Well, now I really do have to read all the essays in that volume. But I would say that in this particular case, you've just raised new objections for me with this reading, at least the first part of it (up to where you talk about logical positivism and McCumber's disciplinary positioning). There's a powerful, widespread line of reasoning embedded within your representation of McCumber's argument on clarity that I simply think is both empirically and philosophically wrong, namely, that because certain subjects were represented as "unspeaking" in dominant texts and discourses, their communications were not only unheard but unhearable, not only misrepresented but excluded from representation. This view is especially strongly echoed in postcolonial theory.
As I said, I think that is first of all empirically wrong as a statement about the historical reality of modern colonial societies, or of social relations between marginal and dominant subjects within Western societies; subalterns did speak, and their words were heard. I think it's a philosophically flawed view on another level for all sorts of reasons: the back-door solipsism that elevates experience to a kind of incommensurability, the refusal to countenance any universal properties or possibilities within human language and communication, the rejection of any possible capacity to reason that might bridge the gap between two separate histories of experience, and so on. This is a terrain rather well covered in the famous Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate, I think.
In general, I'd say this particular defense of McCumber doesn't so much rescue him as jump him from frying pan to fire. It's actually a pretty typical line of defense against the charge of bad writing or obscurantism, namely, the escalation of reception and experience to being the sole emperors of interpretation, combined with the proposition that obscure critical theory aims to induce or re-enact the *experience* of proliferated meaning just prior to the dawn of what some critical theorists take to be a kind of discursive "enclosures movement" that collapsed multiplicities of experience and personhood into an imprisoning modernity.
This defense, besides having the problems I've already described, also turns its back on the commonly reported ethnographic *experience* of reading such materials, that what McCumber describes an emancipation, many people describe as an imprisonment or confinement at best, or a subjugation at worst. I recall coming out of a totally incomprehensible art-house film once and watching virtually the entire audience rush to a printed review posted in the lobby, hoping to find some explanation of what it is that they had just seen. This wasn't a liberated audience, happily ensconsed in their own meaning-making enterprise, liberated from the tyranny of narrative and symbolic clarity: it was a cringing mob of dependents reduced to a kind of slavery to interpretation, helpless in the face of a text that refused to be clear.
It's the same thing with a particular brand of critical theory. The move it makes is not emancipating, but enslaving. It disperses interpretation into domains of non-labor (e.g., experience: you must live it to know it) or collapses it onto the theorist himself or herself. The hope that words will be taken up by hearers and used in productive ways is and must necessarily be a hope that does not abjure but instead embraces clarity: it sounds to me as if McCumber is (typically in this kind of thinking) hijacking a moral or ethical view of the purpose of writing that is deeply connected to the pursuit of clarity as a property of utility and uses it to justify a lack of clarity. Moreover, as he appears, in your defense, to take the slippage between text and reader to be an intrinsic feature of interpretation, he really has no way to explain differentially why *ANY* kind of writing is more "free" for its readers than any other. From his perspective, I should be able to read the telephone book just as well as critical theory in productive ways undreamed by the author.
"...argument on clarity that I simply think is both empirically and philosophically wrong, namely, that because certain subjects were represented as "unspeaking" in dominant texts and discourses, their communications were not only unheard but unhearable..."
A lot of the objection depends on how rigorously we want to take "unhearable." I don't mean it in an absolute sense (neither, I think, does McCumber, but we're getting to the point where we'd have to go to his texts to be fair to him). For example, John Holbo's reading of McCumber seems to me a very good example of what McCumber might call "occlusion:" Holbo assimilates McCumber's meaning to the framework of analytic philosophy in which clarity is unchallenged as a norm. McCumber has certainly spoken, and there's a sense in which Holbo, having read him, has "heard" McCumber, but, in another sense, McCumber hasn't been heard at all. Obviously, I can't hang too much on John H's misreading of McCumber (he may have misread him because he has a cold, for all I know), but enough such misreadings accrete, if you will, into institutional bias. That was the point of mentioning the absence of courses on Heidegger: it's not as if people haven't heard of Heidegger, or that they can't buy his books, but it's a pretty thin sense in which Heidegger is "heard" in American philosophy departments.
Before turning to the charge of solipsism, I should mention that I'm not defending a type of argument (I'm not at all sympathetic to arguments from the essential incommensurability of experience and I haven't read the rest of the volume because, frankly, I don't have high hopes for it), so much as defending McCumber's specific arguments, because I know him to be careful and interesting.
As for solipsism, where I quoted McCumber saying
In such a case the new conceptual framework may be intelligible only to those who have shared the inarticulate joy and anguish from which it came. Like musical notation or quantum physics—indeed, like any conceptual framework at all—it will not make sense to those who engage it without the requisite prior experience.Yet for all that, it will be clear, at least in that it enables those who have had those experiences to think and work together.
I left out two trailing sentences:
So this Hegelian outcome would not completely abjure clarity. As with Hull's scientists it would recognize unclarity not as a mere contingent confusion but as a necessary prelude to clarity.
In other words, any incommensurability (or, more prosaically, mutual incomprehension), while initially unavoidable, isn't essentially resistant to resolution. McCumber is clear, I think, in saying that the words and ways of speaking that we gain by not dismissing what is at first incomprehensible benefit all of us.
