GERMAINE GREER IS ANGRY

Dr Greer reports in The Guardian that she was awarded a Golden Bull award by the Plain English Campaign for the following sentence:

The first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the unsynthesised manifold.

I did not have a clue as to what she was on about. However, she does explain that the concept “unsynthesised manifold”, like phenomena, is a reference to Immanuel Kant’s, Critique of Judgment.

I never learnt anything, or read anything much, in philosophy, which I now regret, but I remember hearing the story to the effect that the department allowed graduate students to take copies of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason into examination on the basis of that it would be little advantage if it had not been understood. I presume his Critique of Judgment is similar. Germaine Greer comments:

I can still remember the excitement of reading the Critique for the first time 50 years ago, and basking in the glow of Kant’s beautiful mind.

I am pleased to see for a change that something other than Australians and Australia are not the butt of Greer’s anger, however deserving from time to time they and it may be.

Nevertheless, Dr Greer has provided a salutory lesson for some proponents of Plain English.