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:
“One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)