There’s what I’ll call esoteric method, esoteric topics, and esoteric aesthetics. Esoteric method is a way of moving towards legible understanding of a thing through the intervening bog of informal considerations that can’t yet be formulated with both clarity and generality. A lot of philosophy is in this mode, even as it rarely escapes it. Many technical problems are briefly in this mode before an appropriate formulation is found or legible desiderata can be stated. This is very inefficient and should be escaped whenever possible, which is not always. It takes at least a book to describe a practitioner’s state of investigation with enough signal for another to continue the work, and progress is slow.
Esoteric topics and esoteric aesthetics are in contrast the epistemically distortional phenomena that can be associated with practice of esoteric method and make it harder. An esoteric topic is one that’s steeped in tradition of unclarity and anti-epistemic norms that maintain the equilibrium of unclarity. Many steps in the direction of escaping the bog and improving legibility get opposed by such traditions and norms, trivial inconvenience that makes continual use of the esoteric method impractical. It can be easier to make progress by escaping an esoteric topic and taking an outside perspective, while gaining enough access to it by hearing it out with charity. This is usually done without a need to also engage in practice of esoteric method within this outside perspective, so that only well-calibrated application of charity remains the unreliable step, with failure being failure to correctly understand the topic, rather than failure to sanely analyze it. But sometimes there is no legible way of analyzing it either, and so there are two difficulties at the same time, charity towards an esoteric topic in order to know what it’s talking about, and sanity towards its investigation through esoteric method from an outside perspective, in order to both avoid the anti-epistemology that plagues the inside perspective of an esoteric topic, and make progress despite inability to say anything very legible for some time yet, the use of esoteric method.
Esoteric aesthetics is an attitude that doesn’t seek legibility, that enjoys unclarity. Fiction can be borne of esoteric aesthetics, and many practitioners of esoteric topics enjoy it, firming up the anti-epistemology. It might help with making it psychologically more comfortable working through esoteric method, if legibility still functionally remains an aspiration, and there are no side effects of introducing anti-epistemology into the practice and turning the body of work into an esoteric topic that would require another round of reframing through charity to rescue.
There’s what I’ll call esoteric method, esoteric topics, and esoteric aesthetics. Esoteric method is a way of moving towards legible understanding of a thing through the intervening bog of informal considerations that can’t yet be formulated with both clarity and generality. A lot of philosophy is in this mode, even as it rarely escapes it. Many technical problems are briefly in this mode before an appropriate formulation is found or legible desiderata can be stated. This is very inefficient and should be escaped whenever possible, which is not always. It takes at least a book to describe a practitioner’s state of investigation with enough signal for another to continue the work, and progress is slow.
Esoteric topics and esoteric aesthetics are in contrast the epistemically distortional phenomena that can be associated with practice of esoteric method and make it harder. An esoteric topic is one that’s steeped in tradition of unclarity and anti-epistemic norms that maintain the equilibrium of unclarity. Many steps in the direction of escaping the bog and improving legibility get opposed by such traditions and norms, trivial inconvenience that makes continual use of the esoteric method impractical. It can be easier to make progress by escaping an esoteric topic and taking an outside perspective, while gaining enough access to it by hearing it out with charity. This is usually done without a need to also engage in practice of esoteric method within this outside perspective, so that only well-calibrated application of charity remains the unreliable step, with failure being failure to correctly understand the topic, rather than failure to sanely analyze it. But sometimes there is no legible way of analyzing it either, and so there are two difficulties at the same time, charity towards an esoteric topic in order to know what it’s talking about, and sanity towards its investigation through esoteric method from an outside perspective, in order to both avoid the anti-epistemology that plagues the inside perspective of an esoteric topic, and make progress despite inability to say anything very legible for some time yet, the use of esoteric method.
Esoteric aesthetics is an attitude that doesn’t seek legibility, that enjoys unclarity. Fiction can be borne of esoteric aesthetics, and many practitioners of esoteric topics enjoy it, firming up the anti-epistemology. It might help with making it psychologically more comfortable working through esoteric method, if legibility still functionally remains an aspiration, and there are no side effects of introducing anti-epistemology into the practice and turning the body of work into an esoteric topic that would require another round of reframing through charity to rescue.
Nice set of concepts, I might use these in my thinking, thanks!
I like this collection of concepts, but I feel like I may not be understanding them very well without examples. Do you have any cached examples?