Rejecting accepted definitions is fine if you have a purpose for doing it. The problem with Chapman is more that he's very sloppy with his langauge. If you read his blog, you might be left with the impression that Nietzsche is just some simple pseudo-mystical bullshitter, because Chapman doesn't explain Nietzsche's double movement from knowing to unknowing and vice versa. To use Chapman's own taxonomy, what Chapman thinks he's doing is dwelling in the space between meaningfulness and meaninglessness, but he's just being meaningless while expecting Nietzsche to somehow do the heavy lifting. Nietzsche probably would've hated this guy.
Rejecting accepted definitions in discourse and propaganda has proven intellectually and politically dangerous in the past, even when the redefinition is made honestly and explicitly. Devastating when made dishonestly and opaquely.
It raises a red flag…why didn’t an author just define a new term for the concept instead of distorting an old term? Why the required effort for a reader to make the translation from accepted definition to the author’s “special language”? This is prose, not poetry. Redefining accepted terminology is the intellectual equivalent of cultural appropriation and, at best, leads to confusion and empty bickering over terminology. Just sounds sloppy to me…imagine doing that in a STEM discipline, you’d be laughed out of the room.
Could be a useful strategy in cult psychology, though, I grant you that.
> Rejecting accepted definitions in discourse and propaganda has proven intellectually and politically dangerous in the past, even when the redefinition is made honestly and explicitly. Devastating when made dishonestly and opaquely.
And if the accepted definition is already the dishonest and dangerous type?
