Is there any use of philosophy in today’s world?

>theology
>not being agnostic
>not understanding that reality is transcendental and never fully cognizable in any of its parts by anyone whatsoever, inner workings of one's (or anyone's) psyche included
Literally as dumb as a scientard.

Honest question: Why is Veeky Forums obsessed with Zizek?

I read two of his books and a few articles and I am absolutely baffled by the fact that he is posted in every philosophy thread like the epitome of modern philosophy.

Are you underage?

Whitout philosophy there is no meaning to life.

He's a quirky sperg who writes 2 books a year, talks with an accent, and for some reason gets invited to serious philosophical conferences and such. He also managed to get some "serious" academic recognition despite often talking about fisting, something as boring as Czechoslovakia, and starbucks.

What's not to meme about him?

My understanding was that he is a meme yes. But then I came across people in real life and on Veeky Forums who are convinced that he is a genius. And I just dont see that. I think he should be taken as seriously as Stirner and his spooky ideas. He is a joke.as far as I can understand. And I don't see why people take half of his shit seriously? How is he invited to serious talks? Is this a joke that got out of hand?

He's a Hegel nut who is also very fluent in Marx and Lacan. There are always people who are either very stupid or just going through their edgy marxism phase, and it goes without saying that they find good readers of Lacan to be super worthwhile.

Thing is, Zizek can't focus on a subject for ten seconds without sniffing and dropping memeful terms such as 'ideology', 'fisting', 'and so on' and so on, which is why he simultaneously gets so much attention and seems to be a huge joke.

That's the effectiveness of memes for ya

doesn't work for peterson
he'll never get invited to serious philosophical conferences

Peterson is a psychiatrist who has the right to dislike fraudulent XX century "philosophers" same way millions of other people do, except he gets to be vocal about it because, well, he's an academic. Zizek has a PhD in philosophy. I don't see your point.

>but still to smart
Lemme guess, you're one of those autodidacts?

I studied Marxism for 2 years from people who were ideologues in the soviet-era of eastern europe. I basically spent the entire time arguing with them that half of that shit can be disregarded as pure conjecture that doesn't hold up to how the observable world works and economy and that the other half is a sterile worldview that is basically turning Hegel inside-out and has nothing constructive to add.
I don't know anything about Lacan other that he is despised. What does a psychologist have to add to this? how is zizek using him?:

>What does a psychologist have to add to this?
Literally nothing. Studying Lacan is just another trendy, pointless thing academics do to increase their power level.

>how is zizek using him?
He doesn't, really. He just reminds people every now and then that he follows his teachings, because *sometimes* it seems relevant to the whole ideology thing.

> just another trendy, pointless thing academics
How or when did it become fashionable to study subversive charlatans who have clearly not critiquing something in order to improve them but to undermine the authority of working models simply for self-gratification?

>reminds people every now and then that he follows his teachings
So basically he is the professional equivalent of the liberal arts major who quotes the Übermensch passage but has never heard of The Birth of Tragedy? How has he not been called on it and discredited in public debate? How long can he get away with it?

Yes, precisely, you've all seen the emperor's new clothes. This man who has published non-stop for close to 50 years is just producing random word salads of texts he didn't really read or understand and the two of you (plus your king, , who studied marxism for TWO WHOLE YEARS) have debunked this charlatan.
This fat cunt who has been translated to I don't even know how many languages, one of the must ubiquitous academics in today's world is a fraud, and you, brave literati on a quest for truth, have exposed him for what he is.

yes, just stop wasting times on psueds like Zizek

bigthink.com/videos/the-purpose-of-philosophy-is-to-ask-the-right-questions

youtube.com/watch?v=J7ArptkesRI

youtube.com/watch?v=dp8aTYUrPi0

>I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

>Daly: In a sense, would you say that the age of biogenetics/cyberspace is the age of philosophy?
>Žižek: Yes, and the age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.

the truth is that he only has a few actually substantial books. the rest are self-plagiarized money grabs

>psuedo-intellectuals praise a psuedo-intellectual
its not that hard to understand. Also, he fulfills the need for the "cool professor" who talks about things like pop culture and sex!

