Obscurantism

In the fields of philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism identify and describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. The two historical and intellectual denotations of obscurantism are: (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge — opposition to the dissemination of knowledge; and (2) deliberate obscurity — a recondite style of writing characterized by deliberate vagueness. In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology, from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said that: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence." In restricting education and knowledge to an élite ruling class, obscurantism is anti-democratic, because its components anti-intellectualism and social elitism exclude the people as intellectually unworthy of knowing the facts and truth about their government and the political and economic affairs of their city-state. In 18th century monarchic France, as a political scientist, the Marquis de Condorcet documented the aristocracy's obscurantism and indifference to the social problems that provoked the French Revolution (1789–1799), which deposed the aristocracy and the monarchy of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774–1792). In the 19th century, the mathematician William Kingdon Clifford, who was an early proponent of Darwinism, worked to eliminate obscurantism in England after hearing clerics — who privately agreed with him about evolution — publicly denounce evolution as un-Christian heresy.