Trinity Philosophy

Spectator#1

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

I have real world experience to measure it against.

Who doesn't? If you're the only one with experience of it, it's probably not the real world.

Remember, the unexamined life is not worth living, even if it's lavidaloca.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

At the same time as I was studying philosophy in Trinity, my friend was studying Philosophy in UCD, during a time when one of the heads of the department (now deceased) was actually behind a sticker campaign warning against the use of condoms - based on the completely scientifically spurious notion that they were full of holes large enough for a sperm to pass through.

I can't comment on that story, but I can lay testament to the fact that certain staff in our department hold personal, elite religious beliefs which might be considered similar to the motivational beliefs behind that sort of activity.

But that information came to me indirectly. So professional and detached have those members of staff been in their teachings and dealings with the students that it came as a surprise to me. I had always imagined that the kind of detachment and balance they exhibited when talking about issues close to the religious nerve could only belong to people who cultivated in themselves a studied philosophical agnosticism. Not a hint of those staff members' religious beliefs have ever come through their lectures, or their professional actions.

It is something which I respect and applaud, and which has contributed postively to my idea of how a philosopher should conduct himself, irrespective of his own beliefs.

That a man of such medieval mindset was allowed to head a department of philosophy at UCD back in the 90's does not fill me with confidence in their academic rigour either.

Unfortunately for you, then, you are in disagreement with an accredited consensus of Western Philosophy departments. UCD School of Philosophy has had several placings in the Philosophical Gourmet list over the last few years.

And this is the key point: As Im sure you're well aware, philosophy as an academic subject has disgraced itself terribly in the past 40 or so years:

In fact, I was not aware of that, the issue of it shying so far from consensus, so far as to be a marginal falsity. What I find interesting is that you continue on, in that paragraph, to indict academic philosophy on the basis of a bunch of thinkers whose work is only ever controversially considered mainstream philosophy at all - ie. Derrida, Baudrillard. (Baudrillard considered himself a sociologist.)

But those people never could be correctly construed to represent "academic philosophy", The premise is sloppy thinking to begin with, insofar as any such loosely aggregated discipline (nevermind the most loosely aggregated of them all) could ever be comprehensively ennumerated under that one heading or represented by any one homogenous group of thinkers.

Representative of how conceited you are being is this little sentence:

If you want ruthless commitment to logic and truth, you're more likely to find it in Dawkin's department than in Derrida's.

Or you could consult a philosopher who doesn't, at the outset, abrogate the need for logic and the sovereignity of truth. You're more likely to find a "ruthless commitment" to logic and truth in Winnie the Pooh than Derrida, since Derrida "commits" himself "ruthlessly" to neither of these things.

If you want "ruthless commitment" to logic, you couldn't do better than to consult Russell, Frege, Husserl, Carnap, Godel, Quine or Tarski, against whose work it becomes evident that Dawkins' little (popular science) curiosities are more akin to Ciceronian rhetoric than Aristotelian argumentation.

If you want commitment to truth, for God's sake, pick a philosopher (and one who believes in truth commonly conceived - ie. not Derrida), and not some piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes. Pick Sellars, Husserl, Churchland, Habermas or Voegelin.

Finally, if you want to enlighten yourself at all, you could stop taking the text on the reverse of Waterstones' top-ten paperbacks as gospel.

Having clutched to it's bosom some of the most transparent charlatanry seen this side of Homeopathy That people like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and other Po-Mo pundits were actually taken seriously as thinkers is as deep a scar on the face of Western thought as any I can think of.

