Let us defend confusion and unclarity because they are right, but also because they are all but defenseless. Imagine, for example,
that I believe I understand something but to you it is murky. Are you so bold as to
claim that my understanding is wrong when you do not have a clear understanding
of your own to oppose to it? And, even should you have the
boldness to believe that I am wrong, are you not almost certain to say that what is wrong is the conclusion
I have drawn, not the fact that I believe my conclusion is clear? For
what person in a state of not-understanding is so bold as to say to one who
seems to understand, “You may very well be right in your knowledge, but you
are wrong because you know it and are not confused by it, whereas I am right because I am in a state of confusion”? Not one in a
million! Therefore, we must stand up for unclarity, because unclarity will not
stand up for itself. We must stand for shadows, because shadows flee from
light— white, electric, searing light— but a body may yet stand in the way of
the light and stubbornly cast a shadow.
I must clarify what I mean by
unclarity. I do not mean obscurity and opacity in speech and writing nor vagueness and haziness of thought: not the unclarity of jargon and obscurantism, not the confusion of a lazy mind. What I wish to champion is the honest confusion of one who strives to understand but has not yet, or who did once but that understanding has dissolved, or who now understands but remembers the state of confusion that came before understanding, holds to it so tightly that the past confusion is inextricable from the present understanding.
In fact, it is those who believe in clarity and certainty who so frequently speak and write in a
manner that is impossible to understand. And this is no accident: impenetrable language is a very good method of hiding chinks. And there will always be chinks, for clarity and certainty can only only occur when something has
been glossed over— some gap, some uncertainty, some moment of unprovable
interpretation hidden away, buried under jargon, or, better still, inside of jargon. The purpose of jargon is to refer quickly to something that
supposedly is already understood— but is never really understood. And so it is not in fact referred to but rather leapt over.
The person who takes the position of
uncertainty and unclarity, on the other hand, is able to speak and write very
plainly, though his plain speech and writing may sometimes indeed be
incomprehensible, as is the case, for example, in the writing of
Kierkegaard. However, this desperate, wild incomprehensibility is unmistakably
distinct from the cool, breezy incomprehensibility of jargon and technical
exactitude that one finds, say, in a textbook on finance. One is a baring of
the soul, speaking from the depths of its passionate confusion; the language is open
and plain, but the content is bizarre; the reader can follow it at each step,
but it is like following the footsteps of a blind person lost in a
wilderness. The other is a smooth impenetrable carapace that repels
inquiry. No honest reader could confuse the two.
But are we then to mistrust all conclusions? Must we suspend all judgment? And will it not then be impossible to act? Is everything arbitrary? No, no, no, no, no, no. Were there nothing right and wrong, nothing to understand, then there would be no need for confusion. One could persist in a state of happy certainty. Universal relativism is as clear and certain, as whole and complete and totalizing, a philosophy as there is. It is because we must decide and must act that we must plunge into confusion. And yet it is very often the case that my confusion proves crippling.
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