The subject of obscure writing came up on another thread, and with Steven Pinker’s new book on writing coming out next week, now is a good time for a thread on the topic.
Obscure writing has its place (Finnegan’s Wake and The Sound and the Fury, for example), but it is usually annoying and often completely unnecessary. Here’s a funny clip in which John Searle laments the prevalence of obscurantism among continental philosophers:
John Searle – Foucault and Bourdieu on continental obscurantism
When is obscure prose appropriate or useful? When is it annoying or harmful? Who are the worst offenders? Feel free to share examples of annoyingly obscure prose.
I find Searle’s remark somewhat off the mark.
For one thing, I’ve read a lot of Foucault, and only one of his books (The Archeology of Knowledge) gave me any difficulty. The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and A History of Sexuality were all straightforward enough. Then again, I also read a lot of Nietzsche and Heidegger (though less nowadays then I did in grad school).
For another, the whole complaint that Continental philosophy is “obscure” is a fairly petty, passive-aggressive remark made by analytic philosophers that fails to recognize that Continental philosophy diverges from analytic philosophy precisely by taking a very different view about the nature of language itself — and a view that is supported by arguments that analytic philosophers almost universally ignore or fail to comprehend. One might think that those arguments are flawed — I think that they are! — but I’ve taken the time to understand them.
Quite frankly, analytic philosophers who dismiss Continental philosophy out of hand because they don’t understand it are no better than creationists, climate-change denialists, or anti-vaccine enthusiasts. It’s the same intellectual sin in all four cases: proudly proclaiming the vacuousness of something you haven’t taken the time to understand in the first place.
That said, there is no book in any language more obscure than Hegel’s Science of Logic.
KN,
But Foucault and Bourdieu confirmed Searle’s assessment. Foucault is pleading guilty, yet you’re arguing that he’s innocent!
KN,
That Searle clip isn’t “passive-aggressive”. He’s leveling a criticism, openly and straightforwardly. Also, he doesn’t say that continental philosphy is obscure — he says that the writing is obscure, and unnecessarily so. Foucault and Bourdieu confirm the diagnosis.
Continental philosophers take a different view of language, but that does not require them to use obscure language to express that view. Their use of obscure language is voluntary, as Foucault and Bourdieu confess.
Again, Searle is criticizing the fashionably obscure writing style of continental philosophers, not continental philosophy itself.
Bruce, on the other thread:
Yes, it’s important to be careful about that, but if you do exercise care, it’s possible to reach a fair and valid judgment.
I’ll provide some examples tomorrow, or over the weekend, in which some of these continental thinkers tackle scientific and mathematical subjects. You’ll see what I mean. These folks may be able to bamboozle their nontechnical audience, but technical readers will see right through the smoke and mirrors.
Oh, good — it’ll be Fashionable Nonsense all over again.
Keith:
OK, but I am aware of those from Sokal’s book that KN mentions.
I am sure one could find similar examples of scientists misunderstanding or misapplying philosophy, or making scientific argument where philosophy might be needed (eg Krauss’s book on Universe from Nothing as reviewed by David Albert).
But it is philosophers writing in their field of expertise that would be the telling examples.
Further, in any field one can find poorly written but still published material. So you would have to concentrate on the material which is highly regarded by the experts in the field.
ETA: Now should we trust those experts to judge their own field? Maybe the whole field is simply engaging some kind of empty arguments using terms and tests for correctness that make sense only to the indoctrinated?
That would be the same charge that ID supporters level against scientists and evolution. But science and its norms can be justified by its success both in experimental prediction and in helping to build everyday technology.
I don’t know how one would counter a similar charge against obscurely-expressed philosophy, especially since understanding it requires indoctrination into specialized modes of expression. But my not knowing how to do it does not imply that it cannot be done.
Here is an example in response to the request in the OP. It is at the end of this post.
What the hell can that mean?
But in no way do I think Putnam or Tarski’s ideas are obscurantist, of course. I just lack the knowledge to understand the references in the quote.
I have often seen people cite Tarski, in support of a disquotational account of truth. Putnam is saying that they are wrong. Incidentally, I agree with Putnam on that.
Thanks for the explanation but of course it does not help me too much – I don’t know what “disquotational account of truth” means and even if I wiki it or SEP it, I will lack the context for a deep understanding of the phrase.