1) It is an issue of argument, and not of assertion, that the poststructuralist/postmodernist trend could be considered as worthless, or "transparent" as you have asserted that it is. In certain fields... ie. literary criticism, cultural analysis, these thinkers have been influential, and for good reasons.
2) Derrida makes an awful lot more sense the moment you realise he doesn't really fit the mold of postmodernist, since Derrida's work can really be seen to continue the work of phenomenology within the French philosophical atmostphere of post-structuralist linguistics.
3) Indeed, while none of these thinkers are especially clear writers, and the issue is rendered all the more problematic by the problem of translation, none of these thinkers is a "postmodernist" per se, and the source of most misinterpretation of their work, and the reason for most straw man attacks on their worth, is that they are never approached as individual philosophers in their own right, but as proponents of a movement, much demonized in the West, which all of them at one time or another denied being a part of.
4) As you should know, these thinkers weren't taken seriously, and still aren't, by most of the English speaking academic philosophical establishment. It was the literature departments that adopted Derrida (and misinterpreted him). The philosophers who even spoke about reading Derrida in the West were in danger of losing their reputations - (Rorty, for eg.). For the greater part of the late 20th century, Derrida has been the name against which most Western philosophy is set. In fact, it is only recently that those philosophers previously shrouded under the erroneous tag of postmodernism have been even approached by academic Anglo-American philosophy - that is, "analytic philosophy" so-called.

Which is why philosophy has had to concede so much ground to science in recent years.

What are you talking about? In the places where philosophy strays closest to science - ie. in the American departments, philosophy is in a stronger position than it has been for years. Many optimistic projects in the infinitely fractured mind-sciences have hit a blank wall, and have had to graduate back to the meta-thinking in order to get their bearing. There are massively popular collaborative research projects all over the English speaking world that include the philosophy of mind as the basis and guidebook to their practical endeavours. The philosophy of science continues to be essential to the refinement and orientation of the scientific project.

Sure, it's a skill we all need to have, but many of us will develop it whether we study it in university or not (by reading books and living our lives). I consider it profoundly conceited to assume that only those who study philosophy in university can see beyond the 'shadows on the cave wall', to use a philosophical metaphor. Anybody can train himself to think profoundly by reading books, and discussing them with other people who read books. There is absolutely no reason why one should need to do this under the roof of a university.

It is true that... I, for instance, could have educated myself to the level I am at, without attending university. But that project would have been restrictively harder. It is one thing to casually, or even concertedly, read philosophy around your daily life. It is another thing to be a full time student, and to be otherwise free to spend the best part of every day, not just reading , but actively studying and writing, philosophy. The reason why one should do this under the roof of a university is that a university is a place designed to provide the maximally productive conditions for that pursuit.

That's what a university is for. If there was no reason to do this sort of thing in a university, there would be no reason to have universities. They are centralized communities of intellectual learning. It is at universities that you can find people to guide your learning, rather than being left out on your own. It is in a university that you can find a discourse to learn to swim in. It is in university that you can embrace the educational benefits that doing philosophy in an educated, intellectually-refined community offers you.

The lonely path to philosophical erudition is a very hard one, and is a much slower one. Further, the lone philosopher is in far more danger of ivory tower syndrome than the academic philosopher, since he is in far less of a position to subject his philosophy to erudite and valuable criticism, and so is less likely to be able to refine his work. Further, he doesn't have as much of an incentive to produce any philosophy, since it isn't his occupation but his pastime.

My advice to the OP was not to ignore philosophy and bury his head in the sand with regards to matters intellectual. My advice was to study something both interesting and useful, and read whatever books of philosophy take his fancy on the side. That's what I do, and I find it much more fulfulling than studying it in university, because I have real world experience to measure it against.

The invocation of "real world experience" is the favourite rhetorical turn of anti-intellectualism. As it happens, the move is inneffectual, for the simple reason that "real world experience" is so cheap that everyone has plenty of it to spare, and is accumulating more of it all the time.

If I wanted to be conceited, I should think that, to borrow a page from economic theory, this ought to entail that 'real world experience' is relatively worthless, and is getting all the more so all the time. But some things really are priceless, so I shan't wish to assert that.

I shall only observe that, given the widespread availability of "real world experience", someone considering the prospect of accruing a whole lifetime of it might want to consider investing in some other currency: one that will gain interest over time. That, I should think, would be a wise path.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

The 'ideas' of those men did no such thing.

This really is a matter of where you choose to look. You could indict, for instance, feminist theorists on the basis that female genital mutilation still occurs in the world.

