"Heat is in proportion to want of knowledge." - Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
In the summer of my sixth year, it must have been, I was lounging on the linoleum in my grandparents' sunny dining room while my grandfather plied his barber shears along the scrawny neck of another neighborhood elder in receipt of pretty much what he had paid for. My grandfather was an inveterate amateur barber whose tonsorial efforts veered from overweening enthusiasm for his tools into the realms of asymmetry. Over the years he had cut the hair of five sons and, from the gallery of family albums, the golden tow of even more grandsons. In his dotage he proffered his ministrations to some of his contemporaries, and the old fellow now seated in the dining room was a regular taker.
I remember this fellow in particular because as his hair was being trimmed, he was engaged with my grandfather in conversation, and specifically in what must have been a theological discussion. They were mining the subtleties of a hardshelled Presbyterian theology, probably some finer point as to whether good works were merely a signal of divine grace bestowed, or whether they were more like redeemable chits along the road to redemption. As points developed and various counterpoints parried, the pace of the conversation became brisker, the volume gradually increasing, until my grandfather in some heat and in complete exasperation said (a pretty direct quote), "Lyle, if you're going to sit here and say that then you can get out of my house!"
"Now George . . ." his interlocutor cajoled, and so the matter was put to rest, followed by an uneasy silence, some further harrumphing and clearing of throats, until one of them opened another gambit - along the lines of which of the McBurney boys had married the Carrothers girl with the walleye after one or another of the wars ("the war" being a principal signpost in the communal memory, exactly which war always a matter of context or pure supposition).
But even at the age of six I knew of a certainty that my grandfather, for all his heat, had just lost an argument. In the ensuing decades I have treasured this memory; it has enabled me to add a completely new logical fallacy to the pantheon of hoary old chestnuts cataloged by Aristotle and his medieval disciples. I call it the argumentum ad domicilium, and place it in its own niche in the catalog alongside such venerable groaners as the argumentum ad batulum ("If you maintain that position I and several of my friends and hirelings will beat you within an inch of your worthless life"); or the argumentum ad populum ("You may wish to maintain your position, Madam, but I fear very much that your friends and neighbors may henceforth shun you"); or the argumentum ad hominem ("I should have expected such an opinion from one like you who shares the embraces of his wife's chiropodist"). I could go on.
But to clarify: the argumentum ad domicilium is what I call the argument from the ownership of a private residence or business. It is a time honored favorite of bartenders and publicans ("Keep your voice down, pal, or I'll chuck you out"). But it, like any fallacy, cannot bear the weight of argument. The threat of force, or ridicule, or minority in opinion, or lowness of character has no bearing on the opinions or conclusions proffered. To such interlocutors, silence in a rhetorical opponent is tantamount to acquiescence. Their first premise is merely "Shut your gob."
