Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

Let’s take a look at Richard Rorty’s skill to employ some words of the colloquial style into a serious philosophical discourse. I show you this to illustrate the thesis saying that one does not have to separate a heavy philosophical style (and serious issues to be discussed) from the informal everyday speech in order to produce a profound message for both audiences, I mean the professional philosophers and those interested in philosophical issues.

people begin to toss around old words in new senses, to throw in the occasional neologism, and thus to hammer out a new idiom which initially attracts attention to itself and only later gets put to work. In this initial stage, words stand out as words, colors as encrusted pigments, chords as dissonances. Half-formed materiality becomes the mark of the avant-garde (“Deconstruction and Circumvention”).

In some dictionaries and for many speakers, such phrasal verbs as ‘toss around, ‘throw in,’ and ‘hammer out’ are seen as informal, and such terms as ‘neologism,’ ‘dissonance,’ and ‘avant-garde’ (not to mention ‘deconstruction’ and ‘circumvention’ in the title) sound formal. Rorty’s use of such words side by side corresponds to his attempt to widen the philosophical audience in hope to include both philosophers and the readers who are outside of academia.

Take a look at these two crazy sentences by G. Santayana, a philosopher famous both for his philosophy and his English. You can think of the style he uses, the vocabulary, grammar, and rhythm – all employed in each of these two sentences, not to mention the messages he formulates here. All this makes this language very rich and sophisticated, which, for some readers may be unbearable though.  Feel free to tell me what you think.

“1. Any madcap can mimic a clown’s antics, cleverly taking the mad words out of his mouth and telling him what he might be fool enough to think before he has been fool enough to think it.”

“2. Red tape accordingly would be entirely stultified and eviscerated if it were not suffered to be all that modern criticism, inspired as it is by a subjective and psychological philosophy, most thoroughly dislikes.”