18 in 2 months, senior in high school
I’m not! I just posted his picture because he is the only “philosopher” that is active and relatively known today

Write whatever shit in your essay, include a recipe for cake or something

>but then I'll get shit grades/be called an idiot
then you do want to impress other people don't you :^)

>How or when did it become fashionable to study subversive charlatans who have clearly not critiquing something in order to improve them but to undermine the authority of working models simply for self-gratification?
Academia has always had some circlejerk-y trends. It's just one of them.

>So basically he is the professional equivalent of the liberal arts major who quotes the Übermensch passage but has never heard of The Birth of Tragedy? How has he not been called on it and discredited in public debate? How long can he get away with it?
He only does so every couple interviews/speeches. Plus he actually kinda "understands" whatever vague gibberish you can quote (and literally just that, quote) out of Lacan's writings. Probably that's why he's never been called on it (he theoretically has, but just by his readers and right-wing critics) plus it's just a tiny detail among his enormous word salads, and usually not big factor. We can criticize the guy for hundreds of thing other than that, and worse ones, too: logical fallacies and such. I don't think he's a bad guy in the end, just a sloppy far-left academic using his quirks to maximize the attention he gets

If you are in high-school, and have no background in philosophy, then you should steer clear of anything that is considered contemporary, also probably the majority of 20th century philosophy will either be incomprehensible to you (like Heidegger or Derrida because you lack the foundations) or you will fall for memes like Objectivism that will actively hinder your progress if you ever decide to take philosophy up seriously.

For a high-school you should stick to the basics which means you should write about ethics. Basically "why people should be nice to each other" is a major theme in western tradition.
You can compare different schools and then bring up moral problems to which they give conflicting answers that might even be contrary to todays notion of justice. or you can write that through philosophy in general and ethics in particular can a man decide what is the right thing to do in any one instance that he is faced with a decision. I can recommend you books if you tell me what is the assignment.

>actual good post with content

OP, if you want to write your essay, the first link is a good starting point. Zizek puts it very nicely there.

Hardly. Linguistics?

You can apply certain philosophies to your life depending on what they are. Your goal shouldn’t be to rationally -do- anything with philosophy anyway. That’s why you study other shit, loser

He said nothing noteworthy in it. He just rumbles on about that the formulation of a question contains the world-view of they questioner. Which is obvious and have been since the sophists.
Then rumbles on about sexism.

This is idiotic because if you take this point of view to the logical extreme he is saying that no communication is possible because everyone interprets the question in an entirely personal understanding of the world and hence we can never truly understand each-other.
But I might have missed his genius ...

>saying XX century instead of 20th

>being an vtter anglicized plebeius with no respect for the svperior romans

Zizek being the man as always. OP Start here. If you can't extract anything out of this then its own yourself.

you cant ask for the use of philosophy without already assuming some philosophical position on utility, value, etc. if you disavow these positions that your statements imply, you descend from philosophy into ideology.

three ingredients for popular success

1. productivity
2. edge
3. complicity

Philosophy is a natural development. It's a symptom of long-standing healthy families and the wisdom they have harnessed over a generation or more. It doesn't need a "use" — it always resurfaces.

But it also does have a use, by its nature of being the wisdom of long-standing healthy families over the course of a generation or more. It becomes a concise mapping of a culture that helps lead us to the ideal world that we see through our art.

>You can apply certain philosophies to your life
idiot.

You forgot mediocrity.

He truly said nothing new or impressive, but answers OPs question. I don't think there is any need to go any further, to question the question is hard enough work and at the core of the issue. All else comes from there.

>he is saying that no communication is possible because everyone interprets the question in an entirely personal understanding of the world and hence we can never truly understand each-other.
It's amazing that you pick this up from him, I mean it totally unironically and with admiration for your perception. That's it, but it's not wrong. What you've noticed is at the core of the lacanian view about communication, connecting Sausurre and Freud on the nature of signs and how we mentally deal with knowledge. Neither Zizek or Lacan believe that communication is "I think things, I put what I think in words, the other hears the words, the other think what I think, if I'm successful". Communication, to them, is always about the failure of communication. We produce more words so that to cover the flaws we think are there in previous words. We not only do not have access to what the other is thinking ("did the other understand what I said? If he reproduced what I said, does that mean the other understood me? If he said it in other words, did the other got it wrong?"), but we also do not have access to what we think without the words. This is important because to Lacan language is something that we don't own, but that owns us, it's something bigger than ourselves, involves other people and therefore is what inserts us in the symbolic order. Our words are not ours, they are always borrowed. Failure in communication is not a disruptive event that happends occasionally, but what is at the core of all communication.

