Ema Luna Lalic
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia
Analytic philosophy is commonly considered determined by its clarity of expression or style, by virtue of which it is able to provide arguments and remove the possibility of ambiguity. However, there is a dispute about what constitutes clarity and to which texts to attribute it. Philip Kitcher is critical of an overbundant concern with clarity, which he believes to be common in analytic philosophy and calls “a fetish for complete clarity” (Kitcher 2022, 60), while Bernard Williams strongly recommends clarity in analytic philosophy but emphasizes that it can take more than one form and should not be understood simplistically (Williams 2006, 203). Both of them point to the complexity of the concept of clarity, the widespread disagreement on what philosophers and works exemplify it, its overuse in explicating the value(s) of (analytic) philosophy, but also its versatility and general usefulness in helping philosophers consider if their ideas would be understood by others.
In this talk I examine the concept of clarity as a benchmark of analytic philosophy. I argue that clarity is itself an unclear concept, one that we are familiar with ostensively, identifying examples but unable to provide a satisfactory definition. It is also dependent on subject matter of a particular philosophical discipline or discussion, which is why what counts as clarity will differ depending on the subject matter. Given this, it does not provide a good basis for essentialism in metaphilosophy or the view that clarity is a necessary and sufficient condition for a work to count as a work of philosophy. There is more than one way to achieve clarity that fosters argumentation in philosophy and it is a valuable general goal for which philosophers should strive in order to promote understanding, but strong essentialist claims that rely on clarity should be rejected.
References
Kitcher, P. 2022. What’s the Use of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, B. 2006. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chair: Mattia Rossi
Time: 04 September, 11:20 – 11:50
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 