Column Chronicles: Philosophical challenges to clichés

Philosophical challenges to clichés

Frank Cotolo
March 16, 2017

People use clichés to make points, as well as to add a French word to their vocabulary. However, a good philosopher will always challenge clichés because, by their very definition, they are used too often to make the points people desire. Of course we all know that no one is supposed to take a cliché literally but even the very meaning of most clichés can be questioned.

As an example, here are some philosophical challenges to clichés. If we have done our philosophical best, you won’t ever want to use these clichés again.

"A fool and his money are quickly parted."

Many a fool has spent money in what has been judged foolishly, only to be rewarded with huge success. An example is J. Warton Smashly, an Englishman who wagered a young playwright 100 pounds that he could not write a sequel to "Hamlet." The playwright gave Smashly odds of 10-1. The playwright was William Shakespeare and he had to pay off because he could not come up with an idea.

"All that glitters is not gold."

If you take the definition of "gold" and use it as a metaphor for value, then you can say anything of great value is gold. People like to use a variable of the term for when they find themselves in a great spot, saying, "I'm golden." If you look at their smiles when they say that, you will see smiles that glitter like gold.

"Every cloud has a silver lining."

Talk to any meteorologist and he or she will tell you that clouds so not have linings of any color. As well, if you are trying to say that every bad situation has something good about it but that good cannot be seen through the sorrow of the situation, then you are also full of baked cheese. (I used that term specifically because it is not a cliché using baked cheese and also because a person can be full of baked cheese if that person has eaten so much baked cheese than he or she cannot consume any other food.)

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

This is so obviously untrue because you can find a penny and save it and though it would be your penny and you could add it to other financial savings, it is not earned if you do not work for it. The cliché insinuates that you are not going to spend a penny - it purposely uses the smallest type of legal tender to make the point - that you worked to obtain but that is a huge assumption. Recent studies about the different types of legal tender found and not earned also disprove this cliché, since the penny is not among the top types of legal tender people find because other people have lost it. The twenty dollar bill, actually, is the most common denomination of legal tender found in any one year between the years of 1925 to the present.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.