Saturday, April 22, 2006

More on British intellectuals ...

... presuming there are any (see earlier post): Intellectual (n): clever dick.

Nice to learn that Orwell thought Jean-Paul Sartre was "a bag of wind." That's exactly what he was.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:16 AM

    Sartre's not bad; I think he deserves to be counted among the tradition of "The Western Philosophers".

    Derrida on the other hand... he's worse than a bag of wind; he, like Searle puts it, gives bullshit a bad name.

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  2. Well, I admit my view of Sartre is colored by having actually had to study Being and Nothingness in a course on existentialism. So far as I could tell, it was just Heideggerian French fries. My reaction to Roqentin in Nausea was exactly the same as my reaction to Holden Caulfield. And of course I was completely charmed by Camus - and think that Marcel is a much better philosopher.
    That said, you are of course right: He's wonderful compared to Derrida. Perhaps at Christmas I will post my ditty "Derrida is Coming to Town."

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  3. There is a letter in the correspondence section of the Times every day now, with the writer's definition of an intellectual. Some of them are quite rude.
    I know a lot of very intellectual people, and one thing I can say about them: there is no correlation between intellectual ability and common sense.

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