Page 100 - The Irony Board
P. 100

Into the Cosmos


              Hair splits
              On ends
              Not roots.

             The  philosophical  enterprise  requires  that  distinctions  be  made
         and  defended  against  other  choices  of  conceptual  slicing.  The
         popular expression “splitting hairs” implies that efforts to establish
         unique  positions  based  on  trivial  differences  should  not  be  taken
         seriously.  Gluckman’s  quasi-proverb  elaborates  the  analogy  into  a
         more  specific  statement  about  the  issue.  Hair  physically  (and
         spontaneously) splits at its unattached end; at the other, it is firmly
         planted in the scalp. In the case of philosophical debate, “ends” are
         ideas at the distal terminus of a chain of argument; they exhibit a
         maximum of unwarranted inference and subjective interpretation.
            Gluckman also implies “ends” in a moral sense, another area of
         inevitable  disputation.  The  roots  of  an  issue,  by  contrast,  are  not
         often  contested;  such  basic  definitions  are  taken  for  granted  or
         otherwise left unexamined by mutual consent. Ironically, the most
         important  issues  are  precisely  those  about  primitive  terms  and
         assumptions, but they are too deeply rooted in the heads of those
         who should be analyzing them ever to be reached by logic choppers.
















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