[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.

[beepbooptheory]

Wow yes indeed! That is surely a vastly different world than the one I am referring to 3 decades on, but either way I bet it was a very good time and place to be doing philosophy!

One thing that cuts through both the divide and the passed time here: it is still quite tough to write on Nietzsche outside of an intro class and get a good grade!