Why is it that philosophers, with a few notable exceptions, always use the most convoluted language possible...

Have to agree with . Nietzsche is a really mediocre philosopher who has survived purely on his purple prose.

Nietzsche is an ANTIWHITE SATANIST ATHEIST who is the prophet of liberals who want to destroy our White American nation. DIVERSITY is code for ANTIWHITE. Pray to the Holy Trinity of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.

XD ebin satire my fellow progressive redditors XDDD I fucking hate white males because theyre hateful amirite XDXDXD

no but seriously go back to tumblr

I speak the words of our LORD. He has not SWAYED my life from His divine PATH.

>XD religion is so dumb amirite fuck redneck christians

Your professor was really innocent. At least in regards to this subject.

You have to pretty dumb to be religious in this day and age.

*tips fedora*
heh....nothinn... personnel.... kid.......

>Nietzsche is a really mediocre philosopher

Nietzsche is only a "mediocre philosopher" to people who are already in love with their ideology.

Nice to see you agree. If you didn't you wouldn't be spewing me mes.

One can appreciate a philosopher without agreeing with their conclusions. Nietzsche is just a mediocre philosopher.

He got me into philosophy. I got swept up by the purple prose and then I read other philosophers and realized he was actually quite trite.

>then I read other philosophers

Like who?

Agree.

Nietzsche can be fun to read, but he's not even a real philosopher

Is this the part where I list of some favorites and then you go "no your favorites suck"

Not necessarily, but I am going to assume that since you say Nietzsche is mediocre, it's because you are reading philosophers who fall squarely within the analytical tradition instead of the continental.

Every time I hear someone deride Nietzsche, it's almost always because they either haven't read him, and understood what he is talking about, or because they actually have a bone to pick with anyone who dares to climb outside of a scientific and materialistic framework.

It's probably some psued analytic trash

Shintoism > the collective writing of the western world.

>I'm an Æutist

We know

Pic related.

He only seems that way to people who don't take the time to unpack his aphorisms - that is, they take the aphorisms/aphoristic style at face value.

Don't worry, you're not alone. He can afford to be 'purple' because his 'technical' meaning is buried behind the aphorisms, which he leaves to his readers to deduce. What Nietzsche leaves unsaid is key.

Maybe try ruminating for once.

>Every time I hear someone deride Nietzsche, it's almost always because they either haven't read him, and understood what he is talking about, or because they actually have a bone to pick with anyone who dares to climb outside of a scientific and materialistic framework.
This is why philosophers aren't taken seriously.

>Maybe try ruminating for once.
You might as well have said pray to god for a sign.

Nietzsche hides all his lack of reasoning and evidence in cool quotes and prose.He doesn't even bother to explain all his pointless rhetoric and hides everything in methapors. If you put Nietzche's work in Bible format and you put a name to it you would basically would have a religious book

Yeah, a retard like you needs a miracle.

>This is why philosophers aren't taken seriously.

Right, so I am guessing it was the latter in your case.

Philosophers probe outwards, conjecture.

Sometimes the concepts they arrive to have no name, so the philosopher has to invent a name. They may also summarize many statements in a single (complicated) word

>the ideas aren't that profound and could be expressed far more easily
Do you have an example?

>Pic related.
>It only seems that way to people who don't take the time to unpack its metaphors and verses- that is, they take the biblical style at face value.
>Don't worry, you're not alone. It can afford to have 'purple' because its 'technical' meaning is buried behind the metaphors , which itleaves to its readers to deduce. What the Bible leaves unsaid is key.
>Maybe try ruminating for once.
Nietzsche is literally a pseudo prophet.It is funny how underage edgy highschool students love him and hate religion when Nietzsche is as prophetic as it gets

Different poster but philosophical idealism is total shit

You should pray to a false god so that I become smart. Maybe one of those Muslim prayers.

That's not the point you moron. The only humans on this planet that contend with protons and electrons are actually scientists.

The rest of us(and even those same scientists) have to life a good life, and that has *literally* nothing to do with the little sliver of scientific knowledge that humans have accumulated in 500 years.

>It is funny how underage edgy highschool students love him

Where did this meme come from?

In my experience, highschool students associate him with the Nazis and thus detest him.

>Where did this meme come from?
It is not a meme.Nietzsche is fucking popular for people that begin philosophy.
>highschool students associate him with the Nazis and thus detest him.
Lol.Barely anyone associates him with the Nazis outside of some morons.Most know him because his ebin quotes and le god is death maymay.

>Popular = bad

You dropped your pseud card.

>Barely anyone associates him with the Nazis outside of some morons.

What, you mean the lion's share of highschool students?

Heh, use your brain kid.

>Heh, use your brain kid

If you use a rope first to cure your Æutism

>You dropped your pseud card.
I never said popular=bad. Nice strawman
>What, you mean the lion's share of highschool students?
Most highschool students get into Nietzsche in the philosophy class.They alredy have and idea of what he stands for but don't actually read him.
>Heh, use your brain kid.
I don't need my brain because I am enlighted by Nieztsche's aphorisms.

