I dont know, he usually makes sense to me, even though I'm at least as likely to disagree with him as to agree.

Anyhow, what I've gotten from this is that Chomsky hasn't actually read any Zizek, because he's a lot clearer and more detailed in his writing, his lectures are mostly just him kind of riffing on the stuff from his most recent book or two at the time, as far as I can tell, so they get bumpy sometimes. I haven't read too much of him but what I've read is definitely worthwhile, his process of defending an idea is almost always valuable regardless of whether or not I actually agree with the end result.


His lectures remind me a lot of a Frank Zappa guitar solo, actually, in that he's not afraid to spend 30 minutes or more fucking off for the sake of getting to one elegant, illuminating moment that couldn't have been reached any other way and redeems all of the dicking around that made it happen.

But you have to be willing to tolerate the bullshit.

Incidentally, my favorite moment in modern philosophy was still back in college in the late 90s when whatever the big, global convention of academic philosophers is was having their regular global summit and the keynote topic was "why haven't philosophers produced any new ideas in the last 30 years?"

Extra stars for Chomsky implying that philosophy can and does produce anything "empirical" or "testable."

He's like the anti-Indiana Jones.

Oh, he's just pushing back against the PoMo AntiEmpire's latest fashion icons. "Naked!" he exclaims, "shorn of facts and fleeced of fleece". I'd have to agree with him. though. Rejection of empiricism leads you nowhere of much utility.

Modern philosophers suck.

Kant was falsifiable, Einstein did it.

I used the term "modern" loosely as slang there, what I mean is post-modern philosophers sucks, modern philosophers were actually really cool once you remove Existentialism.