>So what is the value of such work, which is so open to interpretation that 100 years later you will find diametrically opposed takes on its meaning?
Different takes to make sense of complex phenomena happen in many fields. It's not a co-incidence that it is especially as such in the realm of our culture where challenging existing interpretations is common place.
>Conjectures about what the driving forces of society are a dime a dozen, but any useful means of verifying and comparing them seems far out of our reach.
Indeed it is difficult, but I would highly suggest not being too empirically minded about abstract concepts like these. What conceptual frameworks and methods are useful in one field (e.g. quantification and measurements in the sciences) do not carry over to another necessarily. Human societal structures and phenomena are complex and would be more difficult to make sense of were it not for useful works like these.
>So, why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas. What does it really contribute to humanity?
One answer is tradition given these are thinkers part of significant and established schools of thought, and another is that there simply are contemporary scholars that find value in furthering and fleshing out the (usually dense) systems of thought and frameworks. Modern psychology for example has come about from philosophical and psychoanalysis frameworks, some of which are still explored and furthered alongside empirical investigations.
I might be mistaken, but it feels as if your post fails to wrap itself around the idea that not all human knowledge need not be something that contributes to practical or immediate assistance to humans or their productivity. And that instead, sometimes, it can be simply related towards the pursuit and sake of knowledge itself.
>And that instead, sometimes, it can be simply related towards the pursuit and sake of knowledge itself.
But is what we get from Heidegger "knowledge"? Or is it the intricate and imprecise fantastical construction of one (perhaps brilliant) mind? Does it amount to anything more knowledge-producing than a Jackson Pollack painting?
Different takes to make sense of complex phenomena happen in many fields. It's not a co-incidence that it is especially as such in the realm of our culture where challenging existing interpretations is common place.
>Conjectures about what the driving forces of society are a dime a dozen, but any useful means of verifying and comparing them seems far out of our reach.
Indeed it is difficult, but I would highly suggest not being too empirically minded about abstract concepts like these. What conceptual frameworks and methods are useful in one field (e.g. quantification and measurements in the sciences) do not carry over to another necessarily. Human societal structures and phenomena are complex and would be more difficult to make sense of were it not for useful works like these.
>So, why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas. What does it really contribute to humanity?
One answer is tradition given these are thinkers part of significant and established schools of thought, and another is that there simply are contemporary scholars that find value in furthering and fleshing out the (usually dense) systems of thought and frameworks. Modern psychology for example has come about from philosophical and psychoanalysis frameworks, some of which are still explored and furthered alongside empirical investigations.
I might be mistaken, but it feels as if your post fails to wrap itself around the idea that not all human knowledge need not be something that contributes to practical or immediate assistance to humans or their productivity. And that instead, sometimes, it can be simply related towards the pursuit and sake of knowledge itself.