I'm a PhD candidate who actually understands Hegel and has a grasp the broad history/development of left wing thought from Rousseau to Zizek. I'm sick today and remembered this place existed. If you are trying to get a better handle on theory of any kind and have questions on how to go about understanding something, go ahead. I imagine this makes me sound like an ass, but I promise that I'm being totally sincere
Why is my left nut slightly bigger than my right one? What‘s Zizek‘s take on this?
>>2548710This is actually a really fun one to think about. I imagine he'd talk about the necessary imbalance or unequal nature of the pair: it is not that they are precisely identical, the balls, but are nonetheless joined together as though they were the same in the signifier. That one ball must stand out from the other, yet must depend upon it for its own identity, is a cut and dry dialectical case study.
is sorel a leftist
1. If Hegelian dialectics doesn't function as that simplified three-stage model, how does it actually work?
2. Does reality itself operate in a dialectical manner, or is it merely a tool we use to try to interpret a world that moves in some other way?
3. Is dialectics itself subject to dialectical changes over time?
>>2548759sorry for any delay, again I've been sick.
>1. If Hegelian dialectics doesn't function as that simplified three-stage model, how does it actually work?This common misunderstanding (I'm assuming you mean the conflation of Dialectics with the "Thesis->Antithesis->Synthesis" model, which is from Fichte and does not appear in Hegel) actually, at this point, needs its own dedicated history book.
The most basic short-hand way to understand dialectics is to understand it as a continuous, deepening contradiction; to think dialectically is to think contradiction itself. In a bizarre twist of history, Christoph Waltz actually provided an extremely concise explanation of it (pic related). It is not a question of "how does it work" than it is a description of what it is that you, as a subject, are already necessarily doing and thinking.
>2. Does reality itself operate in a dialectical manner, or is it merely a tool we use to try to interpret a world that moves in some other way?This is the Kantian question. For Hegel, it is necessarily the former inasmuch as reality is not graspable separate from subjectivity itself; i.e. subjectivity is itself which constitutes reality (or, Substance, which he is taking from Spinoza), which, in turn, cannot be grasped without a subject to grasp it. The necessary co-constitution of reality by its observer, and the observation by the observed, is at the heart of dialectics. To try and think outside of this, for Hegel, is an absurdity–which is to say that it is literally impossible to accurately think. I myself am pretty convinced by Hegel on this because for him human subjectivity is not definitive; the door is open for other subjectivity (although, for us, being human beings, we will necessarily never have access to that kind of being here).
>3. Is dialectics itself subject to dialectical changes over time?My personal feeling is yes. Walter Benjamin, who basically didn't even read much Hegel, was attempting to articulate exactly this in the Arcades Project
>>2548740the more important question is to ask yourself what's at stake by asking this
>>2548827im just curious. answer the question or you are a HACK
>>2548855I don't mean to be flippant about it, it's really just a question of what one thinks "left" meaningfully signifies or not. For me? I would have a difficult time imagining Sorel to be a leftist since his philosophy necessarily involves the forced unfreedom of others in a systematized, structural way; it's not that he even seems to believe in the necessity of, say, a temporary period of revolution or violence prior to any future utopian sustainable condition of mutual freedom, but rather one in which subservience to myth, and the legitimate continued use of violence, are necessary. But again, I don't think the question itself is really that meaningful.
>>2548861its not meaningful, I was just curious what your answer would be. thank you for responding
>>2548707Why is zizek considered a leftist when he didnt suporrt socialist yugoslavia and joined a libertarian capitalist party as soon as it collapsed?
>>2548707How do you feel about this map of the Science of Logic on Github?
https://autio.github.io/projects/scienceoflogic/ I have to finish up an essay today, so I might be late in responding to future questions. I'll do the tripfag thing for a bit to make things easier. But I'm happy to help: academia is bullshit these days, and the breadtuber or whatever world doesn't make any of this stuff any easier to comprehend.
>>2548881I need to revisit Difference & Repetition, so I don't want to overstate any takes about the man. I will say that his work–particularly with Guattari–needs to be thoroughly contextualized within the postwar French moment. People who act as though his work can be easily transposed onto the contemporary scene really deeply misunderstand him. This user's take, however, seems completely, deeply accurate to me–although it's worth noting that Deleuze himself likely would have disagreed with it himself (to say nothing of Foucault).