That would be to ignore that such issues are actually currency for mainstream intellectual discourse these days. For instance...

The charlatans I mentioned did quite the opposite: While conservative capitalism was busy swallowing the planet whole from the 1970's onwards, those very men went into a huge philosophical sulk

The only reason you have any narrative at all about conservative capitalism "swallowing the world" is because of the recursive commentary and intellectual climate that came into being directly at the consentual hands of, among others, the intellectuals you are denouncing.

refused to talk about anything using 'mainstream discourse' (i.e. sense) any more.

Your dispute here reveals prejudices concerning the approach philosophy should take to its subject matter. But the avoidance of mainstream discourse is the only reason there remain conceptual tools with which to take a critical perspective on an otherwise interpollated capitalist ideology. The late 20th century realization that resistance must be done at the level of language use as well as at the level of action is a lesson you seem to be in need of learning again.

The whole Po-Mo establishment was quite literally fiddling while Rome burnt. The serious left-wing ideals of the Sixties (The So called Old Left) were discarded as being just another 'historical meta-narrative" and the Third World was left to sink in to the far worse state that it's in now.

Look... that's just a really simplistic characterisation of the development of French philosophy. You're ignoring the adumbrations in avant-garde philosophy, in art-theory and linguistics, the incremental developments and the social contexts for the changes in the character of philosophy. You're ignoring that the late 20th century climate in French philosophy grew out a far larger set of problems and issues than just the resistance to advanced capitalism.

You're also endorsing a rather questionable narrative in world history, one that could stand to endure much revision.

(Read Baudrillard on the 'unreality' of the Gulf War for a particularly egregious example)

You've misunderstood Baudrillard if you ask me. Because as I read him, he made a vital and topical point about the way in which a remote military incursion, which happened on questionable incentives, had been made, by the simple virtue of the way news is consumed, and presented, into an entertainment spectacle, such that, as far as most people were concerned, the reportage was the main event. The thesis was only made more tenable by the recent opportunity we had to test it out all over again.

Read "Intellectual Impostures" by Alan Sokal for details.

I've read that. He makes a good argument. His hoax paper was a damning criticism... of Social Text. To imagine that this justifies a prejudice against all French philosophy is rather foolhardy, and departs rather more than is appreciated from the practice of right reasoning.

FionnMatthew

DadaKopf wrote: »

That's a long post, FionnMatthew. Is your first name David by any chance?

Hi Dadakopf. Actually, my first name is Fionn.

I wonder if I know your David, though...

4Xcut

I'm currently studying philosophy at TCD.

First, the first year course is quite good as you cover a lot of different topics briefly, thus putting you in a better position to choose things in forth year.

Second, the reading lists are huge for a reason. Different people will find different authors better for studying a given topic. Best advice I was ever given(by a lecturer in philosophy) was that if you're reading something and not getting anything from it, pick something else from the reading list of a similar vein. Its large to give you choice.

Third, i would advise strongly contacting the department and looking into the course more as there's only so much that they can put in a prospectus.

I would also advise studying it with something else. It gives you a break from it once in a while and allows you to focus on something else acedemicaly. But more importantly, it tends to tie in nicely with a good few subjects and this i feel is the true benifit of the subject. It will give you a much different way of looking at certain things that others are studying.

Over all, if you are really interested in philosophy then its not a bad course, once you can get through second year which is just boring compared to some of the areas studied in other years. That is not just my opinion, but a rather general consensus.

Workload isn't too bad at all. Very manageable indeed.

The department is quite honestly rubbish. It's true of a lot of courses that lecturers are more concerned with their own acedemia but none so bad as pholosophy. But then again it sort of comes with the territiry as many lecturers have to teach rather than wanting to and just sort of fall into it(though this is a problem in most of education, not all but a large portion).

Joe1919

I would also advise studying it with something else."

