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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