Did Derrida and Postmodernism Destroy the West?
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- čas přidán 6. 05. 2024
- This article by Quillette got me thinking that it's important to defend Derrida against his liberal detractors. quillette.com/2024/05/07/how-... What do you think? Comment below! And be sure to check out millermanschool.substack.com and millermanschool.com for more political philosophy.
I'd love to see a general book recommendation/library video. My own reading list is huge at the moment but I'm always looking for more lol.
I follow your channel precisely for this - I do not politically align with you, not that that particularly matters beyond comment section trivialities and bad faith flame wars, but because I find your intellectual pursuits of a higher caliber than the standard liberal discourse. There is a difference between being critically read and critically un-read and I think this short video sets you apart in this and also from unthinking political opportunists in right media today. Thanks.
I went back to university as a post graduate, but my background was in technology. I went to a post graduate meeting once to discuss a paper, because other post graduates in the faculty were more on the social science side. The paper was by Jacques Derrida, and I was not impressed. I told the group I thought it was an unfocussed whinge and compared him to George Orwell, who tried to make his ideas clear. Later, because I like reading English literature, an English lecturer told me about an introductory book on English literature he recommends his students read. I read two chapters on the French Postmodernists, including Jacques Derrida, and I did not understand a word. The theory he built did not seem testable.
Short answer: no.
Postmodernism didn't bring the end of the West, the end of the West brought postmodernism.
Big difference.
that's an amazing point. Much to ponder there.
I would like a bit more elaboration on your thoughts around this. Please complete a 10 page paper on the topic for me by Thursday, Chicago style.
I also believe a declining societal order enables ideas like postmodernism to grow
@@Mishkola Read Oswald Spengler.
@@goonofhazard2203 No, ya shit, I want to hear your genuine thoughts. If you're doing nothing but vomiting up someone else's thoughts I'm going to be cross.
IMHO: The problem with reading Derrida is that he has nothing "positive" (whatever that would mean) to offer to Philosophy. At least Heidegger points to poetry as a way for philosophy to continue after Ontotheology. What, for Derrida, is after Logocentism? He has "no-thing" to say. Prophecy in expectation of a future, until then infinite foreplay?
Thank you for the fair treatment of Derrida. If only people could read before speaking.
To be fair that is easier said then done.
@@soulfuzz368 I read last year that Emerson and other American Transcendentalists rejected Kant without actually reading Kant's books. Casually dismissive speech in American academia seems to have a long pedigree.
@@scottmcloughlin4371 I mostly agree although you can’t read everything so some things must always be dismissed. The idea that what should be read is what is popular is an idea I am starting to sour on. It’s possible that bad philosophy can be influential, popular and even important but I don’t think I am qualified to make the distinction.
I cannot forgive Derrida for his subtle attacks on the Logos. I always considered him a minor thinker in spite of his ephemeral popularity at one time.
Its interesting that you had this prejudice to begin Derrida; most serious readers through the years used to question, if not complain, that Derrida did not write much explicitly about ethics or politics until the 90s. I’m not sure this is accurate, but it was an understandable concern for deconstruction generally and Derrida specifically. I’m glad that you agree that he is a thinker well worth our time, despite the difficulty of his writing and the word play. He was deeply critical of liberalism and liberal individualism in his own way, though in a manner different from both Marxists and conservatives.
You are a decent intelectual Millerman. I wasn't into Derrida for fun neither but You can and therefore should make a case for Derrida. And even if he was a full blown leftist, I do not think his work is therefore ideological in nature and thus we may not let it be cheaply strowmanned. The muffin cookbook guy "critique" doesn't amount even to that. It's below the dignity to be commented on. Thanks for your careful work. You are a decent fellow, which is something rather Unique these days. God bless You.
Antileftists or Mccarthys children , call them what you like, will all share this bias.
He was a bullshit grifter
This video reminds me of what a professor once told me. Don’t dismiss Machiavelli because of one line “The end justifies the means”. He wrote lots of books and there is lots of great things in his works. Including the Prince. This was in the early to mid 90s. He was stressing don’t reduce a philosopher to a single or few memes.
