hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue
- La Rochefoucauld (a Frenchman)
I was reading an introduction to The Prince and this line made me pause for thought. Honestly it took me quite a while to comprehend. guess my brain's really mush now after the exams (maybe it's mush to begin with hah). my guess is this: vice's relation with virtue is close, since virtue is the mean and vice the extremes along the spectrum. then, hypocrisy is the alongsides? vice masquerading as virtue = hypocrisy?
or the easier way to see it may be this: since being a hypocrite is saying something but not practising it, i.e. paying lip service, then "yeah yeah, i agree, it's all about being virtuous.... not(under your breath)"
according to the writer Christian Gauss, the above means "hypocrisy works because the majority of men are not hypocrites and therefore not suspicious". somehow i don't think that's what it means, literally; granted, Mr Gauss's interpretation is more like an explanation of the utility of the maxim. And this put another freaky thought in my mind. if the world is populated entirely of hypocrites, then in the long-run, how 'efficient' or 'useful' is it to be a hypocrite knowing everyone might or might not be telling the truth? hypocrisy breeds cynicism then, doesn't it? <-- Quote me! :)
so. what does it mean exactly?
* sidenote: i was reading "hypocrisy" from wikipedia and my idiotic brother came up to me and said why someone called you a hypocrite and you didn't know what it meant and you had to look it up on wiki? then he continued to babble about the straw man argument and the smoking example in wiki, to which i replied wait a minute, how come you know everything so well on wiki on hypocrisy, did someone call you a hypocrite before and you didn't know the meaning and had to check it up on wiki?
to which we both guffawed right in the middle of the living room and woke the house up at bout 1 am. LOL.
well, here's the picture i took! but somehow the quality is bad :( though the scene and everything else is great!
Labels: books, brother, photography, thoughts