Postmodernism and Critical Theory. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

im still not convincend national governments are going to continue to relinquish so much power to the tech giants - Im of the feeling their power will be a tranistory period that largely turns out irrelevant.

its like the shipping and merchant companies back at the start of empire - government is unsure of the outcomes and doesnt want to be involved in all the risky moves that trigger changes.

then, the legislate and bully the system back under their wings at the appropriate time.

no doubting the AI shiz is going to change alot of things, but i suspect most of that is going to be the destruction of the middle class paper shuffling classes - lawyers in particular.

anyone that makes a living by knowing how to peruse a large and complex library for existing information.

not people who write the books that fill that library, they will be safe for the forseeable future.

You've convinced me to hedge against giants in the long term but whether a titan or a thousand hobbits own it, doesn't change that the machines obliterate the self-identity attached to our industrial production of rulers, leaving them depressed and *culturally* suicidal.

That the machines will do what they are gonna do is almost neither here nor there. But it is asinine to follow people who are coming apart at the seams by the possibilities of the technology.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

(except the french)

The french exception is that when they are good they are really good.

And could I make a quick plea for my paisans. italian philosophy is a lot richer than it is given credit for and never gets no respect. Instead, some frenchman with a droopy eye says something and people treat him like a rock star or a german coughs and it sends whole departments into deep cogitation. 700+ years of some pretty original thinkers and each is treated as some isolated, accidental surprise or cute event never to be spoken about again. Even the English avoid that kinda treatment.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Maybe blame CRT and Postmodernism on Martin Heidegger and the German Romanticists more than on Marx. Bonus question: who may be the real nazis?......'>......

When Heidegger published Being and Time, philosophy was in crisis. The neo-Kantian project that dominated late-nineteenth-century German philosophy was in shambles. Ludwig v. Wittgenstein and the positivists of the Vienna Circle portrayed metaphysics as literal nonsense. Heidegger promised a path out of the cul-de-sac of the old metaphysics. His student and mistress Hannah Arendt wrote that Heidegger sought “to make Man the ‘Master of Being,’” and to “put man in exactly the same place that God had occupied in traditional ontology.” His evolving understanding of Being turned the concept into a secular substitute for God.

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the- ... gerianism/

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Maybe blame CRT and Postmodernism on Martin Heidegger and the German Romanticists more than on Marx. Bonus question: who may be the real nazis?......'>......

When Heidegger published Being and Time, philosophy was in crisis. The neo-Kantian project that dominated late-nineteenth-century German philosophy was in shambles. Ludwig v. Wittgenstein and the positivists of the Vienna Circle portrayed metaphysics as literal nonsense. Heidegger promised a path out of the cul-de-sac of the old metaphysics. His student and mistress Hannah Arendt wrote that Heidegger sought “to make Man the ‘Master of Being,’” and to “put man in exactly the same place that God had occupied in traditional ontology.” His evolving understanding of Being turned the concept into a secular substitute for God.

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the- ... gerianism/

Yes, Heidegger is in the eye of the storm as much as anyone. I noticed our contemporary Spengler distribute a review of "Heidegger's Ruins" re-emphasizing how much of a nazi Mr.Heidegger was and the scandal of the protection he's received (in selected and altered published writing) among academics: Heidegger's Downfall

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

This is sensitive because of the nazis and the holocaust; but while I don't believe in the banality of evil, I do believe in the banality of circumstances, and I think Heidegger's pride of place is more accidental and not a lot changes if you remove him from the story. (And what 'a lot" is depends on how seriously one takes metaphysics).

Without Heidegger, we are still in a post-phenomenalist world in a race to define a new metaphysics. Maybe we all suffer a little bit less from the explosion of alleyway existentialists who popped up afterwards. What else changes?

-- interest (or obsession) with the pre-socratics and sophistry doesn't.

-- the reverent agnostic turn from the old pantheistic conception of god that the best and brightest believed in doesn't change

-- identity issues and all the kultursmog stuff? LMAO.

[noddy]

to combine several previous posts.

ironically, the philosophy with the constant rejuvination and staying power in the modern context, is italian stoicism

"AAARGH MAKE MY HEAD STOP" seems to be the preferred flavour of the modern world.

we seem to have largely given up on metaphysics and the why of things, the modern condition is focused on the what.

im largely like that - i only approach philosophy as an interesting thing, not an informative one.

[Typhoon]

It's the ancient Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers and practitioners that most impressed me;
Epictetus [former Greek slave] and Marcus Aurelius [philosopher-Emperor of Rome].

Christian theology emphasizes the commendable concepts of mercy, charity, forgiveness, and love,
but I can do without the metaphysics.

And then there's my favorite

"O Lord, make me chaste, . . . but not yet."

~ St. Augustine (Confessions 8,7)

Latter philosophy strikes me as the grudges of solitary and/or miserable men.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Latter philosophy strikes me as the grudges of solitary and/or miserable men.

