Obscurantism

Obscurantism (from the Latin obscurant, "making dark") is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known. There are two common senses of this: 1) opposition to the spread of knowledge: a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public, and 2) a style (as in literature or art) characterized by deliberate vagueness or abstruseness.

The essence of the first sense of the term "obscurantism" can be seen Plato’s “noble lie.” This is the lie that the ruler, (Plato’s philosopher king), would transmit to the people for their own good. The notion that rulers or leaders know what is best for the people can be found in all forms of totalitarianism and as Bergen Evans warned, “obscurantism and tyranny go together."

Opposition to the spread of knowledge

The older sense of the term 'obscurantism' refers to practices that favor limits on the extension and dissemination of knowledge. Obscurantism in this sense is both anti-intellectual and elitist, as well as fundamentally anti-democratic, as it considers the people unworthy of truth. The Marquis de Condorcet wrote extensively on the phenomenon during the period of the French Revolution, when obscurantism was widespread among the aristocracy. Later, William Kingdon Clifford, an early proponent of Darwinism, devoted some writings to rooting out obscurantism in England after hearing clerics who privately agreed with him publicly denounce evolution.

Though often associated with religious fundamentalism, obscurantism is a distinct strain of thought: Fundamentalism presupposes a sincere belief in religion, while obscurantism rests on the deliberate manipulation of faith by an enlightened few.

Obscurantists may be atheists or agnostics themselves, but believe that some form of religion or superstition among the masses is necessary for a stable society, and thus seek to limit to a select few the awareness of evidence that counters common belief. The term is used in this sense by modern-day skeptics, such as H.L. Mencken, in their critiques of religion, and by reformers within religious movements who are also pro-science.

Plato

One powerful source of supposed obscurantism is found in Plato's Republic, where he advocated the use of the "Noble Lie," the lie that philosophical kings find necessary to guide society as they see best. This notion is said to have been adopted by Leo Strauss and his Neo-conservative adherents.

Plato is also seen as a source for Neo-Platonism, Christian mysticism, negative theology, and the hermetic tradition, which have adopted linguistic and logical strategies that attempt to indirectly speak about the ineffable. Such tendencies are seen as obscurantist by various critics.

Aristotle

Aristotle's ethics, because of its technical language and its being aimed at a cultured elite, has been accused of being a form of ethical obscurantism in recent discussions of virtue ethics.

Leo Strauss

The philosopher Leo Strauss has also been criticized for presenting a related notion of "esoteric" meanings in ancient texts that are not meant to be accessible to the "ordinary" reader or citizen.

Bill Joy

In 2000 Bill Joy published the paper Why the Future Doesn't Need Us calling for a halt to the spread of scientific knowledge lest humanity destroy itself or be surpassed by super-intelligent machines. His proposal to limit knowledge for the sake of preserving current society was quickly compared to obscurantism , though preserving religious belief was not one of Joy's arguments.

Accusations of deliberately vague or ambiguous writing style

In the 19th and 20th centuries "obscurantism" has become a polemical term to accuse authors of using styles of writing and reasoning that critics see as deliberately vague and abstruse in order to hide the fact that the writer's ideas are vacuous, empty, or involving intentional obfuscation. In this sense, what is supposedly obscured is not knowledge itself but the writer's knowledge of his subject. Philosophers who are not empiricists or positivists are often accused of such obscurantism because they do not use empirical criteria of verifiability and/or falsifiability or they diverge from logical criteria such as the law of non-contradiction. These empirical or logical criteria are often modified or rejected by these authors for various philosophical reasons. It is thus important to note that writing which appears clouded, vague, or abstruse is not necessarily a sign of a poor grasp of the subject matter, and that unintelligible writing is sometimes purposeful and philosophically considered.

Hegel

Some critics associate it with the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel and those influenced by his writings, especially Karl Marx. A charge of obscurantism against Hegel was made by Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote that Hegel's philosophy is: " . . . a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage..." (Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality) and; "The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had been only previously known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced, general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument to German stupidity (Arthur Schopenhauer, ).

Analytic and positivistic philosophers such as A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper have considered Hegel and Hegelianism a principal target because of what they consider the obscurantism of his philosophy. Yet despite such criticisms, Terry P. Pinkard notes "Hegel has refused to go away even in analytic philosophy itself"

Hegel was aware of his 'obscurantism' and saw it as part of philosophical thinking that grasps the limitations of everyday thought and concepts and tries to go beyond them. Hegel wrote in his essay "Who Thinks Abstractly?" that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly but the person on the street, who uses concepts as fixed, unchangeable givens, without any context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because they go beyond the limits of everyday concepts to understand their broader context. This can make philosophical thought and language seem mysterious or obscure to the person on the street.