Look I need to add that Machiavelli never wrote that 'the end justifies the means' - that's a common error, and any decent introduction to Machiavelli will tell you that. Both some ancients and then the Jesuits came closer to maintaining that doctrine. For M., unjust means remain unjust (immoral) BUT a prince may have to choose them to maintain power. Such a choice, which is power politics ignores morality and cannot thereby produce its own justification.
Dugin's take on the 'usefulness' of aspects of post-modernism is very interesting. I'm going to read his essay again.
👍
For one he is against universalisms, in some aspects he simply agrees with actual postmodernists. Also, in my opinion at least, it is possible to see the usefulness of postmodernism as a destabilizing force, as a force that could create chaos. Chaos is good if you want to change the system, and acceptance of usefulness of chaos is a part of his worldview. An actually postmodern society would be fragmented, confused, there would be no truth, it would be open for change. Then it could go in a non-liberal direction or a liberal direction, one possible risk of such a strategy would be that the order such a society would desire could be realized in some form of an extreme liberal universalism.
Hey! Great video Mr. Millerman. I wanted to comment that the length of this video is really good. I like your long form videos as well, but I feel like they can be a lot to process as they are very dense in information. Shorter videos allow for an introduction of an idea, and the initiation of a thought process that is easy to parse and carry through out the day.
Your reasoned and balanced approach did not tingle my rage addiction at all. Thinking requires much more effort than reacting.
Also operating with pure attention as a possibility to deal with the reactive mind .
so well put!!!
😂
Hi Michael, Thank you once again for your valuable contributions. Alexander Dugin mentions three logos: Apollo, Dionysus, and Sibyl. Have you made a video covering this topic?
I have a course on it at MillermanSchool.com (Dugin's noomakhia) but I don't believe I've covered it much on this channel. Maybe in my recent dugin-tucker video I brought it up. Good topic.
I was lucky 🍀 enough to meet Professor Derrida shortly before he died at the university of York
Michael - I'm big fan, for quote a while now. It's refreshing to see you (or anyone) give Derrida his due. The literacy of Derrida is generally piss poor and it would be great to see more breakdowns of his work. Calling Derrida a "leftist" at all, while true in some cases, misses the point of Derrida entirely. It's a pedestrian take. Love your work, cover more Derrida if you can.
It took me awhile to understand him (especially because I read him in English where a lot of the French wordplay doesn’t translate), but when I did I greatly *enjoyed* Derrida. Lack of serious engagement with texts is a serious problem of our age, and I believe we can *always* learn *something* by engaging with texts that don’t align with our worldview and/or that we don’t agree with.
I mostly agree although there is a strange thing where in the west we are almost without exception, more willing to engage with texts with orientation in one specific direction.
@@soulfuzz368 As far as our institutions go, I totally agree. There is a real lack of open-mindedness and engagement with diverse texts in academia for example.
Derrick was a degenerate grifter
Very inspiring Michael. You have a great attitude, a winning attitude. You have inspired me to go back to your book and try to figure out what Heidegger is all about.
Yes, I have read Derrida mostly decades ago, and he is valuable in his own way. Yet he’s comparable to a movie critic-only on philosophy. You read him, and you’re left with only pronouncements about language that slip and slide into darkness. One can “apply” Derrida. One cannot live inside his philosophy.
Political parties should not be able to define a man. Neither should a single philosophy. If one can’t disagree with someone it means they are not free.
Well-articulated video. There is an aphorism by Nicolas Gomez-Davila that the unfolding of history is a series of misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the ideas of philosophers. It also speaks to the protean nature of ideas. Many are still trappee in this notion of the Idea as Form and misunderstand the nature of Form, interpretting it as something static. Thank you again.
Good video, I enjoy hearing your thoughts. I'm going to investigate more. Is it possible that both perspectives are correct? - Perhaps a presumably unintended consequence of post-modernism has been a significant destruction to the western world (Pluckrose - and yes, I read that book too, and got a lot out of it), and when analyzed correctly or from a higher perspective there could also be a significant benefit? If so, I'd guess you'd agree that it's important to understand both the potential benefits and harms.
Rhetorical question, but looking forward to diving deeper.
Thanks for all the great content Michael!
Sorry, but nobody reads these philosophers. So whats the indirect mechanism of influence? Academia => Media => ordinary person?
