favorite 20th-century French philosopher poll

raymond aron

idk if i'd vote for him but it's sort of hard to take this poll seriously without him

has he really had that much influence outside of france tho? (honest question, I know next-to-nothing abt him)

tony judt liked him

can't say i'm aware of jean-luc nancy's widespread influence, though i kind of try to avoid this stuff

absurd to leave off Jean Cavaillès

toss up b/w de beauvoir and foucault

if we're gonna o_O at dudes being left off the list then can I just say, no Jean Hyppolite no credibility

(but I think there are enough good names on the list that I will be able to pick one)

yah idk i dont really care that much abt philosophy *as* philosophy but those two are p key for me.

kinda feel like derrida is the only right answer here but also feeling the tug to vote for bataille, bourdieu, deleuze, foucault, lacan, omg my fave levi-strauss, levinas (member of tribe points), teaching sartre right now... tough choice

well "right answer" -- maybe if question was most important, but it's favorite so really i retract that comment

also notably absent: the whole strain of more 'traditionalist' French Catholic philosophy (apart from marginal cases like Blanchot and maybe Nancy) — Maritain, Marcel, Ricoeur (altho I think he's actually some Protestant denomination?)

gonna vote deleuze in the end i think bc thousand plateaus + also send some love in guatarri's direction

baudrillard is the most fun to read however of this bunch

Aron was pretty good at countering Sartre.

ehh, everyone had to counter Sartre — Barthes in Writing Degree Zero, Levi-Strauss in La Pensee Sauvage — it's what happens when yr the big dog

baudrillard is fun but I'm not if he is (or wants to be) a 'philosopher'; I like him best when I read him alongside the other dudes he is attacking/making fun of

baudrillard is the best bc disneyworld

baudrillard is the best bc disneyworldTHE MATRIX

same diff

I guess I think of Baudrillard as just, like, a good essayist. I've never really been able to get with his broader systematic/methodological notions about "symbolic exchange" and "the code" and all this; but then he drops a hilarious aside or a striking image or devastating truthbomb ("Everywhere what has been liberated has been liberated so that it can enter a state of pure circulation, so that it can go into orbit") and I'm like, right on man

btw in case it wasn't already obvious this topic is like catnip to me on a sad rainy day

every post i have ever made to ilx about this topic has deeply embarrassed me 5 minutes after i post it so i am not going to "get into it" here but derrida

like catnip to me on a sad rainy day

vy vy pretty

Will cast my vote in 10 years when I will have hopefully gotten my shit together and properly read everyone here.

Derrida for me. Though i actually have a real soft spot for Sartre.

we should do germans next

Heidegger in a walk, no? (though not my choice)

kant + hegel would be strong competitors i'd think. also, i'd vote for adorno

No Bing Crosby?

husserl...

oh, just realized this is only 20th century lol

predictions

1. Foucault
2. Derrida
3. Sartre
4. Lacan
5. Camus
6. Beauvoir
7. Lyotard
8. Deleuze
9. Levi-Strauss
10. Althusser

how far off am I?

foucault shouldn't be over derrida and sarte is way too far up

can't imagine Camus placing that highly (does anyone really rate him as a philosopher? even his fiction doesn't rly seem to be 'taken seriously' anymore); definitely can't imagine Lyotard beating Deleuze, who I'd say has an outside shot at top 3; wld personally rate Althusser higher on influence alone but he's not a very exciting choice.

foucault is awesome bc ppl like sex and leather and getting high in the desert and discipline baby and madness and despair. in comparison derrida is like "so i read this book when i was stoned"

sometimes the book derrida read was by foucault, and he's trying to figure out how all the sex and leather and deserts got into the pages, and then back out again.

i guess specters of marx seems like a good idea. but then the best bits of capital are already the bits about werewolves and vampires

can see Bachelard in there somewhere based on the popularity of The Poetics of Space.

