I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine. And I said to him, "Why the hell do you write so badly? Pourquoi tu écris si mal?" ... And this was Michel Foucault. He was a very smart guy and wrote a lot of very good stuff but in general he just wrote badly. When you heard him give a lecture in Berkeley, it was perfectly clear, just as clear as I am. ... And he said, "Well, in France, it would be regarded as somewhat childish and naive if you wrote clearly. ... In France you've got to have 10% incomprehensible." Otherwise people won't think it's deep. They won't think you're a profound thinker.
And I gave a series of lectures in Paris at the Collège de France with another very famous French philosopher as my host, Pierre Bourdieu, and I told this story to Pierre, ... And he said it's worse than 10%, more like 20%. And I have to say if you read Bourdieu, yeah, 20% at least ...
You see, there was a time when I learned French when the slogan was, "Si ce n'est pas clair, ce n'est pas français. If it's not clear, it's not French." That has been abandoned in French philosophy and a lot of it is very obscure.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine. And I said to him, "Why the hell do you write so badly? Pourquoi tu écris si mal?" ... And this was Michel Foucault. He was a very smart guy and wrote a lot of very good stuff but in general he just wrote badly. When you heard him give a lecture in Berkeley, it was perfectly clear, just as clear as I am. ... And he said, "Well, in France, it would be regarded as somewhat childish and naive if you wrote clearly. ... In France you've got to have 10% incomprehensible." Otherwise people won't think it's deep. They won't think you're a profound thinker.
And I gave a series of lectures in Paris at the Collège de France with another very famous French philosopher as my host, Pierre Bourdieu, and I told this story to Pierre, ... And he said it's worse than 10%, more like 20%. And I have to say if you read Bourdieu, yeah, 20% at least ...
You see, there was a time when I learned French when the slogan was, "Si ce n'est pas clair, ce n'est pas français. If it's not clear, it's not French." That has been abandoned in French philosophy and a lot of it is very obscure." in the context of "UC Berkeley Philosophy of Language (Philosophy 133), lecture 21, 40:00, Fall 2010" to mean that wisdom is timeless.