First you establish the traditional “two views” of the question. You then put forward a common-sensical justification of the one, only to refute it by the other. Finally, you send them both packing by the use of a third interpretation, in which both the others are shown to be equally unsatisfactory. Certain verbal maneuvers enable you to line up the traditional “antitheses” as complementary aspects of a single reality: form and substance, content and container, appearance and reality, essence and existence, continuity and discontinuity, and so on. Before long the exercise becomes the merest verbalizing, reflection gives place to a kind of superior punning, and the “accomplished philosopher” may be recognized by the ingenuity with which he makes ever-bolder play with assonance, ambiguity, and the use of those words which sound alike and yet bear quite different meanings.

~   Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Paris, 1955; London, 1961), 54.
04.05.10 /12:46
Canvas  by  andbamnan