<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 10/26/04 5:16:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">The incomprehensible jargon of many continental writers is an old trick of looking profound to those who are too insecure to ask "what the f___ does that mean?"  There is no other excuse for poor and incomprehensible writing. Difficult ideas?  Maybe, but the hallmark of a great mind is the ability to explain these ideas in understandable terms (Stephen Jay Gould comes to mind as an example).  An impostor will make simple, if not trivial, things look esoteric and obscure. </BLOCKQUOTE> The ability to explain complicated ideas in simple terms is most definitely not the hallmark of great minds. Aristotle and Hegel are among the greatest minds of all time, but neither is easily accessible to the ordinary educated reader. Educated readers, and especially English-speaking ones, have always had a hard time grasping the first chapter of Marx's "Capital." Expressing the ideas of great thinkers in more comprehensible terms is the vocation of intelligent critics and popularizers. The problem with postmodernists is that they replicate the obscurity of great thinkers  without possessing any of their profundity. </HTML>