Six Aphorisms Of The Transparent Ironist

(A) The unexamined life is not worth living. The overexamined life is not worth dying for.

(B) To err is human. But to err on the side of those who have palpably suffered is more human.*

(C) Do not claim that you have exhaustively understood a human being. A human being is not a rock. For the same reason, do not claim that you have exhaustively understood a rock. A rock is not a human being.

(D) Sometimes you can help others only by helping yourself. But you are already implicated in a social order; only within its horizon do you begin to recognise yourself as an 'I'. Therefore, helping yourself and helping others are two 'moments' of the same activity.

(E) If you think, in a fit of teenage insanity, that you can wipe the slate clean and start right from the beginning, remember that in order to do so you must nevertheless speak, read, or write some language. And the beginnings of this language were made even before you were born.

(F) The most conservative person is she who keeps on changing all the time. The rebel is the person who forgets to change from the morning after the revolution.

(*The Roman Catholic Franciscan Order calls this 'the preferential option for the poor'.)