There's a belief that philosophy, when properly done, should sound dense,
forbidding, a little confusing, as if it might have been awkwardly translated from the German.
But at the dawn of the Modern age, lived a French philosopher
who trusted in a very different way of presenting his thoughts; a man who wrote a very slim book,
barely sixty pages long, that can deservedly be counted as one of the true masterpieces of philosophy. The book is a compendium of
acerbic, melancholy observations about the human condition; each of them only a sentence or two long which nevertheless present an
exceptional number of timely, wise, and oddly consoling lessons for our morally confused and wildly distracted age.
The Duke de La Rochefoucauld was born in Paris in 1613. And despite his many initial advantages: wealth,
connections, good looks, and a very beautiful and ancient name, he had a thoroughly difficult and often miserable life.
He fell in love with a couple of duchesses who didn't treat him well.
He ended up in prison after some bungled but honourable political maneuvering. He was forced into exile from his beloved Paris on four occasions.
He never advanced as far as he wanted at court.
He got shot in the eye during a rebellion and almost went blind.
He lost most of his money, and some enemies published what they falsely purported to be his memoirs
full of insults against people whom he liked and depended upon: who then turned against him and refused to believe in his innocence.
After all this betrayal, imprisonment, impoverishment, injury,
plagiarism, and libel,
La Rochefoucauld can readily be forgiven when he declared that he'd had enough of the act of life and would henceforth retreat to quieter,
contemplative pursuits instead.
So he hung up his sword and spent his time in the living rooms of two leading intellectual figures of his day: the
Marquise de Sable and the Comtesse de
Lafayette
who regularly invited writers and artists to sit with them in their Parisian salons in order to discuss the great themes of existence
often over lemonade and light snacks.
The salons rewarded wit and spark. They weren't lecture halls or seminar rooms. There was no tolerance for lead nurse or pomposity here.
So winning over listeners required particular skills that came to shape La Rochefoucauld's mind and work.
It was in the salons that La Rochefoucauld developed the literary genre for which he has become known: that of the maxim or
aphorism, a pithy statement that deftly captures a dark insight into the human soul,
reminding us of a wise and often uncomfortable truth.
In good hands, an aphorism should deliver its punch in less than three seconds. One might be competing with the arrival of an asparagus tart.
In the salons, La Rochefoucauld perfected and honed the 504 aphorisms, which made his name.
He watched how his fellow guests reacted and tweaked his work accordingly. His aphorisms covered all manner of psychological topics;
though issues of envy, vanity, love, and ambition were recurring themes. A typical La Rochefoucauld
aphorism begins by addressing the reader with a we or one,
inviting consent with gentle coercion.
The aphorism then subverts an accepted piety about human nature in a cynical or skeptical direction.
It's in the last third of the sentence that the sting is generally delivered, and it often makes us laugh as can happen when we're
forced to acknowledge the falsity of a previously sentimental or hypocritical position.
Perhaps the most classic and perfect of all La Rochefoucauld's aphorism is, "We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others."
It's closely followed by the equally effective,
"There are some people who would never have fallen in love, if they hadn't heard there was such a thing." And the no less accomplished,
"He that refuses praise the first time it's offered does it because he would like to hear it a second."
Voltaire said that [italics] La Rochefoucauld's maxims was the book that had most powerfully shaped the character of the French people;
giving them their taste for psychological reflection, precision, and cynicism. Behind almost every one of the maxims lies a challenge to an ordinary,
flattering view of ourselves.
La Rochefoucauld relishes revelations of the debt that kindness owes to egoism and insists that we're never far from being vain, arrogant,
selfish, and petty and in fact never nearer than when we trust in our own goodness.
Having suffered unduly in its name, La Rochefoucauld was particularly suspicious of romantic love.
"The reasons lovers never tire of one another's company is because they never talk of anything
but themselves." "If one were to judge of love according the greatest part of the effects it produces,
it might very justly pass for hatred rather than kindness."
"To say that one never flirts is in itself a form of flirtation."
La Rochefoucauld wrote as he did because he wanted his ideas to persuade people
whom he knew had little time and wouldn't necessarily be on his side.
If most philosophers since have, with the odd exception, felt no need to write with his elegance, wit, and concision,
it's because they've trusted, wrongly, that so long as one's ideas are important, the style in which one delivers them is of no issue.
La Rochefoucauld knew otherwise. Most of us are so distracted if someone wants to get a point across to us,
they must use all the devices of art and writing to seize our attention, and burn them into our memories. The
history of Philosophy would have been so different if its practitioners had all imagined themselves to be writing for an impatient,
non-professional audience with meandering minds in the midst of a chatty Parisian salon. But history offers us a new chance.
The 140 characters of our own digital salons now offer us a second chance to try to put La Rochefoucauld genius into action.