Why Are Brilliant Thinkers (Sometimes) Hard to Understand?

Brilliant thinkers often speak out of a tradition with its own idioms and ideas. In a real sense, they sometimes speak another language. So part of the reason why we may not be able to understand a brilliant thinker is that we have yet to learn their language.
We cannot understand someone speaking French unless we learn French.
The same thing can be true for those who speak out of a specific tradition. This is so important. Recognizing this will help us to judge much slower, to listen much deeper, and to open our horizons to brand new worlds.

[@CraigSmitham]

Here because of the O’Donovan thumb. Reading O’Donovan is difficult at first, but richly rewarding for his thought and endearing personality once you can just tread some water in his prose. O’Donovan is a master communicator and his description of the phenomenons of the moral life are so trenchantly apt. His employment of the term “pigheadedness” in a passage of Disappearance was like a tasting note in a fine wine that made me put the book down and just smile for a full minute, even if I don’t yet grasp half of everything else he is saying …

[@wagraham]

His work is partly what prompted me to record this video. Yep, he’s great and can be tough to grasp