aleph.dk \ polemos
Chacun est renvoyé à soi. Et chacun sait que ce soi est peu.

Something which has really gotten my goat lately is intellectual commentary. There are certainly innumerable culprits within this field of pseudo-intellectual guff but two among them annoy me on a daily basis: Christopher Hitchens and Slavoj Zizek.

Let us begin with the anti-theist. Hitchens is a very educated man. He went to Oxford, which is often mentioned when he is introduced before going on stage. But this is another thing: Why is it important that the man went to Oxford?! It is without a doubt a good school, but in no way is it a guarantee of the man’s competence. The snobbery of it! I know plenty of people who went to La Sorbonne. I see no greater assembly of geniuses there than anywhere else and yet it is mentioned with a certain awe, as if it were the proof of a mind as sharp as a surgical laser. Why can’t we simply accept that it is not the teaching which makes the thinker, but the studying.

Hitchens probably did a fair deal of studying. He seems to be a well-read man. But this also seems to be his only intellectual strength. If you listen to his speeches, interviews or debates or you actually read his texts you might notice that he is all reference and no analysis. He refers to literary quotes and the experiences of his own wicked self or those of others. His argument is thus based on the authority of texts or the allusion to “real life”.
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