[lit-ideas] Re: Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 21:55:00 -0400 (EDT)


In a message dated 6/25/2013 5:25:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx makes an important point:
 
"who is it who thinks they are the same and/or different?"
 
This relates to the word, 'remember', in the dictum.
 
As Grice said, "I remembered my name" is not something I would naturally  
say, for "it implicates that I have forgotten".
 
The idea that philosophical maxims have to be formulated as imperatives is  
Kantian in nature, and he possibly got it from Moses's Tables.
 
----
 
Note that there is a temporal qualification, too, which may come as otiose: 
 "Always remember", as opposed to "sometimes remember" -- or "remember  
sometimes", or "remember from time to time".
 
The implicature, indeed, of the dictum, is that 
 
 
SOMEONE (or other) has claimed that "you" are NOT unique. To that demeaning 
 (or allegedly demeaning) claim, the negation is dropped: "You ARE unique". 
 
Mutatis mutandis, the affirmative, "you are like everyone else" is meant to 
 IMPLICATE that someone (or other) did claim the contrary, "You are NOT 
like  everyone else".
 
If that's not paradoxical, I don't know what is.
 
Note that as Eric Yost implicates, the dictum, in the first person singular 
 (the favourite person of egoist Wittgenstein) becomes rather dull:
 
"I should always remember that I'm unique, just like everyone else".
 
Or not.
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
 
 
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[lit-ideas] Re: Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else

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