SPIEGEL: And what now takes the place of philosophy?
Heidegger: Cybernetics
Let’s consider the deeper issue at stake in a brief essay by Professor of Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill, Daniel Muñoz, where he takes himself to offer a defense of ‘clear’ writing in philosophy, through a critique of points made by Professor Judith Butler and Professor Ellie Anderson.
We’ll begin with some basics in the attempt to reach more general conclusions. Most would agree that writing aims to communicate something. Determining if the writing is ‘bad’ or ‘good’ would be done based on how well it communicates that which is the nature of the activity to communicate. Although we can claim that it is the nature of the activity of writing to communicate, not all writing-based activities aim to communicate equally. The thing towards which the communication aims establishes the norms for the goodness or badness of the activity itself. When writing an email to students cancelling class, I aim to communicate a factual state of affairs: next week, there will be no class. When writing a birthday card for a friend, I aim to communicate the importance of her presence in my life. A good email to students will manage to inform them. A good birthday card will manage to make my friend feel valued. The criteria for a well-written novel are not the same as for a well-written physics paper. The standards for communicating well through writing differ, as what each activity aims to communicate differs. Since the aims of writing-based communication differ, how ‘good’ or ‘clear’ a piece of writing is shall depend on the activity’s particular aims. I hope this is all sufficiently obvious.
And so it is in the case of philosophy. Philosophical writing aims at communicating something, and how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ the writing is shall depend on how well it fulfills the purpose of communicating that which the activity aims at communicating. I posit that we can infer what a writer considers to be constitutive of the activity of philosophy based on what they take ‘good’ or ‘bad’ philosophical writing to be. Thus, a critique of ‘bad philosophical writing’ says a lot more regarding the conception of ‘philosophical writing’ held by the writer, than about philosophical writing itself. Since there is significant controversy regarding ‘philosophy’, its proper object and method, I consider this exploration more interesting than refuting any particular perspective on whether someone’s writing is ‘clear’ or not.
With these claims in mind, I turn to Professor Muñoz’s critique of ‘bad writing’. Again, this shall allow us to see what the true core of the controversy is: Muñoz’s understanding of the very concept of philosophy. We begin with his claim that it is good to write clearly. But what is clear writing? Muñoz does not provide a criterion for ‘clarity’, thus, what he takes clarity to be is itself unclear. Yet, we can infer a criterion from the following:
“The audience should be able to understand—with a minimum of toil and guesswork—what your words mean and how your ideas fit together.”
A first point to note is an implicit recognition of a two-way relation: Muñoz recognizes that the author has a determinate meaning and ‘fitting together’ of ‘ideas’ in mind when writing. He could have perfectly written, instead: ‘The audience should be able to understand—with a minimum of toil and guesswork—what the words mean and how the ideas fit together.’ By using the second-person, Muñoz recognizes the existence of something like the author’s intended meaning. This point might seem obvious, but, as we shall see, Muñoz does not always respect the idea that we require, in fact, the effort of two people for the possibility of determining clarity. Second, the standard of clarity depends on being understood. Whatever we take the telos constitutive of the activity of philosophy to be, we can minimally grant that, for all of us who engage in this activity, we aim at being understood; we aim that the reader captures the intended meaning through our words. A third point is that Muñoz mentions ‘toil and guesswork’. Let us be charitable as far as we can, and consider by ‘guesswork’, he means ambiguity. If I am deliberately ambiguous, I am not expressing what I mean in the most precise manner, so the reader is justified in thinking I do not know what I am saying or defending. If I say ‘redness is a part of being’, this would be an ambiguous claim. Do I mean being has parts like the house has parts, thus am I supposed to conceive of being as an aggregate? Do I think of ‘redness’ as a thing that would be like the part of a house, a house we call ‘being’, say, a couch? This is ‘guesswork’ the reader would be forced to do when reading this claim, at least out of context. Then I am an unclear writer. But what about ‘toil’? There are two problems with ‘toil’. The first is how difficult a reader finds a text is incredibly subjective. While some consider Aristotle to be the easiest philosopher to read, some find him the hardest. Then how difficult you, the particular individual, find a text does not reflect upon its ‘clarity’.