>>2548889I actually cannot help you with the diagram–I've never been a visual thinker, so I've always found that these kinds of diagrams mystify more than clarify the topic. What I will say is that the diagram, in the first place, assumes too much of a stabilization of movement, which is to say it appears, retroactively of course, teleological, which dialectics in the first place does not allow for and indeed completely negates.
The second quote is not entirely inaccurate: the Bolshevik/Soviet tradition of Dialectical Materialism, particularly from Stalin and Trotsky onwards, was not at all very well versed in Hegel or proper dialectical thought; the tradition of Lukacs (Frankfurt School and onwards) dealt far less with this burden, but they were essentially also pompous assholes who refused to explain themselves like normal people (you can read Martin Jay's "The Dialectical Imagination" to confirm this for yourself, and to be clear: I think extremely highly of Adorno).
>Is it correct to say that just because something is " amoving contradiction" doesn't mean it will be short lived? Contradictions can be stable over long periods of time, like orbits, right?This is a very interesting question. I would hasten to say it depends. Since the notion of a contradiction depends upon the grasping of it by the subject itself, there is no definite or necessary timeline for how long or short such a grasping may take or extend itself for. Hegel's dialectics is entirely historical and non-teleological, so there's no rule to this. Since all grasping of thought is necessarily retroactive (or what Freud called "Nachträglichkeit"), the relative "stability" of a situation can only ever be grasped after that situation has concluded. Otherwise, it would not be capable of being grasped in the first place–one would be too within the moment to articulate it (alienation for Hegel is the necessary condition to grasp all thought).
>>2548901Again, like in my response to the Sorel question, it's really a question of what one thinks is at stake by identifying Zizek with the signifier of "The Left" or vice-versa. As for the guy himself, one has to appreciate what was going on in Yugoslavia and its collapse to make sense of his actions. Like he said in an interview with Todd McGowan, capitalist money is an unfreedom, but it is an unfreedom that the Socialist subject was not free to freely decline.
>>2548909I like him. He helped me a lot to understand the "Force & Understanding" section of the Phenomenology.
>>2548915See my above comment: I don't particularly find diagrams all that useful to understanding these concepts. One has to go through the entire process of misunderstanding in order to understand—which is to say, there's unfortunately no real replacement to really sitting down and reading it for oneself. That's not to discourage using secondary literature as much as possible though! I think Todd McGowan & Ryan Engley's podcast "Why Theory" remains the most accessible and easiest entryway into dialectical thinking
What authors post-Lenin do you recommend on Marxist/Marxian IR?
So do you cum when you mentally masturbate?
>>2548901because western 'leftism' is mostly captured by trotskyist anti-communists, those few leftist orgs that were not hostile to the USSR being stamped out (mccarthyism, etc.)
>>2548943Venezuela is trotskyite though
>>2548933Why does dialectics not allow teleology? Why does dialectics completely negate teleology?
Would you consider Marx a Hegelian? And an somewhat odd question just because I'm curious: What do you think about Fukuyama (the nothing ever happens guy), is this dude actually relevant in academia?
>>2548936My main focus is on sociology and culture, so I'm not the person to ask this unfortunately. I think you would do well to become more familiar with Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein though, even if the latter isn't really "Marxist". You shouldn't limit yourself to categories and traditions just because you wish to stay ethical and, well, in reality. If you're a thorough and careful enough reader, you will be able to pick up any analysis and gain meaning, perspectives, and information from it.