I personally agree with this statement. I studied philosophy and history. I think (and this is just my own personal opinion) that philosophy can, at times be a little too inward looking and an enormous benefit can be obtained by complementing philosophy with another subject. (joint honours)

I also studied some great philosophy, such as Erasmus, Voltaire, Hobbs, Locke, Weber, Foucault, Machiavelli, Hegel and DesCarte from history course and this added a sense of balance, in terms of how their philosophy affects the external world and peoples opinions. For example, DesCartes dualism, although controversial today, did affect society by distinguishing the physical world as something distinct from the spiritual world and hence, led people to a more enlightened opinion that (e.g.) witches and the devil were not behind natural disasters.

Indeed in this respect, there is quite an overlap between philosophy and history as well as other subjects. It's important to note that philosophers are often multi-disciplined. To take an example, Bertram Russell has contributed to Maths (set theory) , History (Hume was also a great historian) and Politics.
I do have the deepest respect for philosophy and philosophy does not exist in isolation and in trying to answer the difficult questions ( that there may be no answer to) is part of every subject to some extent.

But remember, this is only my personal experience and I dont claim to profess any universal knowledge.

LaVidaLoca

This message board just isnt big enough to respond to all these points in detail.

However I like the phrase "piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes." - I didnt say Dawkins was a philosopher. Probably all the better for him that he isnt - when was the last time a philosopher ignited widespread debate ourside of the academic world?

But I like what it reveals about your prejudices that a guy like Dawkins is *shock* popular. I, like many others, applaud Dawkins for having the courage to publicly stand up to religious idiocy, that for all too long it has been taboo to criticise for fear of offending people's beleifs. I see him as continuing the tradition exemplified by that other sneering know it all, the Bertrand Russell of "Why I am Not a Christian."

Secondly I like your ringfencing of the UCD philosopher's religious beleifs as "elite religious ideas", by which you of course mean "ideas so loony and backward that the only way a public man could hold them is by not telling anybody about it." Of course they didn't bring these ideas in to the lecture hall, to do so would have been equivalent to a chemistry teacher doing a class on Homeopathic Potions. Do you apply the same rigourous criteria to that sort of medievalism that you apply to Professor Dawkins?

While I recognise of course that the lunatic fringe of French Philosophy that I spoke against, does not repesent the mainstream of academic philosophy: It does however speak ill of the integrity of many philosophy (and literature and sociology) departments, that these people were taken seriously for so long. When I was studying in the 1990's, one literally HAD to accept ideas that even at 18 one knew were bull****, as the professors correcting your essays had dedicated their lives to them. You couldnt just stand up and rightly say (as is my honestly held belief) this person (Derrida, Baudrillard, Lacan, Kristeva et.al) is talking opaque obscurantist gibberish more intended to confuse than enlighten. And if that makes me sound like Roger Scruton, so be it. But I am in no way a conservative in thought or action. I merely know rubbish when I see it. And I dont think it neccessary to get involved in debates any more about the details of what these people said. It is enough for me to dismiss theoligcal debates about angels on the head of a pin by simply saying. "Yes ,but I dont beleive in god or angels."


You must understand to get back to the original point of all this: I did not advise the OP to not study philosophy. I advised him to not make philosophy his only subject of study. I do this for many reasons, some of which are practical and to do with jobs, and others of which are a matter of personal taste.

To take an analogy: If a young person came to me with a love of music, and a desire to express himself through music, Would I suggest that he therefore study luthiery? No, I would suggest that he study music (with possibly a minor or a small module in luthiery in that it mightn't do his playing any harm to know how a violin works) But it would in my opinion be a diversion of his musical talents to study luthiery only. Especially if to continue the analogy he lived in a world in which there were very few people willing to pay a luthier to make a violin for him. I know, 'the job market' shouldn't matter when one chooses a subject of study, but unless one is from a wealthy family, it does matter. There's loads of subjects one can study that are both interesting and can help you get a job.

I agree with whichever poster it was that said "the unexamined life is not worth living." I simply take issue with the idea that this examining is best undertaken within a university philosophy department.

experiMental

DadaKopf wrote: »

That's a long post, FionnMatthew. Is your first name David by any chance?