But your reply does provide an example of something that is obscure to the ignorant (ie me) not being obscure to people who have studied the subject.
Basically, The Deflationary Theory of Truth.
KN,
Yes, that’s the first place I’ll look. Why reinvent the wheel?
I do too.
Some writers do seem clearer than others. It’s a virtue, IMO, but there may be higher ones. Chisholm once said that when he can’t understand the writing of some philosopher, he generally thinks its the writer’s fault rather than his own. But he made an exception of Aristotle, who he thought HAD to be hard to read. Kant is obscure, but great for all that. And, I think, Hegel had bigger problems than being hard to understand.
Also, there’s a philosopher with a continental bent in my dept. who says he can understand Heidegger, but not Russell. So, who the hell knows? Anyhow, G.E. Moore is clear as a bell (to me), but extremely annoying to read for all that. I think he might be TOO clear.
ETA: I just wanted to add that I sometimes feel I don’t fully understand KN’s posts, and I think it may be because of his background in continental thought. But I (usually) don’t take that as being a defect of his posts, but of my almost entirely Anglophone training. Very few non-English speaking philosophers make it onto my desert island list. Descartes, Leibniz, Brentano, Fechner, maybe. (And Kant, if I feel particularly industrious). But even with those guys, I probably enjoy English expositors of their work a bit more.
I guess I’m just more provincial than KN (although I probably enjoy uglier music). I’m even a sucker for middlebrow costume Brit flicks and belong to a Trollope reading group.
I draw a sharp distinction between obscurantism, which is deliberate, and writing that is unintentionally obscure. Some people write badly even when they’re trying not to.
Foucault and Bourdieu, on the other hand, admit to deliberate obfuscation in order to impress their French readers. They were obscurantists.
That’s sensible.
I find all philosophical writing obscure 🙂 (Pl don’t challenge me to list what little I have read. I can’t even remember the titles). Most have no point to make !
Here’s a hilariously pompous and obscure bit of mathemasexual bullshit from Jacques Lacan, quoted by Sokal and Bricmont in Fashionable Nonsense:
It’s hard to read that excerpt without imagining Lacan laughing his ass off at the fact that readers were actually buying it.
Or, at least, none that you can remember, I suppose.
It’s also quite likely that they had a point to make, but that ‘the bystander’ didn’t understand it.
Reading that Lacan quote, it becomes apparent that:
1. He doesn’t understand the math.
2. He can’t relate it to sexuality in a coherent way.
3. He isn’t trying to be clear or to communicate anything substantive.
4. He wants to impress readers who don’t know that he’s bullshitting.
Of course, none of that means that Lacan had no good ideas, or that there isn’t a nugget of truth anywhere in his writings. But when you know you’re dealing with an author who will readily lie in order to impress you, it becomes harder to justify the effort (and stench) of sieving the shit to find that nugget.
Kids, don’t be like Jacques Lacan!
I strive towards maximal charity when it comes to philosophers like Lacan or Derrida. I haven’t read their work and don’t intend to. I tried Lacan’s Ecrits and gave up in frustration half-way through the first essay. I’ve read exactly one essay by Derrida, and found it intriguing but not enough to go any further. Yet there are lots of philosophers just as smart as I am (if not more so) who read their work and get a lot out of it, and many of those people are friends and colleagues. So I don’t pretend to be in a position of saying, “there’s no there there!”, because how would I know?
The most charitable interpretation I can think of why Lacan writes as he does is that he’s using a logical concept in a metaphorical way. I find that intellectually offensive myself. But it doesn’t bother my friends who read Lacan; they can just breeze right past it and get down to the psychoanalytic truth that’s being expressed metaphorically. I can’t do that; my irritation at seeing a logical concept being used metaphorically gets in the way.
One might take “doesn’t understand it” as an insulting.
But if one admits one cannot remember anything that one read, then it follows logically that perhaps one simply cannot remember the point, purely as a consequence of one’s own admitted limited memory. Then that would be why one thinks there was no point when in fact there was.
Hint #2: remember my bit about Godel.
Now you could say I should stick to retirement, and not plan a second career in stand-up comedy. That would be fair comment.
KN,
The charitable interpretation just doesn’t fly in Lacan’s case.
