I suspect that the prolixity and tortuousness of much philosophical writing nowadays comes from the desire to protect oneself against every possible objection that anyone could raise, however foolishly.
(J. J. C. Smart, "Reply to Hare," in Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart, ed. Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan, and Jean Norman [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987], 184-7, at 185)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 