[quote][i]Originally posted by Jimbo[/i]
<br>OK, who let "Z" read Derrida's "Letter to a Japanese Friend"?
Did Jacques Derrida really die a few weeks ago from pancreatic cancer or did he simply define a new social and literary construct or context for "living"? Then you will ask what is living. Is Martha Stewart living? She does have a magazine by that same name so I guess you could say yes! She is indeed "living", unless you talk to her stockbroker and then he might say she is "dead" to him. Where do we then go from here? Where [i]is[/i] here? What is [i]is[/i]?
Alas, I digress...
Call it what you want "Z", but I don't think that old Jacques has been seen at work lately, thereby leaving all those old constructs in place after all.
The really neat thing about "Deconstructionism" (the not-so-new word for "Nominalism"), is the view that the meanings of words are completely arbitrary and that, at the end of the day, reality is whatever your little heart desires it to be. Now if you say something like that so plainly, you will be laughed at by most people. But if you then dress it up with some deep sounding French phrases like "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" then you can look like a deep thinking intellectual to the rest of us unwashed masses.
So if you were to follow your own philosophy, you would not be insulted by what savethewave has posted. Because how can you [i]really know[/i] what he meant?
[/quote]
Absolutely! I wish I had seen it before! This Z guy is one of those who says how things are all relative, and that nothing really means anything.
You know the difference between Z and a bucket of crap?
The bucket.