Writing
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Thursday, October 05, 2006 at 6:50 AM
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5 Comments |
One of my tasks as a student is learning to write good philosophical prose. This is a skill which is rarely, if ever, taught directly; one does not see (say, in a course catalog) classes dedicated to writing philosophy. This is unfortunate, I think.
In academic philosophy, one’s “form” of writing is often connected with one’s “content.” Here’s why. Good philosophy just is (with a few qualifications) good, hard thinking about some subject. And, as they say, writing is thinking. A way to think clearly and clearly transmit thought to others is to write. Becoming a good philosopher, then, may have more to do with learning how to write well than one might otherwise suppose.
All of this to say, I have a few favorite philosophers, and a few favorite philosophical writers. They often coincide. Here are some things I’ve observed about one of them:
Trenton Merricks is perhaps the best youngish philosophical writer I’ve come across. His prose is witty, fun to read, and above all, clear. Merricks is willing to break those standard “rules” of writing that sometimes obfuscate. For example, he’ll begin many paragraphs or sentences with conjunctions. Or use sentence fragments. These two devices serve a clarifying purpose. Beginning a sentence with a conjunction can make it clear what the connection is between the sentence in question and previous sentences. And sentence fragments add a conversational zing to his style. Despite the fact that Merricks writes to an academic audience (eg, analytic metaphysicians), one can read his book Objects and Persons (some thoughts about the book) in just a few hours. Now that is good prose.
5 Comments:
the metaphysician at 8:13 PM said... Despite failing miserably all too often, I always try to emulate the philosophical prose styles (not to mention the actual philosophizing) of David K. Lewis and John Martin Fischer. Despite their technical natures, the former's ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS and the latter's THE METAPHYSICS OF FREE WILL are joyous to read.
James A. Gibson at 11:56 PM said... I've also thought of Bill Alston and Laurence Bonjour as fine examples for clear writing. Donald Davidson too... just kidding.
at 2:47 PM said... "For example, he’ll begin many paragraphs or sentences with conjunctions. Or use sentence fragments." That second sentence is too ironic not to be intentional. Nice.
Andrew Bailey at 4:16 PM said... I'm glad you liked my little joke. =)
at 10:01 AM said... Hi,
Do you guys know of any other places on the net that contain information on which philosophers are good writers? I've always been keen to find out what other think on the matter, but seldom with much success. I think it'd be useful & interesting for people to come together and comment on the styles of the authors they've been familiar with. To my mind, there are those who write with exceptional clarity (e.g., William Lycan, Patricia Kitcher), those who write with elegant and/but colorful language (e.g. Quine), those who are annoyingly repetitive (e.g., Rae Langton's Kantian Humility) and pompous (e.g., Duncan Pritchard's Epistemic Luck). Does anyone have some thought on this?
Y