I came to Millerman via the Tucker-Dugin interview. (I had hit on M3 before thru his reading of The Straussian Moment and maybe via Auron Macintyre.) I will be spending time here regularly.
I gonna say something that may seem absurd but have any of these great thinkers pondered the vast treasury of Buddhist thought? The significance (or rejection) of the psychedelic experience? When i hear ideas like dasein and beingness and such I think of suchness/thusness or sunyata/emptiness. Things that might possibly require a shift in consciousness to fully standunder. But I digress. Thank you, M3 for sharing your knowledge and time.
Thank you for your video, Derrida is often very misunderstood and like you said should read outside this " leftist" agenda. Also I think Nietzsche is very very important what comes to Heidegger and " other postmodernist", glad you mentioned Nietzsche too, although Nietzsche is a " modern" thinker and still thinks inside humanist and metapsychical framework, but like Heidegger said Nietzsche is the thinker who needs to overcome in modern times, and I think he is right, Nietzches concept of the overman.
"Highest Thinkers
lowest followers"
TRUE!!
Another name for process philosophy is "constructive postmodernism." I wonder if Heidegger, with his interest in pre-Socratic ontology, wrote about process philosophy. Have you read about the Japanese reception of Heidegger? The Kyoto School sees a bridge between Zen and Heidegger. Evola wrote a book on Buddhism and he had a great respect for Zen. In Ride the Tiger he engages with existentialism, including Heidegger. It seems to me that the existentialist project is the philosophical equivalent to the great work/magnus opus in alchemy/Hermeticism. Trying to complete the project without a proper metaphysics is like trying to read an alchemical book without knowing what the symbols mean (Evola's Hermetic Tradition).
Heidegger wasn't an existentialist.
Totalmente de acuerdo, solía seguir a un comunicador político aquí en Chile que hablaba de derrida en esos términos, en una ocasión le hice un comentario respecto a la hermenéutica en los textos y derrida, él afirmó que no tenía idea de lo que hablaba por "defender" a derrida que justamente había contribuido a la destrucción de occidente y me dijo "deberías informarte más" así que lo hice, y ante mi se abrió un mundo de posibilidades con Heidegger y con Derrida. Y no soy precisamente un izquierdista liberal posmoderno.
To figure out what my high schooler was babbling about with Continental Philosophy and the Frankfurt school, I went old school pulling up college lectures from the late 80s. Most were terrible except for Bryan McGee of the BBC but even he fell short of great in-depth explanations such as your YT channel.
i know what you've said about running along with 1 thought, but 1 sentence from nietzsche's "beyond good and evil" keeps blinking in my mind while watching this. to paraphrase it - every great philosophy consisted of the confession of its originator. what do we do with a confession? mock? self indulge?
Praise to Derrida! I love Derrida's work. One doesn't have to agree with everything he wrote in order to acknowledge that deconstruction is self evident.
Very interesting video. I have never read Derrida but this has made me interested in him.
I’d love to hear you on Academic Agent’s youtube channel.
Thank you for defending names of philosophers who question values that lay at foundation of Modern Western. There is a constant nagging sensation that the manner of our very being is faulty. It helps to have insight on where we are wrong.
Have you read The philosophy of Derrida by Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh? Short, concise book written from a conservative perspective but takes Derrida very seriously. Made Derrida more intelligible to me and saved me from this stupid liberal-centrist characterization of "postmodernism" that you talked about in this video.
Ouch 😣
Thanks for this, sounds like something for me
THANK you for this. I get so annoyed when people sum up leftist writings to "word salad" when most of it is not. I don't like most of it either, but the words mean VERY specific things and you won't be able to combat the ideas expressed if you choose not to understand them.
Deleuze was a process philosopher. He picks up Heraclitus (the Lao-Tzu of the West) and puts him in the 20th century. Like Nietzsche, Deleuze believes Plato ruined Western metaphysics by creating a substance-based ontology. Instead of reality being constant flux, Plato says reality is created by Eternal Forms. Taoism is not just a philosophy. It also has a practical component to it. Lao-Tzu says to follow the Dao or wu-wei. Nietzsche framed it in terms of beyond good and evil (duality). Now you see the theme of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. The Taoist path is neidan (inner alchemy). In alchemy, you have to produce the philosopher's stone. In Christian terms, you need to find a fruit from the Tree of Life. Wu-wei is transcendence through immanence. Jesus tells Nicodemus he needs to be born again. In process philosophy, reality is described as panentheistic. God is in the world and the world is in God. THE BODY WITHOUT ORGANS. This solves scientific problems like "How did consciousness arise from matter?" If you want to see Deleuzian metaphysics through the world religions, read Evola's Yoga of Power, Ride the Tiger, and Eros and the Mysteries of Love. Deleuze is a modern day magus.
