Why did the french postmodernists write such long books with an obscurantist language style? Many of their ideas could be reformulated consolidated and put into a 30 page book at most.
it became a way of sorts to show off, the more obscure the writing the smarter you come off as.Schopenhauer fucking hated that shit though, only philosopher who hated everything about hegel and who intentionally wrote in a way the common man could understand so that he could be opposed to hegels way of writing which was obscure
>>25354292Foucault doesn’t really belong there, as far as the French post/structuralists go he’s pretty lucid. Lacan also did not arguably write long books because most of his writings were transcriptions of his lectures. Regardless, if you read philosophy and have a problem with long books you might be retarded (or are at least experiencing cognitive dissonance)
>>25354325This is extremely common in Marxist translations especially. Here is a decent Cockshott article I read about this sort of thing and how common it became in England of the 70s to translate Marxist works in an obscurant manner.https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/how-translation-mystifies-theory/“Creating surplus value” for example is rendered as “valorization” because creating your own words like you’re Chris Chan and just expecting others to know what the hell youre talking about is par the course for Marxist autism.
Foucault never calls into question the validity of the findings of human sciences like psychology, biology, economics, etc., he's only doubtful at best. The trouble I have with that is how one is supposed to rebel against these dividing practices without turning into some anti-vaccine schizo.
It was part of the Parisian intellectual culture of the time, trying to show off how much more obscure and smart you are to your peers. Thats what Foucault claimed, famously.The other point that I read in Scruton is that the obscurity has a political function. It is intended to browbeat the reader into mute acceptance, to make them believe that the author knows better than them and they must learn to repeat what they say. This is a classic Marxist maneuver.
>>25354292"This could be 30 pages" as often said by people who mistake summary for thought. You can summarize Heidegger’s ready-to-hand/present-at-hand distinction in a paragraph, but that paragraph is not the philosophical work. The work is showing why ordinary ideas like "object," "use," "world," and "experience" are already misleading. Technical language is not automatically obscurantist. If you opened a cardiology textbook and didn’t understand the terminology, you probably wouldn’t conclude that cardiology is hiding simple ideas behind obscure wor;ds. You’d understand that you lack the training (at least I hope you're smart enough). With philosophy, for whatever reason, people mistake their lack of knowledge for proof that the work is bullshit. The terminology exists for a reason, often because ordinary language is too imprecise for the arguments that are being made.And if you don't understand it, do what most people do and go to university, read secondary texts, follow lectures, work through commentaries, and learn how to read the primary works closely.
>>25354292Because if you say "2+2=5" (or, more often, "2+2=banana") in a plain, clear style, everyone will see you're talking rubbish.
>>25354292their texts communicate not only ideas but a style of thinking, a style of desiring. they gather together all kinds of cultural currents in a way that makes the texts feel part of a world and its ongoing history (they also disclose those worlds in the first place). they teach you how and why to care about things, not only to how understand them. similarly, you don't 'get' someone like nietzsche from an ai summary. a list of Key Idea bullet points won't get you excited about those ideas. you get excited by nietzsche, you start to see history and culture in a nietzschean way, when you get a feel for his voice and his milieu and can project yourself back into the 19th-century, walking amid the alps, fuming in german drawing rooms, envisioning the century to come.in fact what's bad about ai is precisely this loss of style and milieu, the banishment of everything that introduces desire and an open-ended connection to history into a text.
>>25354404I smell pseud cope. There are many philosophers that wrote about complex systems in clear language, just see the neoplatonics for example. Or Aristotle, for all its dense text.
>>25354341>This is not an isolated case. Over the years I have repeatedly run into English translations of continental Marxist theory that seem designed to mystify. They take concepts that were clear in the original language and bury them under layers of pseudo‑technical jargon. The same pattern appears in Engster’s case. His argument leans heavily on the term valorisation, and he repeatedly uses the phrase “the valorisation of value.” In standard economic English this is not a concept — it is a tautology masquerading as theory. It is the linguistic equivalent of fog.Except that valorization doesn't mean valuing value, or any other tautology. Calling it a tautology misses the Marxist technical meaning. It is not saying "value is valuable." It is naming the process by which value becomes self-expanding capital.And no, creating surplus value is not the same as valorization. Surplus value is the extra value produced by labor. Valorization is the whole process by which capital turns that extra value into more capital, i.e., turning money into more money by producing and selling that surplus value.
>>25354421I smell resentful incomprehension/anti-intellectualism cope. If you can't understand the text, that is fine; acting like your incomprehension is a critique is the cope.
>>25354421>aristotle>clear language>picrel>aristotle>clear language>Since, just as in all of nature, there is something that is matter in every genus (this [the matter] is potentially all those things [in the genus]) and another thing that is a productive cause that creates all (such as a craft is in relation to the matter it has affected), these distinctions, by necessity, are extant also within the soul. And mind is this way in that it becomes all things and creates all things, so therefore has some state of being like light: In some way light makes the potential colors into active colors. And this mind is separable, indifferent, and unmixed, by its essence being active; for the maker is always higher than the affected, and the principle than the matter. Active knowledge is the same as its thing [as known]: Potential is accordingly prior in time in individuals, but on the whole not at all in time: However, it does not sometimes think and sometimes not think. Separated, it is only that which it is and this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not remember because on the one hand this is indifferent, but on the other, the mind subject to feeling is perishable), and without this, nothing thinks. (On the Soul 430a 10-25)
>>25354429Obscurantism for the sake of obscurantism is a bad thing, yes. No serious philosopher ever needed to use undecipherable jargon to expose their systems.
