Thursday 3 May 2018

Graphic Images


We all know how difficult it is to feel the force of an argument. Images, analogies and metaphors seem to help. Wittgenstein thought that a sentence was like the story of an accident rendered by the use of models as is common in a courtroom. But what about ‘but’ and ‘and’ and ‘although’ and ‘perhaps’. Ok we need several sets of models. That would do it.

Graphic images have appeared in our present (Ireland) abortion referendum debate. As a way of cutting through ‘trust’, ‘choice’, ‘care’ they are effective. ‘Am I not a human being and a brother or sister’? Naomi Woolf back in the day accepted them as a truth of the matter though she might steel herself to ‘do it anyway’. She would still her regretful necessity with ‘tikkun’ or mending.
Woolf on images

If one believes that abortion is killing and yet is still pro-choice, one could try to use contraception for every single sex act; if one had to undergo an abortion, one could then work to provide contraception, or jobs, or other choices to young girls; one could give money to programs that provide prenatal care to poor women, if one is a mother or father, one can remember the aborted child every time one is tempted to be less than loving -- and give renewed love to the living child. And so on: tikkun.

Rip the garment, mend the garment, rip and mend. Here I’ve run out of thread and the garment is very small. But feel the quality.

To be philosophically serious for a moment is there a graphic image of the external world? That depends on what you mean by ‘image’, ‘external’, ‘world’. Why ‘the’ world? Is there only one? Might it not be ‘a’ world?


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