Aphorism Pdf

[Cristhian Cinq-Mars]

Aphorismwas originally used in the world of medicine. Credit Hippocrates, the Greek physician regarded as the father of modern medicine, with influencing our use of the word. He used aphorismos (a Greek ancestor of aphorism meaning "definition" or "aphorism") in titling a book outlining his principles on the diagnosis and treatment of disease. That volume offered many examples that helped to define aphorism, beginning with the statement that starts the book's introduction: "Life is short, Art long, Occasion sudden and dangerous, Experience deceitful, and Judgment difficult." English speakers originally used the term mainly in the realm of the physical sciences but eventually broadened its use to cover principles in other fields.

The concept is generally distinct from those of an adage, brocard, chiasmus, epigram, maxim (legal or philosophical), principle, proverb, and saying; although some of these concepts may be construed as types of aphorism.

Often aphorisms are distinguished from other short sayings by the need for interpretation to make sense of them. In A Theory of the Aphorism, Andrew Hui defined an aphorism as "a short saying that requires interpretation".[2]

The word was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a long series of propositions concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing and medicine.[3] The often-cited first sentence of this work is: "Ὁ βίος βραχύς, δὲ τέχνη μακρή" - "life is short, art is long", usually reversed in order (Ars longa, vita brevis).

This aphorism was later applied or adapted to physical science and then morphed into multifarious aphorisms of philosophy, morality, and literature. Currently, an aphorism is generally understood to be a concise and eloquent statement of truth.

Aphorisms are distinct from axioms: aphorisms generally originate from experience and custom, whereas axioms are self-evident truths and therefore require no additional proof. Aphorisms have been especially used in subjects to which no methodical or scientific treatment was originally applied, such as agriculture, medicine, jurisprudence, and politics.[3]

Two influential collections of aphorisms published in the twentieth century were Unkempt Thoughts by Stanisław Jerzy Lec (in Polish) and Itch of Wisdom by Mikhail Turovsky (in Russian and English).[4]

Misquoted or misadvised aphorisms are frequently used as a source of humour; for instance, wordplays of aphorisms appear in the works of P. G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams. Aphorisms being misquoted by sports players, coaches, and commentators form the basis of Private Eye's Colemanballs section.

Professor of Humanities Andrew Hui, author of A Theory of the Aphorism offered the following definition of an aphorism: "a short saying that requires interpretation".[2] Hui showed that some of the earliest philosophical texts from traditions around the world used an aphoristic style. Some of the earliest texts in the western philosophical canon feature short statements requiring interpretation, as seen in the Pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Parmenides. In early Hindu literature, the Vedas were composed of many aphorisms. Likewise, in early Chinese philosophy, Taoist texts like the Tao Te Ching and the Confucian Analects relied on an aphoristic style. Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, Desiderius Erasmus, and Friedrich Nietzsche rank among some of the most notable philosophers who employed them in the modern time.

Andrew Hui argued that aphorisms played an important role in the history of philosophy, influencing the favored mediums of philosophical traditions. He argued for example, that the Platonic Dialogues served as a response to the difficult to interpret fragments and phrases which Pre-Socratic philosophers were famous for. Hui proposes that aphorisms often arrive before, after, or in response to more systematic argumentative philosophy.[2] For example, aphorisms may come before a systematic philosophy, because the systematic philosophy consists of the attempt to interpret and explain the aphorisms, as he argues is the case with Confucianism. Alternately, aphorisms may be written against systematic philosophy, as a form of challenge or irreverence, as seen in Nietzsche's work. Lastly, aphorisms may come after or following systematic philosophy, as was the case with Francis Bacon, who sought to bring an end to old ways of thinking.[2]

This aphorism verges on being a parable: a small story that teaches. It strikes me that this is a self-portrait of the artist as a receptacle of, versus creator of, reality. Or, as the Moody Blues sang aphoristically many years ago, "Thinking is the best way to travel."

But are some aphorisms really poems in disguise? Or are poems sometimes aphorisms in disguise? In paging through Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, an encyclopedic compendium of aphorisms (with very few women in it), one would think so. James Geary classifies the first stanza of Emily Dickinson's poem "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant" as an aphorism. He also classifies one-liners from Bob Dylan, David Byrne, and Leonard Cohen's song lyrics as aphorisms. "He not busy being born is busy dying" (Dylan). Hard to argue with that as an aphorism.

