FALSE APHORISMS: A PREFACE

Almost all aphorisms–pithy sayings that are intended to dispense wisdom–are false, misleading, actually unwise, and quite often dangerous. One can be inspired to do the wrong thing, make a mistake, or turn down the wrong road. Aphorisms require brevity, but depth, wisdom, and hence subtlety. The pithy is almost the opposite. The profound difference between is not always immediately obvious.

Sometimes, aphorisms can be a good place to begin serious introspection, reasoning, and scrutiny, and sometimes they help in regulating attitudes and conduct, but this is almost never true if they are taken in and of themselves to be profound propositions.  Virtually all aphorisms need to be subject to careful reflection and criticism.  Rarely, they may sound witty and profound, but they almost never are deep truths or even truths.  Watch out for letting yourself be inspired by any of them.

Philosophy and wisdom require that the language of whatever is said be understood fully, more or less.  That often requires comprehensive attention to the language used—to the words—and often a certain degree of literalness. Sayings purporting to provide wisdom must be questioned.  If one simply grabs an aphorism and tried to follow it without contemplating and re-contemplating it one will either fail to follow its true spirit, one will fail to really get rolling, or one will go in some wrong directions. Pithiness and centralized ambiguity go together, hand-in-hand, as it were.

Many aphorisms have immediate appeal to people and even popular acceptance.  Following most aphorisms, however, without sufficient reflection will not lead to situations that make one admirable. Actually, when really understood literally, they are seldom recipes for real success.

If they are treated as mere suggestions regarding consciousness, thought, emotions, intuitions, and conduct.  Consider one of the most famous:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” As it stands, this is a very bad idea. What if you don’t love yourself much, but actually periodically despise yourself as a being unworthy of being loved. What if this leads you to flog yourself? Clearly, that is not how you should treat others, or yourself for that matter.

—MSQ

But suppose you are stuck in a mental rut, and you can’t improve your self-image and the way you think and feel about yourself.

At the same time, looking at this aphorism, which is central to both Christian and Jewish faiths, is a suggestion to learn how to love yourself more so that you can generalize that love to cover others as well.  You’d never know this from listening to the many, many repetitions of this aphorism one hears, not to mention variations on it.

The truth, of course, is that this apparent aphorism is not an aphorism at all.  It is a proposition that fits into a system of ideas and which cannot be understood by itself. It might even be worthwhile to think about an oddly analogous “suggestion” for living. Here it is: Think about how the truly admirable person thinks of, feels about, and relates to others. Then try to think of yourself as one of the relevant others; try to imitate his ways of relating; and then try to apply his outlook to how you think about yourself, as well as others.  This is hardly an aphorism. Way too complicated sounding.

By the way, how should we react to the proposition “Know yourself.”