[bananamerica]

Derrida is a lot closer to literature than it is to philosophy, including Nietzsche. He’s a charlatan that uses cryptic language to make his writing seem serious and profound. Not unlike Jacques Lacan and Aleister Crowley.

[masswerk]

Lacan is actually surprisingly rigorous or, at least, methodical. It's just, if you attempt to talk about what preconditions language and language like structures using language, you necessarily enter a metadiscourse. (Having read Lacan in philosophy was actually of help to me to come up with some algorithms as a programmer.)

[bananamerica]

If Lacan could be methodical (and I don't think he did), it would be much in the same way psychotics can be methodical.

> you necessarily enter a metadiscourse

It's quite possible for metadiscourse to be also intelligible. No reason to write like a lunatic.

[masswerk]

I think, much of the reception of Lacan is specific to the language, language as in translation. E.g., mind that the early US reception is somewhat unfortunate due to the translation. On the other hand, the German edition tends to be a bit pompous, probably in order to establish the text in the context of the German academic discourse of the time. (Especially the Ecrits are about unreadable at times.) The Seminars, however, are, at least in the original, colloquial, slowly spoken, trying to find appropriate words for where there are none. And he's developing a methodology of his own, for sure. He even tried to express them conclusively in mathematical formulars and diagrams ("mathemes" – yes, we may have to put an emphasis on "tried"). If you have a look at Seminar II (Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychoanalyse, 1954-1955), you even may observe that he entertained relationship with the cybernetic community, there are also traits of Rosenblut, contemporary mathematics… And, not to the least, some of Lacan's concepts seem to have shown up in FMRI findings of the last years.

Edit: If we entertain for a moment Marx's thought of history being the natural history of mankind, we may assume that this natural history sediments into technological artifacts, for short, technology, machines. If we also assume some value for the concept of the moi, we may conclude that we put some of a resemblance to our own into these machines. There's a mutual inheritance in the description. And machines, which are are also kind of sediments of algorithms or symbolic forms in their own, adhere – at least to some degree – to the same preconditions. (This, BTW, is a great way of looking at 2001, A Space Odyssey.) There's something to be learned from exploring either of them. However, we may have to find appropriate methodology for each of them, according to the specific scope. Since the venture of describing the preconditions of the human psyche equals the endeavor of describing a scope from within this very scope, we also encounter Boges' paradox of the map at 1:1 scale, which doesn't do for a description. What to do about it? Necessarily, we'd have to resort to some analogies, but, at the same time, we'd have to invalidate them, in order to not fall prey to ontology. What's left? Probably a system which is built more on resonance than on conclusive description, entertained by the mutual relations and suspense of the various concepts, which, at the same time, provides proper meaning to these concepts. Some sort of a bootstrapping process. We try to talk about meaning and its constraints by the very process of making meaning. Which, BTW, is totally conclusive with post-structuralist epistemology, as long it is internally conclusive. (Mind that this is for the most in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the linguistic turn. – And it's a generation of French academics who were, at least to some extent, formed by the confrontation with Hegel and Heidegger, and by the example of Lévi-Strauss.)

[bananamerica]

I've read different translations, I've have been part of a prestigious Lacanian psychoanalytic society that's a direct descendant of his original - physical - school in France. At its best Lacan's works is an interesting form of literature, at it's worse it's indistinguishable from pseudo-science and charlatanism. His followers are basically mystics and cultists.

If you read Aleister Crowley you will get to the same point: "this is so incomprehensible that it must have meaning. And after years of decyphering, there it is, actual meaning!".

Human beings are genetically formed to see patterns. If I generated a list of grammatically correct phrases combining random words, people would find meaning there too.

[masswerk]

I'd say, if it makes sense as a system and you can make sense by it and in it, it must be a system, at least. If we may further make predictions, which prove to hold (compare the FMRI findings mentioned above), and/or add explanation to what was previously unexplained, there may be even some value to it. :-)

[bananamerica]

Supposing that a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable knowledge, and if you're willing to concede that Lacan is/was just as good as a random word generator, then YES, Lacanian psychoanalysis is a valuable epistemological framework.

But

> a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable knowledge

Is obviously valse!

[thebooktocome]

> He’s a charlatan that uses cryptic language to make his writing seem serious and profound.

A common criticism, to be sure; but not one with much evidence behind it. For instance, here's a good review of one of his better books, _The Politics of Friendship_: https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/what-jacques-der...

> It’s taken me years to read “The Politics of Friendship.” As I’ve inched my way through it, lines here and there have sent me to Derrida’s other writings, or have spurred my mind to chase random memories. I fix on the parts that sing, and I try to catch the gist of the parts that are too complicated for me. The book’s main appeal is the opportunity it provides to follow along as someone grapples with an ephemeral part of human experience. Doing so has come to feel more and more poignant as I have made my slow progress. At times, it seems as though Derrida is describing a bygone way of being, one racked with less anxiety about the bonds that tie us together. In an era of social media and fluid, proliferating channels of communication and exchange, the idea of friendship seems almost quaint, and possibly imperiled. In the face of abundant, tenuous connections, the instinct to sort people according to a more rigid logic than that of mere friendship seems greater than ever.

That doesn't sound like a charlatan. It sounds like a difficult author that few people have the patience or incentive to engage with -- like Heidegger or Wittgenstein, who somehow eschew the "charlatan" label while being much more technically demanding.

[Erik816]

If your prose is obtuse enough in just the right way, you can come off as profound and let people read all kinds of things into your words that are not really there.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

This is like saying ''if you use enough math symbols, you can come off as profound and let people think you are proving things which arent really proving". Which is of course ridiculous, just like your premise is.

I've noticed that lots of people, and especially those with a background in STEM, seem to have lots of difficulty with any works written for specialists in humanities disciplines, preferring to pretend like the writing is the problem, not their lack of reading skills (because being able to read and interpret and understand specialist works is a skill above being able to read words) and knowledge of the discipline. On the other hand, when people go ''i cant read this math book meant for grad students, this book is bad'', they go ''well yes, its because you lack the expected knowledge that the math builds on''. But they do expect to be able to pick up books written by philosophers for philosophers without having to understand everything the book is in dialogue with.

[bananamerica]

Just to give you some info: I have a mater's in literature and a bachelor's degree in film. I am well-versed in humanities and have a knack for it. I'm not even that good at math and technical stuff. Still think Derrida is a charlatan.

[mikdman]

this still comes off as somewhat uninformed. just for comparison's sake i recommend trying to read Hegel, who is one of the more celebrated philosophers yet one regarded as one of the worst writers. one of the things that Hegel argues is that to understand a philosophy you must understand the philosophy that come before it meaning that individuals who commit to studying philosophy are better equipped to understanding.

you finding Derrida cryptic(which can describe much of the post modern french) is understandable, but calling him a charlatan makes little sense, you at that point would be calling much of the discipline a charlatan discipline. though in the contemporary his philosophies are frequently cited to be argued against, his concepts such as deconstruction of philosophy brought much to the table.

congratulations on your accolades but they don't really seem like rigorous studies to help you understand academic philosophy.

[bananamerica]

I appreciate your generosity, but my previous experience in humanities don't come even close to being "accolades.

You're entirely right in thinking I have no real academic credentials in philosophy. I just wanted to point out where I was coming from since most people on Hacker News have a STEM background and you might have been making that assumption about me.

So I thought this information might be relevant for your argument. It turns out it is not, which is totally fine.