>>25354423> Valorization is the whole process by which capital turns that extra value into more capital, i.e., turning money into more money by producing and selling that surplus value.So it’s creating surplus value from surplus value exactly like he said.
>>25354433Read a book you don't understand then act like everyone around you is just acting like they get it. Fortunately, your limitations are not universal.
>>25354431This paragraph quite clear, though.
>>25354438You keep doubling down on obscurantism. Perhaps all you want to do is to make others waste time having to decypher the deliberately obscured meaning? I'm starting to believe the other posters are right, and that your kind likes to obscure meaning because otherwise many would see the stupidity of the system.
>>25354431>The mind can imagine a thing before creating it in reality, not only form memories based on pre-existing real objects. Ideas take no actions (including mental actions), are indestructible, and are required for thinking.
>>25354404hmmmm
I'm a brown tradcath who admires Roger Scruton and this is my post >>25354411
>>25354292Some of these are not obscurantist and you know it. When did the poor comprehension of the readership start to be blamed on the philosophers themselves? Is this consequence of Schopenhauer and his ramblings going mainstream?
>>25354449The fact that you think I am making an argument for obscurantism really says all that needs to be said here.
>>25354325>only philosopher who hated everything about hegel and who intentionally wrote in a way the common man could understand so that he could be opposed to hegels way of writing which was obscuretry reading his critique of Kant or the second part of the second volume of WWR, you won't understand jackshit unless you can decipher the likes of people he supposedly hated
>>25354369You don't. You just end up like Agamben.
>>25354475man i'm losing my fucking mind
>>25355791qrd?
>they were just that smart >they wanted the female undergrad audience that dwells heavily in the camp of needing to be slightly ahead of their male peers pick your poison
>>25355787>you won't understand jackshit unless you can decipher the likes of people he supposedly hatedTo be fair, he was at least honest about admitting when his works are difficult, and essentially apologizing that he couldn't avoid making his work hard when he did. That's a very different attitude to the throwing to the wolves tactics often used by others.
Learning that most intellectual stuff is mostly to get pussy, at the end, is both depressing and liberating at the same time. People are motivated by biscuit dipping, hole filling, etc. - this is true no matter what they tell you.
>>25354292Something that everyone else has failed to mention is that it was an evolution of symbolism and the decadent movement, as well as a reaction to historical events at the time, including the first world war.>>25354404denounce vishnu
>>25354292The conflation of Marxism and post-modernism/post-structuralism in this thread shows many of you do not actually read the writers you are talking about. This board gets so retarded the moment anything beyond German idealism is brought up.
>>25357014>The conflation of Marxism and post-modernism/post-structuralismI had to reread the thread lmao, very funny. Just look at his pajeet >>25354390 whom I actually believe is learned in Scruton due to his retardation, shitting up his own post by throwing in the Marxist buzzword at the end. Foucault and the French intellectuals Scrotum despised were famously all orthodox Marxists, that sounds correct.Also >anything beyond German idealismAnd those threads have one or two erudite posters, and some small legion of enthusiasts who discuss the topic at length giving the false appearance that the thread is fecund discussion-wise and in number of posters.
>>25357014>>25357043denounce vishnu
>>25357014>>25357043There is truly no hope for you retards
>>25355762You just seem to be a contrarian troll to be honest.
>>25354292These replies are pathetic. Sure these writers, and many other philosophers, could've spent more time making their texts clear and accessible to the common person by using simpler everyday vocabulary. But you, the person buying the English translation 50 years later for $15 on Amazon, are not the intended audience. They are writing to other academics familiar with the meanings behind the "jargon" that was arrived at over time. They have invested time to creating or reappropriating complex terminology because it leads to more precise discussion. Other academics aren't going to cry about a work being 400 pages instead of 100 if they really care about the subject matter. None of this is written for mass appeal and to sell paperbacks to goyim. And a 30 page summary of a book could highlight the important points, but they have to actually expand on their thoughts, how they arrived at them, address potential counter-points, clarify in great detail in order to fully develop a system of thinking. Another point: many influential philosophers are trying to develop new ways of thinking about the world. The first attempt by one guy doesn't always get everything across perfectly, which is why western philosophy is a 2000+ year conversation. Others will clarify things later or correct them if they think they are wrong. This is WHY secondary literature exists. You, me, academics all benefit from secondary literature. Two of Deleuze's first works are on Nietzsche and Kant. Go to college and they will ease you into these harder texts with secondary literature. Or you can just retreat to modern day analytical Anglo philosophy and read a 5 page paper regurgitating deboonked Cartesian retardation written in "plain English".
>>25357112>>25357145booktok zoomies should fuck off and go read BAP like the bunch of faggots you are
>>25354431SIX SEVENNNNN!!!!!!!!!
>>25356438You are barely human. A vulgar animal, an unthinking beast.