What's up with this name dropping?
Very good video, thank you
Please make an episode about Ken Wilbers "Boomeritis"
You are a decent philosopher, Millerman, and a decent man, honorable. All the best to you. So is Lindsey, but over the top in his endless genealogy of Woke.
So we have to study a guy who is absolute in his rejection of absolutes and is definitive in his relativistic diagnosis of things,it's worth giving time to,in deed lol...
Подписался на вас, потому что у вас очень хорошо получается объяснить мне суть, не попадая под цензуру ИИ☺. Мне нравится ваш интеллект.
Thanks for this.
Derrida is in hell, no question
excellent. Derrida is a challenge by I believe his late work demands a return to orthodox thinking and he just discovered it too late to change course.
Wow! This is the funniest cat video I've ever seen. ;-)
Respect!!
No, it was Napoleon when he got the idea in his head that Christ haters could be integrated.
The attempt to reduce thinkers to political positions, usually ones defined by somebody other than the thinkers, is cancerous and one of the reasons that I started to dislike academia. To my sorrow, I found that it is even more common outside academia.
I think academia is one of the only places that you will find people ignoring or trying to remain neutral on political ideas when considering an individuals philosophy. It is probably impossible to do this completely but there is usually an effort. I think the desire to want to know what peoples motivations and reasons for writing is human nature and putting them in categories is how we conceptualize these motivations. It takes education in order to avoid this natural tendency. Personally I am a very serious reductionist because I think motivations are the most important aspect when considering a philosophy and we shouldn’t ever believe someone when they tell you what their motivations are.
@@soulfuzz368well there is an assumption that the person's politics are the motives. There is an assumption that politics are primary for some reason.
@@user-sz8lp2tj5x politics IS primary. I don’t mean politics in the sense of political party or in a democratic sense, I mean it in the true sense of the word as power relations between different groups of people. How one thinks power, status and resources should be organized in society will inform everything a serious thinker posits to the world.
@@soulfuzz368why? You think it is inconceivable that a person could not have an overriding interest in this? This assumes some kind of universal interest in power relations. (It also assumes that the primary power relations are those between people.)
@@user-sz8lp2tj5x yes it is inconceivable. Not all power relations are between people though, some are between political structures, institutions and people, both real and hypothetical.
It’s possible we are talking past each other here and you have something in mind that I am missing? Why don’t you try and give me an example of an intellectual, thinker or otherwise that you believe works outside of the framework I am describing here.
anyone counted how many times the word *serious* has been said ???
Some unserious people need to be reminded, and repetition can be an effective reminder.
@@millerman ya, serious-ly !!!!!
seriously now, given the fact that parallel universes do exist, why wouldn't anyone deny that at least subliminally we exist and act with prime purpose the parallel universality?
The issue is that these second or third or fourth tier followers seem to be the people we end up engaging with in public forums. They have shaved enough of the difficult material off the top to render the themes accessible to the general public, and the pubic resonates with this 4th tier version.
As I get further away from academic philosophy, I have to come to realize that the 4th tier understanding is usually the most accurate.
@@shanonsnyder9450 In hegelian terms it is its TRUTH
🔥
Individualism led to all of this, but more so, Michael millerman, look into Seraphim rose.
This began with the west absorbing Aristotle and the peripatetic axiom leading to Aquinas.
Any specific works you are referring to?
@@FEiSTYFEVER seraphim rose, jay dyer analyzing natural theology, Gregory palamas, David Hume as taking empiricism to the extreme.
Contrast Eastern Orthodox theology to Roman Catholicism.
What did Derrida say that was worth considering?
In a simple way Derrida asked us to question some absolute truths because both absolute truths and logic have histories, and could change through time. As well to question when propositions seemed too black and white or either/or. This is of course a very simplified take of some of the basics of his thought.