>>2548950As I hinted at earlier, dialectical thinking is by necessity a retroactive activity. It proposes that something can only be grasped once it has been alienated enough from immediate thought and experience that it could be identified as being separate from ourselves. Another way of saying this is that in order to identify something, that thing must in the first place stand out and be separate from its environment or situation; this appearance of separation or alienation however should not be misinterpreted as a really existing separation, it's really instead our own recognition of this separation. Now, what does teleology have to do with this? We will *always* be tempted to say that the recognition of this false separation or alienation was inevitable, but this is not at all the case. This is why Hegel's system of thought (and Marx's by extension) is by nature thoroughly historical: mis- and nonrecognition is inevitable and occasioned/contingent to the particular circumstances of the time. For Hegel (and Zizek by extension), all we can do is articulate how it was that we got to the present recognition: to me, this is the central tension and philosophical conflict between Hegel and Marx. Marx wanted (and rightly so) to be able to implement Hegel's thought into an actionable system of political and economic organization. If Marx made any mistake–and to put my own cards on the table, I do think he did make a mistake here–it was by reasonably thinking that the full application of, then, modern empirical science and sociology onto political economy would be enough to override this necessary limit to thought. This is why the LeftComs (at least traditionally, I don't know where they're at these days) are fundamentally insistent on spontaneity. Zizek, and Todd McGowan by extension, have spent basically their careers trying to figure out how to embrace Hegel's radical anti-teleological thought while remaining, well, practical and actionable; they clearly have not had much, if any, real success in this.
>>2548978See my above response. I think Marx was very much Hegelian but, reasonably, became frustrated with the implications of Hegel's thought. He additionally had to contend with the Young Hegelians of his time who basically didn't take "real life" seriously whatsoever. This was the whole reason why Marx began his "Materialist Dialects" in the first place, although what he articulates in Capital and earlier isn't incompatible with Hegel whatsoever.
As for Fukuyama? I honestly have a soft spot for the guy. It was understandable why he wrote what he wrote when he did, and he frankly got a whole lot more correct in his analysis than people want to admit or give him credit for. I think his issue was he didn't understand what "The End of History" actually meant for Hegel (and, to his defense, very few still understand it). My impression is that while he's explicitly cited less and less, the influence of his intervention can be seen everywhere (Mark Fisher basically helped do this, and, imo, he was correct to).
>>2548707Deleuze had quoted once, "Anti-Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche's work at its cutting edge", will you elaborate why he said that? How Nietzsche counters Hegel? and How can I understand Hegel is there any methodology?
>>2549881Not OP, and very drunk, but isn't it obvious that the difference between Hegel and Nietzsche is that of collectivism and individualism? Hegel's entire thesis of zeitgeist is dependent upon an collective understanding of history and his predicitive modes and analisis of the world is larger than the individual. Nietzsche's work is completely lacking context of the world a person lives in and spouts individualism as the most radical good someone can live by. Even Striner thought there should be unions, but the Zsche was all about what is best for the best. Do you not read books? Or does your brain not make connections like that? Or am I completely off base and am drunk?
>>2548707First of all prove you're not a booklet LARPer wasting my time, and give me your best impression of Hegel's interpretation of the myth of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit
If that's too difficult, what's your interpretation of Hegel's "unhappy consciousness" (aka "delectatio morosa" in the Summa)?
If that's too specific, you mention starting your understanding of philosophy starting with the French Revolution, but Hegel's most notable philosophical influence is actually a pre-revolutionary rationalist Philosopher, who is it?
>>2549923Lets go to bed, Grandpa
>>2548707What's your opinion on whether or not philosophical Pragmatism is compatible with Marxist thought, and what is your reasoning for thinking so?
My question is inspired by the works of the young Sidney Hook: after studying under John Dewey in the 1920s (his favorite student, in fact), he wrote an influential book released in 1933 called
Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx. In it John Dewey is not mentioned once, but it was quickly pointed out by reviewers that Hook's reading of Marx was heavily inspired by Dewey's pragmatist epistemology.
The thing is, despite some vituperative attacks on the book over the years (clumsy guilt by association attacks by the CPUSA at launch, and more sophisticated critiques by Trotskyists in the 60s and 70s), when I read the book I saw almost nothing that contradicted how I already understood Marx and Engels. The only thing that
might be be in conflict is on the "inevitability" of socialism: Hook merely maintains that capitalism makes socialism
possible by allowing for mass education etc., with socialism merely being an ethically desirable state of affairs; the critics allege that Marx thought socialism was "inevitable", either through the economic collapse of the capitalist system or through a mechanistic desire for socialism arising in the course of proletarianization. I think both theories of inevitability seem pretty disproven now in $current_year.
