I am fairly new to Latin so forgive me if this is a silly question. I have always loved the phrase know thyself and have begun a path to sustained and constant self improvement, this has led me to make thyself. Also I am a growing member of the MAKE community so a slight play on words here. I would like to have “know thyself, make thyself” as a sort of mantra but I do not want to learn it incorrectly. I have Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te but I feel like either it should be nosce te, fabricare te or Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te ipsum. I have looked through quite a few posts here and want to make sure I have not made a glaring mistake. Any help would be much appreciated.
Know thyself, Make thyself
- Thread starter Heron
- Start date
What's that?
"Make thyself" doesn't mean a lot on its own in English, and in Latin (done literally) it would have been the same. If you want a single Latin word you're going to have to settle for something whose meaning is either vague or different from what you've asked for. If you'll settle for a paraphrase your options are better.
It sounds purposefully vague to me.
So this is the proverbial ſelfmade man who worſhips his creator?
Yes, pretty clear but vague.
Oxymorons can be valid statements nonetheless.
My point really is that whereas the phrase "Know thyself" is ubiquitous and universally understood as a philosophical axiom, "Make thyself" has no cultural heritage whatsoever. Compare occurrences of "Know thyself" and "Make thyself/Make yourself" on Google Books to see what I mean.
The upshot is that the meaning of "make thyself" is far more open to individual interpretation than "know thyself", and, as a consequence, although syntactically straightforward it is semantically vague.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/10/04/chris-anderson-how-the-makers-will-create-a-new-industrial-revolution/
Anyone who is curious the maker culture is a collection of tinkerers, inventors, and artists who will possibly be a major driving force of progress in the coming years. Already the widespread adoption and distribution of 3D printing alone is making some industries wonder about there own long term viability because of the convenience. There are “Maker spaces” popping up allover the USand are inadvertently turning into business incubators. More and more small companies are coming from these environments and are challenging traditional businesses as an aggregate rather than one or two bigger businesses. More importantly “Makers” invent and create out of the love of creating solutions to there own as well as others problems. It has gone from a small community to a movement that has Makers fairs in quite a few major cities. So when I asked “make thyself” I mean create a new better version of ones self and always march towards progress. Any progress, be it learning a new language, teaching yourself everything to do with electronics, or boating. Anything that “makes” you a better person. So is my initial grammatical interpretation close. I have Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te but I feel like either it should be nosce te, fabricare te or Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te ipsum.
Anyone who is curious the maker culture is a collection of tinkerers, inventors, and artists who will possibly be a major driving force of progress in the coming years. Already the widespread adoption and distribution of 3D printing alone is making some industries wonder about there own long term viability because of the convenience. There are “Maker spaces” popping up allover the USand are inadvertently turning into business incubators. More and more small companies are coming from these environments and are challenging traditional businesses as an aggregate rather than one or two bigger businesses. More importantly “Makers” invent and create out of the love of creating solutions to there own as well as others problems. It has gone from a small community to a movement that has Makers fairs in quite a few major cities. So when I asked “make thyself” I mean create a new better version of ones self and always march towards progress. Any progress, be it learning a new language, teaching yourself everything to do with electronics, or boating. Anything that “makes” you a better person. So is my initial grammatical interpretation close. I have Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te but I feel like either it should be nosce te, fabricare te or Nosce te ipsum, fabricare te ipsum.
Yes, I feel like it's better if it's "symetric", so either te or te ipsum on both sides. Both are correct; the difference is that ipsum puts more emphasis on the "self" part as an object of the verb if you will. Fabricare means "construct", "build" or "form", "fashion". A very basic "make" would be fac.
Thank you for your quick response I really appreciate it. So im clear if I where to write Fabricare te the would te imply self and if I write Fabricare te ipsum would it denote construction of self literally or would it allow for construction other than of the physical body and more of self character/skills/knowledge.
Both te and te ipsum will translate to "thyself" here. The difference is one of emphasis that can't be actually translated into English. "Thyself" is more emphasised with ipsum, there's more insistence on the fact that you're doing it to yourself. For example, in English you can say "I saw the king" and "I saw the king himself"; in the latter there's more emphasis on the fact that you say the king, exactly the king himself. It's the same kind of difference there is between fabricare te and fabricare te ipsum, except that here you can't make the difference in English as you can with the king.
Yes, my dictionary says in one of the definitions "to train, fashion (a person, character)".