Society/Culture R.I.P Levi-Strauss

[Richo83]

re: verboseness/obfuscation...it is again an unfair generalization. There is nothing at all like that in Lyotard, for example. Lacan, on the other hand, more than fits the bill. And there's a whole gamut somewhere in between the two. As for the intent, I don't share your cynicism. Some are simply more gifted writers than others.

Derrida, Heidegger, Hegel, Foucault, Adorno, (no wait he writes clearly but just writes rubbish about how Kant was a Fascist).

 

[evo]

re: self-contradiction...here I think there is a fundamental flaw in the rigidness of those with an analytic philosophy background.

I've already told you my main interest is 19th century continental philosophy. Very few of the analytics interest me, apart from perhaps Wittgenstein. Nevertheless there is a lot to be said for a consistent train of thought when thinking. In my experience many of the names you have bought up primarily deal in word salads - for want of a better term - and the results they produce often reflect that. Pretty colours from a distance, but on closer examination bugger all calories.

What is dismissed as self-contradiction is often a required, unresolvable tension born of the nature of language itself. This is not something that is unique to the last half-century either; see Kierkegaard for example.

Kierkegaard dealt in paradox at times, this is true, but to align him with the likes of Lacan or Lyotard is poor form in my view.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

A question for evo and skillts; have you guys read anything by Friedrich Holderlin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holderlin

I read "On the Process of the Poetic Mind" recently for a subject on the critical imagination and it was incomprehensible. The first sentence is over a page long because instead of full stops he uses semicolons. All that I took from it was that many philosophers (for want of a better term) fundamentally fail in the very basics of communication.

 

[evo]

The only thing I really know about him is that Nietzsche rated him. They were both into waxing about Dionysus.

I haven't read any of his stuff.

 

[rugmop]

A question for evo and skillts; have you guys read anything by Friedrich Holderlin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holderlin

I read "On the Process of the Poetic Mind" recently for a subject on the critical imagination and it was incomprehensible. The first sentence is over a page long because instead of full stops he uses semicolons. All that I took from it was that many philosophers (for want of a better term) fundamentally fail in the very basics of communication.

Not being one who reads much poetry, you have me at a disadvantage about Holderlin's work. However, Heidegger almost revered his writings, to the extent that he posited that poetry such as his was the form of art most capable of directly explicating being, in the most unmediated way possible. If what you say about Holderlin's syntax is correct, it would appear he and Heidegger came from similar moulds.

In Heidegger's case, I tend to forgive him his opacity, because he was trying to give language to concepts which don't lend themselves easily to such a project. I found the level of application and concentration required to make sense of Heidegger yielded extraordinary rewards. My immersion in his thought opened a whole new way of seeing the world, and our place in it.

FWIW, you have my sympathy and admiration for having attempted what you found to be unendurable, enforced reading. Did you glean any benefit at all from reading Holderlin? Did any of it make any sense?

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Not being one who reads much poetry, you have me at a disadvantage about Holderlin's work. However, Heidegger almost revered his writings, to the extent that he posited that poetry such as his was the form of art most capable of directly explicating being, in the most unmediated way possible. If what you say about Holderlin's syntax is correct, it would appear he and Heidegger came from similar moulds.

In Heidegger's case, I tend to forgive him his opacity, because he was trying to give language to concepts which don't lend themselves easily to such a project. I found the level of application and concentration required to make sense of Heidegger yielded extraordinary rewards. My immersion in his thought opened a whole new way of seeing the world, and our place in it.

FWIW, you have my sympathy and admiration for having attempted what you found to be unendurable, enforced reading. Did you glean any benefit at all from reading Holderlin? Did any of it make any sense?

To be honest, no. This year is the first time that I have really read any Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, Castoriadis and so I am very much a neophyte in this area. It did, however, open my mind to things I had never considered, even if I did not understand most of it. Of all that I read, I most enjoyed Sartre and Kant, although Kant took a few readings to understand what he was on about. Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is most enjoyable, in particular his discussion of drunkenness.

 

[mdc]

In Heidegger's case, I tend to forgive him his opacity, because he was trying to give language to concepts which don't lend themselves easily to such a project. I found the level of application and concentration required to make sense of Heidegger yielded extraordinary rewards. My immersion in his thought opened a whole new way of seeing the world, and our place in it.

And much the same can be said for any number of post-Heideggerian thinkers, and many of them echoed his admiration of Holderlin as well.

In my experience many of the names you have bought up primarily deal in word salads - for want of a better term - and the results they produce often reflect that. Pretty colours from a distance, but on closer examination bugger all calories.

Which is why my counter-analogy would go something like this - If it's a salad, it is a salad behind a sneeze guard; one that we cannot lean over and examine in the traditional sense. Any individual part of the salad may well have no calories, but if we consume the entire thing, we'll be well satisfied.

That is to say; thought is inextricable from the words themselves. We cannot and should not search for a centre or an order, and this irreducibility is not sufficient grounds for cynicism. In fact, that very irreducibility is what the continental philosophers so greatly value in poetry. Ultimately, the primary condition for philosophical writing is neither succinctness nor clarity, but rather precision.

 

[Clay Davis]

So, mdc, essentially you're saying that just because a thought can't be contained in a pithy phrase, that doesn't make it any less valuable as a thought.

evo does have a penchant for pithy phrases.

 

[evo]

That is to say; thought is inextricable from the words themselves.

This is an absolute claim. A reduced claim. A "search for the centre"

yet you follow by saying...

We cannot and should not search for a centre or an order, and this irreducibility is not sufficient grounds for cynicism.

