“The Death of Socrates by Means of the APA,” by Q (APP, 2013a), after “The Death of Socrates,” by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
In “Philosophia Longa, Vita Brevis,” Robert Hanna correspondingly argues that philosophia longa, vita brevis. That neologized Latin aphorism means: “philosophy is long, life is short.” Of course, Hanna riffing on the classical aphorism ars longa, vita brevis, which means “art is long, life is short.” We shouldn’t assume, however, that in this classical aphorism, the Latin word “ars” means fine art; instead, more broadly and more inclusively, its intended meaning is applied art, craft, or practical art. ars longa, vita brevis, then, what it means is that any authentic applied art, craft, or practical art—like medicine, for example—is a calling, a discipline, and a perennial project that cannot and should not be forced, against its proper nature, into any procrustean compliance with and subjection to what A.N. Whitehead so aptly called “the goading urgencies of contingent happenings” (Whitehead, 1925/1967: p. 25). Hanna argues that not only does ars longa, vita brevis, so interpreted, have a salient measure of truth in it, but also that, metaphilosophically speaking, philosophia longa, vita brevis is even truer and indeed highly importantly true, provided that by the Latin term “philosophia” we mean real philosophy. And that’s because there are four significantly different, but equally important, metaphilosophical senses in which it’s true that real philosophy is long, but life is short.
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