Socrates Tenured

I think it's unfortunate how many philosophers are overlooked in the analytic hegemony of
the Anglo-Saxon world due to the unfair claim of obscruitanism that is levied against them.
Read Richard Rorty's 'Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida' for a very
clear, well-considered (if at times over-generalized and outright wrong) explanation of how
Derrida and linguistic philosophy are actually complementary rather than opposed and how
Derrida's actual language, difficult as it was, complemented his philosophy rather than
obscured it.
Likewise, Deleuze (who was attacked as obscuritanist by Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins)
was doing something very specific and deliberate with his work. On the one hand, he was
deliberately and intentionally using, misusing, and abusing concepts and wanted to leave
his own work open for others to use, misuse, and abuse (this is a big part of his theory of
repetition, see: Difference and Repition). On the other, he was concerned with "speed of
thought" and didn't want to be slowed down by having to make sure that his theories were
perfectly penetrable and accessible to all. (For an extremely accessible intro to Deleuze's
thought, look up Manuel Delanda's lectures freely available on youtube. Likewise consider
reading the essay by Paul Patton "Concept in Deleuze and Derrida.")
Let me quote Bourdieu's Preface to the English Language edition of Distinctions: "Likewise,
the style of the book, whose long, complex sentences may offend--constructed as they are
with a view to reconstituting the complexity of the social world in a language capable of
holding together the most diverse things while setting them in a rigorous perspective--stems
partly from the endeavor to mobilize all resources of the traditional modes of expression,
literary, philosophical or scientific, so as to say things that were de facto or de jure excluded
from them, and to prevent the reading from slipping back into the simplicities of the smart
essay or the political polemic." Sadly, I would charge Searle of such a simplistic rhetorical
polemic! A line of Judith Butler (who I think can be far too obscuritanist!) adequately sums
up a lot of these thoughts; simply: "What does transparency obscure?"
Perhaps Searle is right, that Foucault was subject, in part, to the codifications of French/
German philosophy and academia. But then he cannot escape the fact that he is subject to
similar codifications which simply takes something (clarity of expression) as its object and
only happens to be opposed to some forms of French/ German expression. If anything,
Searle's theories, as he explains them here, are far more dangerous than any
obscuritanism could be insofar as he considers his presuppositions universal and perhaps
even morally right. My advice, do not confuse "I do not understand" with "This is too
obscure." "I do not understand" might lead to the conclusion that "This is too obscure" but I
promise you, you will pick up a lot of beautiful knowledge along the way.