It stinks of Critical Theory subversion. He wasn't in it for the pursuit of truth or for the love of truth, quite the opposite. Him and his acolytes wanted to burn it down and rule over the ashes.
@@HANECart1960 So nonsense then?
@@acropolisnow9466 If you have an unwarranted prejudice against certain writers that's your loss and it's your loss through your own ignorance. I myself have read and been inspired and enlightened by reading Derrida. If you want to led by the nose by people who are in opposition to Derrida's thought by all means do so, and stay in your safe but shallow bubble. But read his work. If you get nothing from it move on to thinkers that might inspire you as Derrida did me. Work's of philosophy are simply tools that we can either use or not. If you can't use them there is no use to making ignorant remarks. It only reveals you as the fool you are.
@@HANECart1960 Isn't that an absolute truth and too white of a request?That's the problem with relativism everything is relative and has to be questioned,except relativism.
Yes, yes it did. I thought that was fairly obvious.
Academics who described what we all have come to know as 'post modernism' are to blame for post modernism?
What the ulrick beck am i smoking.
You have to go farther back then post modernism
The first generation of French Postmodernist have to be read in the context of French intellectual culture that is the abstract world of the literary character of Monsieur Teste. This is theory only. Only an Anglo-Saxon would be so banal as to APPLY this in the world!
TLDW: Yes.
Thinkers? Are not people that regurgitate what they have learned from reading other peoples thinking. They are just tape recorded thinkers.
The thinking part comes upon reflection. You're constantly engaging with an author when you read a text and work through the arguments presented.
Lol yeah, some people fall into that trap for sure. But it’s also impossible to live in a complete thought-bubble thinking that you’re gonna reinvent every wheel 😅
Reflecting on other’s thoughts is keeping you too tied up to enable your own thinking to happen.
Wheel don’t need reinventing that’s my point. Why read about everything ever written about wheels when you should be wrestling with current pressing questions and issues.
@@vivianoosthuizen8990 tbh, I generally agree…. I’ve just been interested in the history of human thought recently because it’s surprising how much stuff was already thought of 2000+ years ago!..
Also, if you’re going to have a convincing argument of your own, you need to test it against other people, and one way to do that would be to read their arguments.
Yes.
👀
You think Hiedeger was greater than Neitzche?
It all started with Marx
"Liberal Left" that is a Oxymoron.
Or with words Lenin.
“The liberal bourgeoisie in general, and the liberal-bourgeois intelligentsia in particular, cannot but strive for liberty and legality, since without these the domination of the bourgeoisie is incomplete, is neither undivided nor guaranteed. But the bourgeoisie is more afraid of the movement of the masses than of reaction. Hence the striking, incredible weakness of the liberals in politics, their absolute impotence. Hence the endless series of equivocations, falsehoods, hypocrisies and cowardly evasions in the entire policy of the liberals, who have to play at democracy to win the support of the masses but at the same time are deeply anti-democratic, deeply hostile to the movement of the masses, to their initiative, their way of “storming heaven”, as Marx once described one of the mass movements in Europe in the last century.” - V.I. Lenin, “Two Utopias”
Because everyone on the left is a Leninist ?
Amazing analysis. But the greatest philosopher of recent centuries is Wittgenstein. He is the deconstructionalist without the leftism. Heidegger held not a candle to that man. Hegelianism essentially diverged into Marxism/Heideggerism/Derridaism/Gadamerism (the last is amazing, look him up) vs. Nietzcheism/Russellism/Wittgensteinism/Wallaceism, both of which movements hold important value for our society today, but neither of which is fully understood by our present society. TLDR; Derrida held not a candle to Wittgenstein. (Also on Dugin, he’s really more related to Himmler than to Heidegger, as you acknowledged, please get informed on Russian philosophy in the 21st century which diverges equally from Dugin as Wittgenstein does from Derrida.)
Nietzschean/Russellian? Wha?
@@phillipvillani9061 keep reading/listening, it will come together one day
@@abrahamcollier Russell's logical atomism and Nietzsche's anti-rationalist vitalism? They might come together one day, or then again they might not, or you could just open up The History of Western Philosohy and read what Russell actually has to say about Nietzsche
What's so great about Wittgenstein? His endless boring musings about language? He is trash.