If you want to get an idea of Hook's thought, read Chapter 9 of TUKM (attached), which I thought was the most brilliant chapter. Were Marx and Engels Pragmatists?
>>2548999>If Marx made any mistake–and to put my own cards on the table, I do think he did make a mistake here–it was by reasonably thinking that the full application of, then, modern empirical science and sociology onto political economy would be enough to override this necessary limit to thoughtCan you explain why you think it's necessary, if I'm understanding you, to view dialectics only in hindsight? By saying it's necessary then you must also think that there is no information to gain from an ongoing dialectic, right? But we can examine the characteristics of this thing we identify and examine the current and past interactions of it with its contradictions and can predict certain things about the necessary traits of the resolution of that dialectic, even if we can't know the specifics. For example, with the contradiction of socialized production with private ownership, we can predict by the nature of this contradiction that a necessary resolution will involve social ownership of socialized production in some form. How exactly the production ownership will be organized won't be clear until after it's already taken place. But that specific detail of removing private ownership can be predicted. We cannot predict, on the other hand, that production will no longer be socialized because socialized production is inherently more efficient than petty bourgeois individual production and capitalism will always tend towards using that more efficient method.
What am I missing?
I'll respond to everything as I can; I'm still very sick lmao
>>2549881I'm going to hazard to guess that this is from his Nietzsche book, which for the record I haven't read. As I hinted at before, I'm not much of a Deleuze guy; I'm more familiar with his middle to late period with Guittari onwards. But this is almost certainly in reference to Nietzsche's anti-historical drive. For Hegel, dialectics are necessarily steeped within–and Marx and Nietzsche alike would claim overdetermined by–the historical "spiritual" conditions (Geist) of the moment of its thought and recognition. Perhaps the core of Neitzsche's philosophical program is to explode the notion that a thinker need to rely on or respect or respond to the past whatsoever (The Gemology of Morals and The Twilight of the Idols are ostensibly arguing and doing exactly this). The Hegelian critique is this would be essentially to show that this very move by Nietzsche is itself intractable from the spirit of his moment in history; Deleuze thinks that this move is (I recall he once uses this phrase) a parlor trick.
OP, bro, do you still here? I want to know how one can get into continental philosophy? Any good reading guide to it?
>>2550310he got filtered by my basic factual questions and cowered in shame
>>2550084The Antigone discussion would require too much tracing of the development of individuality in Hegel; which–and you can take this as me backing out if you wish–I'm just too sick to do at the moment. Unhappy Consciousness is easier to extract on its own. In a short-hand summary, Unhappy Consciousness refers to the point at which the subject, aware of its own internal contradictions within itself (the recognition of its own internal division as consciousness) as much as its extrinsic contradictions in respect to "external reality", remains alienated from or is irreconcilable to the fact that the situation of, ostensibly, being alive as an individual human being in the world, is unchangeable. Another way of short-handing it is that Unhappy Consciousness is Hegel's term for entirely summarizing the path of French Existentialism: it is the point at which the subject can recognize itself as being an essential part of the world, and yet continues to identify itself with the unessential (pure thinking) rather than the whole (the recognition of itself as being co-constitutive with the whole of being or spirit). This, again, is all my shortest-hand way of describing a moment in Hegel which, as the dialectical method necessarily needs, would require starting all the way back from square one to properly communicate.
>>2550310I actually commented last night on a thread on /edu/ about this question (
>>25347 ), so I'll just repost a slightly edited version here:
Continental philosophy is just philosophy, whereas analytic philosophy more generally refers to a methodological approach and system of logic which, by its own constraints, can only describe a specific portion of consciousness and reality. It's unfair and generally incorrect to think of the divide as being incompatible (see: Wittgenstein). As for where to start, it really depends on what you're interested in. I think everything still basically begins and ends with Plato, but if you're interested in aesthetics (which I think the "Continental tradition" is unquestionably better equipped to detail), reading Spinoza, Henri Bergson, Gaston Bachelard, and Merleau-Ponty would be fun for you. In terms of critique, there's still no replacement for Hegel and Adorno, although I think Heidegger's essays (Age of the World Picture, Question Concerning Technology) are also essential texts. Kierkegaard is a very fun entry-point as well. The answer really depends on what you're interested in.
