French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard, a well-known postmodernist and all-around cynic, passed away a couple of weeks ago, to the jubilation of people who think that sentences in an academic work should have content that is actually comprehensible. Living as we do, however, in times where linguistic wankery is deified and true thought is the object of scorn, the media have decided to tell us just how wonderful the old bastard was:
Typical is a gushing obituary in the German Die Zeit newspaper, which notes his “hatred of French egalitarianism,” and goes on approvingly to describe Baudrillard as a “reactionary prophet” and “ Apokalyptiker of the counter-Enlightenment”-i.e., someone preaching the end of the world, who takes up arms against all that is progressive in modern human thought and science. In fact, the largely uncritical reception of Baudrillard’s work in the press says a great deal about the current decay of bourgeois public debate and, in particular, the utter degeneration of layers of the former left-leaning intelligentsia over the past three decades.
The above quote is from “But the Emperor has no clothes!” French philosopher Jean Baudrillard dies in Paris , which is an excellent article (even if you don’t agree with every point), but which you may not want to read if you think that socialists eat children. If you have the slightest interest in modern philosophy, however, please do read it; it is extremely refreshing to see any criticism of the pure idiocy that is postmodernist philosophy, and to see its connection to the so-called left. If I have to read one more postmodern “left” or “radical” academic essay that consists of meaningless twaddle (literally meaningless; just a bunch of long words that don’t actually signify anything) I’ll puke.
Seriously, having been exposed to so much postmodernist thought, I’ve developed a real hatred for it. It claims to be “radical” but what it is, in fact, is the very opposite of that; it is inaction, relativism, nihilism, and in most cases just pure nonsense. It’s sad, but if this kind of philosophy continues being embraced by the “left” there will never be any progress at all.
