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).

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.