Subject: Re: BHA: Re: It's only words...
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 21:20:18 -0500


Hi Mervyn--

Hm, well I hate to say it, but your critique of Orwell is itself a red
herring.  Whatever one thinks of Orwell as a person or a thinker, one can
still believe he hit the mark about certain things, and I cited one of them.
(As I like to say of Lenin, even a broken clock is right twice a day.)  In
any case I don't think he's at all saying that (as you put it) thought must
be cast in the straightjacket of 'plain English' -- his concern is much more
with flabby writing and verbiage that impresses rather than conveys ideas.

> There is I think no important theory/practice inconsistency where the
> writing practices of Kant, Hegel, Adorno, Bhaskar are concerned.

But "important" is I think the operative word here.  As I said previously,
one can acknowledge that there's a T/P inconsistency but deem it a
relatively minor problem in the face of other matters.  At the very least,
this is an honest position, which I can respect even if I don't agree the
problem's quite so minor.  And if this is the position you're claiming, then
I'll be quite comfortable dropping the subject.  But sometimes I get the
impression that you believe there is in fact no problem whatsoever, which I
feel is worrisome.

>                                                        My
> general point is that what they had to say could only be worked out via
> writing that is complex, rich and difficult.

I agree!  But complex, rich and difficult writing can still be a pleasure to
read (in and of itself), or at least not torture.  And bear in mind that I
say this as someone who has gotten *much* from DPF and has progressively
integrated it more and more into his thinking.  Still, DPF is rich in ideas,
but the writing is impoverished.  Walter Benjamin's writing is complex, rich
and difficult, and it's also wonderful.

>                                                   When emergentists
suggest
> that the Phenomenology or DPF could be translated (reduced) into much
> more accessible works without loss, now *that's* a theory/practice
> inconsistency.

To say that the writing could be better is not tantamout to saying that it
could be reduced to pedestrian prose.  At the same time, there's no reason
to assume that making language more accessible entails a loss in meaning.
It can lead to an increase in meaning instead.  I've experienced that in my
own writing -- from time to time I find a sentence I feel is overly
technical, and when I try to clean it up and make it a little more
straightforward, the ideas themselves become richer.

>        One does of course have a reponsibility to readers, but
> I agree with Bhaskar that the basis of this can only be truth to
> oneself, i.e. one must follow one's daimon.

Mmm, but this is a rather individualistic position, no?  At least when posed
that way.  When searching for (alethic) truth, yes, one has to be true to
oneself (in the normative-fiduciary sense); but when bringing that truth to
others -- when communicating -- one has to be true to the reader (again in
the normative-fiduciary sense).  How is the reader to trust an argument
encased in walls of language?  (Maybe you know this joke: "What do you get
when you cross a Mafia boss with a poststructuralist?  A guy with two
heavies, who makes you an offer you can't understand!")

>                 If one's ideas are any
> good people will appropriate them (as they have indeed appropriated
> Kant's and Hegel's -- two of the most difficult *and* most influential
> writers of the modern era).

Uh-huh, in the marketplace of ideas, good ideas have a competitive edge over
bad ideas.  Foo!  If this were true, the world would have become socialist
in 1918 and nazism would barely merit an historical footnote.  In reality,
bad ideas usually have the upper hand, and influence is no proof of quality.
(Saussure, for example, has been very influential and IMHO is total
poppycock.)  The truth will never survive unless people are willing to fight
for it, and one front in that battle is to communicate it well.

(Of course, there are those who maintain that good ideas do have a
competitive advantage, and that that's why socialism failed.  I take it you
aren't saying that socialism is a crummy idea, right?)

> It seems to me you're applying, in the end, an abstractly universalist
> notion of what constitutes bad/good prose.

I don't know what this means, actually, or why it might be a bad thing.  If
it means arguing for prose that's understandable to anyone who survived
their secondary education (what we Yanks call high school), then no and yes.
No, in the sense that I'm not a bit interested in anyone churning out more
lifeless language.  Yes, in the sense that workers with little formal
education have loved to read Marx, Shakespeare, and other difficult writers.
Granted, we live in a very different culture -- but why should philosophy
only be comprehensible to people with a PhD?

Sorry to be flogging the horse again.  I'm going to try really, really hard
to shut up now.

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---