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Article 1654 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Whence comes this impatience?  (was: Heidegger)
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Date: 27 Nov 91 01:50:18 GMT
Organization: U Texas Dept of Computer Sciences, Austin TX
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <kj5ueqINN1rt@cs.utexas.edu>
References: <1991Nov22.210528.10844@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Summary: Answer: Strunk & White.

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In article <5710@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
> It certainly seems to be the case that "continental" philosophy
> is harder to read than Anglo-Saxon "analytic" philosophy, at least
> as the two appear in English.  Are we suffering, perhaps, from bad
> translations?  Or just from impatience with a less direct style.

I would suspect the latter.  If it is Derrida's translator who
creates his many and subtle convolutions, then this translator
should be writing his own work!

We, in the English speaking world, have had many generations of
writing teachers who tell us that the direct is generally 
preferred to the indirect.  It is ingrained in our style books.
It is a dictum that, we are taught, especially applies in
writing philosophy.  So when we read Continental philosophers
who are frequently obscure and indirect, and after parsing them,
when it appears that their obscurity and indirectness serves
little purpose except its own celebration, we tend to lose
patience.

Russell