Marx and Marxism

Karl Marx, most famously in early works such as The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, and The Holy Family, and philosophers directly or indirectly influenced by Marx, from György Lukács's The Destruction of Reason to Jürgen Habermas's The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, have criticized German and (more recently) French philosophy, especially German Idealism and what they perceive to be a tradition of German irrationalism, as an ideologically motivated obscurantism.

Marx and Marxism have been criticized in turn for obscurantism by generally conservative and positivistic methodological individualists such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, who reject the reality of or appeal to collective entities such as class.

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche distinguishes the obscurantism of metaphysics and theology from the more subtle obscurantism of Kant's critical philosophy and modern philosophical skepticism in Human, All Too Human, claiming that obscurantism is that which obscures existence: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence" (Vol. II, Part 1, 27).

Wittgenstein

The analytic philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein has been repeatedly accused of obscurantism because of his account of what cannot be said and the limits of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his apparent abandonment (from a positivist perspective) of empirical explanation for linguistic description in his later works. Friedrich Waismann, a member of the Vienna Circle, accused Wittgenstein of "complete obscurantism" because of this apparent betrayal of empirically-based inquiry. This criticism has been further developed by Ernest Gellner in his controversial work Words and things: An examination of, and an attack on, linguistic philosophy. Frank Cioffi discusses the various senses of obscurantism in Wittgenstein, which he designates as limits obscurantism, method obscurantism, and sensibility obscurantism.

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger and those influenced by him (e.g. Jacques Derrida) have been labeled obscurantists by critics from analytical philosophy and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

Bertrand Russell wrote of Heidegger, for example, "his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic." That is Russell's complete entry on Heidegger, and it expresses the sentiments of many mid-20th-century English-speaking philosophers concerning Heidegger.

Derrida

Derrida's work has been regarded by critics such as René Thom and W. V. Quine, as "pseudophilosophy" or "sophistry." John Searle, an analytic philosopher and frequent critic of Derrida dating back to their exchange on speech act theory in Limited Inc (where Derrida criticized Searle's approach to language and of intentionally misreading and misrepresenting him), exemplified this view in his comments on deconstruction in the New York Review of Books, for example: "...anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial."

An instance of controversy surrounding Derrida's work and its legitimacy among Anglo-American academics arose when the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate, despite opposition from some members of its philosophy faculty and a letter of protest signed by eighteen professors from other institutions, including Hugh Mellor, W. V. Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and René Thom, in which it was claimed that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor." They described Derrida's philosophy as being composed of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists." The letter also stated that "Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university."

Noam Chomsky has expressed the view that Derrida uses "pretentious rhetoric" to obscure the simplicity of his ideas. He groups Derrida within a broader category of the Parisian intellectual community which he has criticized for, on his view, acting as an elite power structure for the well educated through "difficult writing". Chomsky has indicated that he may simply be incapable of understanding Derrida, but he is suspicious of this possibility. Chomsky's opposition to Derrida could arguably be connected with opposition to the linguistic and semiotic theories on which Derrida has partly relied throughout his work, and to an opposition to the greater part of modern French thought and as another example of the broader tension between analytic and Continental philosophy.

Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in The New York Times ("Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74") and The The Economist[3], both of which argued that Derrida was guilty of purposeful obscurantism. Both of these obituaries were criticized by academics supportive of Derrida and other obituaries were less hostile.

In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues that Derrida (especially in his book, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond) purposefully uses words that cannot be defined (e.g. Différance), and uses previously definable words in contexts diverse enough to make understanding impossible, so that the reader will never be able to contextualize his literary self. In this way (according to Rorty), Derrida escapes metaphysical accounts of his work. And since his work itself ostensibly contains no metaphysics, Derrida has consequently escaped metaphysics altogether.

Lacan

At least one intellectual, Jacques Lacan, defended obscurantism, at least to some degree. When students complained that he intentionally made his lectures difficult to understand, Lacan replied: "The less you understand, the better you listen."

In Encore - Lacan's Seminar from 1973 - he remarks that his Écrits were not to be understood, but would produce a meaning effect in the reader similar to some mystical texts. Part of the reason for this, it should be emphasized, are the repeated Hegelian allusions (themselves derived from Kojève's lectures on Hegel, which Lacan attended) and similar unheralded theoretical divergences and not, first and foremost, Lacan's obscure prose style, as some have alleged.

Sokal hoax

The Sokal hoax arguably showed that obscurantism is a problem within academia.

Analytic Philosophy

Ordinary lay readers have found many works of analytic philosophy of language and science to be obscure and difficult to read. Scholars of classic works from Frege and Wittgenstein to Quine and Searle have disagreed about the meaning of their works.

See also

• Anti-intellectualism
• Denialism
• Politicization of science
• Pseudophilosophy
• Pseudointellectual
• Positivism
• Scientism

External links and references

• Obscurantism in religion -- Islamic Research Foundation International