The second problem is that it might be the case that, in some activities, such as philosophy, being ‘easy’ is not even a virtue. This is not a new thought – philosophy does not need to be for everybody, but for those who want to do philosophy; we require being willing to engage with difficult, often puzzling material, often at a painfully abstract level, which often entails much ‘toil’ and effort. This is not for everybody, which is why philosophy, since Plato, has been taken by many to be an aristocratic activity. Of course, this ‘aristocratic’ point would not be a line of defense for (allegedly) ‘unclear’ writing on the part of people such as Butler and Anderson, alongside most philosophers working in the institutional context of Western academia, who rather adhere to progressive, democratic, modernist (or post-modernist?) values and forms of thought, generally hostile to any aristocratic ideal. Indeed, if everything ought to be democratic or ‘inclusive’, including philosophy, it is a virtue that people find it ‘easy’ to do. The ‘easier’ it is to do, the more people will do it, and the more people do it, the better. But, to me, this seems neither obvious nor plausible in the case of philosophy (let alone anything most philosophers before the past century would fathom; but why respect the opinions of the dead who created the conditions of intelligibility for everything we say and do, as philosophers?). I will return to this point later. For now, let us agree with the idea of clarity as the property of a text that reflects the virtue or ability to express oneself in a way that the reader understands the author’s intended meaning with a minimum of guesswork.
Now, Muñoz presents some arguments against Butler. Let us consider these. First, he quotes Butler’s attempted defense of ‘unclarity’:
“Butler: ‘neither grammar nor style are politically neutral. Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself. (xix)’”
After providing the quote, Muñoz goes on to level his charges against Butler. The classic philosophical exchange, one would think, beautiful and as old as philosophy itself. But if we read what Muñoz writes, we begin to identify a worrisome pattern. He ‘refutes’ ‘Butler’s’ argument by claiming:
“This non sequitur is so brazen as to be insulting. Yes, you have to follow the rules of a language in order to make yourself understood. You can’t expect other people to follow you if you’re speaking pure gibberish or secret codewords. But Butler says almost nothing to connect this banal linguistic truth to politics.”
We might blink several times, squint our eyes, attempting to discern how the refutation is supposed to take place, how Muñoz’s critique relates to anything Butler has claimed. After a few moments of disbelief, one might even make the effort to reconstruct Muñoz’s understanding of Butler, upon which the very possibility of understanding anything he is claiming as a refutation of Butler is predicated. The conditions of intelligibility for Muñoz to ‘refute’ what Butler is saying as a ‘brazen’ non sequitur are that he interprets Butler’s argument as follows:
P1: Something something politics
P2: One must follow language rules to be understood
P3: Thus, writing clearly is following rules
P4: But to follow rules is to be a conformist, which is bad
C: Thus, clarity is bad
No matter what one thinks of Butler’s original argument, Muñoz’s reconstruction is clearly not what Butler means. To identify if Butler is, in fact, a clear writer or not, as per our shared definition of the capacity or virtue of clear philosophical writing, one would have to at least attempt to understand what is meant. Does Muñoz seriously, honestly consider that he has provided anything like an attempt to understand Butler’s meaning, such that he would be able to say it does not meet a relatively neutral standard for philosophical clarity?
Well, maybe this ‘interpretation’ is an exception to Muñoz’s otherwise perfectly capable philosophical reading skills, a momentary lapse into intellectual laziness on the part of Muñoz, or his rhetorical attempt at writing for a more popular audience so that his Substack can grow and provide further units of social approval, thus deserving momentarily sacrificing anything like the minimal attention and epistemic humility required from any reader of philosophy. He is a busy person, after all. Of course, a Professor of Philosophy at UC Chapel Hill can apply the minimal effort to understand, in good faith, a philosophical claim! Silly of me to think otherwise, even for a second. Indeed, to conceive the contrary would be simply outrageous. We can surely forgive this slip –maybe Muñoz had to attend to some urgent matter, maybe there was a Call for Papers deadline, and he had no time for putting any effort into the activity he claims to dedicate his life to. Perfectly understandable, if a one-time occurrence.
Sadly, this is not the case. Let me consider a few more examples from the essay. Butler:
“‘It would be a mistake to think that received grammar is the best vehicle for expressing radical views, given the constraints that grammar imposes upon thought, indeed, upon the thinkable itself. (xix)’”
Muñoz:
“But this claim is implausible, again to the point of insult. If clear language can express the propositions that make up common sense, then it can also negate those propositions. Just add a ‘not’ to a conventional maxim and you get a radical one. There is not an objective external world revealed by science. Language does not represent an independently existing reality. The moon is not not made of cheese. Does Butler think these claims are part of common sense? Maybe they’re just tossing their objections off, and we’re not supposed to take them too seriously? (I’m not even going to touch the ‘subject-verb’ stuff, except to observe that Butler never gives a single example of something that can be stated only ungrammatically, nor do they fill their book with ungrammatical sentences despite their supposed value for radical politics. If you can believe it, when Butler decries subject-verb requirements, they themselves use a sentence with a subject and a verb. Is their idea not radical after all? What are we even doing here?)”
