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Agree on everything except Zizek. He's an entertaining provocateur, but there's no way he's at the level of Hegel and Kant. His interviews in the British news
by cmpxchg 9y ago
Agree on everything except Zizek. He's an entertaining provocateur, but there's no way he's at the level of Hegel and Kant. His interviews in the British news media are hilarious though.
Hofstadter's book is brilliant, funny, delightful - a real treasure.
- orthoganol 9y agoI'll throw a line to Zizek. In his serious works, he does set out a systematic ontology of reality. I don't fully understand it, if there is even something to fully understand, but along the way he without doubt makes you think, and gives relatively accessible interpretations of a ton of other thinkers. He's not a major philosopher like Kant, but he is much more than a charlatan or provocateur. To his credit, I probably wouldn't have picked up his serious work if his antics hadn't first put him on my radar many years ago.
- vippy 9y agoI appreciate Zizek's cleverness. He demonstrates the kinds of higher-order thought that are possible via application of the dialectical method (though one has to be careful; his analysis of violence could lead the unsuspecting thinker down some interesting paths!) When I said "dense" before, I think I was looking for something closer in meaning to, "Zizek is a Hegelian reductionist, beware." I also appreciate Ayn Rand's committed exploration of rational egoism, also reductionist, though I admit I have not yet been impressed by its implementation.