ABSTRACT
The word Aphorisme comes from the Greek ἀφορισμός, where it means “definition, distinction,” from ἀφορίζειν, “to mark-off, to limit.” An aphorism is a peculiar thought expressed in concise form, or a splinter of thought.1 Aphorisms were extensively used by philosophers and writers who were contemporaries of Kierkegaard, for example, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and Stendhal. A basic distinction is to be made between Kierkegaard’s use of aphorisms as a genre of literary-philosophical text, and his use of the terms “aphorism” and “aphoristic.” Regarding the latter, one has to distinguish between a designation of a particular text genre and a designation of a particular mode of existence. Thus, in Kierkegaard, the term has two different points of reference: one literary and one existential.