I go for Deleuze but considering that this is My Field I've read shockingly little by most of them.

favorite = althusser

p sure ive read 75% of deleuze in ppls artist statements.

also it would be sad if levinas didn't place at all

I've done 1/10th of 1/10th of one percent of the reading I'd need to do to cast an informed vote here, so I won't. I do want to say that a "favorite 20th-century French philosopher" poll is worthy of Woody Allen. (That's not a putdown! I'm a poll/list obsessive--it makes me laugh in a good way.)

I think Sartre is still popular enough to get some serious support here, but it would be fun to see Deleuze and Lacan beat him (Foucault and Derrida probably will)

Wittgenstein would take the German poll, right? "Wittgenstein VS Heidegger"?

i think adorno + benjamin would be competitive

agreed

I mean, I agree about Adorno and Benjamin. will shut up now

Meagre pedantry, but Wittgenstein is Austrian (unless you just mean German language).

My position is that, without pics, this poll skews toward irrelevance. (See also: physicist with best hair poll).

pics or it didn't happen

yeah I thought of Wittgenstein too before remembering that Austria is not Germany. Marcuse looks even lolzier than Sartre in 2k11. Hannah Arendt maybe?

Will French people actually be voting in this? Because there should be a Jerry Lewis option.

other minor quibbles: Levinas = Lithuanian — and if he gets in based on the language and country in which he worked then I think Kojeve deserves a spot too, for the long shadow he casts over half the ppl on this list

I guess what I am saying is that Hegel is my favorite 20th-century french philosopher

kinda annoys me how people fall all over themselves in their rush to not take Camus/Sarte "seriously" anymore.

Hegel is my favorite 20th-century french philosopher

this is kind of a truth bomb

as someone who has been teaching being + nothingness recently i gotta say -- sartre is def goofy

sure, but so are a lot of philosophers. i just get the impression that not taking him "seriously" anymore is meant to signify some kind of philosophical maturity.

favorite = althusser

― HOOS the master?? STEEN NUFF (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Saturday, February 5, 2011 4:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

you = dead to me

I think there's a bit of a Sartre revival on the go just now, especially in relation to the (completely nuts, by everyone's admission) Critique of Dialectical Reason. It was written on amphetamines and the first volume was barely edited because he was Sartre, who's going to edit him, while the second volume wasn't edited at all I don't think, so as I'm told it alternates between brilliant insights and constructions and dozens of pages of rambling about martians and fuck knows what else.

way more interested in the martians than the brilliant insights

I have not read enough Sartre to really have an opinion (although I like his plays and, broadly speaking, his politics), but will hopefully change this soon — trying to work thru French intellectual scene of the 30s/40s, get a better handle on "What was Existentialism?" and (ultimately) the transition from there to structuralism, "theory", human sciences and the 1960s.

shd probably drop the semantics bomb at some point and ask what is a philosopher

not sure levi-strauss is one (i meant that neutrally, even admiringly), nor bourdieu, nor althusser, nor lacan (nor aron while we're there)

i would say s.thing like they wrote in a certain philosophical mode within (or against) their discipline

wouldn't call marx one either though, so...

though him more than levi-strauss

i think thats kindof what i was getting at when i said i dont really care abt philosophy

part of the problem is that "philosophy" as a coherent discipline began to lose its focus and split apart (I'd argue around the Nietzsche, Husserl, Peirce etc) around early 20th century anyway, so a list like this is interesting because it basically shows that fragmentation. almost none of these guys would cop to being an actual philosopher.

which is why they call it "theory" now i guess....a sort of pluralism of philosophical practices.

which one would have made the best ilx poster

x-post: and secondly i think a lot of these guys have internalized "philosophy" to be "the sort of thing Hegel does" and not necessarily what they do.

pretty sure best poster would be Bataille!

Jack da Reader but I wish I could give all these guys who aren't Nazi/Stalin apologists a vote.

most of them would be insufferable posters I think even my boy jacques

who's a Nazi apologist?

we need Bataille on TMI.

