[denton-scratch]

Thing is, I'm a layman, and Sokal's paper reeks to me of bullshit. I'm neither a physicist nor a sociologist; but that pasaage about the "hegemonic Zermelo–Fraenkel framework", with its implication that the axiom of equality is somehow political, is pretty obvious nonsense. I don't hve to understand set theory to see that.

[beepbooptheory]

May I introduce you to Alain Badiou, a massive and important figure of contemporary philosophy? "Being and Event" is probably the most focused work around ZF theory stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou

[denton-scratch]

Thanks; never heard of him before. according to that wikipedia link, Scruton says:

"No proof is clearly stated or examined, and the jargon of set theory is waved like a magician's wand, to give authority to bursts of all but unintelligible metaphysics."

That seems to be exactly what Sokal was parodying.

I have very little time for what the French have been referring to as "philosophy" since roughly 1970. It's a sort of overproof bollocks.

[beepbooptheory]

Thats a pretty sweeping statement for a self-described layman. But either way, got it, have a nice day.

[denton-scratch]

"Layman", i.e. not a physycist or a sociologist. I did a philosophy degree, thankfully not involving any Foucault or Derrida.

[beepbooptheory]

Just an aside really, but when I hear comments like this I am always so grateful ending up with the professors I did, at the programs I was at, where effort was made to ignore or constructively address "the divide" of contemporary philosophy. I was probably a year into my MA before I learned how some might think it wrong, or silly to appreciate people like Cavell and Derrida, or Frege and Deleuze, etc. at the same time.

To me, the experience of talking with the true partisans of either the analytic/continental tradition is exhausting and at times absurd. Where else in academia do you have otherwise wonderful scholars being proud of never having read someone?

In my mind continental people are the worst offenders in this, but I guess your helping balance the scales here.

Thankfully, not everyone in the field is like this. Off the top of my head: Graham Priest and Paul Livingston are two guys doing good work to complicate the party lines here.

[denton-scratch]

I completed my Philosophy degree in London in 1981; the professors strongly favoured the analytic tradition. My papers were on Nietsche and Wittgenstein; I got poor marks. There was some teaching of existentialism (but not Nietche); but no deconstructionists or postmodernists. They wouldn't reach English universities for a few years.