It has lately come to my attention that in certain quarters of academia, a cadre of whining crybabies is bemoaning what they perceive to be a lack of emphasis on the humanities in higher educational curricula and they attribute this to the subversive influence of corporate good will.
As a concerned Republican, I’ve decided that it is incumbent upon me to determine whether or not there is any substance to these baseless allegations.
Firstly, I’ve deduced that it would be helpful to learn something about the humanities and so I’ve recently taken up the study of philosophy. What is philosophy and how do we know when we’re having it? What is a philosopher?
In the interest of fairness, I’ve made note of some of history’s most notable philosophers and given careful consideration to some of their most notable quotes that I now offer for your consternation.
Let’s start with some low-hanging fruit and then work our way further up the ladder of historic philosophical bloviators.
So how about this guy Baruch Spinoza?
He lived in the 17th century and was a contemporary of Descartes, Locke and Galileo. Let’s take a moment to try and digest some of his witty aphorisms. Below, in bold italic, are a few, followed by my carefully reasoned responses.
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
Yes, they’re rare because they’re difficult. If excellent things weren’t difficult then everybody would be doing them and then everything would be excellent but then there would be no standard of measure or basis for comparison. We would come to regard everything as being just pretty good or ok. Then we would have to deal with ennui.
The big question for a hot shot philosopher like you, Spinoza, would be: what do I do about this all-consuming sense of ennui? Should I reread Principia Philosopiae, should I take a vacation in the south of France, should I write up a bunch more of my own howdy-doody philosophy and then go out and try to get laid?
And yeah, you’ll try all of that stuff but to no avail. And then what? Trying to understand ennui will probably be your last-ditch effort. In abject desperation you will attempt to get to the metaphysical essence of that wretched state of being but again, no luck. Buy yourself some golf clubs and give up.
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
I’m told that the deaf actually are big fans of heavy metal music. It’s because they can feel the bass and drums in their tympanic membrane or something like that. I once asked a deaf guy who his favorite heavy metal band was but he didn’t answer me so then I told him that he had a spot on his forehead that looked exactly like a spot I once had on my forehead that turned out to be skin cancer. I just wanted to see if he was really deaf or just messing with me.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
I’m not vain and I have never imagined myself to be pleasing to all yet still I manage to be a universal nuisance. How does that work? Is it innate talent? Is it a gift from God? I mean, it’s effortless. I don’t try to be a nuisance, it just turns out that way. People are always getting annoyed with me.
Sometimes it hurts because I want most people to like me. Am I being needy? Aren’t we all that way? Not that I care about how most people are, I don’t but still, it seems like kind of a natural thing.
Well ok, not for everyone, obviously.
Certainly not for G.G. Allen*. He enjoyed being hated and was by all accounts very good at it but he ended up committing suicide. I, on the other hand, do not want to commit suicide. G.G. and I are very different in that way.
*G. G. Allen was sort of 80’s grunge/punk shock rocker and he really knew how to test the boundaries of propriety and good taste. One of his best loved artistic conceits was to come on stage in his underwear, sing a couple of tunes (to get the crowd warmed up) and then take a dump on the stage and then run around throwing his hot, rock&roll excrement on various members of the audience (imagine their discomfiture). There was no guarantee that Allen would carry any given performance to this ordurous extreme but it was understood that one could not discount the possibility. This provocative gambit always gave a sort of wildcard feel to his shows.
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
Honestly, I expect better than this from someone who purports to be a world-class philosopher.
“Whatever is…” – what? What are you talking about? How about we let God weigh in on this one.
Ok, hello? Earth to God… come in God. Huh? What? Oh well, nevermind.
Ok, let’s make no mistake here, I am a deeply religious man but I imagine a supreme entity that’s not really so much a god but more like a benevolent godlike presence, like Bank of America or Monsanto.
Well alright, I see that it’s almost cocktail hour so that’s enough for today.
Class dismissed.