Obscurity, Repetition, Unnecessary Length

W. reads me a passage from the new Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on Hermann Cohen:

In Cohen's hands, this historical orientation contributes in no small part to other aspects of his writing that none of his readers can fail to notice: its obscurity, repetition, and sometimes unnecessary length.

Don’t they understand that Cohen should be praised for his style?, W. says. That the philosopher, least of all, is obliged to be clear? The philosopher shouldn’t understand what he’s doing, W. says. He shouldn’t know where his thought is going; and nor should his readers.

A thinker should be at least regarded for his unthought as well as his thought, W. says. In what remains undeveloped in his work. Unseen!

W. speaks about the work of commentary, which is completely different from the work of introducing a thinker. An introduction makes the work of a philosopher intelligible to a time, and thereby reduces it to the preccupations of that time. A commentary, by contrast, makes the work of a philosophy untimely. It shows us that we have no idea of who that philosophy was as a thinker, and that we've hardly begun to read his work. And doesn't commentary reveal this by focusing on the very obscurity and repetition of the philosopher's work? In its no doubt unnecessary length?

That's why the true thinker always awaits his commentator, W. says. Didn't Husserl await Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty? Wasn't Rosenzweig reborn in Levinas? Sometimes, W. dreams that the work of Cohen has awaited his commentary. Rozensweig's, too. Isn't W.'s mathematical messianism the commentary that will render these thinkers untimely?

Sometimes, he thinks that it might be the same with Kierkegaard, in our collaboration, W. says. Sometimes, he thinks that Kierkegaard’s despair of capitalism, about which he wrote nothing at all, is the unthought that will echo through our speculations.