Let us count the interpretative crimes against poor Professor Butler committed by Muñoz in his attempted ‘refutation’ (perhaps another reader can find more?):
- Muñoz is presupposing that what Butler means by ‘received grammar’ is equivalent to what he means by ‘clear language’.
- Muñoz is presupposing that what Butler means by ‘radical views’ is something like: the negation of conventional maxims.
- Muñoz is presupposing that what Butler means by a language’s ‘grammar’ is the construction of sentences with subjects and verbs.
- Muñoz is presupposing that Butler’s claim that it would be a ‘mistake’ to think received grammar can be the best ‘vehicle’ for radical claims is equivalent to advocating for an ungrammatical use of language, which he in turn (5?) understands as equivalent to “fill[ing] their book with ungrammatical sentences”, which he in turn (6?) understands as equivalent to writing a book full of ‘sentences’ that do not adhere to the subject-predicate requirements.
No wonder it is so easy to argue against these silly ‘continental’ people. In Muñoz’s interpretative hate-fiction, they are rather stupid. And at this point, Muñoz’s refusal to read Butler with anything like the willingness to understand what Butler means completely discredits him as an authority to discern if a philosophical writer is clear or not. A depressing realization. But, just for fun, let us provide one more example. Muñoz cites Butler:
“Avital Ronell recalls the moment in which Nixon looked into the eyes of the nation and said, ‘let me make one thing perfectly clear’ and then proceeded to lie. What travels under the sign of ‘clarity,’ and what would be the price of failing to deploy a certain critical suspicion when the arrival of lucidity is announced? Who devises the protocols of ‘clarity’ and whose interests do they serve? What is foreclosed by the insistence on parochial standards of transparency as requisite for all communication? What does ‘transparency’ keep obscure?”
And he replies:
“Again, I am stunned by the poverty of arguments. Butler just tells a story and asks some vaguely ominous questions! Are we supposed to conclude, on the basis of zero evidence, that a nefarious cabal of powerful oppressors decides what is and isn’t clear communication? (Don’t we have some independent grip on linguistic features like ambiguity and complexity?) And why should the fact that foul dealers clothe themselves in a certain virtue irrevocably discredit that virtue? It’s a truism that everybody wants to look virtuous. For any virtue you like, there’s going to be some Nixonian figure who falsely claims to have it—should we conclude that there are no real virtues, after all? And in Nixon’s case, he’s not even talking about clear expression in the relevant sense. He wanted to make clear what happened—i.e. to definitively establish something as fact. That’s not the same as wanting to speak clearly. It’s possible to speak clearly without clarifying anything about what’s going on. ‘I plead the Fifth’ is perfectly clear speech, but it usually doesn’t establish much.”
Here is what Muñoz thinks Butler is arguing:
P1: [some story]
P2: [vaguely ominous questions]
P3: A nefarious cabal of powerful oppressors decides what is and isn’t clear communication
C: Thus, clarity is bad
Or, at best, something like:
P1: Bad people say they are doing virtue x
P2: But bad people are bad
P3: Thus, virtue x is bad
P4: Nixon says he is clear
P5: But Nixon lies, and that is bad, and Nixon is bad
C: Thus, clarity is bad
The obvious question here is: Does Muñoz seriously think Butler, who at least deserves the credit of being among the most influential living intellectuals, is that stupid? Is he honestly convinced he has done anything close to a good job in rendering Butler’s meaning? Can he look in the mirror and affirm: “I have legitimately tried to understand Butler”? I am myself no friend of Butler’s conclusions nor argumentative method, and yet I cannot help but feel somehow moved by the level of interpretative violence committed here. Since there is no attempt at a good-faith reading of a style of philosophical writing other than the one he is most accustomed to and comfortable with, there seems to be no good justification for taking Muñoz as a good authority to discern what is or is not ‘clear’ philosophical writing.