In two sentences you have taken two opposing sides; contradictory stances.

In fact, that very irreducibility is what the continental philosophers so greatly value in poetry.

Fine. And that is exactly what i believe your favoured form of thinking to be: poetry. In my view it has, generally speaking, turned the philosophy department into a laughing stock the last few decades. And rightly so.

Ultimately, the primary condition for philosophical writing is neither succinctness nor clarity, but rather precision.

You spoke of Kierkegaard, so I'll go with him by way of example. This is my idea of good philsophy; it is all at once succinnt, clear and precise.

The positiveness of historical knowledge is illusory, since it is approximation-knowledge; the speculative result is delusion. For all this positive knowledge fails to express the situation of the knowing subject in existence. It concerns rather a fictitious objective subject, and to confuse oneself with such a subject is to be duped. Every subject is an existing subject, which should receive an essential expression in all his knowledge. Particularly, it must be expressed through the prevention of an illusory finality, whether in perceptual certainty, or in historical knowledge, or in illusory speculative results. In historical knowledge, the subject learns a great deal about the world, but nothing about himself. He moves constantly in a sphere of approximation-knowledge, in his supposed positivity deluding himself with the semblance of certainty; but certainty can only be had in the infinite, where he cannot as an existing subject remain, but only repeatedly arrive. Nothing historical can become infinitely certain for me except the fact that of my own existence (which again cannot become infinitely certain for any other individual, who has infinite certainty of only his own existence), and this is not something historical.

Lacan, as an example hasn't even begun to approach that depth of thought, insight and precision in his entire 40 year career of publishing that Kierkegaard has managed to impart in 3 or 4 sentences (IMO of course).

 

[Richo83]

A question for evo and skillts; have you guys read anything by Friedrich Holderlin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holderlin

I read "On the Process of the Poetic Mind" recently for a subject on the critical imagination and it was incomprehensible. The first sentence is over a page long because instead of full stops he uses semicolons. All that I took from it was that many philosophers (for want of a better term) fundamentally fail in the very basics of communication.

I don't count Holderlin as a philosopher, more of a poet. I agree that the move of philosophy to poetry is worrying, it suggests the subject is mere pretty words fitted together to impart feelings on the reader, of which are largely sophistry. While the greeks embraced poetry they also embraced a sense of reason and method which makes them so great.

I find Heidegger difficult. Firstly, he's a nazi, secondly, he just comes off at times as a grumpy country nationalist, thirdly, I can't help but feel that a) it's been done before and b) by people who did it better. At times he makes claims which are completely ridiculous, at times he makes statements which are completely obvious.

I do find it interesting though that Strauss is being lumped into the pomo crowd, who liked to deconstruct social ideas and formations and point to their "power origins", when Strauss tried to impart a scientific system of knowledge (which is power see) on sociology (society). I think if Derrida met Strauss (maybe he did? I don't know) I think he'd explode in his notion of a science, and a science of society.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

I don't count Holderlin as a philosopher, more of a poet. I agree that the move of philosophy to poetry is worrying, it suggests the subject is mere pretty words fitted together to impart feelings on the reader, of which are largely sophistry. While the greeks embraced poetry they also embraced a sense of reason and method which makes them so great.

Fair call. Richo have you read any Bateson?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson

I have only read some of Steps To an Ecology of Mind. I found it very interesting. I ask about all these authors as I have only read small parts and I am interested in the thoughts of those who are more well read than me.

 

[mdc]

This is an absolute claim. A reduced claim. A "search for the centre"

yet you follow by saying...
In two sentences you have taken two opposing sides; contradictory stances.

But that claim, or rather rejection of the converse claim, does not belong to the structuralists or anyone else that usually incurs your wrath; it belongs to Wittgenstein/Sauce-Your, and has been espoused (implicitly) by almost everyone who followed. Perhaps your beef should be with them?

Moreover, the lack of a centre does not preclude claims absolutely, it simply forbids the systematic ordering or isolation of said claims.

Fine. And that is exactly what i believe your favoured form of thinking to be: poetry.

That's not really accurate. I just believe it should have a seat at the table, and not be locked outside like a stray dog.

While we're on the topic, there's an excellent book by Badiou on the subject of the relationship between poetry and philosophy titled Handbook of Inaesthetics. I'd be happy to up it for anyone interested.

Lacan, as an example hasn't even begun to approach that depth of thought, insight and precision in his entire 40 year career of publishing that Kierkegaard has managed to impart in 3 or 4 sentences (IMO of course).

Believe me when I say I would much rather read Kierkegaard than Lacan, who for me at least, is as difficult to read as just about anyone. But there is plenty good stuff in Lacan if you're prepared to sweat, especially if you're partial to Hegel or Freud.

 

[Richo83]

Eh, there are so many anthropological writers writing on so many cultural subjects, I tend to try to stay to the classics and classic subjects, Bateson is okay but he does two things which I tend not to like: firstly, he writes in dialogues (only the Greeks did it well and Hume only did it to save his own neck) and secondly, he applies dialectics (a term I am completely sick of). I find people like these tend to just take issues without analysing the basis behind them, as in to use philosophy when talking about ideas. It's the same problem that sociology, just jumping in without having a sense of what you're talking about. Bateson often has so many topics and strands you want to tie them together but it's tough. My reading of anthropolgy is shallow though.

 

[Richo83]

But there is plenty good stuff in Lacan if you're prepared to sweat, especially if you're partial to Hegel or Freud.

Doh to me. I don't get the love in with Hegel.