Readers with an interest in philosophy will probably know Richard Rorty died last week. Of the summaries of Rorty’s thinking, two in particular caught my eye. Their connection to each other, and to recent posts, is, I think, pretty obvious.

Norman Geras wrote:

“Rorty’s anti-foundationalism, his refusal of the idea of an objective realm beyond the language in which we try to apprehend it, leaves us intellectually defenceless in the face of a cognitive relativism for which any view must be just as good as any other. Rorty denied this consequence of his own arguments, but the denial struck me as one example among many of his tolerance for internal contradiction.”

Roger Scruton had this to say:

“[Rorty’s] venture into political theory took [him] in new and unforeseeable directions, as he tried to reconcile his view that some versions of political order are superior to others, with his belief that there is no trans-historical perspective from which any such judgment can be made. It is a testimony to his literary skills that he was able repeatedly to stare refutation in the face, and to go on staring…

Undoubtedly he was the most lucid of the postmodernist philosophers – though that is, given the competition, no great achievement… Rorty was paramount among those thinkers who advance their own opinion as immune to criticism, by pretending that it is not truth but consensus that counts, while defining the consensus in terms of people like themselves.”

Rorty was a learned man, to be sure, but, like so many of his postmodernist peers, he tried to deform logic to fit a political prejudice.

Related: On Derrida’s clotted prose.

Further to my article on the ludicrous Carolyn Guertin, here’s another example of how not to impart knowledge to soft student brains. From Jacques Derrida’s 1994 book, supposedly on the relevance of Marxism, Spectres of Marx, the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International:

“Capital contradiction. At the very origin of capital. Immediately or in the end, through so many differential relays, it will not fall to induce the ‘pragmatic’ double constraint of all injunctions. Moving about freely (aus freien Stucken), on its own head [de son propre chef], with a movement of its head but that controls its whole body, from head to toe, ligneous and dematerialised, the Table-Thing appears to be at the principle, at the beginning, and at the controls of itself. It emancipates itself on its own initiative: all alone, autonomous and automaton, its fantastic silhouette moves on its own, free and without attachment. It goes into trances, it levitates, it appears relieved of its body, like all ghosts, a little mad and unsettled as well, upset, ‘out of joint’, delirious, capricious, and unpredictable…”

“But also at stake, indissociably, is the differential deployment of tekkne, of techno-science or tele-technology. It obliges us more than ever to think the virtualisation of space and time, the possibility of virtual events whose movement and speed prohibit us more than ever (more and otherwise than ever, for this is not absolutely and thoroughly new) from opposing presence to its representation, ‘real time’ to ‘deferred time’, effectivity to its simulacrum, the living to the non-living, in short, the living to the living-dead of its ghosts. It obliges us to think, from there, another space for democracy. For democracy-to-come and thus for justice. We have suggested that the event we are prowling around here hesitates between the singular ‘who’ of the ghost and the general ‘what’ of the simulacrum.”

Now it’s possible you find this meaningful and “skilfully poetic”, as others claim to do, and you might argue that I’ve taken these passages out of context and thus obscured some deep and elegant insight. In fact the sequence of many paragraphs appears arbitrary and I suspect one could rearrange them in any number of ways to much the same effect. And if you think I’ve been unfair and scoured for the most “difficult” passages, please feel free to read a much longer extract here, from which these passages were taken. Caution is advised, however, as prolonged exposure may induce fits of nausea or hilarity, or an urge to bite one’s own fist. Those who survive will, no doubt, be rendered very, very clever.

Some of you may have seen Vanessa Engle’s witty BBC4 documentary series, Lefties, screened in February last year. The 3-part series revisits the “alternative politics” of the 70s and 80s, when the far left was an all-too-serious force in British political life. Among the gems to savour are the endless factional disputes over exactly how capitalism should be toppled, the farcical mismanagement of the News on Sunday, an earnest exposition on “penile imperialism”, and interviews with former self-styled radicals, now sitting by private swimming pools, fretting about fridge ownership or planning to work on llama farms.

Here’s a brief taste.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The three episodes – Property is Theft, Angry Wimmin and A Lot of Balls – can be viewed online here. Given a generation of young lefties with little, if any, experience of what their dreams entail when applied in the real world, it’s worth casting an eye over what happened when Socialism wasn’t just something people laughed at.

Help me buy my own llama farm.

Zombietime has posted video and transcripts of Christopher Hitchens’ recent debate with the leftwing jihad apologist and author of American Fascists, Chris Hedges. I urge you to watch the brief “Hitchens Highlights” clip below. A second compilation can be found here and a much longer exchange, in 7 parts, can be seen here with photos, transcripts and commentary. Needless to say, Hitchens does a fine job of highlighting the sneery, morally contorted posturing that now defines much of the left.

“The decline – not to say the moral eclipse – of the secular left has just been illustrated on this very platform by someone who makes excuses for suicide murder and tries to trace them to a second-rate sociology… Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know. But these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers – and you have to live with the shame of having done that – these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they’re also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.”

Someone buy that man a drink. More sneery posturing here. Related: this.

This article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Laila Lalami has prompted a reply from a reader, Suhail Shafi:

“Ms Lalami’s article… [takes] a firm stand against the oppression of women in any way shape or form… Believing in equality for women without insulting or vilifying anybody’s religious sentiments… strikes as being far more constructive than the factually questionable (at best) rant of the likes of Hirsi Ali. Yes, ‘eminently brilliant’ is quite an appropriate label for Ms Lalami’s work.”

Setting aside the matter of Lalami’s “eminent brilliance”, an obvious problem springs to mind. It seems rather difficult to “take a firm stand against the oppression of women in any form” without challenging the specific religious ideas and specific religious laws that are used to justify and perpetuate the oppression one is supposedly taking a stand against. How, for instance, does one deal with the “respected” Andalusian imam, Mohammed Kamal Mostafa, whose book, The Islamic Woman, advises Muslim men on how to beat “rebellious” women without leaving visible signs of injury, in accord with Muhammad’s teachings? How, exactly, does one challenge Mostafa’s assertions – and the assertions of others like him – without also challenging the “sacred” ideas that are invoked as an unassailable religious mandate? And how does one take “a firm stand” without suggesting, at least by implication, that those “religious sentiments” are wrong and disgusting on very important issues?

“Believing” in the equality of women is very easy and conveniently vague, especially if one is unwilling to challenge the means by which cruelty and coercion are perpetuated, justified and enforced. Unless one is prepared to address the theological nuts and bolts of the matter, and prepared to risk offending some religious “sentiments”, it’s hard to see what kind of “firm stand” has actually been taken.

Elsewhere, Tim Blair highlights the flummery of some multicultural “feminists” when confronted with female genital mutilation. One particularly conflicted soul says, “It would seem to me counterproductive to have loud denunciations of [FGM] – the key thing should be to convince people it is wrong.” Quite how one makes a compelling and realistic argument while studiously avoiding “denunciation” of any kind isn’t exactly clear. Apparently the words “barbarous” and “stupid” are frowned upon. But again, it isn’t obvious how such practices can be challenged in any meaningful way if one is obliged to flatter the “sentiments” of those who wield the clitoral scissors.

Update: Some of the comments are quite illuminating. Related: this.