Obscurantism
In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism identify and describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject.
"[5][a] In restricting education and knowledge to a ruling class, obscurantism is anti-democratic in its components of anti-intellectualism and social elitism, which exclude the majority of the people, deemed unworthy of knowing the facts about their government and the political and economic affairs of their city-state.
In The City and Man (1964), he discusses the myths in The Republic that Plato proposes effective governing requires, among them, the belief that the country (land) ruled by the state belongs to it (despite some having been conquered from others), and that citizenship derives from more than the accident of birth in the city-state.
Thus, in the New Yorker magazine article "Selective Intelligence", Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed the "noble lie" concept: the myths politicians use in maintaining a cohesive society.
[6][7] Shadia Drury criticized Strauss's acceptance of dissembling and deception of the populace as "the peculiar justice of the wise", whereas Plato proposed the noble lie as based upon moral good.
"[9] Leo Strauss also was criticized for proposing the notion of "esoteric" meanings to ancient texts, obscure knowledge inaccessible to the "ordinary" intellect.
In the Phædrus, Socrates notes that writing does not reply to questions, but invites dialogue with the reader, thereby minimizing the problems of grasping the written word.
[10]Critics readily noted the obscurantism in Joy's elitist proposal for limiting the dissemination of "certain knowledge" in order to preserve society.
In that context, Hayek used the term obscurantism differently, to denote and describe the denial of the empirical truth of scientific theory, because of the disagreeable moral consequences that might arise from acceptance of fact.
In the 19th and 20th centuries obscurantism became a polemical term for accusing an author of deliberately writing obscurely, in order to hide his or her intellectual vacuousness.
Analytic and positivistic philosophers, such as A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, and the critical-rationalist Karl Popper, accused Hegel and Hegelianism of being obscure.
About Hegel's philosophy, Schopenhauer wrote that it is "a colossal piece of mystification, which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage".
In opposing the decision, philosophers including Barry Smith, W. V. O. Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, René Thom, and twelve others, published a letter of protestation in The Times of London, arguing that "his works employ a written style that defies comprehension ... [thus] Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university.
In the event, editorial deference to "academic authority" (the author-professor) prompted the editors of Social Text not to fact-check Sokal's manuscript by submitting it to peer review by a scientist.
And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths—the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.
As a pseudoscientific opus, the article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" is described as an exemplar "pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense, centered on the claim that physical reality is merely a social construct".
