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Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

From:Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Date:Saturday, August 14, 2004, 19:33
--- Samuel Rivier <samuelriv@...> wrote:

> On that note, am I alone when I say that reading > some > "Great Masters" of philosophy gets me incredibly > pissed off at what seems to me to be an incredibly > superfluous use of language to describe relatively > simple and, to an extent, reasonable concepts? I > mean, > I loved what I read of Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology > of > Perception)--he had great ideas, once I could get > through the horrific wall of words in the > translation. > I have an idea that the French version may be more > condensed, but I don't think my French skills are > such > that I could read a philosophy book to any good > effect. >
No no, you're not alone, we are 2 (I am the other one). I made many times exactly the same reflexion to myself, and this, among others, disgusted me from philosophy. Some rules for writing philosophy seem to be, for ex: - never use a simple word if a more abstract and complicated is at hand. - never use a complicated word one can find in a dictionary if you can find one that won't be in. - never use the same word that a colleague of yours already used to name the same concept if you can invent one of your own that nobody ever used yet. - never write a non-ambiguous sentence. A sentence can can be understood the same way by at least two different people cannot be philosophy. - never use a cold, dry, factual, language : always mix it up with heavy literary coquetry. Remember you're not a scientist, you're a philosoph. - in any case, make your sentences so twisted and inflated that any normal reader, coming to the end of one, will be absolutely unable to remember how it began and what it was about. Remember you're not a pedagog, you're a philosoph. - use plenty of personal apartes and references without mentioning the sources and the context. The ones who won't understand them by themselves cannot understand any philosophy anyway. - do not use a plan, or even better, feign to use one, but do it in a way that nobody can see any relation between the content of a paragraph and its title, or can imagine what is the general idea and what is the main direction of your philosophic thought. - always remember that your goal is that 99% of your readers won't understand anything of your work (this is the vulgum pecus, and you don't need to care about them), and that the remaining 1% will understand it 37 different ways (those are your fellow philosophs, but they're all wrong, each one in his own way: thus they should be mocked and contempted). Only really incomprehensible philosophs will get to posterity. French philosophs are not bad from that standpoint, but the champions remain of course the German ones, even if they lack that literary coquetry that makes the charm of the French. Let's say it flatly: they're a bit heavy, while ours are more spiritual. (By the way, the above could also apply to some linguists from different countries). ===== Philippe Caquant "High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>