Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Insignificance of Derrida


Philosophers can be funny. I don't laugh at a lot of things, but sometimes philosophers can make me laugh. Here is philosopher Mark Goldblatt. He's not fond of postmodernism. Can you tell? He writes:

"The critical point to be borne in mind with regards to Derrida... is that he is not now, nor has he ever been, a philosopher in any recognizable sense of the word, nor even a trafficker in significant ideas; he is rather a intellectual con artist, a polysyllabic grifter who has duped roughly half the humanities professors in the United States — a species whose gullibility ranks them somewhere between nine-year-old boys listening to spooky campfire stories and blissful puppies chasing after nonexistent sticks — into believing that postmodernism has an underlying theoretical rationale. History will remember Derrida, and it surely will, not for what he himself has said but for what his revered status says about us."
- "Derrida, Derrida, etc."

Critical thinkers (logicians) are dismissive of postmodernism.