I'm mad into aesthetics - for its own sake, and art's - and especially aesthetically grounded political philosophy (post-/neo-Marxian and post-structuralist thought). So I understand the attraction.

By comparison, I find that people who entered working life through a narrow discipline also live narrow lives, and while not bad in itself, makes me feel bad that they're not opening themselves up. I'm not a utopian, but the world could be a better place if people valued and studied philosophy.

Just out of curiosity, don't you think that many modern artists should put a lot more thought into making sure that their work will be understood by the audience ?

That was ott, but it's something that I'm dying to know.

DadaKopf

experiMental wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, don't you think that many modern artists should put a lot more thought into making sure that their work will be understood by the audience ?

That was ott, but it's something that I'm dying to know.

I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. Every age finds its artform, as Jackson Pollock said.

FionnMatthew

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

However I like the phrase "piddling popular science author who sells books to sneering know-it-alls by writing nasty invectives against stereotypes." - I didnt say Dawkins was a philosopher. Probably all the better for him that he isnt - when was the last time a philosopher ignited widespread debate ourside of the academic world?

But I like what it reveals about your prejudices that a guy like Dawkins is *shock* popular. I, like many others, applaud Dawkins for having the courage to publicly stand up to religious idiocy, that for all too long it has been taboo to criticise for fear of offending people's beleifs. I see him as continuing the tradition exemplified by that other sneering know it all, the Bertrand Russell of "Why I am Not a Christian."

1) If only Dawkins' letters were anything like Russell's. Russell's atheistic work was a) philosophically literate (although innately biased), b) epistemologically coherent (as opposed to Dawkins' ludicrous burden of proof hypothesis) and c) uninclined to inspire an army of ideologues who hung on his every word.

2) Dawkins hasn't inspired "widespread debate", as far as I'm concerned. Dawkins has popularized the use of rhetoric to quash actual debate about religious matters, and has simply inculcated counterreligious prejudices in a bitter athiestic minority. He has oversimplified the field, and downgraded the possibility of proper understanding on this most volatile of issues. We could do very well without the kind of polarized, volatile "debates" that Dawkins "inspires".

3) I'm not just talking about The God Delusion. Before that book came out, his needless, childish sneering against respectable scientific positions that he doesn't agree with proved that he isn't really interested in truth at all, but being right.

4) If you must read paperback money-spinning works on the subject, rather than addressing the issue proper, you'd do a good deal better with Dennett's work. It's a lot more sophisticated, if only a little less polemical. (Dennett is a dogged polemicist too.) At least his work, Breaking the Spell, inspires a little more further thought on the issue, and actually addresses the philosophical core of the problem. It's a little bit closer to inspiring actual debate on the issue.

5) The reason Dawkins is popular is that his works aim to be such. Dawkins isn't actually a proper writer at all, but an industry. His target audience is intelligent people who underacheived, and who want to take the quick route to condescension. He wants to make atheism, which is actually just an epistemological position on a rather silly religious fiction, into a mass movement which parallels the gay pride movement. His books are really just concerted and yet hollow polemics against stereotypical religious figures, which congratulate the reader on not having fallen into the (rather obvious) pitfalls of religious fervour. This ultimately sycophantic ploy manages not to spur the reader on to actual, continual enlightenment, but encourages him to spend his marginal erudition in intellectual one-up-manship, thereby lessening the chances of his ever seeking knowledge for its own sake. The kind of "debate" that emerges post-Dawkins is the appearance of intellectualism, each side (in an increasingly polarized back-and-forth) slinging big words they don't fully comprehend, in imitation of their patron genius. Such a climate can only ever rarely produce any philosophy of worth.

Perhaps though, if you want to continue the Dawkins related exchange, we ought to do it in another thread. If you wish, start one, and I'll follow you there.

Secondly I like your ringfencing of the UCD philosopher's religious beleifs as "elite religious ideas", by which you of course mean "ideas so loony and backward that the only way a public man could hold them is by not telling anybody about it." Of course they didn't bring these ideas in to the lecture hall, to do so would have been equivalent to a chemistry teacher doing a class on Homeopathic Potions. Do you apply the same rigourous criteria to that sort of medievalism that you apply to Professor Dawkins?