Also (I realize now that I don't know whether you've read the McCumber piece or not), McCumber is using "abjure" in a very specific sense. (These two paragraphs follow the one just quoted.)
But there is a third possibility, one that (I suggested) has no name. It involves abjuring, rather than seeking, clarity altogether. In such a case, many think, common action will also be abjured, leaving us with what so many on the cultural right see as postmodern: a group of people who perversely choose to express themselves in ineffectual whines.
But there are different ways to "abjure" something. The previous paragraph trades on an absolute sense in which we "abjure" something by rejecting it altogether. But when something has had absolute status, that is, has been canonized as the indispensable goal or necessary precondition of some practice, we can "abjure" it simply by beginning to look on it not as absolutely valid but as merely one among a number of alternatives, thus situating it in a wider spectrum of goals and practices. This would leave room for discourse that is not only not clear from the start (as Aristotelian views hold discourse should be) but that is also not trying to make itself clear (as discourse should on Hegelian views).
This is where he gets into what I called "deliberate" unclarity. I agree with you wholeheartedly that deliberate unclarity is dangerous ground and can have precisely the effect you describe: "not emancipating, but enslaving." And also for the reason you give: often, there is "no way to explain differentially why *ANY* kind of writing is more "free" for its readers than any other." Just so. Which, to my mind, makes McCumber more important, not less. Where John Holbo sees McCumber as "ornament[ing]" his essay with Hegel and Aristotle, McCumber is giving a quick sketch of the criterion he would use to distinguish emancipating speech from babble, or "ineffectual whines."
The common thread in all of McCumber's books is that Aristotle's form/matter distinction--with its inherent domination of matter by form--keeps reinstating itself in the work of thinkers who believe they've set it aside. The bulk of his scholarship is, on the one hand, an analysis of Aristotle's views on form/matter, and on the other hand, a rather meticulous and dauntingly erudite examination of precisely where certain contemporary thinkers (Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Heidegger) successfully challenge the form/matter structure, and where they fail and fall into babble or banality.
Fair enough. I do think that some of the arguments for "bad writing" or obscurity need to be taken seriously, even though they're often in my judgement wildly flawed...I'm made very nervous by the more casual or anti-intellectual broadsides against "bad writing" for that reason. (Though John Holbo's critique definitely is anything but casual--I think he's very careful if also very clear and witty in his comments.)
Though I know the biases of the compiler, the obvious response is that the University of Pittsburgh can hardly be called a "top-ten" university for philosophy. Any philosophy program which lacks professors who can teach Heidegger (and Wittgenstein) competently cannot be classified as outstanding. Every department ranked in the top 10 is obviously overweighted towards a specific type of Anglo-American philosophy and also, quite obviously, lacks any serious depth in 19th century German philosophy or 20th century non-analytic philosophy.
That's a very good point about the bias of the list. Setting aside your rather convenient definition that a department that doesn't teach Heidegger can't be outstanding, do you think that there are many departments that most professional philosophers consider superior that are teaching Heidegger?
I stopped arguing with people who dismiss philosophers for their 'bad writing' long ago. It's a hopelessly naive criticism, since there's always a defensive mechanism in play (why else so much protest?), and it follows that you can't get through to such people. So I think your stance is basically right, Ogged -- even if McCumber doesn't have the best argument for it.
But why these new aspersions at Pitt? Pitt has been trying hard to replace its main Heidegger guy (who left for Chicago a few years ago along with a Wittgenstein guy), and in the meantime there are several people there who are very interested in these philosophers. Is the commenter remarking on the *quality* of Brandom's and McDowell's interpretations of H and W? So no department can be outstanding unless it gets H and W *right* (by David's lights)? Or is he remarking on Pitt's hiring standards? True, they wasted a lot effort trying to steal a Heidegger guy from Princeton -- so much for the idea that none of these schools teach Heidegger.
P.S. I didn't mean the first bit of the above remark as a criticism of Holbo. His second post (at least) doesn't at all manifest the defensiveness that usually accompanies the charge of 'bad writing.'
If I were to venture my own opinion, I would say that BU 's department is an 800 pound gorilla; far more impressive than Harvard's and light years ahead of MIT. Just look at their roster: Allison, Rosen, Hintikka, Haakonsen, Dahlstrom, etc. These are all serious scholars, not cafe intellectuals. BC is okay for the breadth of their offerings but I think they're a bit weak in ancient philosophy and, oddly enough, medieval philosophy. I don't possess any personal animus toward U Pitt but I can't see what all the shouting is about. The department is very narrowly focussed and the only recognizable "names" (not necessarily famous, but better known than your average Joe) are Rescher and McDowell.
It says that McDowell teaches ancient philosophy but he's not known as a scholar in that area so I'm a bit perplexed as to what his approach would be. Who lectures on Nietzsche? Hegel? Marx? Husserl? I shop the philosophy section of the bookstore and I haven't heard of the overwhelming majority of these people. That's not a bad thing per se, but it starts me to wondering about whether they are laboring in a very narrow subspeciality to which I don't pay attention or if they are still building their c.v. with articles before they put their ideas into a book.
