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My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…
If much of the interest of high-quality papers lies between the lines—in the metaphorical fire that a paper lights in…
I would also recommend that potential grad students make inquiries into how far the compensation package actually goes towards cost…
It’s a mix. I’m still in the UAE with my family, and we feel safe. But some students and faculty…
In the above comment, Michel wrote: “As an aside, every once in a while I check out how the chatbots…
I could imagine LLMs having saved me a *ton* of time in graduate school–e.g., by having supplied reasonable answers to…
The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…
(Click on the image if the margins are cut off on your screen to see it all, or choose "view image".)
On Twitter, Jesse Showalter suggested a shorter version of Plato's Apology: "Pro se defendant on trial for his life gives rousing speech. Loses. Receives death sentence." Others welcome in the comments.
Principia mathematica: “2+2=4, but can we prove it? Blah blah blah . Something about a barber. Ok we finally got there.”
Loser of sky-war becomes an apple merchant. Paradise Lost.
A learned man wanders this world with only three friends–an aesthete, his therapist, and their manager; he finds himself unable to argue, predict the future, or teach a child to play chess. He reads and rereads Jane Austen novels, waiting for a saint to appear. (After Virtue)
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Sometimes talk is cheap, but under felicitous circumstances it can get the job done.
Heraclitus, Fragments:
Man unwittingly makes same point twice
Plato, Meno:
Geometry lesson somehow requires ghostly realm
Plato, Republic:
Conversation, conversation, spelunking, more conversation
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics:
Philosopher asks which life is best, answers “mine”
Augustine, Confessions:
Man has fun, finds God, becomes bore
Aquinas, Summa Theologica:
User’s guide to world, with Frequently Asked Questions
Machiavelli, The Prince:
Advice to rulers: do what you have always been doing anyway
Montaigne, Essays:
Extremely wealthy man claims life’s not all bad
Descartes, Meditations:
After six days of effort, man right back where he started
Locke, Two Treatises on Government:
1: Who made him king anyway? 2: we can fire him
Leibniz, postscript to any letter:
Here’s a sketch of some ideas I might work out in detail some day
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:
Long argument to urge docile readers to organize mass book burning
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason:
Reason accuses self, defends self, judges self, acquits self
Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals:
Man works out idea “what if everyone thought about ethics the way I do?”
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit:
Man tries to know world, finds world itself beat him to it
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil:
Philosopher unironically claims that all philosophers are hypocritical bastards
Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic:
Logician takes half of book to reach step One
Wittgenstein, Tractatus:
After throwing away ladder he climbed, man realizes he cannot ask for help
Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds:
Man in actual world presents argument similar to one by man in possible world
Leiter, Why Tolerate Religion:
To be fair we should tolerate their stupid fantasy tales
I think Professor Rauscher wins the internet for today. Brilliant!
Individuals without an overarching power would make a mess of things: therefore we need absolute governments to make a mess of things on an international scale (Leviathan).
Man finds love with drunk lord. Same man finds love with drunk lord’s sister. But the drunk lord and his sister are Catholics so it does not work out even though there have a really nice palace. (Brideshead Revisited )
Small person goes on long journey. Saves friends; betrays friends. Comes back with much less treasure than he expected. (The Hobbit).
Tall, cultivated and long-lived man explains that the life of man in naturally nasty, brutish and short (Leviathan)
Small person goes on long journey to throw away valuable object. (Lord of the Rings)
Hot girl rejects advances of proud rich guy. Proud rich guy saves hot girl’s sister from ruin. Hot girl relents. (Pride and Prejudice)
Silly sister falls for guy who dumps her. Sensible sister falls for guy engaged to someone else. Silly sister ends up with old guy in a flanneled waistcoat. Sensible sister gets the guy she wants when his fiancée dumps him. (Sense and Sensibility)
Put-upon poor relation nabs rich prig cousin. (Mansfield Park)
Hot rich girl makes a mess of things. Marries moralistic older man (Emma)
Napoleon wins one war and loses another. Rich Russians have love affairs, fight duels and lose money gambling. Soldiers die in snow. Author gives lectures on the philosophy of history. (War and Peace)
Man argues that metaphysics does not make sense by appealing to a principle which does not make sense. ( Language,Truth and Logic)
Man does as he is told a) by three witches and b) by his wife. It does not end well. (MacBeth)
King develops flimsy pretexts for unjust war. Murders political opponents; threatens war crimes; agonises about how tough it is being a king; commits war-crimes; bullshits princess; dies. (Shakespeare, Henry V)
Effete King loses crown to scheming cousin. Agonises endlessly. (Richard II)
Thomas Mann's, "The Magic Mountain". A latently tubercular young popinjay visits his cousin at a Swiss sanitarium. Much hilarity ensues. Pathos and pedagogy a little sometimes too. After seven years' commitment, he quits himself unedified of the journey—just as the reader quits the book.
American liberal argues that American liberalism is a Good Thing. (Rawls: A Theory of Justice.)