Think I read something about Althusser's dodgy past and much as I love Bataille's writing the guy did not swing liberal. But maybe I am misrecalling.

bataille might be fun if he chilled out a little but we already have a lot of posters being gross all the time

favorite = althusser

― HOOS the master?? STEEN NUFF (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Saturday, February 5, 2011 4:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

altHOOSser

bataille didn't 'swing liberal' but was definitely anti-fascist (albeit in a sorta-naive "we must create myths to counter fascist myths!" way) and communist (moreso at some points in his life than others)

and althusser was pretty far from a stalin apologist — dude gets more flak for being sympathetic to china and critical of khrushchev

my original point was a bit throwaway but I wd maintain that neither of those guys' relationship to totalitarianism was unblemished - but I'm not calling for heads or anythink

it's cool, just tryna set the record straight

Blanchot maybe comes the closest to 'compromising himself' via his 30s association w/Combat et al; but afaik he always opposed nazism and was sort of a gadfly within the ranks of the nationalist far right

i don't understand philosophy. i will probably vote de Beauvoir, but i have a special affection for pierre bordieu for being the only "theory" i read in grad school that made any sense to me. would have called him a sociologist, tbh, but idk much about this stuff.

bordieu would be such a boring ilx poster

no offense horsehoe

would constantly be getting into fights with deej about "my world of young people" on ilm

haha i was about to say i think he would be a dece poster! boringness is a good corrective to all these other crazy dudes.

would get involved in many interminable ILM clusterfucks, I'd bet. (xps)

he would be an ILM-only poster

he would post to ILB

the truth is i love all these guys in different ways but they were probably SO ANNOYING to hang out with

lol. I dunno about that! I could imagine many being chill bros in chill bro settings, unlike, say, Adorno, who despite the fez + hot babes picture I can't imagine having topics of conversation beyond paralysing intensive reflection on everything.

adorno was the other grad school theorist i didn't hate. i feel like maybe this suggests i am annoying to hang out with.

eh id probably take boring pierre bourdieu over spending any time at all with sartre or de beauvoir

Barthes deserved a place on the list, think he'd've made a pretty good poster too

yup, I think if Barthes were on this list he'd be the best potential poster out of them.

List should probably also have a later feminist or two (although if we're feeling pedantic neither Irigaray nor Kristeva were born in France).

Camus' first thread: "Mother Died Today."

shit, forgot Barthes. major oversight.

I would totally welcome Bordieu on ILM, tbh.

Foucault FTW

torn between foucault and bourdieu, tho derrida is if anything weirdly underrated and blanchot is devastating.

you = dead to me

― history mayne, Saturday, February 5, 2011 7:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i love how i don't even have to interpellate u to make u turn and look at me

vote for deleuze everybody! after that, foucault

yah from the heart this is prolly foucault why because he was a fun guy also evil

seems unfair not to be able to vote for Deleuze and Guattari as a package.

HM is right that this is mainly a list of guys who are not philosophers or are banned from the philosophy club. Banned from the psychoanalysts club in Lacan's case.

Foucault and Derrida both strike me as being fun, mischievous guys. Gilles & Félix too I think.

Feel like voting for any one option in this poll is more confining than I'd like, though this is obv a problem with all polls. But there's nobody I'd get behind 100% here. Foucault comes closest. Then Bourdieu.

The fact that Bourdieu is like a boring ILM poster is probably why I am like him.

Been trying to cobble together a "No Reservations" joke about Bourdieu all weekend but I give up tbh

I clicked on this to vote for Barthes but I guess the author is dead

Debord

debord, really? I have never seen anybody mount a convincing defense of him...always seemed like he was just parroting the others and now only looks good because of his association with the situationists and because of the patina of time

Err yeah I don't think I would actually rate him above the best on the list, but I thought it was a shame not to see his name. You're right about him parroting stuff but, well, most of us are parroters not philosophers right? Maybe I like recognising that when I read him. I was reading the instructions to his Game of War yesterday and they are quite entertaining. I'm way too hungover right now to mount a convincing defense tho!

hah, fair enough. I think a more accurate description of his writing would be 'college bro who read half of the syllabus of his philosophy class while smoking weed and got ~inspired~'

would love it if somebody could show me a way in though

'college bro who read half of the syllabus of his philosophy class while smoking weed and got ~inspired~'

this appeals to me more than wilful obscurantist/apologist for tyranny/fraud tbrr w/u

