Philosophy in Progress

Share this post

Cacoethes Scribendi

williamfvallicella.substack.com

Discover more from Philosophy in Progress

Philosophy both narrowly and broadly construed
Over 1,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Cacoethes Scribendi

Compulsion to write

William F. Vallicella
Aug 25, 2022
Share

A weird mix of Greek and Latin, cacoethes scribendi  means compulsion to write. ‘Cacoethes’ is a Latinization of the Greek kakoethes, which combines kakos (‘bad’) with ethos (‘habit’). It can mean ‘urge,’ ‘itch,’ ‘compulsion,’ ‘mania.’ Similar constructions: cacoethes loquendi, compulsive talking, and cacoethes carpendi, a mania for fault-finding. You can see ‘carp’ lurking within the infinitive, carpere, to pluck (Cf. Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, Harper & Row, 1985, pp. 71-72.) To this list I add cacoethes blogendi, compulsion to blog, a compulsion with which I have been for a long time afflicted.



Aficionados of Jack Kerouac’s not-so-spontaneous spontaneous prose will recall how he got his revenge on poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth in his Dharma Bums: he bestowed upon him the name, Reinhold Cacoethes. Sweet gone Jack was a wonderful coiner of names. I’ll have to return to this topic in October, Kerouac month in my personal liturgy.



As for my own cacoethes scribendi et blogendi: once a scribbler, always a scribbler. My fifth grade teacher had us begin each day by writing a 200 word composition. At the end of the year, she announced in class that my compositions were the best she had ever seen in her teaching career. I decided right then and there to become a free-lance writer, which in a sense is what I have become. 

Moral: be careful what you wish for. Wishes and dreams are seeds. They just might fall on fertile ground. 

Share
Top
New

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 William F. Vallicella
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing