And French! E.g. John Searle's comment on Michel Focault, > 'Don't be ambiguous', 'don't be too wordy, be brief', 'be orderly' and 'avoid obscurity' are the fo

And French! E.g. John Searle's comment on Michel Focault, > 'Don't be ambiguous', 'don't be too wordy, be brief', 'be orderly' and 'avoid obscurity' are the four Maxim's of manner. And I think those are frequently violated. In fact, there are certain schools of philosophy---not once I'm sympathetic with---where they are more or less systematically violated. I don't know if I've told you this story but I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine and I said to him "Why the hell do you write so badly, pourquoi écris-tu si mal", and he said, "Look, if I wrote as clearly as you do people in Paris wouldn't take me seriously. You know, they would think it's childlike and naive." [...] In France you got to have 10% incomprehensible otherwise people won't think it's deep. (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jean_searle_on_foucault_and_the_obscurantism_in_french_philosophy.html http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/jean_searle_on_foucault_a...) I think this is one of the great contributions of the anglophone academic sphere, the idea that you should try to aim to be easy to understand.