--- Anthony Tothe <yankee at webspan.net> wrote:
Also,
> judging from some of the reviews of it-like the one
> on the Znet home page-it
> didn't seem like they had all that much to say. But
> whenever anyone starts
> using dense language and concepts when discussing
> world affairs-this isn't
> physics-I get very skeptical that they really have
> anything of value to say.
It is true that there are a lot of people who want to dazzle with opaque language when they really have nothing to say. However, I think that it would be wrong to conclude from that that all difficult texts are rubbish. I personally think that Empire has a lot of interesting ideas, others may not. However to discard it out of hand just because it is difficult would mean that you would have to discard Spinoza, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and any number of difficult philosophers.
> It strikes me as needless careerism written for the
> benefit of other
> intellectuals. I really don't have time for books
> like this.
Well, I can understand that you might not have time, interest or energy to read a book like Empire, but as I said above, that isn't reason to discredit it or any other difficult text on that basis.
Some of the people that you mention Chomsky, Zinn etc, do indeed do fine jobs but they are not writing political philosopy. Chomsky mostly presents news that does not get revealed by the mainstream press. True, his political writings are fairly easy to read. However, have you tried to read one of his books on linguistic theory? Not exactly easy. Should we then conclude that Chomsky has nothing to say about linguistics? That he is just a poseur? Zinn is a popularizer. Nothing wrong with that. But writing those types of works are different than political theory.
Thomas
===== "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
"Money eats quality and shits out quantity" -William Burroughs
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