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sententiae antiquae Profile picture
@sentantiq
Jul 10, 2021 • 24 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X
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#MemePolice

A reminder thread of things #Aristotle did NOT say

1. “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it”

nope.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
2. “A Whole is greater than the sum of its parts”

This really popular misattribution may be a poor translation of the Metaphysics
3. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” [and many variations thereof]

This one has absolutely no basis. Aristotle says many things about education, this just ain’t one of them.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
4. “We are What we repeatedly do. Excellence is an act, not a habit.”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
5. “Knowing Yourself is the Beginning of all Wisdom”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
6. “Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”

This is almost Aristotle. It is mostly Francis Bacon

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
7. “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.”

This is totally super-capitalist, corporate double-speak nonsense

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
8. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

This one is likely a mistranslation or an attribution of a lost saying by Seneca in On Tranquility of mind.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
“Well-begun is half done”

This is not really Aristotle. The idea is proverbial even when it is kind of quoted by Aristotle. But these words belong to someone else.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
10. “The more you know the more you know you don’t know”

This is clearly a retread of Plato’s Apology 21d:

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
11. “To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
12. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”

This is another indirect attribution that probably comes from Seneca De Tranquilitate Animi 10

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
13. "Memory is the scribe of the soul”
Ugh. “scribe”? Soul? This one sounds like it a misunderstanding or a fabrication made to sound old-fashioned.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
14. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
15. “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society”

The character of this quotation is alien to Aristotle and ancient Greek ideas including using “tolerance” in this way and “dying society”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
16. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
“The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

This shows up in Tyron Edwards’ A Dictionary of Thoughts in 1909, Century Illustrated Magazine, also from 1909. And then it just keeps on keeping on.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
19. “To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
20. “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self“

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
21. “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal”

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
22. “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim of human existence.”

I mean, this is kind of the whole aim and purpose of the Nicomachean Ethics, but this is not a quotation of a translation of it.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
“Those that know do, those that understand, teach.”

This variation on the put down “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” does not seem to appear before the last decade or so.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.“

So, this sounds nice, but would you really want to go against 50 people with one ally? This is motivational poster fake.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…
25. “Character is made by many acts: it may be lost by a single one“

This is a misattribution made only rather recently online from a Methodist Minister’s writings in the 1800s. It is a very Christian and rather un-Aristotelian notion.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/23/mem…

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More from @sentantiq

sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Apr 25, 2023
Ok, one more thread on Achilles and Odysseus and how we should read Homer then I promise I will chill

The reason I am profoundly unchill about this is the confusion of rich epic narrative for simple paradigmatic propaganda
Homeric poetry is like a philosophical dialogue, a tragedy, or a piece of visual art: it invites audiences to explore its narrative through their experiences, and to compare their experiences to epic
No one reads, hears, or experiences the epic at any given time and no one comes away with the same conclusions—we bring our experiences and expectations closer together through conversation
Read 21 tweets
sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Apr 24, 2023
A little more: Odysseus is not a "hero" or anti-hero. Those terms are anachronistic

He is a "man" (andra) at the beginning of the epic, apoem thematically part of exploring the END of the race of heroes

Audiences are supposed to think about how he fucked up his life
At the beginning of the poem, the narrator says he tried super hard to rescue his men, but failed, "because they died thanks to their own recklessnesss" (gr. σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν)
25 lines later, Zeus complains

“Mortals! They are always blaming the gods and saying that evil comes from us when they themselves suffer pain beyond their lot because of their own recklessness.”
Read 6 tweets
sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Feb 16, 2023
So, here we go
I wrote up a little bit about the Duals. Its a draft part of a chapter in a book about how Homeric language functions like a biological organism

sententiaeantiquae.com/2023/02/16/epi…
To summarize the problem, in a passage in book 9 of the Iliad dual forms--nominal and verbal forms meant for two people--are used for more than two people in overlap with plural forms.
Read 19 tweets
sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Jun 24, 2022
It is easy to dunk on absurd theories that make Achilles a culture warrior representing some kind of prelapsarian ubermensch. Let me tell you why that’s dangerous.
1.Jocular, attacking dismissals let those desperate hatemongers feel persecuted and feeds their sense of righteous outsider position
2.It implies in a damaging way that there is a correct and singular interpretation of an ancient poem (or really any work of art)
Read 15 tweets
sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Aug 29, 2021
Joining @FlintDibble and @rogueclassicist and others in a call for @AntigoneJournal to drop their problematic platforming of eugenicist.

Antigone can do great work and the journal is doing a disservice to its other authors by standing behind a bad decision
All of us who move into this new, fast digital space make mistakes trying to respond and adapt. I have have RT'd some bad stuff, said stupid things, and thought better of earlier stances.
A good journal should have a public editorial board and a clear statement on where their funding comes from.

They should also consider their constituents.
Read 6 tweets
sententiae antiquae Profile picture
Aug 29, 2021
#AcademicTwitter #ClassicsTwitter

Let's normalize sharing our work when people ask for it and asking scholars for their work.

Friends, if there's an article out there you want to read and you don't have access, just reach out!
1. Academic publishing is a cartel. Sometimes it is benevolent and helpful, but mostly it gatekeeps

2. Most academics are FLOORED when people ask because that means that 11 people will now have read articles we spent years on
3. Many of us can't post all our work publicly without getting in trouble, but we can share if someone sends an email

4. Not all academics are free to publish open access: some departments and institutions still expect certain journals for tenure and promotion
Read 4 tweets

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