>Edit: If you disagree with the Zizek statement and have never listened to him speak, you may wish to look him up.
This is extremely uncharitable. Zizek is a serious philosopher, and people take him seriously. Just because you don't understand the points he's making (or don't agree with them), it doesn't mean he's purveying nonsense. Very few (if any) of his critics and fellow philosophers accuse him of being nonsensical. He frequently talks about topics I can't even attempt to understand, but I'm sure high-level physics can sound like nonsense to people too. He has 164,015[0] citations counted by Google Scholar, and along with Althusser considered important in the philosophy of ideology and socialism. He's by no means a hack.
Thanks for that. I really did want readers of my comment to look him up. There’s a reason Chomsky describes his work as being without value, but now we’ve just got two appeals to authority going. I’d rather people look up some Zizek on YouTube and judge for themselves.
In a way, Zizek and his forebears represent the problem with the modern left: they left reality behind in favour of nonsensical “theory” that intimidates most people because it sounds authoritative, despite being empty.
For balance, I’m entirely certain that you could make similar claims of being out of touch with reality of the right, but they do not, for example, try to couch their ideas in an impenetrable fog of deconstructivism and psychoanalysis.
I wonder to what degree that relates to our subjective submersion for so long into the collective percolated ideas of Hume and Hobbes and Kant and Locke and (with the extent latter-day capitalism has adopted some variant of 'the end of history) Hegel. That is to say, were any of these works being actively purveyed to the public now, rather that forming a sort constituent background radiation in which even the prenatal are bathed, whether the foundation works of what is called western-enlightenment wouldn't be viewed in the same light. (In fact, I would wager one could start publicly reading from any of the above mentioned [excepting Hegel, for obvious reasons] and be sure of getting at least a few denouncements along the lines of 'postmodern trash'.
Also, I'm tempted to say that idea or only penetrable when they're not considered at all, that is, when they are merely that constituent background radiation of our lives. (Much like how we tend to know the answer to something right up until we're asked the question.) And upon the act of engagement, that is trying to understand any of this, we're left with Adam Smith being as seemingly impenetrable as Freud.
I didn't know that, so I stand corrected. But I wonder if there are any serious (published) responses calling his positions nonsensical or even incoherent rather than merely disagreeing.
>Edit: If you disagree with the Zizek statement and have never listened to him speak, you may wish to look him up.
This is extremely uncharitable. Zizek is a serious philosopher, and people take him seriously. Just because you don't understand the points he's making (or don't agree with them), it doesn't mean he's purveying nonsense. Very few (if any) of his critics and fellow philosophers accuse him of being nonsensical. He frequently talks about topics I can't even attempt to understand, but I'm sure high-level physics can sound like nonsense to people too. He has 164,015[0] citations counted by Google Scholar, and along with Althusser considered important in the philosophy of ideology and socialism. He's by no means a hack.
[0] https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=qzuup1UAAAAJ&hl=...