In Defense of the Convoluted Philosopher- Jersey Flight

My thought is just this... in reading Derrida or Deleuze I may perhaps be tempted to blame my inability to understand what they say on a failure of procedural logic: a failure to account for every step, every syllable, every symbol. Do I then go on to claim that they have nothing to say? Do I go on to declare, that this particular use of words, is "inferior" to another kind?

What I am getting at is just this:

I suspect, in many cases, that we are better off if we can avoid the distracting act of grammatical narrowing. Now certainly there are times when this is necessary, but what if my criticism of Derrida and Deleuze turns out to be an Ad Hominem that has negative consequences for my own intelligence? Just because we don't understand something does not gives us the right to categorize it as a "negative ontology." How often do we present a negative summary of a given position, only to base our rejection and refutation on this caricature? To engage with a position dialectically takes far more skill than offering up a bare summary [in this sense one might actually try reading Marx]. But as it goes, I see the world's vast hoards of intellectuals [vast hoards is grossly overstating the existence of intellectuals] both giving summaries as refutations and taking summaries for refutations.

Are we sure our summary of a given thinker is accurate enough to warrant a poisoning of the well? Is this a good way to learn? And more importantly, how could a dedicated thinker be content dismissing any philosopher without having had some experience of that philosopher's dialectic?

As I feel the presence of another thinker, I try not to let myself be distracted by Ad Hominem injections... as a thinker I have a duty to probe the subject; I have a duty not to distract the conversation from the subject myself by complaining of poor treatment. Let it come! It may be in poor taste, but it matters not. I will gladly endure the insults of a good thinker over the polite courtesy of a poor thinker, which is to say, I find the latter to be more insulting. One who is losing ground is often pleased to complain of poor treatment, as this allows him to evade the arguments pertaining to the subject. It is a fallacy to assume that a man of poor conversational etiquette must equally be a poor philosopher. But more importantly, if we are allowing such a fallacy to determine the limits of our dialectical engagement, then we are weak in dialectic. One might walk away from unnecessarily crude articulation, but we go too far when we pretend that such an offense constitutes a refutation!

The only time pointing out an Ad Hominem constitutes a refutation is 1) when the argument is based on it and 2) we have actually refuted it. 

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