What did he mean by this?

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It's the same shit Chomsky always does - proclamations about how "simple r gr8" and "We can't be complex or funny or write in a literary style, no sir." In the end, it's just him posturing about how simple he is, which I always find hella ironic tbh.

He's right, 90% of philosophers have no idea how to write.

Chomsky must LOVE Mao then! He wrote and spoke to the common man, using their very tounge!

ITT: butthurt college students

Although it sounds like anti intellectual trash, he does have a point. There's a strong trend in continental philosophy to deliberately write obscurely. Foucault has admitted to doing it because he wouldn't be taken seriously if he did. Derrida was terrible about it and even Heidegger and Hegel wrote more obscurely than necessary.
There is a point to be made about it. Knowledge is to be shared with all instead of being hidden away. This trend creates a sort of cult of personality around a thinker. People are unable to properly understand their ideas so the thinker will always be relevant. They hold a monopoly on their thoughts and become a gatekeeper to the truth.

I was thinking of the relevance between this and people who constantly shitpost: "read Zizek". Who is he actually writing this stuff for? I know for sure I'm not part of his intended audience though or most working class people in general.

Probably non-partisan thinkers, and moderates.

It's a fair criticism of the state of a lot of politics right now. People can't have a discussion about proper leftist ideals without relearning a lot of terminology in order to actually understand what's being said - that's not their fault, they just haven't been exposed to that stuff, but it does hurt the ability for the masses to be taught the shit we actually want to teach.

One of the appeals of continental philosophy to people in the field is its exclusivity. That makes it useless in function, but it is the perfect lube for an intellectual circlejerk.

Just the thing you want when you create a greenhouse of controlled 'opposition' that becomes a parody of itself through its excessive focus on theory.

I don't know how many people have realized just how catastrophic a defeat 1968 was for the Left.

Isn't analytical philosophy just as circlejerking, with muh mathematical formulas and muh logic

How catastrophic was it?

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When its academics writing among themselves, sure. That's not really the point though.


Also good job responding to yourself.

I'd like to see Chomsky explain the Hegelian universal without using polysyllables

It was the death knell for the two Italian and French communist parties, and more than that its language was almost completely appropriated by liberalism and turned against its original goals.
Not to mention the co-opting of the leaders, that while insignificant on its own, poisoned mass opinion against the left in Europe forever.
Speak to an older, educated leftist in Europe today (they are the dominant demographic, in part for this reason) and they are all struggling with the consequences of that surrender even as they organize the latest meaningless protest march.

Almost all the mutations of society you see today including idpol were born out of the recuperation of those movements' energies. Memes like maospontex and Foucault playing the leftist among others.

There also was the Prague thing that sealed the fate of the USSR.

I don't know enough about the conditions in America at the time but I think there didn't really was any potential, at least compared with Europe. Same with Japan.

Hegel is pretty famous for his obscurantism. So I think Chomsky would probably say the same thing.

champagne socialists and liberal literati

No, actually, and that's the point of it. If you actually understand how to read logic it is easy to follow through it step by step.

Right. Although I think Zizek is just particularly bad at this. He just namedrops philosophers without coherently explaining their ideas which is just really poor form.

While pomo writers are the worst, I think they are just extreme examples of a very general mechanisms in academia that pushes people to write in an obnoxious and unclear fashion.

It's a very common requirement to write stuff with a certain minimum length. Just think about what that does to people. You have a topic, you write a text about it, the text is good as far as you can tell, but it's only half the required length. So what do you do? You learn the art of the waffle.

did you mean to respond to

Whatever happened to political manifestos being written as pamphlets?

writing in academia has gotten so bad because academia is just another power structure.

prove me wrong.

I think there is a super meaningful difference between academics writing for themselves and them writing for a general audience.

Academa BTFO

Contis on suicide watch

Yes but what is the point of knowledge if it is only accessible by academics with phds? It's point is impotent curiosity.

feels bad man

I wouldn't find Heidegger as mindfucking or as enjoyable if he wouldn't twist the language to make it say the things he did. I can't imagine how he could say the same thing in a different way tbh. You need to actually read them to get it.

He meant to say that's philosophy itself is a spectacle.

feels really bad man
i love this man