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Brand Blanshard’s effort on his “Philosophical Style” is concerned on trying to

define what it is to write a good philosophical text. Blanshard different sources such

as Macaulay, Kant, Hegel and etc. He went from describing a philosophical text down

to what makes it bad or what makes it good. Several topics are pointed out which is

soon to be discussed in this text.

Inquiry is the very standpoint at which philosophy is grounded. It rests on as

Reichenbach says, the nature of “converting elements of the original situation into a

unified whole”. Insofar as converting the elements of a situation into a unified whole is

viewed as one’s understanding of an author of his philosophy. Its business is to

analyze fundamental concepts. This dealings entail a purely intellectual enterprise.

Writing philosophy may be too hard a task. One may end up talking gibberish if not,

be intelligible on a wide public.

The difficulty of philosophy comes with a failure in communication. As stated on

the previous paragraph is that by nature, philosophy is already hard. And the

importance of philosophy belong to the literature of knowledge where fundamental

concepts such as self, mater, mind, good and truth are analyzed and fitted into a

coherent view of nature and man’s place in it. This problems cause plain men to make

a further demand on the philosophers. That philosopher’s work should understandable

to them. Of course, this is another problem that a philosophical author should look into.

As hard as it may be, writing philosophy is always motived with the love of truth.

Truth there isn’t some facts or information to be told. Truth there is accuracy,

as expression, the vraie vérité. The lover of truth concerns only with what is true even

if its argument leads to painful realizations. In writing for truth, one may find himself

giving full weight to objections, having the readiness to consider all evidences and to
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accept that one could get wrong or has been wrong and be faithful on being corrected.

It could resolve into being inconsistent but such an attitude make some writers great

such as Mill and Locke. This is not because they wrote which such profundity but

because of the spirit which they thought and wrote.