[Note: The
following observation is merely illative, and should be skipped by the general
reader.]
Awhile back I posted an Aristotelian exercise, whose effectiveness if any, depended upon the reader’s
holding, or at least being able to entertain for the sake of the argument, two views:
(1) that a certain Singerian illation, of the familiar form “if
A then B” (for the instantiation, vide
infra), has some claim to being valid -- at all events, that it suffers
from no internal vice of logical form, and might be entertained (or not) by a
reasonable person, such as that Princeton philosopher;
(2) that many reasonable people
(sociologically, probably most) would not, however, embrace the apodosis.
From this, something would follow -- at least for the
logician; though for extra-logical
reasons, it must remain sine nomine.
Yet this morning we find (like an ominous portent, at the
bottom of our driveway) “B”
emblazoned and celebrated, in full color, taking up the whole of the
front cover of the large-format New York Times Magazine. From thence stares out at us, uniformly hirsute, but suitably
suited and necktied, such a one as addressed the learnèd gentlemen in the Bericht für eine Akademie, purportedly
from the witness-stand. A sotie? No; an actual
case, currently sub judice. Whereby said simian brings an action at law against parties named (or rather, it has
been brought in his/its behalf, the plaintiff himitself having not the wit to do it -- wherein
lies the greatest potential for legal mischief). And so cowed is The Times by the potential
imprecations of the hyperzoöphiles, that it immediately reassures its
readership, that no beasts of field or forest were harmed “or even used” in
trumping-up that photograph.
They did not even dare photo-shop in an authentic hominoideal face, but
dressed up a human (consent-forms duly signed, no doubt) in a costume.
Such antics are barely worth comment, as a society sues
itself into insensibility. And
satire is beggared -- the very next development on the ground will render any raillery O.B.E.
~
Well; I hope
that has been sufficiently obscure (caviary to the Boeotians), for I am fond of
my own skin. For
(comparatively translucent) comments on a work far more obscure, cf. our
newly-updated essay on Finnegan’s Wake.
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