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Being an unattainable ideal, there is no end to our quest for certainty: we can only aspire to box on, unravelling and exhausting as many nefarious possibilities as we can find before our fingers bleed. We know we will always fall short of the perfect — they are the essences, the ''εἶδος''; our worldly grapplings at them but a shabby imitation of a brilliant [[Platonic form]]. | Being an unattainable ideal, there is no end to our quest for certainty: we can only aspire to box on, unravelling and exhausting as many nefarious possibilities as we can find before our fingers bleed. We know we will always fall short of the perfect — they are the essences, the ''εἶδος''; our worldly grapplings at them but a shabby imitation of a brilliant [[Platonic form]]. | ||
And when our energies subside, we have the little pitons that we can jam into nearby fissures for yet further purchase on [[certainty]]: is there one amongst us who has never | And when our energies subside, we have the little pitons that we can jam into nearby fissures for yet further purchase on [[certainty]]: is there one amongst us who has never whispered “''[[for the avoidance of doubt]]''”, not once, even to break some [[tedious]] ''impasse''? | ||
Such is our institutional suspicion of ''[[doubt]]''. Note, in that | Such is our institutional suspicion of ''[[doubt]]''. | ||
Note, in that grim phrase of hack lawyering, the word “''[[For the avoidance of doubt|avoidance]]''” — as if doubt is so repulsive to our collective morality we should ''evacuate it'', [[ab initio]], from our bowels, and flush it away, whereupon only then can we lie back into cosy, sterile ''certitude''. | |||
Yet you need be no great student of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that, however hard we have lunged at this elusive definitude, we have had a hard time ''finding'' it. | Yet you need be no great student of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that, however hard we have lunged at this elusive definitude, we have had a hard time ''finding'' it. | ||