Andrew is a philosophy major who went to this school, that school, and another. I think he also teaches. Recently, he wrote a book about aphorisms. Those short little sayings that get passed along through generations like pieces of advice. But what’s special about this form of literature is that their meanings are open to interpretation.
Then there’s a second part. A lady walked into a bookstore and felt angry. There was simply too much to know. How could anyone digest all of these books? Does acquiring knowledge really have to be this hard? That’s why another purpose of the aphorism is to act like a summary for passing along wisdom.
Nietzsche
Let’s use Friedrich Nietzsche as an example. He said, “If a temple is to be erected, a temple must be destroyed.” This saying is often attributed to his view on communism. The first rule of commie is to crush all religion, pursuing loyalty to the state and this ideology instead. Those reds have no time for faith.
Anyway, there are many interpretations for this quote. What if you recently joined a gym trying to create a new self? Couldn’t this mean “in order to become healthy me, unhealthy me must die?” I think so. And it could be applied to other instances to mean all sorts of things. That’s the idea behind an aphorism. Someone crunches down a topic into a sound bite so that you, the reader, can learn. And it’s great. So now that you get the idea, let’s end with the first one ever said.
Know thyself
As you know, Western culture started with the Greeks. And the Greeks built an oracle at Delphi to speak directly with the gods. Guess what was the first thing they heard? “Know thyself.” And again, this could be interpreted a number of ways.
The official explanation is to know the part of you that is human and the part of you which is divine. So the oracle said there’s a little piece of God built right inside us. Kind of cool when you think about it. So cool that during the formation of the Catholic Church this nugget was placed at the centre of Christianity.
There you go, you just learned two new things: what’s an aphorism and “know thyself.” Remember them deeply because you don’t want to be messing with no oracle.