I've often tended to share Ambrose Bierce's view of philosophy, which he defined as "A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. "
I'm reminded of it because today, comes the sad news that the post-modernist French philosopher of the "hyperreal" - Jean Baudrillard, has died.
I wrote this commentary - Welcome to the Desert of the Theoretical - on one of his more recent books - "The Spirit of Terrorism" - just over two years ago.
I subsequently read his magnum opus "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" as well. First written as a series of essays in the French communist party daily Humanite, it was overpoweringly silly. He repeatedly mentioned Timosoara, the town where protests by minority Hungarians precipitated the downfall of the Romanian dictatorship in 1989, as an example of the misuse of hyperreality: his outraged tone hinted that he and the majority of Romanians might not share the same conception of reality. In practise, this has always been the art of politics, to do what observers and opponents cannot understand. In the words of Machiavelli, in chapter eighteen of the Prince:
Men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone, touching to few. Everyone sees how you appear, few touch what you are; and these few dare not oppose the opinion of many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.
If the money is in the hands of you, you don't want to this fetish grace, Because the sage once such instruction: hardworking than gold.Do you think so?
Posted by: Asics shoes | September 18, 2010 at 07:42 AM