Donald Davidson on 'the underlying paradox of irrationality'

'If we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background of rationality needed to justify any diagnosis at all.'

(from 'Paradoxes of Irrationality' in Philosophical Essays on Freud, eds. Wollheim & Hopkins 1982)