Ad Hominem has at least four major meanings, most people conflate the first and second in the now most publicly powerful manner, and so show themselves as accomplished upholders of foolishness. A few know the relatively trivial third, and fewer still the momentous fourth.
To understand a word is to know why one is using it. What aims it furthers, and to weigh thoughtfully if it is the right way to that aim, rather than the burial of that aim. It is never to cite mindlessly a string of words called the definition.
First we might specify what the phrase names, which confusion over is at issue of the post. Ergo, you might try reading it before arrogantly prating with befouled black lips.
Mine brown eyes read the OP loud and clear, but mine Moderator eyes answered you from lips that spake from authority.
I have already read elsewhere, on what you view ad Hominem as/the gear in which you choose to drive it in… should I know more than that? is my ignorance preceding me, on the matter?
No, you don’t know what it means, or have the slightest idea what it is to think and be solicitous for the possibility of thought. Your foolishness is just the awful difficulty the thinking part of the community is posed with. Passing to authorities only makes your rank imbecility more obvious. You simply have no inkling of what philosophy is. You think its a game made up some time in the past by academics.
I would say that philosophy has been turned into a game through academia, but that it started with the very first sentient thought, of which that moment in time has never been given any credit, because of the egotistical want to own everything that enchants/endears/creates… labeling human processes does not qualify for ownership of them, akin to kicking over a sandcastle on the beach and making a bigger and better one… reflective of the destroyer’s ego, which is reflective of the human condition in general.
The problem is not with thinking, but in the ability to get out our thoughts/express them/execute them, as there should be a resulting outcome or conclusion, or why have thoughts to begin with, if not to gain from them. There’s only so much thinking a person can do, before the need to do manifests.