A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter

by Andrew Hui

***🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year ***

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“He’s a professor of humanities, not a card-carrying philosopher, which probably liberated him to write about something which is very prominent in the history of philosophy but gets largely neglected in philosophical teaching, which is the aphorism.” Read more...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2019

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher

The book, according to the author

“The question that animated my book was: What’s the relationship between philosophical thinking and the aphoristic form? We usually think of philosophy as discursive argumentation: it’s logical; it proceeds by step-by-step demonstrations. What I’m interested in is fragmentary thinking and non-discursive arguments. ‘Atomic’ thinking, as it were.”

Read our full interview with Andrew Hui on aphorisms.