Perhaps I should make myself clearer. By elite religious ideas, I had intended to evoke the same kind of negative connotations as the words 'Opus Dei' inspire in me, for that is the particular religious alignment of the people in question.
I had not intended to even remotely defend such religious beliefs. Such impression can only be a coincidence of my wording.

I frown on Opus Dei. I frown on any devout, hardline, proseletyzing religious activism. (which is why I frown on Dawkins)

I had intended the anecdote to lay testament to the professionalism of said lecturers, that even so extreme a religious alignment as Opus Dei was not allowed to transgress the professional detachment, and seep into their pedagogical practises. Those teachers, in their teaching, gave if anything the appearance of atheistic detachment whenever they touched on any religious matters.

As privately-held beliefs, these beliefs neither demand nor deserve rigorous scrutiny. "Professor" Dawkins, as you so deferentially call him, is in the position of having written very public tracts, which present themselves to the scrutiny and criticism of all. By no means could I be expected to treat the two cases as equal, and a less tolerant audience might resent your having equivocated the two.

As a philosopher, I am prepared to respect and appreciate the work and professionalism of these people, even if they hold "medieval" views privately, views that I couldn't even begin to address, so distant are they from my own. Should they perform public actions that I disagree with, so long as they have no place in the classroom, I don't see why it should be at all relevant. The same mindset would have us ignore the (massive, apolitical) philosophical value of Heidegger's work, just because he was a Nazi.

While I recognise of course that the lunatic fringe of French Philosophy that I spoke against, does not repesent the mainstream of academic philosophy: It does however speak ill of the integrity of many philosophy (and literature and sociology) departments, that these people were taken seriously for so long. When I was studying in the 1990's, one literally HAD to accept ideas that even at 18 one knew were bull****, as the professors correcting your essays had dedicated their lives to them. You couldnt just stand up and rightly say (as is my honestly held belief) this person (Derrida, Baudrillard, Lacan, Kristeva et.al) is talking opaque obscurantist gibberish more intended to confuse than enlighten. And if that makes me sound like Roger Scruton, so be it. But I am in no way a conservative in thought or action. I merely know rubbish when I see it. And I dont think it neccessary to get involved in debates any more about the details of what these people said. It is enough for me to dismiss theoligcal debates about angels on the head of a pin by simply saying. "Yes ,but I dont beleive in god or angels."

There is a reason you might have been expected to actually address those thinkers. Because they are not straight up bull****, and do contain a lot of philosophy of value.

That highly intelligent people endorse their work ought to be testament to the fact that there is something there, if you look properly. Particular to many latter day French intellectuals is the intellectual climate of France. In order to go along with them, you need to do a lot of contextualizing. If you didn't do this, and indeed, if you weren't helped along in this by your teachers (there is a dual responsibility there) then you might be forgiven for believing there isn't much to it.

If you still think it's rubbish, then you ought to attribute that to a failure of understanding on your part.

Not all theology, by the way, is about angels on pins. Some of it strays closer to metaphysics. There are no definite boundaries, and the sort of intellectual territorialism that you practice by aping Dawkins in this matter (his utter, unswerving refusal to do theology in TGD) could very well lead you into error. In this I speak as a proper atheist, and not the "does it offend you?" kind that we are getting more and more of these days.

You must understand to get back to the original point of all this: I did not advise the OP to not study philosophy. I advised him to not make philosophy his only subject of study.

True. But you have also denigrated philosophy unfairly, repeatedly, and by the means of crooked reasoning, overgeneralization and blatant falsehood. While you never actually advised against the study of philosophy, the substantive message of your contribution here has been unequivocally that.Since this began, I've had two PMs from people who had intended to study philosophy, and were now unsure. The reason I'm responding to you is:

1~) You are actually wrong. You are speaking falsehoods when you say things like "Western philosophy is all about chairs".
2~) Those falsehoods are deterring people from studying the subject you are misrepresenting.