For one thing, a writer who is honestly trying to communicate will use analogies and metaphors to clarify things, not to obscure them. You take a difficult or unfamiliar concept and liken it to something that most of your readers will understand. Lacan is doing the opposite, hoping that his readers will understand even less of the math than he does, and that they will take his word that he knows what he is talking about. He clearly doesn’t.
Also, Lacan himself torpedoes the “it’s just an analogy or metaphor” argument. Sokal and Bricmont quote a lecture by Lacan in which he makes the following claims:
After the lecture, a questioner asks:
Lacan replies emphatically:
Here’s an interesting example. The argument below is from Luce Irigaray, but as summarized by the American literary critic Katherine Hayles, who writes much more clearly than Irigaray. When presented in clear prose, the battiness of the ideas stands out quite vividly:
By presenting it so clearly, Hayles has stripped Irigaray’s argument of its first line of defense — its obscurity. Bad ideas are much more palatable when presented in a wrapper of obscurantist prose.
Or it may be simple case of the points not worth remembering. Only useful or interesting bits of knowledge makes it to the long term memory.
Sure, but what does “not worth” mean? I don’t see how you can dismiss out of hand a field of knowledge which has attracted so many intelligent people and which speaks to so many issues that confront us in living our lives.
Of course, like any field of knowledge, once you get past the basics, then only the experts in that area might find it worth the time to understand and remember the details.
I’m glad I started this thread, as it’s given me a reason to reread Fashionable Nonsense. Here’s a marvelously pretentious quote from Gilles Deleuze:
The totality of the valid scientific content can be expressed thus:
Of course the view that the “totality of the valid scientific content” is equal to the totality of the content generally is verificationism, but never mind….
How is analytic philosophy any different? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1n5MnCoxTs
How is it any different from what?
ETA: Never mind, I now see what you meant. Very funny! Tom Stoppard has also taken his whacks.
Analytic philosophy is not free from obscurantism, not even when compared to continental philosophy, that’s what I meant 🙂
I’m firmly continental myself, but I agree that postmodernism is its absolute lowest point.
Erik,
Thanks for posting that! I had never seen it.
It reminds me of this story from Richard Dawkins:
Erik,
I doubt that any field is free from obscurantism, but there’s a case to be made that obscurantism is far more acceptable in continental circles than in analytic. Take the “stars” of continental thought over the last half century and compare their writings to those of their analytic counterparts. I maintain that you’ll see much more deliberately obscure writing in the former than in the latter.
Sokal and Bricmont write this about the aftermath of Sokal’s hoax:
Steven Pinker’s new book just arrived on my Kindle, and I expect it to contain lots of advice suitable for the obscurantists cited in this thread.
However, I see trouble brewing already. In Chapter 1, Pinker compares a passage from Dawkins to one written by Rebecca Goldstein (who happens to be Pinker’s wife):
Given the recent excoriation of Sam Harris on trumped-up charges of sexism (see this: Fuck you, you sexist, patronizing asshole. You think women don’t take a critical posture?), I fear the Gender Thought Police will soon be descending on Pinker.
I hope they will read this first.
Oh, I wouldn’t take that bet . . . not until you’ve experienced first-hand texts by Saul Kripke, John Rawls, David Lewis, David Armstrong, or Kit Fine.
I’d take Merleau-Ponty over that lot any day of the week. Then again, Merleau-Ponty was an exceptional writer — and pretty much the only philosopher of his generation to take science as seriously as he took art. (Deleuze also takes art and science with equal seriousness, but he’s simply not the prose stylist that Merleau-Ponty is.)
A wrinkle about the Sokal hoax worth remembering: the editors of Social Text asked Sokal to revise it, because they couldn’t understand it. He refused. They decided to publish it anyway, because they thought the prestige of having a physicist publish in Social Text outweighed other considerations. So the real hoax lies in having revealed the shoddy editorial practices at Social Text: that they elevated prestige and status over intellectual virtue.
My premise was entirely wrong, but I stand by the conclusions drawn from it.
petrushka,
Is that a response to someone in this thread?
keiths:
KN:
I’ve “experienced” texts by the first three authors, but I didn’t get the impression that any of them were being deliberately obscure. Do you have any particular examples in mind?
As I wrote earlier:
KN:
Anyone who would bullshit like this about science is not taking it very seriously, except as a source of borrowed authority for his own dubious pronouncements.
