{"id":8728,"date":"2013-06-06T15:59:44","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T15:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/06\/the-harsh-style\/"},"modified":"2013-06-06T15:59:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T15:59:44","slug":"the-harsh-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/06\/the-harsh-style\/","title":{"rendered":"The Harsh Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just now came across an excellent  post<\/a> by D. G. Myers in defense of the harsh style. Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

. . . the harsh style is first cousin to the plain style. They share a genetic predisposition, inherited from their ancestors the anti-Ciceronians and anti-Petrarchans, for clarity and exact statement (which are, of course, the same thing). The harsh style demands clarification, and knows there is a critical difference between clearing the air and freshening it. Where the plain stylist is content to speak definitively and to the point, the harsh stylist goes further, excoriating amiable blandness and sumptuous qualification. He is the sworn enemy of anything that menaces clarity and exact statement, whether it be accredited confusion, folk mythology, self-satisfied blunder, or political ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It is no accident that so many harsh stylists are Jews. Judaism is a religion without catechism or dogma, and as a consequence, the Jewish tradition places great value upon loud-voiced and teeth-baring debate\u2014as long as it is a makhlokhet leshem shamayim<\/em> (\u201ca dispute for the sake of heaven\u201d). As long as a dispute is for the sake of heaven, there are no restrictions on \u201ctone,\u201d no code of manners, because how is it possible to be too aggressive and discourteous for the sake of heaven?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have something to say on the topic in The Enmity Potential of Thought and Philosophy as Blood Sport.<\/a>  The piece ends with a link to a report of an occasion on which Gustav Bergmann waxed very nasty indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

See also Invective, Philosophy, and Politics<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ed Feser addresses the question of his tone here<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

[Here I must digress to address a pet peeve.  Something called \u201cFeser\u2019s tone\u201d is the subject of occasional handwringing, not only among some of my secularist critics<\/a>, but also among a handful of bed-wetters in the Christian blogosphere.  But there is no such thing as \u201cFeser\u2019s tone,\u201d if that is meant to refer to some vituperative modus operandi<\/em> of mine.  Sometimes<\/em> my writing is polemical; usually<\/em> it is not.  I have written five books and edited two others.  Exactly one of them — The Last Superstition<\/a><\/em> — is polemical.  Of course, some of my non-academic articles and blog posts are also polemical.  But that is an approach I take only to a certain category of opponent, and typically toward people who have themselves<\/em> been polemical and are merely getting a well-earned taste of their own medicine.  Complaining about this is like complaining about police who shoot back at bank robbers.  I\u2019ve addressed the question of why and under what circumstances polemics are justified in this post<\/a> and in other posts you\u2019ll find linked to within it.  End of digression.]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Krauss Kreamed<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Farewell to Krauss, A Universe From Nothing<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just now came across an excellent  post by D. G. Myers in defense of the harsh style. Excerpts: . . . the harsh style is first cousin to the plain style. They share a genetic predisposition, inherited from their ancestors the anti-Ciceronians and anti-Petrarchans, for clarity and exact statement (which are, of course, the same … Continue reading “The Harsh Style”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}