Think, also, of the aphoristic wisdom of Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet. If I page through it with an aphorist's eye, the sentences, singly and in groups, almost all break down into aphorisms. Here are the lines, from Stephen Mitchell's translation, that give me succor:

Jane Hirshfield is one of a handful of contemporary women who has been writing aphorisms that are sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. She calls them "pebbles" and "assays," two forms that strike me as being different kinds of aphorisms: "they both make poems that like to think," she has written. A pebble is "cool, detached, and often a bit self-contradictory"; an assay is "a meditation" without a conclusion ("Statement" following "Poe: An Assay"). Aren't these really just definitions of the aphorism? Here are two excerpts from the series "Seventeen Pebbles" from her collection After:

When I was traveling in Turkey, I took along the Scottish poet Don Paterson's book of aphorisms, Best Thought, Worst Thought: On Art, Sex, Work, and Death, and found myself in violent disagreement with a number of them. The worst response an aphorism can elicit in its reader is a vigorous shaking of the head. Or is it? Of course, Paterson has an aphorism at the ready: "Anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only reconfirmed a prejudice." And "Of course you don't like all aphorisms. I don't like all of you."

Here's one of the ones I disagreed with: "Poetry is the word in silence. Only a poem can consist of one word." I have no quarrel with the first sentence; poetry and silence throw each other into greater relief. But a poem must be at least two words in juxtaposition, rubbing together. The minimum needed to create a metaphor is two: hummingbird heart, for instance.

I've recently been teaching Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay," from Glass, Irony, and God, as a quintessential long poem with its masterful braiding together of the familial (her father's death, her difficult visit with her mother) with her reading of Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights as a way to cope with the third strand (her failed love affair). Here are the most oft-quoted lines:

The first sentence, "Everything I know about love," strikes me as a personal aphorism; the sentence beginning "Soul is the place" strikes me as a cooler aphorism. The two are linked and also written in verse. They depend upon each other. Perhaps this small moment is what I consider the future of the aphorism: the most personal of moments in the service of generating a truth about the human condition.

Recently, I had the good fortune to spend time in Lisbon, Fernando Pessoa's city. I visited the Casa Fernando Pessoa, where he lived with his mother and sister. It was there that I learned that Pessoa's final words before he died were in English and were, in the context of being deathbed words, an aphorism: "I know not what tomorrow will bring." One is inclined to think of Gertrude Stein's famous, possibly apocryphal, last pair of questions: "What is the answer?" Brief pause. "What is the question?"

I use aphorisms as a way to prompt reflection. In the tumult of everyday life, I find it refreshing to quiet my mind, to focus on a large and spacious thought. I turn the aphorism over in my mind, I think of examples, I argue against it, I ponder its relevance.

Nietzsche is commonly said to be an aphoristic writer, perhaps the master of the aphorism. Yet it is not clear what is entailed by this stylistic designation or how far it takes us in understanding Nietzsche's thought and writing. It is a mistake to see Nietzsche's writings as exclusively aphoristic, if this is meant to imply that his writings lack philosophical and literary structure. Certainly sections of those books (conveniently numbered and titled) can be regarded as independent aphorisms (if aphorisms are ever independent, a question which must be assessed). In fact the long third essay of The Genealogy of Morals claims to be an interpretation (Auslegung) of just one aphoristic sentence from Zarathustra. Yet Nietzsche does not say that the interpretation of the aphorism is independent of the rest of his thought and writing; and the form of the interpretative essay need not itself be aphoristic. As Nietzsche was himself aware, the aphoristic form is a dangerous temptation. It invites us to classify what we are reading as belonging to a rather minor literary and philosophical genre. We're tempted to suppose that the aphorism is simply an amusement, a playful recreation, perhaps, from the difficult pursuits of science and philosophy which should be expressed in more continuous and systematic forms. The aphorist, it is supposed, is the jesting or satiric counterpart of the thinker. Even if we are inclined to see some philosophical value in individual aphorisms we may find their collection formless and bewildering.

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