Q&A: French Philosophy (?)
French Philosophy (?)
Question
With God's help,
I read the Rabbi's fascinating and excellent column about the state of philosophy nowadays, and about the French in particular. Personally, I tried to read Levinas's book Totality and Infinity; it certainly sounds very bombastic and deep, but I didn't really manage to understand what exactly he is saying. On the other hand, one of the well-known French thinkers is Michel Foucault, who is considered a guru in the postmodern world, and he is commonly associated with the school called "structuralism," which today is considered an important trend in philosophy, the social sciences, anthropology, and even linguistics (speaking of Noam Chomsky, who is also often associated with this school; see the book Structuralism by Jean Piaget—well, another Frenchman). Does the Rabbi's criticism apply to them as well, and why? And how does the Rabbi explain the enormous influence of a philosopher like Derrida on human thought and on issues like moral relativism and the like, even though according to the Rabbi their thought is empty of content?
Thank you very much
Answer
Derrida's influence is not philosophical. Shakespeare also influenced the world in the sense that he stirred insights and attitudes in people. There is a postmodern mood that is aroused by contentless texts that create that atmosphere. See my lecture here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhGAutVypI
In my opinion, Chomsky's structuralism is nothing more than sharing a name with that of Foucault and his group. And incidentally, as Chomsky wrote in the passage mentioned above, Foucault is an exception among the French, since some of what he says does contain sensible points.
In hermeneutics, structuralism is a different trend from Derrida's deconstruction, and to some extent the opposite of it (according to that approach, there is interpretive truth, except that it is not rooted in the author but in the text, which is shaped by the environment and other factors that embed different structures within it).
And the fact that something is considered an important trend in the fields you mentioned does not necessarily mean anything, since they are full of material lacking value and sense. See my columns 178–184.
Discussion on Answer
I don't know, but it actually fits their character pretty well in other areas too, at least from what I know today. And maybe it's just a search for novelty.
Does the Rabbi think there is a reason this phenomenon appears דווקא among the French, given that this nation produced important philosophers in the past such as Descartes, Pascal, and the like?