{"id":9503,"date":"2012-07-31T13:15:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T13:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/31\/susan-sontag-on-the-art-of-the-aphorism-2\/"},"modified":"2012-07-31T13:15:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T13:15:48","slug":"susan-sontag-on-the-art-of-the-aphorism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/31\/susan-sontag-on-the-art-of-the-aphorism-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

At any given time I am  reading twenty or so books.  One of them at the moment is Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980<\/em>, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2012.  In the midst of a lot of stuff, there are some gems.  Here is one:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Aphorism is aristocratic thinking: this is all the aristocrat is willing to tell you; he thinks you should get it fast, without spelling out all the details.  Aphoristic thinking constructs thinking as an obstacle race: the reader is expected to get it fast and move on.  An aphorism is not an argument; it is too well-bred for that. (512)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The last line is the best.  There is something plebeian about argument.  The thought is pure Nietzsche.  See "The Problem of Socrates" in Twilight of the Idols <\/em>(tr. Kaufmann)<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Section 4: Socrates' decadence is suggested not only by the admitted wantonness and anarchy of his instincts, but also by the hypertrophy of the logical faculty . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

Section 5: With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dalectics. [. . .]  What must first be proved is worth little.  Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon . . . . Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously<\/em> . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Whether or not argument is plebeian, it has no place in an aphorism.  As I put it<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

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An aphorism that states its reasons is no aphorism at all. But the reasons are there, though submerged, like the iceberg whose tip alone is visible. An aphorism, then, is the tip of an iceberg of thought.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Aphorisms and poems have this in common: neither can justify what they say while remaining what they are.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Sontag-Nietzsche view seems to be that one needn't have reasons for what one aphoristically asserts;  mine is that one should have them but not state them, leastways, not in the aphorisms themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum, 4:30 PM<\/strong>:  That indefatigable argonaut of cyberspace, the ever-helpful Dave Lull, librarian non pareil<\/em>, friend of bloggers and the just recipient of their heart-felt encomia, sent me a link to a post by James Geary entitled  Susan Sontag on Aphorisms<\/a>.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Geary rightly demolishes the silly conceit of another blogger who, commenting on Sontag, characterizes aphorisms as "the ultimate soundbitification of thinking."  That is truly awful and deserves to be buried in the deepest and most mephitic nether regions of the blogosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Geary says something that contradicts my claim above that argument has no place in an aphorism:<\/span><\/p>\n

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And aphorisms are<\/em> arguments. That\u2019s why they are so often written in declarative or imperative form. An aphorism is only one side of the argument, though.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It appears that Geary is confusing a statement with an argument.  Consider Nietzsche's "Some men are born posthumously."  This is a declarative sentence but certainly no argument.  An argument requires at least one premise and a conclusion.  To argue is to support a claim with reasons.   Nothing like this is going on in the one-sentence aphorism just quoted.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At any given time I am  reading twenty or so books.  One of them at the moment is Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2012.  In the midst of a lot of stuff, there are some gems.  Here is one: Aphorism is aristocratic thinking: this is … Continue reading “Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aphorisms-by-others","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}