Princeton and Stanford are broader in their orientation but they still reflect a very clear bias towards contemporary analytic philosophy. One half of Princeton's courses are devoted to subfields in analytic philosophy. Who's the Heidegger specialist at Princeton? Longueness? Most of the rest of them are laboring in some part of the analytic vineyard save Garber, Nehemas, and one or two others. Who is teaching that 1,000+ year swath of time we call "medieval philosophy?" I don't want to sound pissy but failing to study the history of philosophy makes people ripe for falling into the same errors while thinking that they are being original. I would probably take Stanford over Princeton and absolutely over both Cambridge universities.
I don't think that departments must offer numerous courses on Heidegger but he should be treated with something more serious than contempt by the logic-chopping crowd. He is ridiculously obscure and he was very wrong in certain places but, for better or worse, he has become part of the very air we breathe these days so ignoring him in the hope that he will disappear is an exercise in wishful thinking. I also believe that he is a deeper thinker than either Wittgenstein or Russell so I have less patience for those who shake the totem of logical clarity at the expense of philosophical depth.
Ogged, Here's why the 'bad writing' assusation says more about the assuser than about the accused.
You can't argue with anything unless you understand it, and you can't understand a piece of writing unless you assign it a clear meaning. The charge of 'bad writing' is a way of arguing with something by arguing that the writing it which it is couched lacks a clear meaning. But if you don't know what the writing means, you don't know what you're arguing against.
Some writing, indeed much writing, is not worth attending to. It simply doesn't sustain interest. The charge of 'bad writing' can a way of saying that the writing does not sustain interest, but it's a misleading way -- since it suggests that the reader is arguing rather than merely expressing a preference. I do not prefer to read Judith Butler: her writing, insofar as I've looked at it, does not engage my interest. I do read Stanley Cavell and John McDowell, even though many complain that their writing is 'bad.' I read Heidegger. I read Levinas. I read Adam Phillips (who is intentionally 'impenetrable' at times). All these writers strike me as doing interesting things, things worthy of the attention required to argue back. Insofar as I'm interested, insofar as the writing grabs my attention, I take it to possess a clear enough meaning (clear enough to argue with, that is). People who say that McDowell or Cavell 'write badly' are saying that the writing does not engage them, and they are saying it in a way that entails that it cannot not engage them, because there's nothing there worthy of their attention. But wherefore the 'cannot'? The accusation amounts to the pretense that the accuser knows what's there, and that what's there is not worthy of attention. But if the accuser can see that what's there is not worthy of attention, he should say why and forget the writing. If he cannot get past the writing, he should not pretend that he knows there's nothing there.
The accusation amounts to this: I cannot tell what this writing means, and my inability to tell what it means entails that what it means is not worthy of my attention.
The right reply is: Either shut up (read something else!) or keep interpreting until you know what you're talking about.
Ted, you are too charitable. Many luminaries in the history of philosophy wrote poorly, or used opaque terminology, to be sure. And the reader who ignores Kant or Hegel for this reason has erred.
But when confronted with text they really cannot understand readers are at some point entitled to ask "is the problem me, is the writer himself confused, or is this perhaps a hoax with no meaning at all."
That's all that's happening here. And it's quite fair to conclude that a confused theorist or a hoaxster does not merits one's time.
"The writer is confused" is fine as far as I was arguing, since that's an objection to the content, not merely to the writing. But "It's a hoax with no meaning at all" is dubious, unless that means simply that I doubt it's worth my effort trying to interpret it (then why not say that?).
By the way, I'm writing these comments on Ogged's post in order to avoid having to write comments on my students' papers. The procrastination itself acknowledges that some writing is very painful to read.
There is a point at which we may conclude that something isn't worth puzzling over, but if you stop puzzling, you give up the right to criticize: you may legitimately only note that you didn't understand. But again, if you can make a good case that you've understood something, then you may opine on whether it's poorly stated. The difficulty then, obviously, is that some people believe they've understood enough to criticize, while others believe those criticisms result from misunderstandings. Then we're back to debating textual interpretations. Provided I believe someone is making a good faith effort to understand (like John Holbo), then I don't mind the tribal snarls, and I'm happy to debate.
Ogged, Ted, I fear you will transform the principle of charity into a straight-jacket. Even a Hegel-fancier like me can acknowledge that some writing really is a hoax. And hoax text -- that is, text that manifests not just confusion but a kind of willful blindness to the norms of argumentation -- deserves to labelled as such. These claims are always debatable. So what? Stipulate that there are now academics hiding poorly reasoned arguments behind intentionally obscure prose. What do we do about these people. Call them out, I say!
Yes, we might in this case also impugn genuinely thoughtful scholars who are bad stylists or who approach jargon rich topics. But I bet the innocent will be able to defend themselves.
This topic always reminds me of Kant's touching introduction to the 1st critque where he apologizes for the length and difficulty of the work, but suggests that there are some books "that would have been clearer had they not tried to be so clear" (quote from memory). I idolize Kant, and detest those who mock him for his style (Friedrich, I am looking at you!), . Some topics are difficult to approach and we should be charitable to those who attempt to explicate them. But we needn't extend the same degree of charity to everyone. Kant merits more than Judith Butler, who in turn merits more than Mr. Data on Star Trek explaining how a tachyon field can reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals.
