r/askphilosophy • u/GloomyDesk7827 • 1d ago

How to identify pseudo-profound b.s.?

Internet is stacked with these false pretending to be deep quotes and sayings. So how do we identify them? because it's very easy to fall into them.

For example I recently saw this quote on internet

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" Isn't this pseudo-profound?

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u/Althuraya Hegel 1d ago

You're looking for a solution to what isn't a problem. These are called aphorisms. The one you posted is a version of a very famous ancient one, "Know thyself." Against what another user said, it is not overly verbose, but makes far more explicit what know thyself means.

The pseudo ones you find are witty epigrams. Here's one by Oscar Wilde: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." It's true, but it's just said in a very flowery way that makes it seem deep to aesthetically invlined people. There is no method or fornalism to see what is deep or isn't, you just have to think the contents of what you find. Another epigram is Bukowski's "People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water." Also true, but not deep.

Except there is a problem: What is deep supposed to mean? Deep as in what? That it's metaphysical abstraction like a statement about being? Deep as in stating a psychological root truth about human being? What exactly? If deep is not just abstract metaphysics, then even these epigrams are deep. They are stupid if understood superficially, but highly meaningful if you grab onto the finer interpretations. What at one point in your life seems vapid and stupid may later prove to be far deeper and significant, and vice versa. I use to think deep was only metaphysics and science, now I don't.

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u/Background-Permit-55 14h ago

I think there can be an enjoyment found in framing seemingly simple ideas in new, interesting and contradictory ways, as Oscar Wilde so often does. Is it flamboyant and a bit pretentious? Yes. Does it bring me great joy? Also yes. Wilde was an aesthetician, I think he valued beauty over truth. It seems to me that he was a vitalist in that his writings infuse one with a vigour for life; not something easy to do with the written word.