Define this, and I’ll respond 
Just as a suggestion, you’ll probably have better luck googling for “Sokal” 
But yeah, good story. I tell it to my freshman comp students every semester (although, of course, many of them are trying to write impressive-sounding BS, so the moral is sort of lost on them).
I apparently put more effort into it than anyone who’s agreed with you. They have all been talking about postmodernist philosophy and sociology. You mentioned sociology in your OP, but gave no examples from that field. All the names you mentioned were philosophers. None of them were postmodernists. You didn’t say anything about postmodernism. The closest you came was “especially the contemporary theorists”. None of the names named in the OP fall into that group. The bulk of your OP was dedicated to Spinoza, who is certainly not a contemporary theorist.
If you want to present a criticism of the “contemporary theorists” then go right ahead, but if that’s the discussion you’re after I don’t know why you didn’t write an OP about that instead of Spinoza. My response was in regard to the OP you actually wrote, not the one you now seem to think you should have written.
Another one here calling attention to that the original OP contained nothing about “postmodernists” but referred completely to “canonical” DWEM philosophers of the Western tradition. Pretty damn pointless to pit the canon for not being written to current standards.
OTOH of course the postmodernists, who should know better, are full of it, or of It or that which is called “it”… but in other breaking news, Atlantic Ocean determined to contain water. I was cheering and whooping it up when Sokal punk’d them at Social Text.
But it’s so haaaaaard! Why can’t we read something easy instead?
Actually, I just remembered that I have read at least one fairly easy “popular philosophy” book: Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. It is both for and about teenagers studying philosophy. I believe it’s been fairly successful. I’m sure it’s unusually successful for a Norwegian YA novel about philosophy!
I personally didn’t think Sophie’s World was all that great, but that’s because the frame story didn’t work for me. It felt like a knock-off of The Neverending Story. The philosophy lessons contained within the novel were good though, and clearly explained. My only criticism on that side would be that they don’t go into enough depth, but considering the target audience and the bredth of material covered this was probably unavoidable. It seemed like it would be a good introduction to Western philosophy for the layperson.
Ooops! :smack: Yeah, him. Thanks. One thing I did like about Sokal was his lament about the contemporary left abandoning reason whereas they used to be the champions of it.
“A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies”.
If Sokal is correct and people are actually claiming that objective reality is optional, some sort of social construct and a tool used to oppress people, it is amazing that such philosophers would get anyone to listen to them. If I’m unnderstanding Sokal’s complaint, it would seem that some philosophies approach being more of a practical joke than a serious study.
Regards
Testy
I think that this thread might lose coherence if you all start mixing the absurdity of much contemporary social “thought” with the obscurity of the great philosophers of the past, as though they were the same phenomenon.
Again I recommend Roger Scruton as a clear, often witty, chronicler of philosophy. He writes well, is non-technical, and makes philosophical problems seem important and interesting.
On further review I note that my point was already made by Lamia and JRDelirious. :smack:
Legendary bad academic writers like Butler and Bhabha are quite capable, when the chips are down, of turning a respectable English sentence. In fact they tend to reserve their best prose to reply to complaints about their bad academic writing (Butler’s New York Times op-ed on the subject; costs $2.95, but trust me, it’s clear, if silly). They write that way on purpose. They’re hiding something.
Humanities departments are trade unions, and trade unions exist for two reasons: to restrict the supply of their labor, and to increase the demand for it. Of course there is no ultimate demand for Bad Academic Writing, in the sense of actual readers. Yet there is ongoing ancillary demand, from Bad University
Presses and Bad Academic Quarterlies. They have quotas to meet and space to fill, while being generally exempt, thanks to generous endowments and still more generous taxpayer sponsorship, from the tiresome obligation to turn a profit. New and cogent thoughts on literature and philosophy will not float these subsidized outlets, not by a long shot. What is needed, and supplied, is a formula for generating an indefinite number of ways to say the same thing. Bad Academic Writing, like so many other bad things, is your tax dollars at work.
This being said, often the source of dense academic prose is that the writer doesn’t know what they intend to say. This, actually, is good bad writing, in that there is thinking going on. The same is true of many business memos - many hard to follow and not particularly coherent memos actually have very good business ideas behind them.