I *think* my enjoyment of Debord reflects my preference for political pamphleteering/artistic sloganeering over actual 'philosophical works'. I've never done any actual studying in this area so am more clueless dilettante than anything else.

lol I remember you being a debord apologist xp

I like Debord but I sorta love Vaneigem.

society of the spectacle is all-time, even if it gets knocked for being the undergrad social theory equivalent of catcher in the rye or w/e. there should be a canon of those kinds of books, too, y'know! plus his arguments abt the nature of time and the (non)relation to history in 'consumer society' were pretty avant-garde w/r/t the several decades of 'postmodernism' chatter that ensued.

good political instincts too. I think the situationists basically got the 60s right, i.e. they understood what was going on and where it was all likely to lead.

Other: Roland Barthes...

back to Sartre's current reputation, some strong support here who is your faviourite western philosopher from this list?.

so he should be able to do good in this poll, unless ilx cares more passionately about Foucault/Derrida/Lacan than about Spinoza/Nietzsche/Wittgenstein which would be kind of awesome.

Those guys all have helluv affinities imo

the first or the second bunch?

the 6 of them, feel like the latter 3 sought routes away from dominant philosophical paradigms as much as the prior 3, somebody like Deleuze wd sit happily inbetween the 2 sets.

I'm thrilled with all this Deleuze love on ilx

its foucault v. bataille for me. also wittgenstein is kinda garbage

wittgenstein just pissed me off

wittgenstein pwns all these lamers imo

wittgenstein gotta realise that sometimes talking shit about shit for some reason is hella fun.

i really love wittegenstein but im p entry lev on this

its foucault v. bataille for me. also wittgenstein is kinda garbage

― am0n, Monday, February 7, 2011 5:57 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my man

lol lamp u liking wittgenstein kindof explains things abt u but i have used this 2 diagnose ppl before

how can you hate on wittgenstein? i don't understand

Foucault and Derrida both strike me as being fun, mischievous guys. Gilles & Félix too I think.

one of my profs from grad school was a student of deleuze and would talk and talk and talk about him whenever the subject came up, i def had the impression he was a cool guy with a good sense of humor

wittgenstein gotta realise that sometimes talking shit about shit for some reason is hella fun.

― Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Monday, February 7, 2011 11:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

but yeah the tractatus is irrevocably tarnished by its association with stuffed-shirt analytic dorks

you guys should just go all out and have a best philosopher countdown poll, you know you want to

o my recollection of language-games is that his discussion of em is an attempt to pick apart the confusions they result in so as to do away with philosophical 'questions'. but it's been a while since i lazily read the investigations. i do like reading him tho, and he was also way hotter than any of these french bros.

way hotter than any? Derrida? Camus? Bourdieu? time for pics?

but yeah the tractatus is irrevocably tarnished by its association with stuffed-shirt analytic dorks

― proso_Opopoeia (bernard snowy), Tuesday, February 8, 2011 2:38 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

right because your average postgrad deleuze/derrida/_______ stan is the life and freakin' soul...

heh... might wanna check what thread yr in before u go sayin things like that...
*narrows eyes, flicks open switchblade*

u have obviously never encountered our analytic anglo lord history mayne

fwiw tho ime your average postgrad deleuze/derrida/_____ stan is way more fun to hang out with than yr avg analytic dork

ymmv

analytic vs continental poll? to settle it once and for all

glad ilx is here polling western thought

harder to namedrop analytical philosophers

ok to do this poll in the same spirit but better, best covers -

3. http://fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/files/2010/06/grammatology.jpg

v pleasing smooth jacket

2. http://mitpress.mit.edu/images/products/books/1584350180-f30.jpg

so chillwave

1. http://www.waterstones.com/wat/images/nbd/l/978041/556/9780415567886.jpg

'very lovely'

i love those vintage covers

sorry i mean routledge

for a while now I have wanted to write about jacket design and the reception of french theory

feels like this blog/book could be a real 'hit'

