Liking Clear Writing Isn't A Fetish, Actually!
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Sokal affair
12 min read
The article directly references Sokal's hoax paper accepted by a continental philosophy journal. Understanding this famous academic scandal provides crucial context for the debate about clarity and rigor in continental philosophy.
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Continental philosophy
10 min read
While the article discusses continental philosophy extensively, readers would benefit from understanding its historical development, key figures, and how it diverged from analytic philosophy - context the article assumes but doesn't fully explain.
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Correspondence theory of truth
9 min read
The article centers on a debate about whether clarity commits one to this theory of truth. Understanding the actual philosophical theory being referenced would help readers evaluate the arguments being made.
Once upon a midnight dreary, I wrote a piece criticizing continental philosophy. This set the internet ablaze, ended up being read by 30,000 people, gave rise to several follow-ups, increased the number of subscribers to my blog by about 500, and resulted in lots of people on the internet claiming I couldn’t read. Fun times! Now philosophy professor Ellie Anderson has written a reply.
One of my main complaints in the article was that continental philosophy is unclear. You can sort of get a garbled sense of what the argument is supposed to be, but normally it isn’t very precise. This is a bad thing; arguments often have many subtle errors which can’t be spotted unless one writes clearly. If one writes unclearly about a subject, one will think unclearly about a subject, and then think bad arguments are good and good arguments are bad. Because mental confusion is one of the chief ways people go wrong, anything that masks confusion seriously undermines reasoned thoughts. I gave examples of unclear writing in continental philosophy like the following:
The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall) into the exteriority of meaning. To this epoch belongs the difference between signified and signifier, or at least the strange separation of their “parallelism,” and the exteriority, however extenuated, of the one to the other.
(I’ve been reliably informed that if you have any uncertainty as to the precise meaning of that sentence, you are simply illiterate!)
Anderson’s piece is titled Continental philosophy and the fetish for clarity. In it, Anderson criticizes the idea that clarity is a virtue. The piece is also respectful, unlike the kinds of lowbrow sniping that many leveled in response. There is just one big problem with it: the objections raised are incorrect! Seeing as professor Anderson took the time to write a response, and many on the internet are claiming I was thoroughly wrecked, I thought I’d write a response. Friend of the blog also wrote an epic response which I recommend reading. I particularly enjoyed this bit from Daniel:
One recent piece even calls clarity a “fetish.”
At the risk of sounding freaky, I’d like to defend the demand for clear writing, starting with its most infamous nemesis.
Early on in the article Anderson claims that I made basic errors. What are ...
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