Dear Philosophy,
You are almost the most miserable, irrelevant discipline I can think of (except for sociology, and that’s not saying much). When you’re not posturing self-importantly behind the lecterns of the academe, you’re swanning about the yellowed pages of some musty old tome. Get over yourself.
Frankly, it enrages me at times that I am forced to familiarize myself with your major works, sub-schools, and pathetic practitioners. I study novels, for god’s sake! Yet here I am, spending warm summer days indoors, reading frightening prose by a moustachioed asshat from Luxembourg.
Worst, by far, is the way you infiltrate the young, fertile minds of would-be intellectuals. Your twenty-something, white, middle class, depressive devotees slouch around town, coffee cup in hand, cigarette dangling from an unshaven lip, fervidly demanding to know what, after all, is their purpose in life. Where is truth? What is beauty? Will all this moping eventually get them laid?
I once had a boyfriend so afflicted. I told him his existential navel gazing was farm league, and he had better wise up if he wanted to make it in the show. Give me a melancholy onanist who reads too much Sartre and I’ll give you an inappropriate baseball metaphor.
Put your fucking pants back on and get a haircut already!
V
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for years…only not nearly as as well. I’ve tried…God knows I’ve tried.
Dear Vague,
I will divide your criticism into three main points. 1) I am miserable 2) I am irrelevant 3) I am a discipline. Firstly, as to the point that I am miserable, I must seek an adequate definition. Do you mean miserable as in sad? Miserable as in angry? Miserable as in …
Oh, why are you looking at me that way, I’m just answering you!
Fine, be that way!
Yours aggrievedly,
Philosophy.
PS My hair does not need cutting, so there!
Good grief - if you feel that way about Philosophy I can’t wait for your encounter with Economics . . .
Andraste–any time, old buddy. Glad to help.
Tim, aka Philosophy (you are a very complex man, Tim.)–Leave it to you, Philosophy, to get so touchy about a little letter. If you don’t like it just go back to the coffee shop why don’t you. I’ll be at the pub.
Nick–aw, I’m just letting off steam since I happen at the moment to be mired in some Heidegger (um, “the thingly nature of the thing”? Thanks, Martin, thaaaanks). Luckily I have managed to get to the point where I never have to deal with economics (or math(s) or science or political science or statistics) ever again. Knock wood.
vayuge - is nothign stil nothinging or did you get to teh chaptar whare its boss fnids out an fiares its absteract ass?
someboddy said taht all mathamaticians need is a pencil an a wasebaskat an philosaphars are evan more costafective cause they dont need teh wastebasket. have i quotad taht bafore? i love that one.
p.s. loved teh bucktouthed bore in luxemberg.
Freaking hilarious and so true. I managed to get a BA majoring in political science and German without wasting much, if any, time on philosophy. It’s just a way for people to avoid thinking for themselves
Vague - I think you’re quite right to keep away from Economics: utterly dismal, you never know where you are from one minute to the next. And Maths - soooo predictable, the same thing day in day out. Statistics? Completely psychotic - avoid, avoid, avoid. But Fiction - ah, Fiction: always promises so much, never disappoints . . .
HA–I might have heard that one before, but I don’t think it was from you. As for the Heidegger, I have tossed the bastard aside for the day and am strictly writing. It’s important not to get bogged down in the ideas of others, don’t you think?
Oh, and I’m glad somone got the song line, too.
Rachy–thanks for the support. You’re pretty lucky having escaped German (!) and political science (!!) without being too scarred by philosophy. As far as all that goes, the only one I can stand is Nietzsche.
Nick–I completely agree. I don’t even really like reading non-fiction, I mean, tell me a story, already!
Philosophy = “love of knowledge.” So how come philosophers never actually know anything? I suppose they love the unattainable. Hence the misery.
Sorry you have to read it. But then, you don’t have to read anything by David Souter.
I am so happy that you wrote this letter!! Philosophy needed a hard kick in the ass. I keep telling it,”Dude, philosophy, look, you’re NOTHING” but it just won’t listen, rambling on and on about nothingness like nothing is something. I think philosophy needs its “absteract ass” fired, as HA HA HA so aptly put it.
Dan and Chris, you are both quite right. David Souter? As the Poet Nelson Munz once wrote, “HAH-hah!”
Now I am off to get my completely non-abstract, totally concrete ass some lunch.
I never read much Nietzsche, but I did happily lose myself in German romantic literature, especially that of the Austrian variety (and Kafka of course)… I studied the literature direct rather than doing all of the related philosophy courses, which meant that I was able to lose myself in the likes of drei Frauen and Fraeulein Else… hmmmm