ABSTRACT
I have for some while been struck by a number of strange features that modern philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, displays. It is sober and well-ordered, showing few of the flights of fancy, the poetical language, the irony or even the personal voice that can often be found in philosophical writing from Plato to Descartes, and from time to time beyond. It seldom reflects on its own literary style, the idea of which would probably alarm most modern philosophers, committed as they seem to be to repudiating style in favour of what they think of as a straightforward relationship between the words they use, on the one hand, and, on the other, the arguments they use and the truths they seek (as if that was not itself a distinctive style). Otherwise, they might ask, how would there be a clear distinction between philosophy and other genres such as autobiography or the novel? Then too there is the mysterious way in which philosophy now commonly falls neatly into packages of around 6,000 words, just what the academic journals require; even books on philosophy tend to look very much like collections of these familiar packages. It can be taken for granted, of course (some will suspect irony here), that philosophy is to be written and read, rather than spoken or argued aloud, in a dialogue between or among embodied persons, among friends, in the university seminar or tutorial, in the café or the bar.