American liberal explains how judges are morally obliged to decide cases in accordance with American liberalism (Dworkin : Taking Rights Seriously)
Erratum: should be:
Man finds love with drunk lord. Same man finds love with drunk lord’s sister. But the drunk lord and his sister are Catholics so it does not work out even though they have a really nice palace. (Waugh: Brideshead Revisited )
Philosopher argues that it pays to be good – except when it doesn’t (David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.)
Philosopher explains that although there are no moral truths we would be mad (or obnoxious fanatics) not to be utilitarians. (Hare: Freedom and Reason)
It’s about this obscure dude named Jude (Hardy: Jude the Obscure)
Book about how to educate people for goodness by guy who gave away his children (begotten on an illiterate waitress) to die in an orphanage. (Rousseau : Emile)
Man explains how Capitalism is Bad Thing . Develops incoherent theory of value. Makes false predictions. (Marx: Capital)
Book written by duo who argue that writing books does not make a difference. (Marx-Engels: German Ideology.)
Argues that it is important to understand good but that good is indefinable. (Moore Principia Ethica)
Guy argues that we would be better and/or happier if we all minded out now business, the business of most of us being to obey guys like him. (Plato: The Republic)
Man argues that conspiracies don’t make a difference by explaining how a dictator managed to come to power by means of a successful conspiracy. (Marx; Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
Philosopher’s mission: to demonstrate that many claims are covertly meaningless by showing that they mean the same as claims which are obviously meaningless. (Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations)
Philosopher argues that the point of philosophy is not to interpret the world but to change it. Thousands of philosophers devote themselves to interpreting this remark (Marx: Theses on Feuerbach).
Mozart's Don Giovanni:
Boy meets girl. Boy seduces girl. Girl's father comes back from the dead and drags boy off to Hell.
I wish could claim credit for this. It's from an old British quiz show.
Guilt is bad; shame not so much. 'Twas ever thus. (Bernard Williams: Shame and Necessity)
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations: Attempt to shew fly the way out of fly-bottle ends tragically when fly eaten by duck-rabbit.
Kripke, Naming and Necessity:
Jewish man considers baptism
Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits:
Philosopher claims knowledge cannot be analyzed, analyzes it anyway
Quine, Word and Object
Linguist quarrels with huntsman as rabbit flees
Things are really, really terrible, but gardening will take your mind off of how terrible they are.
Voltaire: Candide
Bad things happen to good people. Good people sometimes turn bad. So Aristotle was a better philosopher than Plato. (Nussbaum: Fragility of Goodness)
Marxist explains that Marx was wrong about almost everything. (Elster: Making Sense of Karl Marx)
Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge:
Tree proves God's existence by falling in uninhabited forest.
A University of Chicago professor, learned of evolution, plies earnestly and skillfully in defense of Darwin the ways of argument and evidence, much to the consternation of blockheads. Blockheads regroup, but still burr among themselves about how best to respond to so outrageous a tactic. "Why Evolution is True".
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Man takes 600 pages to say, "You see those people getting really fucked? We should help them."
Logician tries to eliminate contradictions by developing a theory of truth which if true is meaningless and therefore not true. (Tarski: The Concept of Truth in Formalised Languages)
Four brothers want to kill their father. One succeeds but another is convicted. Everyone talks endlessly about money, morality, sex and God. (Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov.)
Man uses rhetorical tricks to prove that rhetoric is dishonest (Plato: Gorgias)
Man refuses to apologise for being such a wonderful human being. Others vote to execute him. (Plato: the Apology of Socrates)
Sophist named Socrates tries to refute philosopher named Protagoras by dubious rhetorical tricks. (Plato: Protagoras)
Man agonises about whether to murder mother’s lover. Drives girlfriend mad by murdering her Dad. Fudges murder plot so that nearly everybody dies. ‘Goodnight sweet Prince, may choiring angels sing thee to thy rest.’ (Shakespeare: Hamlet)
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl seduce large numbers of people. They fall out. One of them dies. (Laclos: Dangerous Liaisons)
Hume's Treatise: Scotsman wonders if he can trust anything. Probably not. Goes on as if he could.
Liberal argues that if you're not his favourite kind of liberal you're unreasonable.
(Rawls, Political Liberalism)
Anxious guy unwilling to chill out, so he looks at some art and falls dreamlessly asleep; ah, that's better.
(Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation)
Man develops sophisticated moral argument for keeping selfish rich bastards rich.
(Nozick: Anarchy, State and Utopia)
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Man who thinks that emotions do, and should, trump reason gives reasonable criticisms of religion.
"Linguist quarrels with huntsman as rabbit flees". That's the best of the lot, in my opinion. Don't know if you'll quite get this: Huntsman quarrels with duck as "wabbit" flees.
Many angry men fight over a royal woman.
One angry man refuses to fight over a different royal woman.
Said angry man agrees to fight over a dead man.
Homer, 'Iliad'
Foreign Man comes to England.
Kills men and women for food.
English men and women go abroad.
Kill Foreign Man and women for revenge.
Bram Stoker, 'Dracula'.
Dramatist explains how the English managed lose the Hundred Years War despite winning all the battles (and being much braver and much better fighters than the French.) .(Shakespeare: Henry VI Part 1)
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