I should hope the general impression of this thread is a little more balanced now, and someone reading it might be a little more fully informed about the dynamics of the choice they must make.

LaVidaLoca

Though it doesnt sound to me like you've read him if you seem to think him capable of inspiring 'armies of ideologues'. What he is espousing is simply a rational look at unreason. I have always found him commendably balanced when talking to nut-cases like Ted Haggard and so on. I think most of the people here would find it difficult to talk to some of the people he debates with (Look at the Liberty University lecture Q and A on youtube) without losing the rag altogether, which he never does. The guy is hardly advocating banning religion, as an idealgue would do. He is simply continuing a tradition of humanism which asks merely that we judge religious claims by the same criteria that we judge non-religious ones.

I hate to mention again the book "Intellectual Impostures", but if you look at some of the astonishing dishonesty that the aforementioned French philosophes were peddling as pointed out in that book, (a good resource for collecting all the worst bits under the one cover) it really is frightening that anybody took them seriously.

In any other discipline, blatant intellectual dishonesty like that would have lead to them losing their jobs and being booted out of university once it was exposed. Of course this didnt happen: Because they used the same con trick that religious hucksters do: Create a set of ideas that appear to transcend all the ideas that we normally hold dear, and you can then accuse people of simply not understanding them when they point out what a load of crap they are.

You seem to think that just because some intelligent people take them seriously, means they must have some worth. I cant answer this any better than Noam Chomsky did:

"There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.
"

You argue that the fact that intelligent people took them seriously is in itself proof that they had some substance to them. I don't think that proves anything at all. There are many very highly intelligent people who beleive in ridiculous Bronze Age texts purported to have been written by God himself, yet their intelligence doesnt make that belief any less risible. Their intelligent logic manages to 'bend' around their beleif. Or as you mentioned above Heidegger was seduced by Nazism.

It is precisely because stuff like that was taken seriously in my philosophy department (and my literature one) that I am sceptical, not of philosophical thinking per se, but in the academic climate in which it grows. Hucksterism of the sort mentioned above finds fertile ground in places where men and women are trying hard to make careers out of thinking about things.

DadaKopf

I hate to mention again the book "Intellectual Impostures", but if you look at some of the astonishing dishonesty that the aforementioned French philosophes were peddling as pointed out in that book, (a good resource for collecting all the worst bits under the one cover) it really is frightening that anybody took them seriously.

The Sokal Hoax was an important event, I think. But not for the reason you claim. You say it's because it proved that continental philosophy is total bullsh!t. The point he was actually making, as a scientist and philosopher, was to point out the misuse of scientific concepts (particularly theoretical physics) by a particular set of philosophers who published articles in Social Text journal.

LaVidaLoca

proved that Social Text was a rag. However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

Howeverm (Intelectual Impostures is not just about the Sokal Affair) it examines in detail the collossal audacity of some of these thinkers in talking completey unforgivable rubbish.

It also however, caught a lot of French thinkers with their pants down: Quite literally posing with scientific concepts they did not understand. This is not a minor "oh well they made a mistake", it is the Academic equivalent of the Enron collapse. That important portions of their work were either full-on pre-meditated cynical deception, or breaktakingly ignorant, and were taken seriously by many, shows that even supposedly rational philosophy and literature departments, were not immune to religious-type hysteria.

DadaKopf

However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

What texts?

oweverm (Intelectual Impostures is not just about the Sokal Affair) it examines in detail the collossal audacity of some of these thinkers in talking completey unforgivable rubbish.

Some, not all. You seem to be damning all continental philosophy by use of extreme examples of where it probably wasn't very good at all. The audacity, really, is to make an extreme generalisation based on a few specific cases.

Quite literally posing with scientific concepts they did not understand.

You haven't added anything to what I said above.

However it was a watershed moment for many of us, who were being taught to read texts all the time that were not far off from Sokal's parody.

I mean, did you even bother reading the stuff, or awere you too conservatively set in your ways even then, whenever that was, whoever you are?