This is a very interesting debate to pursue while commenting on student papers, since students often produce 'hoax texts' (I like baa's phrase) when they're trying to fill out their 3000 words and haven't anything more to say, etc. So what do I do with a hoax text? Well, it's my job to try to interpret it. It's my job to interpret texts that are not intended to be genuinely interpretable (think of the student whom you call on out of the blue and who tries to bullshit his way through an answer). I have to interpret the uninterpretable because I have to treat students as if they had ideas even when they really don't, to hold them accountable for the content of what they say even when what they say isn't really intended to have content. (Sure, sometimes I call the bluff, but it would be bad pedagogy to call it whenever I see it.)
What has this to do with reading and writing that one isn't paid to do? Hold on, I have to finish some comments for a student due to arrive in 20 minutes... I am going somewhere with this...
I took that to mean we were to wait. Are we to wait? If not, then let me complicate things a bit. One of the reasons to read with maximum charity has nothing to do with charity: it's the best way to benefit from reading and thinking, issues of fidelity aside. The leaps and contortions we go through to make an opaque or difficult text make sense are the stuff of new insights. (I should add, that with the great thinkers, it's a notable...coincidence...how often those new insights reveal themselves to have been part of the author's thinking, and integral to the text.) So, baa, I'm not sure it's enough to establish that something is a "hoax," you have to show that it's an unfruitful hoax! And we're back to reading and interpreting again.
Ultimately we have to conclude, as Hegel did, that the essence of something must appear, otherwise it isn't essential. A baroque surface can conceal shallow reasoning for a little while but the truth will out in the end. There is no apriori demonstration of profundity in writing or speaking. Much of the bad writing which is called "bad", however, tends to be thought of as bad due to the superficiality of its reasoning. There is a depth to Heidegger which is almost utterly lacking in Derrida and Delueze's near-opaque musings on politics are nothing short of silly. I'm certain that we could multiply these examples.
Sorry -- I got swept away by professional duties yesterday just as I was about to make my point. The point was that when we don't have to read something, we don't have to negotiate the complex hermeneutic that I negotiate with student 'hoax texts.' If we suspect hoax, we can simply stop reading. (If no one read Judith Butler, the hoaxiness of her texts would simply cease to be an issue. This is a cause to which each of us can contribute his or her (un)labor.) Or we can treat the suspected hoaxer as I treat my hoaxing students: wilfully ignore or override the text's wilful uninterpretability. Labor cost may be high, but the widget you thereby devise may also have an important use.
Two new interrelated remarks:
(i) I happen to think that charity (suitably construed) plays a constitutive role in interpretation. So I don't think we can set it aside and continue to count as interpreters. In sum, there's only one degree of charity: on.
But I hastened to add that what the Principle of Charity says is: Minimize inexplicable error, not Minimize error sans phrase. And the 'inexplicable' there is of course itself governed by the principle.
(ii) I agree with Ogged's latest remark that a crucial rationale for Charity is Humility: that you might thereby learn something yourself. Interpretation works from two sides: you interpret the text, and you let the text explicitate and interpret your implicit assumptions about which errors are explicable and which inexplicable.
I don't think there's really much disagreement here. Sure, difficult thinkers confusing remarks lead to inspiration, and yes, we can always stop reading something. All well and good.
I think there are times, however, when simply ceasing to read does not constitute a sufficient response. If someone is perpetrating academic fraud, we should nail them on it. Of course, concluding "X is worthless" from "I don't get X" is poor reasoning. But it seems quite valid to conclude "X is worthless" from "I have tried to read X 7 times, all the claims seem false, confusd or trivial, and no one can explain X to me, and all the people who endorse X have material interest in the value of X or are sycophants."
Academics right now are damaging the reputation of the humanities by writing hoaxes, and they need to be confronted and mocked, not ignored. I believe we should view Alan Sokal as a culture hero for this reason. Don't you guys?
Academics right now are damaging the reputation of the humanities by writing hoaxes, and they need to be confronted and mocked, not ignored.
This is true, but I'm wary of backing it too strongly. John Holbo inexplicably approves of Roger Kimball, who confronts and mocks, to be sure, but does so without evidence of the ability to discriminate between what's difficult yet fruitful and what's a "hoax." This battle is more political than academic, with the lack of nuance that entails.
I say mock the ideas, mock the bad arguments, mock the attitudes informing the ideas and explaining the bad arguments -- as Sokal did. Ogged's right that mocking the writing itself is too easy, and too likely to extend to writing that expresses interesting and fertile ideas.
I suspect at root here is an empirical disagreement about the magnitude of the problem, and hence the danger of over-broad response. I don't want Hegel thrown out with the bathwater, certainly. But I also think you would need to open a fairly indiscriminate fire in literary theory before you hit innocent bystanders. But I admit I could be off on this. Certainly if someone as discriminating as John Holbo can pick the wrong target (as you suggest, ogged) that's a lesson in moderation right there.
Certainly if someone as discriminating as John Holbo can pick the wrong target (as you suggest, ogged) that's a lesson in moderation right there.
