Aphorisms and the Story of Philosophy
“Blotter explosion” - Señor Codo (CC)
Aphorisms are perhaps philosophy’s shortest and most popular product. Their enduring legacy stems from the inexhaustibility of their interpretation. Philosopher Andrew Hui defined them in his recent book on the subject as “short sayings which require interpretation”. Aphorisms are collected, shared, and interpreted without end. You can find them on inspirational posters, as tattoos, posted on Twitter and Tumblr, and printed in the opening pages of novels.
In the category of “short sayings,” aphorisms have plenty of competition. Alongside them are myriad terms for similarly short sayings. Proverbs, maxims, adages, precepts, epigrams, axioms, and fragments all jostle for a place in the many collections of sayings that have been compiled for millennia. These short sayings are perhaps circulated and remembered more than any other philosophical content. Why so? More than popular, aphorisms are powerful, even explosive.
Interpreting the Master’s Sayings
Arguing that aphorisms are “universal” is likely so ambitious as to invite objection. However, aphorisms are common enough to tempt us to do so. They played a similar role in many early traditions. Often, an important “master” figure left behind a legacy in the form of sayings their students recalled, recorded, and compiled. From the Presocratic philosophers and Seven Sages of ancient Greece, to the Analects of Confucius, the Book of Proverbs of the Hebrew Tanakh, the Beatitudes of Christ, the Sanskrit sūtras in Southern Asia, to the Hadiths of Islam, aphorisms exist in the foundational texts of many of the world’s great philosophies.
As Hui observes, a similar format appears in many traditions. The majority of the fragments in the Analects of Confucius begin with the phrase “Master says.” In the Gospel of Thomas the phrase is “Jesus says.” Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts often begin “Thus have I heard.” Many Hadiths (like those of Sahih Bukhari) in the tradition of Islam open with “Allah’s apostle said” or similar attributions. Someone important said important things, and the students needed to remember and make sense of them.
Hadith al-Bukhari manuscript (CC)
Inheriting aphorisms is a burdensome gift for those who must interpret. A good aphorism may take a moment to make, yet centuries to decipher. As Hui put it, “the pithier the teacher, the more voluminous the tradition.” After aphorisms comes commentary. In the words of a 1st Century Confucian scholar, “an explanation of five characters” could take tens of thousands of words. To master even one classic would leave a student gray haired.
We begin to see the dynamic role that aphorisms play in the history of intellectual traditions. Small as they are, aphorisms for Hui are atomic. The most compact of philosophical forms, when interpreted, explodes. In the wake of five characters, come tens of thousands. Aphorisms are often a “before and after” moment for traditions.
Enigmatic Aphorisms: Presocratics and Plato
As Hui shows, you can hardly tell the history of philosophy without the aphorism. In any introductory philosophy course, you’re likely to read the Greeks. Regarded as the fathers of philosophy, the aphorism played a powerful role in their time, setting in motion the philosophy we read and discuss in ours. Before even Socrates and Plato were the ‘Presocratics’ pioneering philosophers known for their aphorisms. Presocratics like Anaximander, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Heraclitus left behind enigmatic “fragments” which are studied even today. You may even recognize some attributed to Heraclitus like this: “You can’t step into the same river twice.”
Plato however, was no great lover of these philosophers and their opaque style. In one of his dialogues, Theaetetus, a character complains of them, saying:
“If you ask any of them a question, he will pull out some little enigmatic phrase from his quiver and shoot it off at you; and if you try to make him give an account of what he has said, you will only get hit by another, full of strange turns of language.”
Plato and Socrates are credited as the fathers of ‘argument’ who championed sustained logical engagement with ideas. The dialogues of Plato are defined by attention to detail, definitions, premises, inferences, and conclusions. Through the tool of a ‘dialogue’, arguments develop as characters question one another. Thus, to Plato, the enigmatic Presocratics must have seemed like anti-philosophers. An aphorism is not an argument. So why did they write that way?
Aphorisms followed one era of Greek thought and preceded another. Before the Presocratics, the age of orally recited epics, performed often for hours, dominated the cultural and intellectual landscape. The Homeric epics were populated with characters, gods and mortals, engaged in long conflicts and dramas, elaborated through complex narratives structured according to formulas that poets would memorize, dedicating years of training to the skill. At the level of scale, epics and aphorisms are opposites. Where a poet takes hours to recite, Presocratic aphorisms come and go in a comparative flash.
Ceiling of the Room of the giants in Palazzo Te, Mantua (CC)
As Andrew Hui argues, the Presocratics like Heraclitus worked “after and against the poetic surplus of Homer.” In response to an era defined by massive narratives, the Presocratics revolted. Where the epic was long, their aphorisms were short. Where the epic explained, their aphorisms were silent. The Presocratics didn’t invent the aphorism, but their use of them defined a philosophical period. Plato’s response defined the next.
Aphorisms Before, Against, and After Systems
In this reading of Hui’s, the aphorism is one main character in the history of philosophy. It’s no wonder they are prominent in many traditions. Being short, aphorisms are easy to read and share. Being enigmatic, they lend themselves to interpretation.
Hui’s thesis is that aphorisms typically arise before, against, and after systematic philosophies, another main character. Systematic philosophies are quite like they sound. Aspiring to answer as many, if not all, philosophical questions using one vocabulary and framework, systematic philosophies are characterized by volumes of text, argument, and explanation. Aphoristic thinkers tend to found, oppose, and or follow systematic philosophies. The sharp contrast of the aphoristic style can highlight the excess of another or even flippantly challenge it. Aphorisms relate to the listener or reader differently as well, demanding work from the recipient, rather than offering its own explanation.
For millennia aphorisms have emerged and reemerged as characters in the story of philosophy. In antiquity there were figures like Solomon, Confucius, the Presocratics, and the writers of the Vedas. Centuries later came Jesus of Nazareth, later the Prophet Muhammad. These figures all founded systems. In the Renaissance, thinkers like Erasmus of Rotterdam and Blaise Pascal breathed new life into the aphoristic style. Nietzsche, the 19th century German iconoclastic philosopher, represents well the figure whose aphorisms come as a reaction to the pretensions of systematic philosophies.
Aphorisms Today
Historically, aphorisms prompted extensive debate and transformed philosophies and religions. In his time, Nietzsche said aphorisms were “not taken seriously enough”. Are they taken seriously today? At one level, we could argue so. Aphorisms thrive in some domains. Religions remain busy with their proverbs, beatitudes, sutras, and hadiths. Philosophers haven’t stopped interpreting Presocratic fragments. Books are yet published on Nietzsche. As a subject of study, they live on. Social media sites like Twitter are full of accounts posting the aphorisms of past philosophers. As Hui points out, Twitter itself mirrors his theory since, “tweets come before, after, and against long-form publications” just as aphorisms do in relation to systematic philosophy.
So, we have contemporary scholars of aphorisms, we have content that resembles it, but do we have contemporary aphorists? Are there new masters, whose wisdom is compact, yet also explosive? This article doesn’t have an answer. Though it hopes to begin to ask about aphorisms, their interpretation, and the story of philosophy today.