>>2550312Gimme some grace bud. I'm sick; I was in the ER less than 48 hours ago. Furthermore, I'm not interested here in asserting myself as any authority, I just want to be a resource. This stuff is, to me, very important, and there's a lot of unnecessary and artificial barriers preventing people from, well, knowledge and understanding. I'm not invested in "proving people wrong or right" as much as just helping some anons out who, clearly, want to be better versed in philosophy.
>>2550364mental masturbation is still masturbation
people do what feels good to them
>>2550270That's what I basically said but drunk!
>>2548707im a silly woke woman and a midwit, every intellectual interest i have leads to Hegel and its a big wall
how do i learn him? pick up his books? maybe books by others explaining him? maybe i just give up and learn philosophy by start to finish? please tips im miserable and knowledge fills me im willing to invest anything to learn
>>2550437Just gimme the practical Marxist equivalent of the unhappy consciousness the same way delectatio morosa is for Catholic theology, here is a clear-cut implication as described in the introduction to the philosophy of right (highlight by me)
I'm not purity-testing here, just making sure you've got at least the basics right, because you should be well aware that Hegel has been parodied by a whole generation of willful ignorants, including the so-called French Theory you just mentioned
>>2550151This is really really interesting! I might have to disappoint you here and admit that I'd have to really sit down and read all of this to give a proper thought.
One thing I would note however, quickly looking at the chapter in question you pointed out:
>[Hegel attempted] to prove that all of existence was rational, therefore, necessary, and, therefore, good, he failed to make the existence of any particular thing intelligible. (74)Is a misled (although historically commonplace) understanding of Hegel. When Hegel uses the word "necessary", it is often taken as a moral or teleological justification, whereas for him the use of the term is entirely, utterly descriptive. This touches upon the question posed by:
>>2550218The question of "inevitability" and the notion of any development being "necessary" touch upon the same thing: the question at stake here, it seems to me, is whether human history is being "driven" or "directed" by anything at all. The interpretation of Marx which has gained the most currency (basically, due to Lenin–and this is not at all a diss; I think Lenin was probably about the smartest man in the world at the time he was alive next to WEB DuBois) is that human history can be understood as the unfolding of contradictions. In Marx, the contradictions are instantiated by the organization (or "division") of labor of a specific society. Based upon this recognition, one can claim to "predict" what will or at least ought occur next (Scientific Communist Socialism). Of course, this did not occur. The reason as to why this did not occur is–well–here we still are debating it. What Hegel provides, however, is the total rejection of any notion of inevitability whatsoever: it is all a matter of whether or not the individual human being (and the social-historical conditions which co-instantiate him) is capable of recognizing their own individual freedom–freedom within thought, within a certain degree of action, within recognition itself. The resistance to Hegel by much of the contemporary (as well as historical) left has been that this thought does not provide very much of a roadmap; but, at the same time, if we are interested in the capital-T "Truth", and organizing society as to be as ethical and sustainable as possible, we must confront this fact.
The question with regards to pragmatism would be whether or not it is possible to consciously know one is being, well, "pragmatic", or if the working vision of the world pragmatism would inevitably become reified and recognized as being reality itself–if that makes any sense? (Again, I'm feverish)
>Hook merely maintains that capitalism makes socialism possible by allowing for mass education etc., with socialism merely being an ethically desirable state of affairsThis seems to me exactly what Marx himself says.
>>2550450Yes! I missed your post. I think your summary is accurate; I think what needs to be done now is to recognize how the individualism of Nietzsche (and the hardcore Egoism of Stirner) are already present within or are not at all contradictory to Hegel.
>>2550364>the new vegas memeWell, you should try to basically forget that notion of Hegel entirely; I'd wipe it from your memory, if possible. Because it's not what he's doing at all.