John's response was instructive (I don't know if you saw his brief comment today, but he's unconvinced by my post) and I await his follow-up, because I'd like very much to know whether he and I can find common ground on this issue. If not, there may be a real issue concerning the recognition of the legitimacy of differing projects. I posted a link to McCumber's paper on this a while ago, but I don't suppose that will be what we use to adjudicate this dispute.
Well, now I really do have to read all the essays in that volume. But I would say that in this particular case, you've just raised new objections for me with this reading, at least the first part of it (up to where you talk about logical positivism and McCumber's disciplinary positioning). There's a powerful, widespread line of reasoning embedded within your representation of McCumber's argument on clarity that I simply think is both empirically and philosophically wrong, namely, that because certain subjects were represented as "unspeaking" in dominant texts and discourses, their communications were not only unheard but unhearable, not only misrepresented but excluded from representation. This view is especially strongly echoed in postcolonial theory.
As I said, I think that is first of all empirically wrong as a statement about the historical reality of modern colonial societies, or of social relations between marginal and dominant subjects within Western societies; subalterns did speak, and their words were heard. I think it's a philosophically flawed view on another level for all sorts of reasons: the back-door solipsism that elevates experience to a kind of incommensurability, the refusal to countenance any universal properties or possibilities within human language and communication, the rejection of any possible capacity to reason that might bridge the gap between two separate histories of experience, and so on. This is a terrain rather well covered in the famous Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate, I think.
In general, I'd say this particular defense of McCumber doesn't so much rescue him as jump him from frying pan to fire. It's actually a pretty typical line of defense against the charge of bad writing or obscurantism, namely, the escalation of reception and experience to being the sole emperors of interpretation, combined with the proposition that obscure critical theory aims to induce or re-enact the *experience* of proliferated meaning just prior to the dawn of what some critical theorists take to be a kind of discursive "enclosures movement" that collapsed multiplicities of experience and personhood into an imprisoning modernity.
This defense, besides having the problems I've already described, also turns its back on the commonly reported ethnographic *experience* of reading such materials, that what McCumber describes an emancipation, many people describe as an imprisonment or confinement at best, or a subjugation at worst. I recall coming out of a totally incomprehensible art-house film once and watching virtually the entire audience rush to a printed review posted in the lobby, hoping to find some explanation of what it is that they had just seen. This wasn't a liberated audience, happily ensconsed in their own meaning-making enterprise, liberated from the tyranny of narrative and symbolic clarity: it was a cringing mob of dependents reduced to a kind of slavery to interpretation, helpless in the face of a text that refused to be clear.
It's the same thing with a particular brand of critical theory. The move it makes is not emancipating, but enslaving. It disperses interpretation into domains of non-labor (e.g., experience: you must live it to know it) or collapses it onto the theorist himself or herself. The hope that words will be taken up by hearers and used in productive ways is and must necessarily be a hope that does not abjure but instead embraces clarity: it sounds to me as if McCumber is (typically in this kind of thinking) hijacking a moral or ethical view of the purpose of writing that is deeply connected to the pursuit of clarity as a property of utility and uses it to justify a lack of clarity. Moreover, as he appears, in your defense, to take the slippage between text and reader to be an intrinsic feature of interpretation, he really has no way to explain differentially why *ANY* kind of writing is more "free" for its readers than any other. From his perspective, I should be able to read the telephone book just as well as critical theory in productive ways undreamed by the author.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 12- 2-03 9:35 AM
"...argument on clarity that I simply think is both empirically and philosophically wrong, namely, that because certain subjects were represented as "unspeaking" in dominant texts and discourses, their communications were not only unheard but unhearable..."
A lot of the objection depends on how rigorously we want to take "unhearable." I don't mean it in an absolute sense (neither, I think, does McCumber, but we're getting to the point where we'd have to go to his texts to be fair to him). For example, John Holbo's reading of McCumber seems to me a very good example of what McCumber might call "occlusion:" Holbo assimilates McCumber's meaning to the framework of analytic philosophy in which clarity is unchallenged as a norm. McCumber has certainly spoken, and there's a sense in which Holbo, having read him, has "heard" McCumber, but, in another sense, McCumber hasn't been heard at all. Obviously, I can't hang too much on John H's misreading of McCumber (he may have misread him because he has a cold, for all I know), but enough such misreadings accrete, if you will, into institutional bias. That was the point of mentioning the absence of courses on Heidegger: it's not as if people haven't heard of Heidegger, or that they can't buy his books, but it's a pretty thin sense in which Heidegger is "heard" in American philosophy departments.
Before turning to the charge of solipsism, I should mention that I'm not defending a type of argument (I'm not at all sympathetic to arguments from the essential incommensurability of experience and I haven't read the rest of the volume because, frankly, I don't have high hopes for it), so much as defending McCumber's specific arguments, because I know him to be careful and interesting.
As for solipsism, where I quoted McCumber saying
I left out two trailing sentences:
In other words, any incommensurability (or, more prosaically, mutual incomprehension), while initially unavoidable, isn't essentially resistant to resolution. McCumber is clear, I think, in saying that the words and ways of speaking that we gain by not dismissing what is at first incomprehensible benefit all of us.
Also (I realize now that I don't know whether you've read the McCumber piece or not), McCumber is using "abjure" in a very specific sense. (These two paragraphs follow the one just quoted.)