Can you clearly tell me even ONE non trivial thing nietzche said, or was he a Mr Motivator for pseuds?

>inb4 being obfuscatory is necessary

Sorry, state and explain your axioms

Can you clearly tell me even ONE piece of non Æutistic faggotry you've ever said, or are you someone who should seriously consider drinking bleach?

Hint: it's the latter, you Æutistic faggot

>Most highschool students get into Nietzsche in the philosophy class.

No they don't.

They get the Anglos like Hobbes/Locke/Burke/Hume/etc.

Maybe a bit of Kant/Hegel. Some Fukuyama/Feminists/etc for minority quotas.

That's about it.

>No they don't.
>They get the Anglos like Hobbes/Locke/Burke/Hume/etc.
>Maybe a bit of Kant/Hegel. Some Fukuyama/Feminists/etc for minority quotas.
>That's about it.
I studied NEETche in a catholic school btw.NEETche is studied in highschool

t.warrior of his daydreams

t. autistic faggot who engages in repetitive autistic behavior and should hang himself

What country has philosophy taught in highschool. In highschool only the pretentious edgy kids start studying philosophy and they usually go for the edgy big name philosophers.

E.g. Nietzsche. To a significantly lesser extent Machiavelli, Hobbes etc.

t.pls don't expose my prophet.

And in decent countries, Æutistic faggots like you are aborted

>Hobbes
More like Rousseau or Marx.Hobbes is not edgy enough for teenagers.
t.ex-teen

t. pls go kill yourself

>What country has philosophy taught in highschool
Everywhere in Europe

>PLease stop exposing NEETche as what he was, a prophet.
>Please I don't want to be put in the same bag with religious I am the warrior of his daydreams
t.NEETchean in damage control

It's only convoluted if you're stupid.

No, I said this

>Ælian is an Æutistic queer who should consider hanging himself, since christposting on Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums is all there is to his pathetic life

I'm a Brazilian monkey and I had philosophy classes in High School.

Do they really have philosophy classes i high schools where you live? And kids in high school actually know anything about any philosophers?

More angry comments please. I need a laugh.

Tbh a big chunk of the continental tradition is shit. German idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism are all respectable. However, most continental political philosophy/Marxist stuff, post-structuralism, critical theory, deconstruction etc. is trash.

Anyone who thinks figures like Foucault, Marcuse, or Deleuze can be compared to Chomsky, Richard Montague, or Searle are delusional.

>Do they really have philosophy classes i high schools where you live?
Yes
> And kids in high school actually know anything about any philosophers?
Kind of. We studied Plato,Aristotles, Agustin,Aquinas,Descartes,Locke,Hume,Rousseau,Kant,Marx,NEETche and Wittgestein

another brazilian here

in my classes they teached us a bit of history of philosophy and tried to make us have some sort of philosophical debate, it was shit but they gave us legit instruction on some things and tried to make us read a lot of books (that no one, except me and other kid, tried to read).

>Chomsky better than Foucault
This is the most retarded thing I've read all day. I don't even like Foucault.

Hegel fails to adhere to basic standards of clarity, probably because obscurity adds to his mystique, and prevents direct evaluation and comparison to clearer writers like Kant (managing to be less lucid than Kant is no mean feat).
As this guy says, unclarity doesn't serve a legitimate purpose, there's no good reason for it except maybe, in some cases, to obscure ideas that couldn't stand the light of day. It's just that many philosophers are bad at writing.

Try reading guys like Derek Parfit, JL Austin, and Isaiah Berlin. Nietzsche, too. Some philosophers could write, some can't.

Don't fetishize things you don't understand.

No, he wasn't. Dude's a PhD and has read it all, quite apart from the babby course that we were doing. Quite the opposite, he simply has an informed opinion that you don't seem to agree with.

But suppose that your assertion were true. Then perhaps we might take you to mean that "in truth, there really are a lot of abstruse/difficult texts that make that stuff you guys were reading look like the piss easy stuff that it really is" or a similar sentiment. This is of course a defensible position, but think about it. Either way there exist several difficult philosophical texts which vindicate the professor's view, leaving one's own tastes on the matter aside.

So either the professor was simply right, or he was "naive" exactly because there are a lot of difficult texts that he hasn't read or is not aware of (not likely per the above), in which case his point is still right.

Unrelated but I am glad that there are still people who express this sentiment with a possibility of sincerity.

Foucault, Marcuse and Deleuze are ideologues. They are not philosophers, even though people think of them.

And yes a big chunk of continental philosophy is shit, but so was a big chunk of analytic philosophy until Quine wrote "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism".

Even though that's what people think of them*

post yr redpilled af reading list plz

Philosophers use complicated language, since they need to be very precise and defining certain words before they use it is their daily bread. I studied Philosophy at university and 1/4th of the grade given was depending on precision (correct use of complex and therefore precise) of language.

Now our boy Hegel is merely an obscurantist mystic, not a philosopher.

>people express her ideas bad because they write bad.
no, they dont write bad, they write not clear. it´s different. and i think it´s a decision. i see it all the time. one friend of mine write completely different after goes to university. it´s a fucking personal decision for wathever reasons. they dont try to be clearer because they dont fucking want. it´s not that they give a shit about writing in a clearer way. that is what i think, anyway.
also, why philosophers write?

