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Articles

Erudition or Gobbledygook?

Tom Shipka considers whether the negativity of communicative unclarity impedes the ontological contingency of non-distance in the dialectic of being, or something.

Is it erudition or gobbledygook? How often I asked myself that question during graduate school, as I poured over the esoteric writings of philosophers Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre and social theorist Talcott Parsons. How refreshing it was to encounter the clear, simple and accessible prose of Descartes, James and Russell.

Today, when I read the obscure, technical, polysyllabic narratives of postmodern philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault and Levinas, I find myself asking again, “Is this erudition or gobbledygook?” A popular bumper sticker spoofs postmodernism well. It says “Eschew obfuscation.”

Take an example.

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