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[fuxd]

I don't like how extracted from analytic writing aesthetic qualities have become. I understand that clarity of writing should be encouraged insofar as it communicates one's argument most effectively, but once at the point of taking perfect clarity for granted, can we not advance back into the realm of rhetoric, personality, and ego is one's writing

Comments

[nostalgebraist]

I believe there's a difference between real persuasion and preaching to the choir, and that both are legitimate goals of writing. Rhetoric and style are useful--and indeed, necessary--if you want to make someone feel the emotional power of a belief, but ideally one should only feel the power of a belief that one already has. If an author is instead trying to convince you that you should have one belief or another, rhetoric and style are just distracting. (Or, if the author believes that rhetoric and style are legitimate forms of persuasion, just childish.)

[fuxd]

I don't quite agree--I think a more sophisticated form of writing can be achieved when, for example, form mirrors content. I don't necessarily mean rhetoric in the persuasive appealing-to-emotion sense, but in the literary-aesthetic-device sense.

[nostalgebraist]

Maybe more pleasant, yes, but I wouldn't say more sophisticated. I think most concepts worth articulating, at least these days, are complicated and subtle enough that any embellishment will just make them misleading or harder to follow

[fuxd]

For me it's conceivable that a work of philosophy could contain an argument so complex that, for example, to adequately communicate it, the philosopher uses the text to deliberately obscure itself. I think drawing distinctions between static text and aesthetic text is a dangerous simplification--though a simplification that much of the philosophic world depends on. I'm trying to push that syntactically structured language employed such as to clearly spell out clear, logically sound arguments takes the power of formalized language for granted. I concede that rejecting the philosophic foundation of accepted language is, for many, a rejection of philosophy in general--but how can anyone deny that there's more to philosophic sentiment (let's call it the pursuit of thoughtful intrigue with a commitment to self-consistency) than what can be explored and communicated through "clear language"?