Simpler is Not Always Better

From fiction to philosophy, the emphasis these days is on simplicity. Hemingway would probably tell you this is a good thing. Faulkner would probably disagree. And although I think Hemingway, if he ever said such a thing, would have a point, I think Faulkner would too. Simpler is not always better.

Take philosophy. Here, the drive towards simplicity is obvious. Philosophy is nuanced, complex, and, especially in contemporary philosophy, often makes a very specific point. It’s not about entertainment, it’s about clarity, so it is unsurprising that virtually every paper of the last few decades starts the same: “First I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do this.” But, philosophy was not always like that. 

Socrates, for example, never wrote anything down, for he believed that philosophy should be done through dialogue; through questioning and answering and then questioning the answers. He thought this is how you achieved clarity and avoided ambiguity, as points could be challenged and refined in real-time. So, of course, The Dialogues never start with ‘first I’m going to do this and then this and then this’, because you never know where you’re going to end up. And I think that’s part of their appeal. They take you on a journey, and it’s a journey we lose by whittling down arguments into their simplest form.

Besides, simplicity and clarity are not the same thing. The reading level of US Presidential speeches has been steadily decreasing over the past decades, but they are no clearer than before. According to UC Berkeley, the reading level of JFK’s 1961 State of the Union Address was around that of a first-year college student, whilst Trump’s 2018 address was that of an eighth-grader. And yet, when we compare a typical speech from JFK and a typical speech from Trump, whose point comes across better? Was the message really harder to grasp when Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”, than when Trump said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats”? And even if it was easier to understand, which would you rather hear? 

Perhaps that’s an unfair example, but the point still stands. We gain something when we engage with great speakers like JFK, and we lose something when we don’t. We gain from engaging with complexity, in writing, speech, and ideas.

Yes, there are intellectual benefits. When you become accustomed to reading challenging works, hard ones don’t seem so daunting. You can read them faster, and understand them more deeply. The effort you must exert decreases. But there are also aesthetic benefits. Kennedy was not just a great speaker because he said important things; he was a great speaker because his sentences were beautiful. It was not just about the content of his words, but how he combined them.

It’s the same for fiction, Dickens being one of the best examples. Of course, he conveys deep themes, creates complex characters, and knows the rules of composition as well as anyone. But a lot of what carries you through his novels is simply the sound of his sentences, which skip and turn and often leave you tongue-tied, yet have a charm and an energy that hooks you to the page.

And yet I do not deny that a simple sentence can be beautiful. I’ve written before about my love for the authors of simple sentences: the Raymond Carvers, the Kazuo Ishiguros, the Claire Keegans. All I’m trying to say is that a complex sentence has a special kind of beauty, a beauty not accessible to everyone. It’s the sort of beauty you get when Great Expectations first hits your ear, and which you don’t get when you try to get the bare facts across. For even in a subject like philosophy, where the point is to convey knowledge, we should surely make space for the entertainment of The Dialogues and cast off the monotony of ‘first I will do this, and in the end, I will do that.’

Illustration by Lauren McAndrew