Deliberate Obscurity
In the second sense, "obscurantism" denotes making knowledge abstrusely difficult to grasp. In the 19th and 20th centuries "obscurantism" became a polemical term for accusing an author of deliberately writing obscurely, to hide his or her intellectual vacuousness. Philosophers who are neither empiricists nor positivists often are accused of obscurantism in describing the abstract concepts of their disciplines. For philosophic reasons, these authors might modify, or reject, verifiability, falsifiability, or logical non-contradiction. From said perspective, obscure (clouded, vague, abstruse) writing does not necessarily signal that the writer has a poor grasp of the subject, because unintelligible writing sometimes is purposeful and philosophically considered.
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Famous quotes containing the words deliberate and/or obscurity:
“I never meant to deny the moral impact of art which is certainly inherent in every genuine work of art. What I do deny and am prepared to fight to the last drop of my ink is the deliberate moralizing which to me kills every vestige of art in a work however skillfully written.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)