This is where he gets into what I called "deliberate" unclarity. I agree with you wholeheartedly that deliberate unclarity is dangerous ground and can have precisely the effect you describe: "not emancipating, but enslaving." And also for the reason you give: often, there is "no way to explain differentially why *ANY* kind of writing is more "free" for its readers than any other." Just so. Which, to my mind, makes McCumber more important, not less. Where John Holbo sees McCumber as "ornament[ing]" his essay with Hegel and Aristotle, McCumber is giving a quick sketch of the criterion he would use to distinguish emancipating speech from babble, or "ineffectual whines."
The common thread in all of McCumber's books is that Aristotle's form/matter distinction--with its inherent domination of matter by form--keeps reinstating itself in the work of thinkers who believe they've set it aside. The bulk of his scholarship is, on the one hand, an analysis of Aristotle's views on form/matter, and on the other hand, a rather meticulous and dauntingly erudite examination of precisely where certain contemporary thinkers (Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Heidegger) successfully challenge the form/matter structure, and where they fail and fall into babble or banality.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 2-03 10:45 AM
Fair enough. I do think that some of the arguments for "bad writing" or obscurity need to be taken seriously, even though they're often in my judgement wildly flawed...I'm made very nervous by the more casual or anti-intellectual broadsides against "bad writing" for that reason. (Though John Holbo's critique definitely is anything but casual--I think he's very careful if also very clear and witty in his comments.)
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 12- 2-03 1:08 PM
Though I know the biases of the compiler, the obvious response is that the University of Pittsburgh can hardly be called a "top-ten" university for philosophy. Any philosophy program which lacks professors who can teach Heidegger (and Wittgenstein) competently cannot be classified as outstanding. Every department ranked in the top 10 is obviously overweighted towards a specific type of Anglo-American philosophy and also, quite obviously, lacks any serious depth in 19th century German philosophy or 20th century non-analytic philosophy.
Posted by David | Link to this comment | 12- 2-03 6:31 PM
That's a very good point about the bias of the list. Setting aside your rather convenient definition that a department that doesn't teach Heidegger can't be outstanding, do you think that there are many departments that most professional philosophers consider superior that are teaching Heidegger?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 2-03 8:36 PM
I stopped arguing with people who dismiss philosophers for their 'bad writing' long ago. It's a hopelessly naive criticism, since there's always a defensive mechanism in play (why else so much protest?), and it follows that you can't get through to such people. So I think your stance is basically right, Ogged -- even if McCumber doesn't have the best argument for it.
But why these new aspersions at Pitt? Pitt has been trying hard to replace its main Heidegger guy (who left for Chicago a few years ago along with a Wittgenstein guy), and in the meantime there are several people there who are very interested in these philosophers. Is the commenter remarking on the *quality* of Brandom's and McDowell's interpretations of H and W? So no department can be outstanding unless it gets H and W *right* (by David's lights)? Or is he remarking on Pitt's hiring standards? True, they wasted a lot effort trying to steal a Heidegger guy from Princeton -- so much for the idea that none of these schools teach Heidegger.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 7:00 AM
P.S. I didn't mean the first bit of the above remark as a criticism of Holbo. His second post (at least) doesn't at all manifest the defensiveness that usually accompanies the charge of 'bad writing.'
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 7:21 AM
Thanks for the info on Pitt Ted, I didn't know any of that.
I'm not sure I understand the first half of your post. Can you say a little more about the defense mechanism?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 7:23 AM
If I were to venture my own opinion, I would say that BU 's department is an 800 pound gorilla; far more impressive than Harvard's and light years ahead of MIT. Just look at their roster: Allison, Rosen, Hintikka, Haakonsen, Dahlstrom, etc. These are all serious scholars, not cafe intellectuals. BC is okay for the breadth of their offerings but I think they're a bit weak in ancient philosophy and, oddly enough, medieval philosophy. I don't possess any personal animus toward U Pitt but I can't see what all the shouting is about. The department is very narrowly focussed and the only recognizable "names" (not necessarily famous, but better known than your average Joe) are Rescher and McDowell.
It says that McDowell teaches ancient philosophy but he's not known as a scholar in that area so I'm a bit perplexed as to what his approach would be. Who lectures on Nietzsche? Hegel? Marx? Husserl? I shop the philosophy section of the bookstore and I haven't heard of the overwhelming majority of these people. That's not a bad thing per se, but it starts me to wondering about whether they are laboring in a very narrow subspeciality to which I don't pay attention or if they are still building their c.v. with articles before they put their ideas into a book.
Princeton and Stanford are broader in their orientation but they still reflect a very clear bias towards contemporary analytic philosophy. One half of Princeton's courses are devoted to subfields in analytic philosophy. Who's the Heidegger specialist at Princeton? Longueness? Most of the rest of them are laboring in some part of the analytic vineyard save Garber, Nehemas, and one or two others. Who is teaching that 1,000+ year swath of time we call "medieval philosophy?" I don't want to sound pissy but failing to study the history of philosophy makes people ripe for falling into the same errors while thinking that they are being original. I would probably take Stanford over Princeton and absolutely over both Cambridge universities.