First time through university I majored in philosophy because I love the world of ideas. Second time for a doctorate in history with an emphasis on 19th c. reform and reformers. I simply found the French and German post-modernists paralyzingly boring and in a way pretentious. How can you take a person seriously whose end conclusion is that his own observations and ideas have no relevance beyond his own pie-hole ? Or ... why pay attention to someone who believes the only purpose of criticism is to destroy and overturn the sum total of what led them to their own ideology? This is just solipsistic nonsense ... nervy navel gazing with a vicious undertone, of no service to anyone but themselves. Prove me wrong. 🤣😂🤣 BTW, I really admire the answer of @goonofhazard2203. I believe she/he has "it."
Foucault was the best of that bunch. You can really learn something from his historical writings; and some of his theoretical concepts are still relevant today.
@@hellucination9905 appreciate your comment. Tnx
This wasn't convincing. I studied the French Intellectuals and arrived to the same conclusion that Chomsky did. Moreover, Continental Philosophy has been a failure, and it crosses over to mysticism in a lot of areas. I can't take it seriously anymore.
The French? No. It's another group.
Amusingly, in my experience, Marxists often view postmodernism as a reactionary, conservative ideology. While right wingers view it as leftist. Such is the myopia of a worldview in which there are only two sides.
Marxists regard anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their flavor of Marxism as reactionary.
What? 1. When was the West destroyed? I missed that memo. 2. No. The people (like me) who love Derrida is like 5 people. 3. Philosopher-Linguists describe things that are already going on. They don't dictate.
1. The precarity of the West's situation, and the prevalence of civilizational rot is clear to see. The rot's connection to postmodernism is also clear.
2. Derrida is one of the most influential philosophers, possibly the very most influential philosopher since WW2, and postmodernism has had a massive impact on everything from entertainment criticism to pedagogy to international relations.
3. Ever since Marx explicitly upturned that doctrine, every philosopher, even non-Marxians, has been judged on that framework, and has been unable to escape it, even if they attempted to - which I am not convinced that Derrida did.
@@_archimedes Guardsman Joe Pretends He Doesn't Know About Slaanesh
I'm not sure what the overall position is here. Michael Millerman seems to arguing than Derrida is deep and profound. Thus, any negative (therefore superficial) takes on Derrida are bound to be wrong. For example, Millerman says that Derrida never wrote "the silly statement that '2 + 2 = 4 is a result of white supremacism'" (or words to that effect). Of course he didn't! That's the point. Such a position, however, can be *derived* what what Derrida did write. But since Derrida never expressed himself simply, then this is still always up for debate.... How does the *Derrida-was-not-a-Leftist* idea fit with Derrida's "political turn" in his later life (in the 1990s), and when he wrote, much more simply, about Marx, revolution and capitalism? Doesn't that hint at the fact that poststructuralism was indeed a kind of *philosophical leftism*?.... Again I simply don't accept the overall position in this video: all negative accounts of Derrida are false because they don't appreciate his deepness and profundity. Perhaps if Derrida had written his prose in a clearer way, then more debates would be about his positions and arguments, rather than about "what he really meant". (Hence, the fixation on "readings".)... I did note that this video doesn't tackle a single one of Derrida's positions/ideas, except to say that he didn't believe that basic arithmetic is "white supremacist".
No, it has not YET, but it is vary close
Camus over Heidegger tbh
You are advocating a more nuanced and informed engagement with philosophy and philosophers regardless of political bias etc. - so, Good Luck ! ...and yet you call Derrida and even Foucault 'postmodern' philosophers. For sake of argument let's accept your stipulation that both were 'leftist', but there could be a great deal of discussion as to exactly what form of 'leftist/m' they were or, supported - certainly not the same and neither narrowly Marxist or, broadly Socialist.
Both Derrida and Foucault's intellectual prominence coincided with (mostly French) Structuralism and Post-Structuralism - but really, were they 'postmodern philosophers'? Seems awfully close to the meaningless jargon/shorthand caricature you are attributing to the 'non-serious commentators' you are concerned to hive off from your discourse.
I understand that polemic has time and attention constraints, but do you really intend to express the traits you are deploring in others?
9
L
well,we need to be more specific;it's vital to remember that these above mentioned French "intellectuals" were all jewish marxists.