CRT. Many interpretations of a text are possible. Derrida said this himself, that when a book is completed the author is 'dead' insofar as that the book now takes on its own life, and produces meaning free from the authors original intentions. If it's possible to warp these men into a politics of description like you mentioned, its also possible for someone like myself to find no such politics present. Settle down big guy.
@@JS-dt1tn I find a lot of value from the postmodernists. I wasn’t criticizing Foucault or Derrida. The author clearly hasn’t studied CRT and doesn’t recognize it’s pervasiveness. He said it’s not being taught in schools but it’s admittedly taught in countless K-12 schools. Even the main founder of CRT and Intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw, explained in a presentation to America’s largest teachers union how it’s being taught in K-12. The interviewer seems clueless about this as well.
Derrida is admitted to be a significant influence on CRT. That doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing. But when people say postmodernism and neomarxism have no relation to CRT, they are lying or unformed. Jordan Peterson uses the term postmodern neomarxist which isn’t a perfectly accurate description of CRT but pretty close. They are two ideas that are largely contradictory but for descendants of Hegel, merging these two things into something new is natural for them.
i wished i was blind for a seconds probably one of the dumbest bit of reasoning i have read on youtube
@@JS-dt1tnOk. The author Derrida is dead. Nothing he wrote was correct. I know what he really meant.
@@TheLincolnrailsplitt now you need to prove it, and fight for your interpretation to become cannon. Unless of course truth moves at a pace and lives a life both through and beyond us.
It''s like, here is Quine (On Indeterminacy of meanimg) and here is Wittgenstein (PI) and here is the implication of this for our conservative contnental philosophy (esp Structuralism).
29:09 who's the HANS he is talking about ? What it is to be human?- Is it a work/paper?
That was actually Kant. Immanuel Kant.
@@LitArtCulture thank you. Also for the video. It was very enlightening..
@@gerardpo6724 Glad you enjoyed it.
Derrida would say, yes, I am a charlatan, and then he would go on to deconstruct the concept of charlatanry in a way that is to his advantage
Jorden Peterson would definitely not call Derrida a Charlatan. Peterson does analysis, which is different then way Derrida did analysis, because they live in different times.
When can a thinker be called a charlatan? I know when a car salesman or a property dealer or a politician can be called a charlatan. If people (or some people) are able to converge on derrida's ideas, then he has ideas to offer. And irrespective of whether his ideas are true or false or relevant or irrelevant or useful or useless, that still makes him a thinker. This is quite a 21st century use of the word "charlatan".
fantastic
Thanks
I just wished the professor would clarify his understanding of the concept of “truth” which he touches on.
I do not think he himself sufficiently grasp it.
He did. He said that "truth" is to be understood in the context it is being used. As for absolute truth, it does not exist or rather inaccessible.
Johns Hopkins, I believe.
Derrida isn’t a charlatan but he’s a bad philosopher for our times and the times in which he was first became popular. He was the sound of defeat and retirement to the cloisters to contemplate how the battle for justice had been lost because perhaps there is no justice anyway!
Derrida is a bad philosopher because he’s got no politics. He’s apolitical. Our world of immense power disparities cannot afford “philosophers” whose only goal is to analyze (“deconstruct” is a just a fancy word for analyze which imbues far more action and moral import with the practice than in fact it has in reality).
After Marx in a world that exists with capitalism, fascism, failed socialist states turned totalitarian; we can no longer accept any philosopher who feels the task of thought is to destroy the thinking subject and analyze all structures of power while those very structures further entrench themselves and subjugate.
This rush to deconstruct “the west” and “all totalizing narratives” and “the unified subject” has only served to aid the neoliberal commodification and subjugation of peoples and cultures while postmodern influenced philosophers have gazed idly at their own navels.
A contemporary universalizing philosophy of metaphysics, morality and politics that has grown from the enlightenment is the only route forward to resist and combat the growing destruction wrought by neoliberalist capitalism as it spreads around the world and brings about climate disaster and reinforces social racial and cultural injustice in order to serve the desires of the oligarchies that are its masters.
"no politics" "apolitical"
It is exactly such totalizing, sweeping statements without nuance that one learns to avoid by reading Derrida, who was himself usually quite cautious in the claims he made, hedging them with qualifications.
We can argue that deconstruction wasn't political enough, or that its contribution to politics wasn't material enough -- such charges would be almost truisms, as they were leveled countless times even when JD was alive --- but that doesn't mean there was "no" politics there. As if a line between descriptive and normative hadn't been among the numerous lines whose porosity JD was given to demonstrating.
Also, to make an overly simplistic statement myself: no leftist analysis or concrete demand, whatever its theoretical frame, is politically potent unless it translates into actual organizing and leads to strikes, massive demonstrations, etc. If not, it is just talk no action: discourse pretending its choice of abstract tools makes it more relevant.
