Roger Scruton thinks the art of the aphorism in in decline among American English speakers.
[W]hen they do talk, it is in an outpouring, in the belief that one person's language is as good as any other's. Bon mots, aphorisms, insightful quotations, nuggets of wisdom, or even ordinary apt remarks form only a tiny part of their conversation.
That's too bad, he thinks, because aphorisms are like stock cubes, they "are dry, salty, compact; and they are intended, when dissolved in thought, to be nourishing." Not having that ability is a deficiency. So far, this is just a point about rhetoric — we lack a special linguistic skill, apparently. But, he notes, there are true and false aphorisms. The true ones are from Henry James, Groucho Marx, and La Rochefoucauld. The false ones are from Marx, Christopher Hitchens, and Oscar Wilde. (Wilde gets lumped with the false aphorizers, because he came down against fox-hunting.) The trouble is that the catchiness of an aphorism is not what determines whether it is a true one or not, regardless of how one comes down on Scruton's division of them here. The crucial thing is to direct them at truth, right?
How are we to recapture the forgotten ways of wit, and the use of aphorisms in the cause of truth? It seems to me that this is something that we ought to be teaching in our universities. A degree in the humanities should have something of the ancient study of rhetoric. It should be equipping students to persuade, to use language gracefully and succinctly, and to speak and write with style. Persuasion comes not through statistics and theories, but through the artful aphorism that summarizes, in the heart of the listeners, the things that they suspect but don't yet know.
But wait — it's in all those statistics and theories and stuff that the truth or falsity of something is found. It's in the evidence, the argument. Aphorisms are good ways to capture that stuff, but without the argument, the aphorism is just garbage. And Scruton wants more rhetoric, not less? What's necessary is more logic, more training in statistics, an education in history. Not more rhetoric.
And how many people remember a brilliant bit of statistics, or are driven by an education in history? Perhaps it would be wise of we trained children early in life in the principles of logic, but also supplied the skills necessary to develop rhetorical brilliance so that what was learned could provide good conversation.
Scott, I agree. Scruton's argument suffers from truthiness. I also refute it thusly: twitter.
@John: Agreed. Scruton's case that there's no nice turning of phrase these days doesn't seem well-supported. That there are lots of people out there who make their cases awkwardly isn't much of a case, as all of his evidence for the glory days are from the high lit of the past. He should read David Foster Wallace.
@Barry: You're pressing something Scruton does, too, which is this line that we respond not just to truth, reason, and so on, but to power and other temptations. That's rhetoric's role, but if Scruton's really worried about true and false rhetoric, and not boring and not-boring conversation, then all that logic stuff needs to be first and last.
You know who loved rhetoric? The Sophists.
"Persuasion comes not through statistics and theories, but through the artful aphorism that summarizes, in the heart of the listeners, the things that they suspect but don't yet know." Something worth to teach before a kid graduates from high school
"Persuasion comes not through statistics and theories, but through the artful aphorism that summarizes, in the heart of the listeners, the things that they suspect but don't yet know." Something worth teaching before a kid graduates from high school
But if the difference between true and false rhetoric is worth attending to, it should be logic, statistics and argument that are of considerably more worth, yes? Otherwise, it's just persuasion.
aikin~Yes, I see your point; it is just persuasion.