Anyway, very complex stuff, there is much more to it, but very interesting to see how you explained it yourself without even knowing this context.

You have to be 18 to post here

Yes, please tell us how Pynchon and Joyce were so terribly mediocre.
>n-no, the user I was quoting said 'popular', like in pop culture!
So then Pixies, Tarantino and Murakami are mediocre?

Look, I never said I’m interested in contemporary philosophy, nor I will in near future. I do have basics in philosophy, because we DO study the history of philosophy(right now we are at Socrates and Plato)
With that being said, my teacher gave me the question I posted in OP for me to write an essay about, because I’m going to philosophy competition so he wanted to see how good I am at critical thinking, which will be needed for the competition essay.

sorry dude but you cant even begin to contemplate the amount of sheer effort required to have an encyclopedic knowledge of hegel. mediocrity is for phd's who drop out once they finish the ma requirement.

>Pixies, Tarantino, and Murakami are mediocre?
"Yes."

Put Slavoj's cock back in your mouth and quiet down

>So then Pixies, Tarantino and Murakami are mediocre
Like that was ever in question.

I get it mr. samefag, you're going to claim that only classical music is of any value because any post-1750s music is "degenrate leftist shit with lyrics".

go back to your containment board, honestly, your kind is not welcome here

Not at all. Transcendentalism and Platonism are just a couple philosophies which are meant to be rigorously practiced

It actually takes quite a bit of perceptive genius on the part of the artist / marketers to be able to establish new trends that reach hundreds of millions, regardless if that work is mediocre at the end of the day.

Peterson is a clinical psychologist, not a psychiatrist, it’s an important distinction because a psychologist is an academic while a psychiatrist is a medical doctor.

Since this thread has turned into being about Zizek, here’s a summary of what I’ve put elsewhere.

Zizek’s principle interest is understanding our sense of subjectivity, especially our subjectivity with respect to the postmodern condition, or the world of neoliberal late capitalism. He grew up during the post-structuralist period in european philosophy, where people like Foucault and Derrida totally denied the existence of ‘the subject’, this is the “self under siege” period, as Rick Roderick puts it. Where because of the critiques from Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud we’ve become skeptical of the Cartesian ‘thinking thing’, the classical view of the The Subject.

Zizek sees Lacan as the only major thinker in this period who doesn’t neglect the subject, and he see in German idealism a period in philosophy before these skeptical critiques were formed where their was a time of rich theorizing on the nature of subjectivity.

As such Zizek’s project as been to take Lacan’s notions about things like desire, and the formation of the subject, and read it agaisnt each major figure of classical German Idealism, working through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and finally to Hegel, with the goal of arriving at a new theory of the subject.

From this he seeks to address the classic Marxist question of ‘if overthrowing capitalism is clearly in the workers best interest, what don’t they already?’, to which the classical answer is Marx’s theory of ideology. To Marx ideology is ‘false consciousness’, a mistake belief in accepting how the Bourgeoisie see the system. Zizek looks at the widespread cycnicism of our time, where few people actually believe the government works for our best interest and everybody knows how shitty corporations are, and yet we still act as if we didn’t know. For Marx ‘they do it because they don’t yet know any better’, for Zizek ‘we do know better, yet we do anyways’. He points to ‘ironic detachment’ as a mode of coping here, being ironic about something allows us to psychically protect ourselves from the facts we know about our consumption, yet allow us to consume all the same. This is one example of how contemporary capitalism structures our subjective sense, and how it functions ideologically today.

Zizek’s basic project is to help us understand how the world of late capitalism shapes how we behave and how we understand ourselves. He is trying to correct the post-structuralist neglect of the subject, and provide a way that we can think about the system so that real politics can become possible once again.