He looked just like a famous French philosopher.
If anything, Derrida was a genius.
Don't be absurd
@@jipangoo There is a reason why many geniuses are considered crazy...they can see things that others cannot see. The ones who can't see immediately assume the reason boils down to hallucination rather than their own color-blindness. It's a shame to be you.
48:52 Derrida might have disavowed relativism and claimed not to be a relativist, but it’s entirely inconsistent with his elaborately expressed philosophical views, especially the deconstruction of unified self and the denial of all fixed meaning. He might talk the talk … but his books don’t back him up … and his political activity, like Foucault’s were … minimal and idiosyncratic.
Yep.
No one can judge anyone because there is no standard or truth which stands outside subjective individuals who each hold their own "truth".
Don't know if Derrida had any great sins, but it was convenient for Foucault to obliterate any sense of reliable standards, truth or morality so he could engage in his sexuality abuse of young boys w/o any societal judgement or punishment coming back on him.
Oh, deride not Derrida, lest in grief he surely die. For the deconstructed philosopher. In the midnight gloom, can be so vary cheerless as he wanders round the room. 😅😊
It’s a shame that this discussion became a political diatribe.
Thanks for watching, but to be fair, only 10 minutes of this interview touched upon politics. And it is inevitable to do so, as Derrida has been used/abused/misused in political discussions.
@@LitArtCulture Ignore the trolls...I read the comment after listening to the whole video and couldn't even recall anything political in the discussion. The troll is guilty of being spooked by Marx's ghost, sadly. And I bet he doesn't even believe in ghosts.
Thanks for watching the video. @@KravMagoo
Short answer: Yes
Typical product of the ENS, more interested in being obtuse than in doing any thinking which has meaning or a useful application.
He just expounds on Heraclitean paradoxes, and shows the lack in anthropomorphic reasoning. That is incredibly productive, insofar as it gives way to a greater appreciation of prudence and awareness. Your dogmatic response is confused.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people are utilizing deconstruction principles every day.
"a blunt instrument..." Really? Not a credible criticism of Derrida's detractors. Lazy.
Derrida was not even wrong.
Clever. Wrong, but clever.
That's a reference to string theory, right?
Derrida didn't invent deconstruction--he found it, or more correctly, he recognized it. It is absolutely 10000% a THING. As someone else said (or hinted at) in the comments, deconstruction is just radical analysis. What most people perceive as elemental and atomic in social systems is in many respects just societal assumption and projection. Deconstruction is just a tool that allows one to access the subatomic scale and imagine a "what if" world. Anyone who is deeply invested in this world's structure will find deconstruction threatening. There are two primary groups that are deeply invested in the current system--oligarchs and religionists, particularly Christian religionists. Both groups see themselves as "winning" the game of life, although in different ways. Unfortunately, for both groups, but especially Christians, God's use of deconstruction principles in the form of Biblical prophecy means that they will actually find themselves to be big losers. Christians entirely misunderstand the Bible. If they employed deconstructive analysis, they might realize that uncomfortable fact, but thinking they are already on the winning team makes them constitutionally averse to deep, critical analysis, especially self-analysis. Christians NEED Derrida, but they are too busy bashing him to realize their error.
Derrida - what a legend. Even his name screams about being deconstructed on the run: der err rerrer ida viva la vida jesus man what a legend indeed! I have lost faith in this thing called philosophy a long time ago. It is so impotent against reality it makes me feel sick. Heidegger was fun, Wittgenstein was hilarious. This strange coup d'etat by French decadents stealing the corpus of German thought is nothing but a papery epilogue to what was once a great tradition of thinking.
He may try to explian deconstruction asbthe analysis ofbthe parts of a whole,, but it is not used like that. When postmodernism uses the concept to negate truth, facts or reality, then it influcts a tremendous harm to the progress of our culture, because the fact that something could be subjected to several interpretations, that does not mean that all of them are right.
But it was used like that
"Our" culture? Is it so fragile that progress can be stopped by merely deconstructing our own "perceived" sureties?
The fact is that there are things that are subject to many interpretations. That don't have a transcendental truth attached to them. Take government, money, stories and many other social constructs
The Bible is absolutely NOT a Book based on Objective Truth...because the God of the Bible is a SUBJECTIVE God, and His will is not fixed. His will is relative which is why THE UNIVERSE IS RELATIVE. Christians entirely misunderstand God and think of Him as a fixed monolith, and they become set in concrete...meanwhile, God is supple, limber, and adjusts to situations as He sees fit. Virtually all Christians' perception of God is based on fundamentally idolatrous principles. As one might expect, this fact is prophesied to be the case IN THE BIBLE.