However, most bad writing from academia is the opposite - the writer knows exactly what they want to say, and is merely armoring it against all possible academic objections. The creakier the argument, the more armor plated it needs to be.
Economics departments can compete, pound for pound, with English departments in this regard.
Nor should you. If your lawyer is throwing Latinisms and other legal jargon your way when discussing your legal problems with you, you don’t have a very good lawyer on your side.
Part of our jobs as lawyers is to explain the relevant law to the client in a way that the client can easily understand and grasp. Effective legal counseling requires good communication with the client, and a lawyer that fails to do that is failing at one of the tasks he is hired for.
I didn’t mean to imply that the OP had started off against poststructuralist theorists, or that I agreed with him entirely simply because poststructuralist theorists do exist amongst philosophers and sociologists.
Someone mentioned those smug little bastards and I immediately went into Rant From Soapbox mode.
Did I mention that I don’t like them very much?
Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy” is clearly written. I think it shows that when some of these ideas are written in clear language, their absurdities and contradictions become more apparent.
Been there, done that. :rolleyes: My apologies to the dead white men that I cited in my opening post.
How do these things happen, you ask? Actually, I was on layover at JFK when I saw an old college mate who, during a drink or two at the bar, reminded me of an odious honors philosophy course we both took. After he left, I whipped out my notebook and pecked out my SDMB screed. That evening, I received an email from my niece, who posted her first D in an upper-level sociological theory course. Opened a raw nerve. Actually, I was going to open two threads, but decided economy is best and rolled everything into one–all to the applause of the teeming millions here in the, um, Pit.
That said, I stand by my intended harangue against the contemporary writers and the stylistic (if not substance) objections to the immortals. I stand by my Sagan assertions. Sorta.
Well, that’s certainly a more reasonable position than your starting point, but it does strike me as rather odd to criticize writers from 200 years ago for writing in the style of 200 years ago.
[hijack] They are? In what sense? What do you mean?
I don’t think of any university department as a union of any sort. Departments certainly they don’t work as collective bargaining units, they sure as hell don’t act as advocates for the people who work in them, and they don’t have any kind of grievance procedure. Yes, many academic departments at many institutions try to increase the demand for their work. Then again, so does the Coca-Cola corporation. I think you’d be hard-pressed to call Coca-Cola, Inc. a union. [/hijack]
Thanks for reminding us that the market is the perfect determiner of all things good. :dubious: If you really think “new and cogent thoughts on literature and philosophy” - or any honest full-bore intellectual content - will “turn a profit”, you are living in a fool’s paradise.
I say the commercial marketplace of ideas is set up to reward zippy, low-content pablum. You say the noncommercial marketplace of ideas is set up to encourage obfuscationist peddling of second-rate ideas. What if we’re both right?
Well, there are markets for both. On TV or at the local Cineplex, the “pablum” you’re talking about (although sometimes trashy stuff can still be fun), and then there’s the SDMB. Hah, they’ve got us all roped into paying $14.95/year for intelligent discussion and interesting, novel ideas. Of course among the SDMB, there are the rational and interesting debaters on each side, and then there are the DtC’s, the Reeders, the Duffers, and finally, the Just Thinks. Clear, meaningful writing will still find a market. Stupid ideas obscured by bad writing will still have to invent its own market.
am suspicious of academics who hide behind verbiage. There is no reason why ideas cannot be presented in a clear, concise for…which is why the physical sciences win out every time! True, quantum mechanics becomes very abstract, but this is because the concepts are so alien to the human mind.
Law is another problem. The lawyers seek to maintain this state of affairs, because the very obtuseness of the law protects their positions. Take common law-in massachusetts, the state statutes run to 46 volumes! Most of these laws were written hundreds of years ago…in an archaic form of english. Why can’t they be rewritten? Well, for starters, 99% of them are never enforced! (Ever see anyone convicted of uttering a curse?) And, truth be known, much of the lawyer’s power comes from his command of the legal mumbo-jumbo-and they ain’t about to give it up!
I think he is. “Until you stalk and overrun, you can’t devour anyone.” Seems pretty straightforward to me.
:::d&r:::
Fleet footed cannibals unite!