It certainly *can* be either a valid point *or* a feeble excuse. To determine which it is in this case, I would first have to familiarise myself with a significant proportion of the work of Chesterton himself, and then of his critics (whom I suspect may legion, and possibly uncountable). Or, I suppose I could buy Ward's biography and see how good a job she does of laying the ground for her own assertion, and then critique that in isolation, hedged around with caveats about the fact that I was dealing purely with the evidence *as selected and presented by Ward herself*.
That's the trouble when people say things about what other people have said about what somebody else once opined: It's so far removed from anything real that it seems not worth the trouble of worying about.
But the lesson we could draw from Ward's comment - regardless of whether she's actually right about her observation in this specific case (you see what I did there? =:o} ) - is that human thought processes often carry a high degree of redundancy, and so when evaluating a conclusion one needs to analyse the entire argument that leads to it, link by link; not just let it stand or fall on the first axiom that gets mentioned (or any other single link along the way), because in the final analysis that datum may prove to have a null impact on the outcome of the argument as a whole.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 02:33 pm (UTC)Hmm.
It certainly *can* be either a valid point *or* a feeble excuse. To determine which it is in this case, I would first have to familiarise myself with a significant proportion of the work of Chesterton himself, and then of his critics (whom I suspect may legion, and possibly uncountable). Or, I suppose I could buy Ward's biography and see how good a job she does of laying the ground for her own assertion, and then critique that in isolation, hedged around with caveats about the fact that I was dealing purely with the evidence *as selected and presented by Ward herself*.
That's the trouble when people say things about what other people have said about what somebody else once opined: It's so far removed from anything real that it seems not worth the trouble of worying about.
But the lesson we could draw from Ward's comment - regardless of whether she's actually right about her observation in this specific case (you see what I did there? =:o} ) - is that human thought processes often carry a high degree of redundancy, and so when evaluating a conclusion one needs to analyse the entire argument that leads to it, link by link; not just let it stand or fall on the first axiom that gets mentioned (or any other single link along the way), because in the final analysis that datum may prove to have a null impact on the outcome of the argument as a whole.
So my decision is... More tea, then back to bed.