Brings around MFF's point about the romanticists. Eyeballing it, philosophers tend to be odd-ducks by nature. But it took the romanticists to make them completely useless as well.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Maybe blame CRT and Postmodernism on Martin Heidegger and the German Romanticists more than on Marx. Bonus question: who may be the real nazis?......'>......

Safe to say that the romanticist & gothic project were pretty futile and stupid gestures...

---------

...like rationalism/irrationalism constructs. It's funny how quickly all those arguments (and opinions) just up and vanished out of the public mind and speech. Except maybe as rhetoric-- calling something irrational brings out the hysterics on certain campuses.

[noddy]

the modern headspace really does struggle with the things we cant see or measure - it goes into the fiction section without those things.

which only leaves the romantic, therapeutic, self help side of it valid for discussion.

alas, I know nothing of Heidegger to comment on his role in the modern conditions.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

alas, I know nothing of Heidegger to comment on his role in the modern conditions.

If you've ever heard someone go on and on about the authentic self or authentic life, then you've heard Heidegger.

[noddy]

oh - that is fuel for both the nazi headspace and the multi gendered, whim of the moment authenticly indulgent headspace.

Still, I agree with the sentiment of him just being a messenger about the society around him.

A plea for an important self in a world that cares not for you

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I think that formula is backwards, it's an uncaring self pleading for an important world.

There is no wishing to care or be cared for but for having the power or prerogative to deprive others of care or comfort. The only way to make that work on the ledger is to have a world be an important place.

I think I can agree that it was a reflection or generalization of the times which is why it connected so well and fueled so many.

[noddy]

I agree with that formulation, its more succint

My original thought was not about care as in caring, its more on the lack of interest in what they have to offer, a world that doesnt think they are as special as they do.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I guess I don't see that much distinction for a professional like heidegger between a personal 'care' and impersonal or professional 'indifference'.

The philosophy departments, and I imagine it was still even more so a century ago with guys like him, are filled with people who are monomaniacally educated and the whole of the world is in their department or field or kingdom by natural right, so as to ignore them professionally is to wound them personally.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

It just brings us back to the problem noddy and MFF's article raised about their being demonstrative arguments against philosophy in general, prompting a philosopher's argument of their own necessity or importance to be...what exactly? We've had about a century of attempts that speak for themselves and a nagging suspicion that the ones which successfully reproduce are the ones whose primary concern is indemnifying themselves from needing to have some sort of utility or purpose beyond existing as a niche.

[noddy]

A nicer way to to express it might be that after 2000 years of grumpy loners 'well actually'ing eachother , all the low hanging fruit has long beem picked.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Being the mean fellow than I am, I retort that it isn't all one continuity and that itself should be instructive.

There is a lot that could be said here. I'll start by pointing out how the purpose and conceptualization of 'metaphysics' is wholly different between the ancient/medieval/late or post-modern; and the difference has little do with whatever was going on in the sciences.

For example aristotle calls 'metaphysics' the hardest science because it dealt with the nobility (and hierarchy) of knowledge. For the medievals, whether the christian schoolman or islamic world, it is primarily concerned with ontology and metaphysics itself the primary science because it dealt in commonalities.

For both, metaphysics was actually a plural word.

At some point for the late moderns 'metaphysics' went from plural to singular and from a hierarchy of nobility in thought to finding the purest (and separate) generality of thought.

[Parodite]

I gave up in my late teens reading deep-thought philosophers, it was only a handful of bits and pieces. If after 10 pages I wasn't captive of da thought-stream I simply couldn't continue. Did find Karl Popper about the sci method interesting, revealing. When successful scientists on occasion make philosophical comments, they can be worth it as they tend to need much less words saying the same, or even more with less.

Philosophy is often self-referential word-saladery into deep-space where causation, correlation and poetry mix, meddle and muddle. They create a sense of smell, the sound of musical awe to the musical ear. Words have a suggestive and hypnotic power, they are like movies: part of us, the sensory-emotional circuit, can't see the difference between the real and the imaginary which is why words can have so much power.

As to the question of Heidegger (I only know him from Wikipedia, where I read he did some fine philosophy but turned out to have antisemitic prejudices and joined the early Nazi gangs) vis-a-vis post-modern whateverists and CRT; given that words can have such hypnotic and suggestive powers I'm willing to consider a causal connection between a philosopher, or identifiable group of similar thinking philosophers who lived in the past, and any contemporary phenomenon like the wokey cult, CRT etc.

But, since philosophy is by nature suggestive-of-things-hardly-understood with little-or-no empirical meat on bones, off-hand casually playing with established sci-tech causal correlations... it is conceivable that the causal correlation is either under-estimated or over-estimated! Do your pick... but don't expect the answer to that question come from philosophers.

My feeling is that philosophy is 95% of the time overestimated since most human behavior is predominantly biologically driven, no matter the latest philosophical fashion statements. They are more like after-thoughts, brain-farts carried away by the wind. Philosophies that keep hanging around are like a stench that crept into the wallpaper; with the right moisty weather filling the air with memories...