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GPvdVCxaNsg/TME4FjHM2mI/AAAAAAAAAlw/7WWVfZgD5lE/s1600/9780415389570.jpg

verso has nice covers too

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/136/11/what-does-the-ruling-class-do-when-it-rules-radical-thinkers-series-3-state-apparatuses-and-stat-13611175.jpeg

new benjamin editions are nice too

http://bookdesign.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/9780805202410.jpg

but i kind of like the corniness of the older ones

http://www.ebooknetworking.com/books/080/520/big0805202412.jpg

http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/images/bau/97802261/9780226143293/0/0/plain/writing-and-difference.jpg --> http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0231081596.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

both basically monolithic. like a textbook.

haha i love that writing and difference cover

anti-oedipus as new-age mysticism vs. anti-oedipus as penguin classic:

http://www.torrentmybooks.com/torrent/covers/42ao.jpghttp://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/84/Anti-Oedipus_Penguin_Cover_2009.png/200px-Anti-Oedipus_Penguin_Cover_2009.png

cld probably write a whole thesis on this trope:

http://img.alldownloadlinks.com/2010-09-09/410906/0016d5ab_medium.jpeg

god i have almost all of these in my parents house somewhere. i bought a ton 60% off at my college bookstore at a time in my life when i actually thought i might pick up deleuze for, you know, fun.

i dig the covers for foucaults college de france lectures, so appropriately... 17th century

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/213/62/the-government-of-self-and-others-michel-foucault-lectures-at-the-collge-de-france-21362788.jpeghttp://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/134/31/psychiatric-power-lectures-at-the-college-de-france-1973-1974-michel-foucault-lectures-at-the-co-13431465.jpeg

yeah they're beautiful — only thing that irks me is the first one deviates from the very series it establishes!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514qSjhPeeL.jpg

haha. routledge classic covers are v nice

http://yourbooksworld.com/images/Nonfiction/evolution-as-a-religion-routledge-classics.jpg

even lo res

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/60/27/the-varieties-of-religious-experience-a-study-in-human-nature-routledge-classics-a-study-in-hu.jpeg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41+kWVM9whL.jpg

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/130/28/one-dimensional-man-studies-in-the-ideology-of-advanced-industrial-society-routledge-classics-13028350.jpeg

http://images.betterworldbooks.com/080/The-Enlargement-of-Life-Kekes-John-9780801476273.jpg

unfortunately those routledge books fall apart really easily

this one is so lush

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0804760977.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/416LU9FS1bL.jpg

http://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/images/images_product/1846144582.jpg

http://img1.wantitall.co.za/images/ShowImage.aspx?ImageId=Dolphins-into-the-Future|51QM2X0SE2L.jpg

http://www.wiley-vch.de/books/tis/cover_big/0745648622.jpg

either lacan or lacan't

feeling this textbook

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/philosophy/images/Tomassi_Logic.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3XfCFSjNnUI/S4qTMMbKZ6I/AAAAAAAAEXw/XZeO7URQK4Y/s640/TERMINATOr+and+Philosophy.JPG

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0128-1/%7BEC03DA77-B145-4D58-9C7A-44713179AD10%7DImg100.jpg

^ has a good chapter on shinto & ffvii

fucking love verso covers

http://img1.wantitall.co.za/images/ShowImage.aspx?ImageId=Dolphins-into-the-Future|51QM2X0SE2L.jpg

irl lol

god i hate those "xxx and philosophy" books, invariably i end up getting one for christmas every year

i dont really like those white "Radical Thinkers" editions. I liked the grey and purple ones tho.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ypgoW-vpL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i like the paper-bag brown ones

they have these ugly metallic silver ones too

i have a weird predilection for seeking out 50s/60s paperbacks because something about the cover styles really appeals to me.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b0/4a/040fb2c008a0c4dcb9ab0010.L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

its totally weird to be into 60s book cover design... no one else is

point taken!

CONTIENTAL vs ANALYTIC who is more fun to hang out with

btw

you know theres a p good band named after that dolphin-centred self help book hoos?

would google

Continuum's a bit variable, but some v nice stuff in there:

http://server40136.uk2net.com/~wpower/images/product_images/9781847064455.jpg

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/290/24/philosophies-of-difference-29024463.jpeg

http://img.alldownloadlinks.com/2010-06-08/338329/00109f58_medium.jpeg

also like their minimal hardback design, e.g.

