pondelok 17. mája 2010

Impenetrability indicates profundity

Nadpis je mi momentálne heslom týchto dní. Než ale aby som vás obťažoval svojimi taľafatkami, radšej sa podelím o dlhší citát ztamtiež odkiaľ je aj ono bystré pozorovanie:
The writing of many philosophers, especially but not uniquely in the so-called continental tradition, is full of hard-to-understand passages where difficulty is presented as pertaining not to expression but to content itself, as being not a rhetorical device but a direct and unavoidable aspect of sophisticated thinking.
[...]
Faced with an inordinately recondite statement, readers have the choice between a negative judgment: the author had no good reason to be obscure, and a positive explanation: the author wanted to convey a thought too deep for plain and simple expression. With a prior high confidence in the intellectual worth of the author, negative judgment is almost ruled out and depth can be inferred, even if no satisfactory interpretation of the statement in question is ever arrived at. Prior appreciation of an author justifies a positive construal of difficult passage. So far, so good. Things may go wrong if, in a viciously circular manner, this construal is taken as further justification for the appreciation.

- Dan Sperber, The Guru Effect

1 komentár:

lvsticvs povedal(a)...

Nad pracovný stôl, takéto heslo.