I don't think that departments must offer numerous courses on Heidegger but he should be treated with something more serious than contempt by the logic-chopping crowd. He is ridiculously obscure and he was very wrong in certain places but, for better or worse, he has become part of the very air we breathe these days so ignoring him in the hope that he will disappear is an exercise in wishful thinking. I also believe that he is a deeper thinker than either Wittgenstein or Russell so I have less patience for those who shake the totem of logical clarity at the expense of philosophical depth.
Posted by David | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 9:00 AM
Ogged, Here's why the 'bad writing' assusation says more about the assuser than about the accused.
You can't argue with anything unless you understand it, and you can't understand a piece of writing unless you assign it a clear meaning. The charge of 'bad writing' is a way of arguing with something by arguing that the writing it which it is couched lacks a clear meaning. But if you don't know what the writing means, you don't know what you're arguing against.
Some writing, indeed much writing, is not worth attending to. It simply doesn't sustain interest. The charge of 'bad writing' can a way of saying that the writing does not sustain interest, but it's a misleading way -- since it suggests that the reader is arguing rather than merely expressing a preference. I do not prefer to read Judith Butler: her writing, insofar as I've looked at it, does not engage my interest. I do read Stanley Cavell and John McDowell, even though many complain that their writing is 'bad.' I read Heidegger. I read Levinas. I read Adam Phillips (who is intentionally 'impenetrable' at times). All these writers strike me as doing interesting things, things worthy of the attention required to argue back. Insofar as I'm interested, insofar as the writing grabs my attention, I take it to possess a clear enough meaning (clear enough to argue with, that is). People who say that McDowell or Cavell 'write badly' are saying that the writing does not engage them, and they are saying it in a way that entails that it cannot not engage them, because there's nothing there worthy of their attention. But wherefore the 'cannot'? The accusation amounts to the pretense that the accuser knows what's there, and that what's there is not worthy of attention. But if the accuser can see that what's there is not worthy of attention, he should say why and forget the writing. If he cannot get past the writing, he should not pretend that he knows there's nothing there.
The accusation amounts to this: I cannot tell what this writing means, and my inability to tell what it means entails that what it means is not worthy of my attention.
The right reply is: Either shut up (read something else!) or keep interpreting until you know what you're talking about.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 11:50 AM
Typos are another matter. They really are bad (as in my first line -- yikes!).
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 11:52 AM
Ted, you are too charitable. Many luminaries in the history of philosophy wrote poorly, or used opaque terminology, to be sure. And the reader who ignores Kant or Hegel for this reason has erred.
But when confronted with text they really cannot understand readers are at some point entitled to ask "is the problem me, is the writer himself confused, or is this perhaps a hoax with no meaning at all."
That's all that's happening here. And it's quite fair to conclude that a confused theorist or a hoaxster does not merits one's time.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 12:06 PM
"The writer is confused" is fine as far as I was arguing, since that's an objection to the content, not merely to the writing. But "It's a hoax with no meaning at all" is dubious, unless that means simply that I doubt it's worth my effort trying to interpret it (then why not say that?).
By the way, I'm writing these comments on Ogged's post in order to avoid having to write comments on my students' papers. The procrastination itself acknowledges that some writing is very painful to read.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 12:37 PM
There is a point at which we may conclude that something isn't worth puzzling over, but if you stop puzzling, you give up the right to criticize: you may legitimately only note that you didn't understand. But again, if you can make a good case that you've understood something, then you may opine on whether it's poorly stated. The difficulty then, obviously, is that some people believe they've understood enough to criticize, while others believe those criticisms result from misunderstandings. Then we're back to debating textual interpretations. Provided I believe someone is making a good faith effort to understand (like John Holbo), then I don't mind the tribal snarls, and I'm happy to debate.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 1:34 PM
Ogged, Ted, I fear you will transform the principle of charity into a straight-jacket. Even a Hegel-fancier like me can acknowledge that some writing really is a hoax. And hoax text -- that is, text that manifests not just confusion but a kind of willful blindness to the norms of argumentation -- deserves to labelled as such. These claims are always debatable. So what? Stipulate that there are now academics hiding poorly reasoned arguments behind intentionally obscure prose. What do we do about these people. Call them out, I say!
Yes, we might in this case also impugn genuinely thoughtful scholars who are bad stylists or who approach jargon rich topics. But I bet the innocent will be able to defend themselves.
This topic always reminds me of Kant's touching introduction to the 1st critque where he apologizes for the length and difficulty of the work, but suggests that there are some books "that would have been clearer had they not tried to be so clear" (quote from memory). I idolize Kant, and detest those who mock him for his style (Friedrich, I am looking at you!), . Some topics are difficult to approach and we should be charitable to those who attempt to explicate them. But we needn't extend the same degree of charity to everyone. Kant merits more than Judith Butler, who in turn merits more than Mr. Data on Star Trek explaining how a tachyon field can reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 2:22 PM
This is a very interesting debate to pursue while commenting on student papers, since students often produce 'hoax texts' (I like baa's phrase) when they're trying to fill out their 3000 words and haven't anything more to say, etc. So what do I do with a hoax text? Well, it's my job to try to interpret it. It's my job to interpret texts that are not intended to be genuinely interpretable (think of the student whom you call on out of the blue and who tries to bullshit his way through an answer). I have to interpret the uninterpretable because I have to treat students as if they had ideas even when they really don't, to hold them accountable for the content of what they say even when what they say isn't really intended to have content. (Sure, sometimes I call the bluff, but it would be bad pedagogy to call it whenever I see it.)