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/21pL4CpinVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://server40136.uk2net.com/~wpower/images/product_images/9781847064455.jpg

first time i saw this out of the corner of my eye there was a second of horror as i thought it was an anthology of dissensus, the msg board

haha that badiou cover makes it look like a grisham tpb

"second manifesto" cover already looks like it belongs in a final fantasy game tbh

badiou's tables make less sense than ff menus

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/uk/products/original/133/5/dorsality-thinking-back-through-technology-and-politics-posthumanities-13305064.jpeg

this one is so lush
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0804760977.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

reminds me of this all-time classic:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SMebtFinL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

derrida more chillwave

uhhh max i'm not sure if you noticed but rorty's book literally has "IRONY" for a middle name

he looks p.fuckin chill to me. just sittin on a bench in a garden somewhere, rockin' the white* suit coat** — 'yeah i'm a philosopher, what u gonna do abt it'

*: or 'ivory' I guess
**: I hope it's a suit, I'd be bummed if it turned out he had on corduroy slacks or something

cmon bernard, derrida's pic is grainy, wry smile and dreamy. rorty is all hi def garden affluence like he's about to start on orchids again while cutting you a slice of cheese - eminently affable but not v chillwave

yeah dog its all abt the grain in the photo

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31QS48F8AJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41B4AR0ZQBL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JQ9YJQHFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i like how the main french publishing houses really don't change their styles

Crazy poll. This morning while showering, eating breakfast, and getting ready for work I was struggling to remember Jean Baudrillard. (What was his name? Pierre something?) I almost never think about these guys anymore. Simulation and what the fuck. What the fuck what was it called. But I have no idea who I'd vote for.

Deleuze is a guy who I think will turn out to be a better 21st century philosopher than a 20th...

I really like some of the more modest ones like de Certeau whose idea of la perruque, even though it's kind of a throwaway idea, is really about as good as you can get as a (mostly optimistic) formulation of the behaviour of subjects under capitalism and things like that. You might call the 20th century the century of white collar work, the century of fucking the dog, the century of someone else's problem.

I don't really understand the difference between Lacan and Derrida but I thought Lacan was Swiss so naturally he should be excluded from this poll. Bergson was also a Swiss, as I remember, and should also be excluded.

Foucault was a good read, kind of like Grand Theft Auto IV was a good video game. Big budget, stupid themes, you can drive over people's heads and all sorts of fuckin' shit. Ultimately really glossy.

I dunno, who's left? Badiou was really popular for a while at the very end of the century. He was in that Coverdale-Page style supergroup with Slavoj Zizek. I couldn't really tell what any of his books were about though. Mostly they seemed to be about being a famous philosopher and how people were going to blog about you very soon.

I'm going to come out of left field and suggest two excluded names who have kicked my ass at various points. René Girard for his Violence and the Sacred and Julia Kristeva for her Powers of Horror. Derrida or somebody probably made a BIGGER impression overall but no two texts had a deeper personal effect, no texts did I work fucking harder to make my own than these two. Great, great shit. Totally recommended and totally my favourite philosophy of the 20th century.

If you wanna do a cool poll, though, do "favourite 20th-century French philosopher of the 19th-century." That would be a good one.

i covered my routledge edition of madness and civilization w/ hello kitty stickers

lol

not sure what these stickers are -- found them in a library book and went to town on ol' gil:
http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/5185/scan0001pw.jpg

Gilles looking kinda mean in his author pic.

i thought about making him the bee but i like the bee where it is

idk how this thread got to this place but it feels right

i wish i had my copy so i could show you but it is in moycullen

Would have voted Barthes, mainly for his essays on photography, but as it stands I'm leaning Foucault w/ Lévi-Strauss as a close second.

honorable mentions to Lacan & Baudrillard

René Girard for his Violence and the Sacred and Julia Kristeva for her Powers of Horror.

cosign girard and kristeva (esp. Etrangers à nous-mêmes), though i haven't read girard in a loooong time

for 21st century, this! bought because of the title. what SHOULD we do w/our brain??:
http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/197/688/400000000000000197688_s4.png

i read her "future of hegel" in grad school. really great book.

