Obvious

Obvious means easily discovered, seen, or understood.

Quotes

• For you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc.). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses.
  • Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), as translated by Ben Brewster (2001), p. 116

• “Isn’t it obvious?” he answered.
  “No. It is so far from obvious that it has gone right through obscure, breezed past unfathomable and is now completely beyond the reach of my vocabulary.”
  • Matthew Hughes, The Spiral Labyrinth (2007), ISBN 978-1-59780-091-4, p. 54

See also

• Appearance