Karl Marx famously said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” What is the point of academic writing: to interpret the world or to change it?
Behind Marx’s statement is a fairly routine logical fallacy: the false choice between interpretation and change. That is, Marx and those in his tradition who want academic writing to be overtly political fail to appreciate the possibility that good interpretation can change the world.
In other words, knowledge has ethical implications. Error, crime, sin, villainy, and evil tend to come from ignorance, not volition. Rarely does someone fully understand an ethical dilemma and consciously choose vice over virtue; usually, viciousness stems from a failure to grasp a situation fully.
From this perspective, academic writing should aim to tell us what to think, not what to do. When thought is clear, virtue is easy. When thought is unclear, vice is likely. What I am trying to articulate here is an ethics of intelligence, one that applies especially to academic writing, which should focus on interpreting, not change, the world.
Taking a cue from Marx, we can say that, in academic writing, there are two kinds of arguments (surely there are more than two, but there are two I am concerned with in what follows). On the one hand, there are analytical arguments, those that are descriptive, what could be called philosophical arguments. On the other hand, there are moralistic arguments, those that are prescriptive or political arguments.
The analytical argument is descriptive insofar as it is designed to describe what is true and why. Thus this argument is also philosophical, a Greek word that means “the love of knowledge.” An analytical argument is about a love of knowledge for its own sake. This kind of argument is about the complete and accurate understanding of something.
The moralistic argument is prescriptive, as in a doctor who prescribes medicine to cure his or her patients; the moralistic argument seeks to provide a cure for the issue addressed. Thus this argument is often political, insofar as it seeks to change an individual or a culture for the better. In theory, ideas for change should be based on a writer’s clear understanding of the problem at hand; in practice, this superior understanding does not always grace those who want to fix the world.
The two arguments could be called, borrowing some terms form literary theory, the expressive argument and the mimetic argument. The expressive argument is concerned with the author’s expression of some moral truth he or she claims to hold; the mimetic argument is concerned with the author’s representation of some aspect of the world in which he or she lives.
In my experience, the truth-claims in a moralistic argument are rarely both complete and accurate. Since the writer is so intent upon fixing the world, he or she focuses his or her mental energy on changing an undesirable situation that potentially he or she does not fully understand. The attempt to fix what we don't understand almost always leads to an exacerbation of the situation or the establishment of some new problem. As Renaissance drama teaches us, misfortune, pain, and suffering become tragedy when we try to fix a world we don’t understand.
If there are two kinds of arguments, the analytical and the moralistic, each has its own kind of utility – that is, its own sense of what’s at stake or why it matters.
A moralistic argument attempts to produce knowledge for the sake of making the world a better place. The purpose of a moralistic argument is to collect and interpret enough information to provide stable grounds for ethical action. A moralistic argument is expedient, attempting to establish reliable grounds of action based on the resolution of a given tension in a given text.
An analytical argument attempts to produce knowledge for the sake of having knowledge. The purpose of an analytical argument is to collect all the relevant information and to interpret it all correctly for the sake of a true understanding of a text.
An analytical argument is often etiological, attempting to establish the historical circumstances that led to the distinct manifestation of a given tension in a given text. In an analytical argument, one cannot resolve the problem that exists in a text. All one can hope to do (it’s more than enough work) is to give an account of what the problem is, where it came from, how it is structured, how it operates, its outcomes and effects, and how it is that we go on with our lives in the face of this problem.
An analytical argument might be a detailed account of the competing logical systems that make the textual problem a problem in the first place. The best task one can perform is to locate a conceptual incongruity in a text (i.e. something that is other that it seems or ought to be), and to explain why the problem exists in the text (i.e. where it came from).
In your papers for me, you should aim to be analytical, not moralistic. As tempting as it might be, you should not aim, at least not primarily, to propose policies for the betterment of society. Doing so will only lead you down a path of banal moralization, the sort of hollow polemic readily available on cable news channels, whereas a careful and deliberate analysis of an issue will take you in the direction of specialized academic knowledge that actually matters. In sum, be aware of the difference between an analytical/descriptive/philosophical argument and a moralistic/prescriptive/political argument, and be aware that – at least in my eyes – the former are usually interesting, and the latter usually not.
My emphasis on analytical over moralistic argumentation is really a matter of intent or purpose on the part of a writer. It’s ultimately less about what you end up doing and more about what you set out to do. Will you try to search for truth, or will you try to change the world. If you try to search for truth and find it, you will find that you have made the world a better place. Truth is inherently good, and an increase in truth is an increase in goodness. Moreover, truth takes care of itself: when truth is clearly known, virtuous action is easy to recognize. If, however, you set out to make the world a better place, you may fail to spend sufficient time and energy attempting to understand it.
Tell people what to think, not how to act. Stick to this advice, and you’ll avoid under-argued papers (that don’t take a strong enough position that tells people what to think) as well as over-argued papers (that don’t present a strong enough argument because they focus too much on telling people how to act).
In sum, the purpose of academic writing is quite similar to what Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes as “the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” To imitate our world accurately, to hold, as it were, a mirror up to nature, to depict the complexities of our world - not only virtue, justice, and pleasure but also vice, error, and pain - showing the form and body (the structure and operation) of your time, other times, all times in a passionate yet gentle and temperate tone - forever analyzing, never moralizing - is the purpose of academic writing.