You forgot about 'Power'.
Derrida is not a charlatan. He is only such to academia, who reads deconstruction like someone who does not understand German and read German as if German is English, thus - after reading German text as if he reads English - he concludes that German is a meaningless language.
This is my way of explaining how modernity conditioned the West (and its hangers-on) according to a notion of reality which the West adopted since the Western European Enlightenment, whereas modernity is just a notion of reality amongst many.
This video was a terribly unconvincing apologia of the obscurantist musing of Derrida. Except for postmodern lit.crit. academics, I suspect only people force to read Derrida are students in college. Does anyone really understand what he wrote? Derrida's claim that philosophy's emphasis on striving for 'clarity' is itself a particualr method no more important that his approach is self-serving. The most embarrassing approach by destructionists and postmodernists is there comical use of hard science's technical terms.
to answer shortly - no, Derrida wasn't a charlatan. He was without any doubt one of the greatest and most influential minds of the 20 c.
Peterson is the charlatan, yoyos.
Columbo of philosophy
@31:00 " .. and we never notice that we are moving between them [registers of truth]..." oh yes we do. Oh Yes We (perhaps not you) Do.
Derrida came up with some great stuff, but he was not a good writer, and it wasn't the Frenchness. Barthes wrote beautifully, much like E.B. White.
And look at Wittgenstein... he uses words a 12 year old can understand, but his ideas take time. With Derrida, it's the opposite. Just a bunch of gobbledygook.
@@CaptMang Yeah, Wittgenstein. I have a weird opinion. I don't think early (the Tractatus) and late (Philosophical investigations) are different. I think he solved the problems he could in analytic philosophy, went off and did other things, and then dealt with the rest of philosophy.
As for Derrida, he had some good ideas, if you can dig through the manure to get to the pony. One is his idea of differance (excuse me for not looking up the e with acute accent). It took me a while, but I eventually figured out it is a precursor to what I have called discerption, which I had to invent to improve Lakoff's radial category theory to work properly.
I deconstructed your words and realized that they actually indicate the opposite. They mean that he was a charlatan. Thank you for saying so.
I haven't thought about these political objections to this kind of philosophy in a long time. I think it is almost needless to say that these kinds of controversies don't come from the same place if there is an academic philosopher on the one side and these political pundits on the other, especially if it is someone with a grilled mind like Peterson is. Not that him or Pluckrose aren't academics, but they aren't philosophers, they are in it for something political and their audiences wouldn't even appreciate them for being clever about it. At some point, Helen Pluckrose partially defended Marx on the basis that he stands for "dialectics, i.e. dialogue". One simply has to notice how silly this is and move on.
Wouldn't go far as to call him a charlatan but he does make philosophy boring, nothing there that captures my imagination at all, not even or maybe especially when he writes about his cat.
Science of Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit are probably the most bone crushingly boring philosophical texts to read in all academia. Nevertheless, still good to engage with these important texts.
... versus that FUN, engaging genocidal racism of Hegel?
More like "Aufhedung."
@Cpt.Frost he rationalized the genocide of America's indigenous population as a kind of historical necessity in his own time. Soooooo...
Do you mean philosophy has value only if it is exciting …. . I bet you never even read one book ( as in read and understood) of Derrida ( ideally in French ) . In the USA Derrida , as are many others , are misunderstood ( as in not understood at all ) . There are so many videos here on Derrida that are superficial . Videos of lectures , often by more famous Derrida “specialists “ . They try to make Derrida easy and force him in a summary or some sorts of simplification …
And I absolutely disagree that the way to read “de la grammatology “ is to just read it , like a novel , as if it is only palpable if it gives instant enjoyment .
When I studied philosophy , half of the courses was guided reading of philosophers in detail , with comments and reflection , paragraph by paragraph , sentence by sentence, word by word . The professors who guided us were specialist in their own right. None of this American simplificated stuff ….
@@crusherjones6809 aufheBung?
@38:12 right, now you are going to tell me how to enjoy Of Gramatology. I've had two shots at it and you can fek off ! As Foucault himself pointed out (somewhere I cant be bothered to remember), in order to get published by the Academy you had to write esoteric gibberish.
France itself is ersatz.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Oh, hell yes
No he wasn’t next stupid question
Salmon’s book surely indicates that he doesn’t understand Derrida … It’s not a competent introduction to Derrida’s contribution to philosophy.
Derrida 🤡
Derrida took from Heidegger
Heidegger took from John Duns Scotus
Everyone took from Plato
Derrida was an idealist
Overrated wise, it was deleuze
Clickbait title. Philosophy is Derrida and Derrida is philosophy. There is only Derrida now.