Not to say that most folk on Twitter have anywhere near the wit of La Rochefoucauld, but there is something to be said for the idea of the Twitter serving the same role as the cogent epigrams of the Paris salons, something La Rochefoucauld would hae appreciated, made use of, and, no doubt, commented mordantly about.
Originally shared by +George Wiman:
WHY I LOVE TWITTER
"Most of us are so distracted, if someone wants to get a point across to us, they must use all the devices of art to seize our attention and cauterise our boredom for the necessary span. The history of philosophy would have been very 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. The 140 characters of our own digital salons now offer us a second chance to try to put La Rochefoucauld’s inspiring principles to work."http://www.thebookoflife.org/the-great-philosophers-la-rochefoucauld/
La Rochefoucauld
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