The point of understanding Hegel would depend on what you yourself want out of life and philosophy more broadly. For me? I'm the kind of person who must know The Truth as best as I can get my hands around it; otherwise I fall apart. Some people are perfectly capable of being able to not worry about how it is that life unfolds–and I massively respect them, to be clear–but I'm just not built that way, unfortunately. If you are interested in the "practical usage" of Hegel–well, that again would be up to you. For me, I've found that reading Hegel has made me feel much more, well, alive and in reality (at times perhaps too much so); a proper grasping of Hegel allows one to read, understand, and integrate virtually anything: his approach to thought represents to me true intellectual and psychic freedom. It's really a question of whether or not that's valuable to you, and it may sincerely not be. It all depends on what you're after bud.
>>2550473The only Hard Requirements for reading Hegel are:
>Passing knowledge of Plato and Socrates>Familiarity with Descartes' intervention in philosophy>Spinoza's Ethics (and, even then, just Part 1 ("Of God"); Deleuze's book on Spinoza is pretty helpful, but Spinoza is an easy read, as far as philosophy goes)I also highly highly highly recommend Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley's podcast "Why Theory". Their Hegel episodes are accessible, concise, and approachable; they're also old film buffs which I adore.
>>2549923>Nietzsche's work is completely lacking context of the world a person lives inI don't think you have read Nietzsche(not necessary though but still), Nietzsche primarily questions the values of values and finds it origin in the contingent flow of history.
>>2550218Wanted to give this a more thorough response than before:
All thought is necessarily backwards looking. In a way, this is apparently obvious, but really only Hegel took this fact seriously. We can only know what it is that has occurred–and even then, what we are able to recognize as having occurred is contingent to our specific moment in the progress of time. Walter Benjamin's "Angel of History" from the Theses is articulating exactly this, but in the context of Historiography. Basically: There is absolutely no such thing as prediction, and to imagine that there is is impossible.
Now, does that mean we can't ""reasonably"" know what is going to happen next? Well of course not, and Hegel isn't interested in saying we can't either. We, by necessity, are always already acting as though we "know" the future (Henri Bergson became famous explaining this, but it's all already contained within Hegel), but that practical knowledge of daily expectation and planning is something fundamentally different from absolute knowing. What capitalism has done–and Marx, I think, reasonably thought he could basically think his way out of capitalism–is that it has thoroughly conflated these two positions: reasonably expecting and actually knowing. The necessary predictability of markets (I don't even mean stock or abstract capital, I just mean the most basic level of capitalist business exchange imaginable) has in turn given the false but overwhelmingly convincing impression that existence is itself predictable–which is to really say, that existence is determined, not free, unambiguous, "knowable"–even though it plainly is not. Marx himself, it seems to me, wanted to correct this, but in turn he perhaps underestimated the degree to which he (and all of us, myself most certainly included) have fallen prey to this false impression. All of the Frankfurt School and French Theory can be seen as basically attempts to, again, think our way out of this situation; clearly it hasn't been the most effective. In large part, this is because both the Frankfurts and Postwar French simply misread Hegel–and how it was that they were able to do this is still pretty unclear. It took until Zizek, Gillian Rose, and Robert Pippin to correct this–and basically nobody still reads them despite their notoriety lmao.
>>2550218>gimme the practical Marxist equivalent of the unhappy consciousnessWell if you've intended to call my bluff as to be a Hegel Scholar, I'll concede to you that! I'm not a Hegel scholar and never claimed to be, I'm simply a Hegelian who grasps the logic of his thought (which, to me, is the practical essence of it) and wants to help others grasp the dialectical method if they're so interested. I'm actually much much more interested now in what your interpretation of this question would be! I've never thought of this application before.
>Hegel has been parodied by a whole generation of willful ignorants, including the so-called French Theory you just mentionedHere we absolutely agree; it's maddening to see how much, basically, the near entire 20th century of philosophy got Hegel wrong. He's a philosopher of contradiction and negation, not "synthesis"!