The reason why it is so easy for Muñoz to refute the defenses of ‘unclear’ writing in Butler is, in fact, that there is no effort to understand. Again, do not get me wrong: I do not think Butler (nor, for that matter, Anderson) provides anything close to an insightful or original argument, at least not from the evidence presented. Neither appears to be too familiar with the tradition they aim to criticize. But they at least seem to care about something Muñoz does not. They care about preserving a certain understanding of philosophical communication as expressing ideas without the loss of semantic content, even if that makes it ‘hard’ for the reader, or some readers. They hold on to the thought that some ideas cannot be expressed differently without the loss of semantic content, i.e., the form of expression that the philosopher finds truest to his or her intended meaning. Sometimes, such semantic content requires patience to understand the overall framework of a philosophical project –to identify the claim as playing a role within a systematic whole. One cannot be expected to open Kant’s Critique of pure reason at random, read one passage, and understand. Thus, Butler and Anderson’s politically-motivated defenses at least evidence a respect towards the preservation of semantic richness –that we ought not butcher and simplify our intended ideas simply because MIT or Standford undergraduates (or graduates) might have a hard time with them, just like we (I hope!) would not like philosophers like Kant or Husserl to have butchered their ideas, to make them ‘simpler’, so as not to ‘waste’ the reader’s precious time.
Muñoz, on the other hand, appears to consider that, if he, personally, does not understand something quickly, it must be the writer’s fault. If a claim does not easily fit within his own semantic background, it must be a problem with the claim, not with him. He, in fact, says so outright: ‘If your theory of gender or of ideology is literally inexpressible in language that I [you, Professor Muñoz, or a hypothetical ideal philosophical reader with time, openness and patience?] can understand—or if it loses its plausibility [for whom, again?] when shorn of flourishes and ambiguities—that is not the fault of my language: it is the fault of your theory.’ Indeed, against the fact that it takes the effort of two for the achievement of an understanding, it appears that he does not think he has a semantic background for interpretation; it appears he thinks his thought simply is truth itself! Uncovering this prejudice as operational is surprising in first-year undergraduates, let alone in a Philosophy Professor.
The level of epistemic arrogance and intellectual laziness displayed by such an attitude might at first appear astonishing. Upon closer look, it is not. In fact, it follows quite naturally, once we realize the underlying conception of philosophical communication operative in the background of Muñoz’s ‘critique’. Indeed, if one reads the essay carefully (thereby giving Muñoz’s essay a degree of time and attention he seems unwilling to grant the likes of Butler or Anderson), we are able to discern the true standard he is using for the measurement of clarity. He claims: ‘it’s a sign of respect to write as clearly and succinctly as you can, so that no one has to waste their time deciphering the guru.’ And: ‘Clear language has clear benefits: you get your point across in a way that respects the reader’s time and patience.’
Implied in these claims is the idea that it is a waste of time to take the time and effort to try to understand someone’s writing. Implied in these claims is the idea that communication, including philosophical communication, is about ‘getting your point across’ in a maximally efficient and quick manner. Here we find the true revelation: Muñoz does not actually care about the possibility of a loss of semantic content. Muñoz does not actually want to fathom the possibility that some apparently unclear writing is, in fact, the best way for a writer to communicate his or her ideas without the loss of content –i.e., without saying something ‘less’ or different from he or she intends to say. And this is because there is an underlying conception that good philosophy is the philosophy that can get to ‘the point’ and transmit the data quickly. Philosophy is here thought of as, well, just another process of information transfer that can be optimized. This conception of philosophy is what Heidegger (another one of those annoying philosophers that no busy, productivity-maximizing, job-having, top-journal paper-publishing, grant-obtaining, monograph-in-Oxford-University-Press-forthcoming academic should waste her precious time trying to understand) calls ‘cybernetics’. This last point, alongside the fact that Muñoz is the paradigm of a successful young professional philosopher in today’s academia, reveals more about the current state of philosophy than any essay I could have written. I am thankful for that.
Allow me to end in a rather dramatic and perhaps hyperbolic tone. I believe it is the tone that the severity of the topic merits. Philosophy, along with religion, is among the last corners where logos is allowed to thrive. While Butler might not be the best example of what the philosophical craft has to offer, Muñoz, consciously or unconsciously, perhaps of no fault of his own but as a result of institutional mechanisms, is an agent of the death of philosophy itself. The poison of efficiency-based thinking is the death of meaning itself. What passes off as a sober defense of clarity is further evidence that we live in times of logocide.