>Philosophy often seems like enlightened retardedness

Not the user you're responding to, but isn't the other possibility that some philosophers might in fact right either obscurely or unclearly in order to make it harder for readers, either for political or pedagogical motives?

I have the sneaking sensation you've never read Quine nor any analytic before him and only picked out "Two Dogmas" because anything that *sounds* like it attacks empiricism appeals to you, even if it's nonsense like your froggy faggot heroes and neetchee

>Because they're writing for all time. In a regular conversation people can ask questions, rephrase, try again, and so on. But some philosophers really are trying to write in such a way that they're saying gets communicated to everyone, everywhere, forever.
nah. they speak do that other philosophers from their time and country can understand them

Nietzsche is probably one of the five most influential thinkers of all time. If he doesn't seem brilliant, it's probably because everyone has spent the whole 20th century ripping him off. There is no Foucault without Nietzsche.

Man the level of butthurt needed to conjure up this post could power the state of Palestine.

What's most annoying is that every single person who is supposedly influenced by him, thinks that his whole philosophy is reducible to "nihilism is good" and "everything we do is argue about power".

>Anyone who thinks figures like Foucault, Marcuse, or Deleuze can be compared to Chomsky, Richard Montague, or Searle are delusional.

Obviously they can't be compared. The former are geniuses, while the latter are deluded and dull.

That's just wrong. Maybe high schoolers who are influenced by him think that. Not serious philosophers.

Well, in the case Kant, he'd opted not to edit his work for fear that it would take another few years, after the 10 he had already endeavored on his critique of pure reason.

But I know what you mean, I read some excerpts on one of Gallilo's dialogue, and I couldn't wrap my head around what the characters were arguing, I had to look up quotes frequently.

Foucault thinks that. All the philosophers, or dare I say ideologues, of power think that.

Of course it's 2016 CMON PEOPLE

t. Never read Nietzsche or too cuck to get anything from it

sorry friend but this thread is perfectly emblematic of this board's inability to actually pick up a book and instead ground their opinions in baseless groupthink

Says the guy who literally doesn't understand that there is a difference between facts and values.

No projecting please

not that guy but maybe he is saying that because

>there are no facts there are only interpretations

you can reject that argument if you please. but have fun proving it wrong. nietzsche puts the burden of proof on you and that's why your argument doesn't work

Not projecting at all you retard.

Nietzsche was a philosopher of values. Not a philosopher of facts.

I get that you don't like him, but fuck off if you don't think he was influential.

>Nietzsche is probably one of the five most influential thinkers of all time
Lol.He is not even top 15.And considering him a philosopher is a bit of an stretch
Can you clearly tell me even ONE non trivial thing nietzche said, or was he a Mr Motivator for pseuds?

>inb4 being obfuscatory is necessary

Sorry, state and explain your axioms

I love Kant. I think he's my favorite philosopher of the ones I've been exposed to in introductory philosophy/ethics courses.

Yeah, but this is one aphorism about thousands he's wrote.

Are you going to say that I should assume his entire philosophy based on that one statement?

>Dude's a PhD

lel you think that means much?

Well, it means he at least read the required texts and understood them enough to write something sensible.

>but isn't the other possibility that some philosophers might in fact right either obscurely or unclearly in order to make it harder for readers, either for political or pedagogical motives?

This. "Obscurantism" is most often a means of escaping ideological impasses.
See it as related to Wittgenstein's maxim:
That of which we can not speak we must pass over in silence.
In turn that of which we can only hint at, must be disguised.

I never got the "Hegel is unclear" meme. I think his writing isnt particularly obtuse or autistic, its Just that his thought processes are pretty cryptic at times

of course not. only that it is uncharitable to argue that that other user was guilty of failing to distinguish between facts and values when he is championing Nietzsche, who claimed that there was no distinction to be made between these at all since for Nietzsche facts did not exist.

>this is one aphorism about thousands he's wrote

this is a fair point; moreover, Nietzsche will indeed contradict himself. the difficulty in struggling with Nietzsche is in taking these contradictions into account and not dismissing them out of hand. you're well within your rights to do so - you will be welcome by the entire analytic community - but my point was that if you're going to take issue with that user it is necessary to understand that you may be criticizing him for what he already believes in and understands. put another way your criticism done in that way will only confirm what he already believes to be the case, which is what he is attempting to communicate to you. or at least that's one possibility.

if you don't like nietzsche that's fine, of course. but this is the thing about criticism: it depends on a certain fidelity to the rules of the games that philosophers themselves supply. and while it seems unfair of nietzsche to create a game with contradictory rules, that is indeed how he viewed the world, and so far it has been hard to think other than that he was right.

Nietzsche doesn't have the final word on everything, and we should not stop with him. people who champion Nietzsche as having the high card on everything are obnoxious cunts. but in terms of facts and values he so far seems to have been correct.

tl;dr newtonian fidelity to einsteinian rules is a mofo