What has this to do with reading and writing that one isn't paid to do? Hold on, I have to finish some comments for a student due to arrive in 20 minutes... I am going somewhere with this...
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 3-03 2:41 PM
I took that to mean we were to wait. Are we to wait? If not, then let me complicate things a bit. One of the reasons to read with maximum charity has nothing to do with charity: it's the best way to benefit from reading and thinking, issues of fidelity aside. The leaps and contortions we go through to make an opaque or difficult text make sense are the stuff of new insights. (I should add, that with the great thinkers, it's a notable...coincidence...how often those new insights reveal themselves to have been part of the author's thinking, and integral to the text.) So, baa, I'm not sure it's enough to establish that something is a "hoax," you have to show that it's an unfruitful hoax! And we're back to reading and interpreting again.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 12:39 AM
Ultimately we have to conclude, as Hegel did, that the essence of something must appear, otherwise it isn't essential. A baroque surface can conceal shallow reasoning for a little while but the truth will out in the end. There is no apriori demonstration of profundity in writing or speaking. Much of the bad writing which is called "bad", however, tends to be thought of as bad due to the superficiality of its reasoning. There is a depth to Heidegger which is almost utterly lacking in Derrida and Delueze's near-opaque musings on politics are nothing short of silly. I'm certain that we could multiply these examples.
Posted by David | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 8:18 AM
Sorry -- I got swept away by professional duties yesterday just as I was about to make my point. The point was that when we don't have to read something, we don't have to negotiate the complex hermeneutic that I negotiate with student 'hoax texts.' If we suspect hoax, we can simply stop reading. (If no one read Judith Butler, the hoaxiness of her texts would simply cease to be an issue. This is a cause to which each of us can contribute his or her (un)labor.) Or we can treat the suspected hoaxer as I treat my hoaxing students: wilfully ignore or override the text's wilful uninterpretability. Labor cost may be high, but the widget you thereby devise may also have an important use.
Two new interrelated remarks:
(i) I happen to think that charity (suitably construed) plays a constitutive role in interpretation. So I don't think we can set it aside and continue to count as interpreters. In sum, there's only one degree of charity: on.
But I hastened to add that what the Principle of Charity says is: Minimize inexplicable error, not Minimize error sans phrase. And the 'inexplicable' there is of course itself governed by the principle.
(ii) I agree with Ogged's latest remark that a crucial rationale for Charity is Humility: that you might thereby learn something yourself. Interpretation works from two sides: you interpret the text, and you let the text explicitate and interpret your implicit assumptions about which errors are explicable and which inexplicable.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 9:30 AM
I don't think there's really much disagreement here. Sure, difficult thinkers confusing remarks lead to inspiration, and yes, we can always stop reading something. All well and good.
I think there are times, however, when simply ceasing to read does not constitute a sufficient response. If someone is perpetrating academic fraud, we should nail them on it. Of course, concluding "X is worthless" from "I don't get X" is poor reasoning. But it seems quite valid to conclude "X is worthless" from "I have tried to read X 7 times, all the claims seem false, confusd or trivial, and no one can explain X to me, and all the people who endorse X have material interest in the value of X or are sycophants."
Academics right now are damaging the reputation of the humanities by writing hoaxes, and they need to be confronted and mocked, not ignored. I believe we should view Alan Sokal as a culture hero for this reason. Don't you guys?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 11:29 AM
Academics right now are damaging the reputation of the humanities by writing hoaxes, and they need to be confronted and mocked, not ignored.
This is true, but I'm wary of backing it too strongly. John Holbo inexplicably approves of Roger Kimball, who confronts and mocks, to be sure, but does so without evidence of the ability to discriminate between what's difficult yet fruitful and what's a "hoax." This battle is more political than academic, with the lack of nuance that entails.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 3:27 PM
I say mock the ideas, mock the bad arguments, mock the attitudes informing the ideas and explaining the bad arguments -- as Sokal did. Ogged's right that mocking the writing itself is too easy, and too likely to extend to writing that expresses interesting and fertile ideas.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 4:08 PM
I suspect at root here is an empirical disagreement about the magnitude of the problem, and hence the danger of over-broad response. I don't want Hegel thrown out with the bathwater, certainly. But I also think you would need to open a fairly indiscriminate fire in literary theory before you hit innocent bystanders. But I admit I could be off on this. Certainly if someone as discriminating as John Holbo can pick the wrong target (as you suggest, ogged) that's a lesson in moderation right there.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 4:42 PM
Certainly if someone as discriminating as John Holbo can pick the wrong target (as you suggest, ogged) that's a lesson in moderation right there.
John's response was instructive (I don't know if you saw his brief comment today, but he's unconvinced by my post) and I await his follow-up, because I'd like very much to know whether he and I can find common ground on this issue. If not, there may be a real issue concerning the recognition of the legitimacy of differing projects. I posted a link to McCumber's paper on this a while ago, but I don't suppose that will be what we use to adjudicate this dispute.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12- 4-03 4:58 PM