Enantiosis

Enantiosis (e-nan-ti-o’-sis): Using opposing or contrary descriptions together, typically in a somewhat paradoxical manner.

There was so much right about what was so wrong. Once again, I had worked my way into the ”two kinds” of good that are a major vexation in so many people’s lives. We have what feels good juxtaposed against what is good: sensual pleasure vs. some other kind of pleasure. I may ask, “Will I let my skin win” this Saturday night?

What is this impalpable concept of the good? Is there some quality of pleasure that attaches to it? What is that quality of pleasure that gives import to its revelation? Is it borne on the contradiction of intellectual pleasure—like the satisfaction of solving a riddle, the seeking of which can be as addictive as any illicit drug. People may use the metaphor of addiction to characterize their pursuit of puzzles’ solutions: “I’m addicted to Sudoko.”

As soon as abstract concepts comport with examples they lose their purity. They wrestle in the mud. They come down to earth. Ironically, to “know” them, the concepts must be embodied as projections of their definitions “proving” them at the troughs of truth where we stick our faces into their goo, trusting that what sticks is mystically threaded to what is.

Home on the range everything is contestable—even self-evident truth which may be a ruse concocted to achieve a purpose that has nothing to do with anything but desire—desire for a change, desire for a difference, a desire to be free. Free?

We are never free. There are always constraints requiring deliberation or well-considered habits to surmount and traverse. I think it was Plato who said that people do what they do because they think it’s good: bank robbers, for example, think that robbing banks is good. You name it: it gets done because it is thought to be good. But we know that thinking something is good, doesn’t make it good. The same goes for “bad.”

We could spin a tome consisting of spiral staircases and unchained melodies. But, it’s about persuasion. It’s abut belief. It’s about what could be wrong: incorrect, or impermissible, or right, or correct. Nobody knows, and those that claim they do are demagogues. So, where does it go? It goes to making choices based on reflection on a nonexistent future.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

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