Pierre Bourdieu was a sociologist, not a philosopher, right? I think I'm still gonna vote for him. Deleuze & Guattari are cool reading if you want to expand your mind, but not so useful when it comes to practice, unlike Bourdieu. Foucault, IMO, is better when used by other philosophers/social scientists than on his own. Can't deny his influence though.

I once tried to read Kristeva, but couldn't understand half of the sentences she wrote. The same seems to apply to many other postmodern/poststructural/postwhatever French philosophers. I've always thought it's kinda contradictory that a lot of these people were/are left-wingers and anarchists who want to deconstruct hegemony, but in order to understand what they're saying you have to have a academic degree, which is kind of a hegemonic position. That's one more reason I like Bourdieu, he's not hard to get.

i have been failing to read Bourdieu's 'the logic of practice' for the past fortnight. fairly sure the problem is with me not him, though.

my vote for other = barthes

people hating on wittgenstein are totally nuts and i do not understand them at all. soz dudes

lol putting u on my list come the revolution. so sad who will look after that dog

i have a vote. although i've only read smatterings of most of the dudes here

i bought an alain badiou book once and then immediately was like "why did i buy this?"

yeah why is badiou on this nobody likes badiou who compiled this two bit poll

i left it out on the curb when i moved apts so hopefully it is in the loving care of some pratt undergrad now

I went as Derrida for Halloween one year

we should do germans next

― Mordy, Friday, February 4, 2011 5:14 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Heidegger in a walk, no? (though not my choice)

― ryan, Friday, February 4, 2011 5:14 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest

it's all abt the benjamin

did you walk around nitpicking and irritating people? xpost

no he walked in the margins

hahahaha

ha ha yeah basically

actually, it was born more of makeshift laziness than anything else. he had just died & I had all of the components sitting around already: prof chic tweed & sweater combo, wavy white wig, pipe - then I cut quotation marks out of poster-board & fashioned them on either side of myself w/ coat-hangers & tape.

lol undergrad bs

I've often thought about going as Foucault for Halloween. He's probably the only 20th Century Philosopher that's viably costume-able.

There's a costume I associate with Heidegger.

I think Prince Harry beat you to it

There's a costume I associate with Heidegger.

― Y Kant Torres Red (Noodle Vague), Friday, February 11, 2011 10:59 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

BAM

i would have voted debord or artaud if presented the option. deleuze of those listed

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Georges Bataille 0

;_;

Albert Camus 8
Jacques Derrida 6
huh!

still tho foucault i <3 u bc i dont mind being cliched

nor did he

id feel zinged nakh but

Albert Camus 8
Jacques Derrida 6
huh!

― max, Tuesday, March 1, 2011 12:06 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

poll results that sum up the spirit of ilx

Alain Badiou 1

this wasn't me but i really wanna know who it was

nrq

cool i can stop reading his posts so

lol

i mean that is a p shameful choice lets call a spade a spade

i doubt it was enrique

well find me another excuse so

max please

haha i can see nrq doing it as an lol vote in absence of zizek

MORDY WAS IT U

I said upthread who I was voting for -- the surprise runner-up Deleuze

also Badiou is like the least interesting thing about Zizek imo

forgot to vote — narrowed it down to Derrida/Foucault/Bourdieu but just couldn't pick

I'm glad I didn't vote for Derrida tho cuz I like having him tied with "Other"

http://versouk.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/cimg2348.jpg

lol lol

yeah seriously even though i would have unwisely stanned for dude a couple years ago even i was like 'wtf is he doing on this list'

Maurice Merleau-Ponty just makes me think

O Merleau-Ponty birds,
O pointy pointy.
Anoint my head,
Anointy-nointy.

no love for Lyotard?

Not one Levinas! :(

ponty birds!

Albert Camus 8
Jacques Derrida 6
huh!

― max, Monday, February 28, 2011 7:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My thoughts exactly.