KN,
Sokal addresses that forthrightly:
Yes. I can’t get quotes to work on my kindle.
From Chapter 2 of Pinker’s book:
I’m a bit unhappy with the equivocation going on in this thread between “Continental philosophy” and “postmodernism”. (Neither term names a natural kind, but that’s besides the point.)
We started off with Foucault and Bourdieu admitting that they write badly in order to be taken seriously — a fact that certainly merits a sociological investigation in itself! But along the way this was dropped in favor of Sokal and Bricmont’s complaints about “the French.” These aren’t complaints about bad writing per se — these are complaints about a lack of substantial intellectual content which is disguised by bad writing. Searle did not think that Foucault and Bourdieu lacked intellectual content, obviously — he was complaining only about how badly they expressed themselves.
And now Sokal and Bricmont are being echoed by Pinker, whose authority as a stylist seems mysterious to me. (Then again, I prefer Orwell’s “The Politics of the English Language” as a guide to style.)
Is there a way to answer the question of whether well-regarded writing in a branch of philosophy is clear to the trained reader?
I don’t think one could use standard tests of clarity (eg for people with a high school education) or apply style guides intended to make writing clear for general readers. This is technical writing and such measures or guidelines are not relevant.
Instead, how about this:
1. Select two panels of trained philosophers, one from continental philosophy, one from analytical. Try to have a variety of specialties for each branch within each panel.
2. Now we need something for them to review. It cannot be well-known papers that they will have seen before. But I think we want something that represents what the field regards as well-written papers. So I suggest selecting all of the papers about to be published in the top-ranked journals for each field.
3. Now have the panel review the papers in their branch of philosophy and rank each for clarity of ideas on a multi-level scale. Not whether the ideas are right or wrong or of value. Simply whether they are clear to a knowledgeable person in the field.
We could then compare the average clarity as seen by the panels. There are statistical techniques to allow for different scales among panel members and other sources of variation unrelated to the outcome we want to measure.
We could even go further and ask each panel member to summarize the ideas and then compare the summaries for consistency and use that to rank clarity.
I think something like that would be needed to answer the OP meaningfully. Simply pointing out worst cases or giving one person opinion is fun but not a useful answer to the question I posed.
IMHO, Rebecca Goldstein is a failed philosopher and bad novelist. Is that better than being an obscure philosopher?
You can get at taste of of what Cleese and Miller are parodying by looking for (the lamented) Gareth Evans on youtube. It’s interesting that Wittgenstein was so influential at Oxford, even though he was never associated with the place. Those affects are disappearing, and, even back when I was a student in the 1970s there were only fumes–even at Cornell, which was a hotbed of Wittgensteinianism at the time.
BTW, I completely disagree with KNs remarks about Kripke and Lewis (in particular). As I’ve mentioned, I think Crispin Wright is extremely obscure, though. And Davidson seems to me overrated as a writer–though at times he hits it out of the park. I also find a guy named Pautz quite difficult–though also very smart and rewarding. So I understand how people might slog through Heidegger and feel that they have gotten a lot from it that they might not have gotten from somebody easier to read. I don’t get that feeling from Wright, sadly.
Also, I’ve long noted with respect to my own writing that it may seem clear to me on one day and a big mess the next, so willingness to edit, patience, all that stuff that contributes to making writers good in any field is important. It’s not all about philosophical ability or smarts: sometimes it’s just about willingness to revise repeatedly, meticulousness, etc.
One philosopher who I will happily admit is a bad writer (perhaps “obscure”) is Wilfrid Sellars. I just think there’s a lot of gold in them there hills, if you’re willing to pan for it. McDowell is definitely obscure! But there too I find working through McDowell immensely rewarding.
KN,
They’re distinct in my mind, and I’m not aware of anyone else in this thread who is conflating the two.
Sokal and Bricmont aren’t criticizing “the French”. Their targets are quite specific:
KN:
He was complaining about the fact that they deliberately expressed themselves poorly. That’s obscurantism.
My challenge concerns obscurantism, not merely obscure writing:
KN:
Pinker is justly recognized as an excellent writer, plus his expertise in linguistics and cognitive science sets him apart from the writers of other style guides. His guide not only makes recommendations, it justifies those recommendations in terms of that expertise.
He writes:
Ah, JUSTLY praised. It’s not, like, a subjective appraisal.