>>2550591These are just practical enactment of the abstract universal as "freedom of the void", specifically here he's referring to the French terror
Marx would later call this "ideology" and the partial blindness that results from (material not ideal) contradiction, hence why the Marxist concept of alienation is purely legal and not some sort of psychological "ethical" (theological: see Summa) distress as it's often misused
pictured is my favorite (relevant) PoS quote, see the very last sentence
>>2548889the second one sorta correct as anon says. the last sentence is also correct but its not trivial. undialectical is often a synonym for ahistorical, removing things from their concrete conditions and treating them as disparate static entities, or saying that something social is an unchanging law about nature
how does it feel knowing you wasted all those years studying this useless shit
>>2550657Yes! That was the very part that I realized I was reading something fundamentally life alerting.
>hence why the Marxist concept of alienation is purely legal and not some sort of psychological "ethical"It's really unfortunate that English doesn't have a better word for it. I do think that alienation in the sense you're critiquing is very real and useful, but it shouldn't at all be conflated with the estrangement of labor that Marx discusses. The 1844 manuscripts have not helped this problem, as I do believe that he was, then, talking much more about alienation in the "spiritual" sense that Hegel discusses; not that believe in Althusser's epistemological break argument at all, I just think Marx clarified what we was concerned with identifying as he got older, and there just really isn't a better word to describe it.
>>2550836The honest answer is that I wouldn't have been satisfied doing anything else, frankly. I myself often wish it were different, but nothing else scratches the itch or gives me the same meaning. I wouldn't in a million years claim that studying this stuff is the singlemost important thing, it's just important to me personally/politically/ethically. That's just me though
>>2552288literally me
that being said, I think it's so dope that this is part of New Vegas. Greatest game ever..
>>2552299it's not actually in the game lol. it's just a meme made by a voice actor on youtube
>>2548707already a theorycel myself so this isn't so much a theory question but I am really curious what your experience has been going for a PhD. even notwithstanding how difficult it's gotten to turn being a humanities scholar into a career without having the right connections, kiss the right people's asses, publish stuff that is trendy in academia, and have a degree from a prestigious university, I've always looked at academia in the 21st century as being a place where all interesting theory that is actually relevant to the world today outside the ivory tower (and especially anything radical) goes to die. it seems like the era of radical intellectuals is mostly a thing of the past these days, at least in the anglosphere.
>>2552334Your impression is entirely, entirely correct. The unfortunate thing is that for my particular field (sociocultural history and historiography), I actually couldn't do my research outside of an academic setting: there remain resources and archives that only scholars can access. If someone's explicit interest is in pursuing radical thought though, I would not suggest pursuing anything higher than a Master's (or you could do the other normal thing which is to get accepted into a PhD and then drop out once you've found a different path/become established). Depending on where you live, there are typically much more affordable "Para-Academic" programs (Brooklyn Institute of Social Research in New York, The New Centre, even The European Graduate School), which are focused entirely on education rather than certification and careerist climbing. If your interest is in learning, thinking, and networking with people who care about learning and thinking rather than a tenure track (which don't exist anymore anyway), you should look into those. Lecture events and reading clubs organized by the (imo absolutely obnoxious) intellectual magazines like e-flux, n+1, and others are also a good and free route as well. But unfortunately, you generally have to live in either New York or LA to do that (at least in the US).
The biggest tragedy for me though isn't even that academia is where thoughts go to die, but that the entire system has been structured in such a way as to basically discourage everyone from caring about actually teaching—which, to me, is the whole point of it. I'd be much happier if I were allowed to focus on teaching undergrads and doing my research for the long term without the pressure of publishing basically useless short-sighted nonsense.
>>2548707>PhD candidateOn philosophy? Couldnt care less about your word games.
I DONT WANNA READ HEGAL, HES TOO CONVULATED AND WORDY
>>2552334>>2552795I also wanted to add that this is really just the case in American and British academia though. Academia is Western Europe remains pretty stable (France and Switzerland probably still being the best place to pursue radical thought). Germany though, especially now with the Gaza crackdown, is going the route of the US, if not substantially worse (it's easier to get a job, but you have to play the game 100x harder). My own prediction is that Western radical thought will largely start to be based out of Ireland within the next decade or so, especially now that they're attempting to bring back social welfare for artists. But yeah, it's a grim grim situation, and every professor will tell you in private that the situation is Fucked Up Beyond Repair.
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