You might end up living in a haunted house where the ghost of Heidegger, or maybe of Marx.. or maybe those French Derrida creeps.. knock at your door just when you started dreaming a nice dream. But since most people don't live in haunted houses... who cares? Or did this change with social media and everybody on twitter lives in a haunted house now...

Maybe The Emperor wears some cloths after all. Air Jordan Peterson is on a heroic journey going from haunted house to haunted house... smelling wallpapers for evidence. Also the socks of Jung under that squeaky old bed are quite fascinating. Maybe stinky chemicals do have addictive powers. Memories that refuse to fade away.

[Doc]

I took several philosophy classes in college. I had one really bright professor that in statement of logic he could seemingly go from any argument and finish with the last With "and therefore proving the existence of God" He also taught game theory. Which I really enjoyed. That is how I learn to play Go.

Sean Carrol just took a position at John Hopkins. Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy.

If you are not tired of philosophy this is a great resource

https://closertotruth.com/

[Parodite]

I took several philosophy classes in college. I had one really bright professor that in statement of logic he could seemingly go from any argument and finish with the last With "and therefore proving the existence of God" He also taught game theory. Which I really enjoyed. That is how I learn to play Go.

Sean Carrol just took a position at John Hopkins. Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy.

If you are not tired of philosophy this is a great resource

https://closertotruth.com/

Thanks. I guess sometimes I jump to conclusions too fast. I know bits from Sean Carroll where he talks about quantum mechanics and some consciousness deliberations. There, for me, he fell through the cracks into the purgatory where crackpots and snake-oil salesmen reside for the rest of eternity. But will keep an eye on them. One flew over the... where psychotics and naive direct realists go.

[Doc]

I took several philosophy classes in college. I had one really bright professor that in statement of logic he could seemingly go from any argument and finish with the last With "and therefore proving the existence of God" He also taught game theory. Which I really enjoyed. That is how I learn to play Go.

Sean Carrol just took a position at John Hopkins. Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy.

If you are not tired of philosophy this is a great resource

https://closertotruth.com/

Thanks. I guess sometimes I jump to conclusions too fast. I know bits from Sean Carroll where he talks about quantum mechanics and some consciousness deliberations. There, for me, he fell through the cracks into the purgatory where crackpots and snake-oil salesmen reside for the rest of eternity. But will keep an eye on them. One flew over the... where psychotics and naive direct realists go.

No doubt there are a lot of crackpots out there. But they, like broken clocks, tend to be right twice a day. Or week or month or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl4VD8uvgec

tl4VD8uvgec

[Parodite]

Woke Quantum Mechanics

Forget about postmodernist neo-Marxist claptrap philosophies. The real culprit and Father of Woke is much closer to home, as it hides its face in that sci-tech golden champion beast: quantum mechanics.

Will make the case, if not by showing causal correlation, then certainly revealing some compelling logical correlations using “spooky action at a distance” (better known as guilt by association), that Woke wants to regress back to a state of womb-like superposition. Where you can be more than one thing at the same time, and even at more than one place at the same time! Where “together you are strong” because in a mob of n-particles probability amplitudes are the square root of a Sum(). Which also explains why mobs are easier to predict than erratic individuals burdened with too much potentiality and uncertainty. Safety in the herd!

Free until no longer

Non-local causal entanglement (not just logical correlation; the crucial difference to always keep in mind when faced with the usual charlatans making psychotic claims about QM) for as long as you remain physically connected to the parts that were shattered into space, when you and your pre-natal mob-friends were smashed through that barium borate crystal and got separated for good. After which to cohere or to decohere is the only question left.

Love decoheres very easily, fragile as it is. To postpone decoherence for as long as possible, and over a distance as long as possible… is worthy of Nobel prizes. This reveals a deep longing for God alias Love in our culture. We want God’s love to never decohere of course, but that wave function collapsed at the cross, as we all know for 2000+ years. (To turn failure into victory; a brilliant master move! An effort however that, like quantum computing, has not been proved to work)

Woke is clearly a post-Christian phenomenon. Extinction rebellion probably the clearest symptom; maximum decoherence-phobia, self-guilt and externalized devils and demons.

The superposition of gender

Gender fluidity: being in two states at the same time, before a measurement collapses you into either a male or a female. Psi calculates the odds of what will be. But once you are not-this-but-that, when that blissful superposition decohered… all hell breaks loose. Now you have quite some immutable characteristics. But the memory of gender fluid superposition lingers on in the background; the time when nothing was decided… yet. All just a maybe, pure and divine potentiality.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Quantum is a postscript. The first stumbling block is with set theory and endless intensional/extensional disputes destroying everyone's confidence. I think a popular reading of mid-20th century writers is that quantum (and physics in general) was supposed to rescue all sorts of intellectual pursuits and let a million new Descartes bloom. Instead, from our perch, it's more like an addition to a pile of "here's a thing/who knows what to do with that?" for the time being.

[Nonc Hilaire]

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